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Greetings Lincoln-Douglas Debaters & Coaches:

We write with exciting news about the Harvard LD tournament. This February we will enhance and improve the tournament in many ways both large and small. Many of these improvements originated with our friends in the LD community, and we thank each and every one of you who contacted us directly with constructive suggestions. We will always welcome them.

The improvements we anticipate for 2010 fall into four broad categories: judge assignment, tournament administration, tournament venue, and a completely new competition. We are also introducing a new traveling championship trophy for the tournament proper.

Judge assignment. Starting in 2010, Harvard will employ a system of “community preferences” with a limited number of strikes for each debater whose school’s judges have posted their judge paradigms to the wiki. This system allows all of you to provide a community assessment of who the preferred judges are; we will in turn assign those best judges to the most critical rounds. To those who came to judge last year and felt they were neglected, we humbly apologize, and ask for you to give this new system a chance.

Administration. The ballot desk will for the first time be run by members of the Harvard Debate Council directly responsible to our coaching staff for their demeanor. The triple-octafinals will be double-flighted with separate panels for varsity and JV. Results, perhaps even written ballots, will be posted after each round, and the elimination bracket will be released at the end of prelims.

Venue. We are doing our best to provide a suitably furnished and private space for each debate. Room reservations cannot be finalized for months yet, but our hope is to move LD back to the main campus, with ample judge hospitality space in Boylston Hall, and easy access to all the transportation and amenities of Harvard Square.

First Annual Harvard Lincoln-Douglas Round Robin. We have secured space in the Student Organization Center at Hilles (the venue for last year’s tournament) in which to host an LD round robin tournament prior to the invitational. It is our hope that this tournament will attract the very best debaters from around the nation. We are consulting our friends in the LD community on such questions as size, schedule, who to invite, etc., and will have further details presently.

The Jacob Morris Nebel Award. The Bronx High School of Science, which won the 2009 tournament in both LD and policy debate, is donating a new traveling trophy in Lincoln-Douglas debate that will match the splendor of the existing policy trophy. The trophy will be awarded to the champion in LD debate. Bronx Science has moved to name this award in honor of Trinity Preparatory School’s Jake Nebel, who debated the varsity final round an unprecedented three times. He was champion in 2008 and placed second in both 2007 and 2009; in addition, he was champion of the JV tournament in 2006.

Everyone at Harvard Debate is committed to doing whatever is necessary to keep the tournament a truly world class event. We hope and believe that these changes will go a long way towards doing so. Your input and suggestions are most welcome.

Sincerely,

Dallas Perkins
Sherry Hall
Coaches of Debating

Minh A. Luong
Elizabeth Brannen
LD Tournament Directors

Geoff Smith
Team Captain