Santa Rosa Rules

[Preemptive Strike]

Hello everyone,

There appears to be an unusual rule included in the invite for the Santa Rosa JC tournament coming up. It reads:

"6._ It is this tournament directors philosophy that students should be prepared and willing to debate on either side of a topic._ If a team refuses to debate a topic, it will be treated as a forfeit and the offending team will be given a loss and zero speaker points for that round."

What exactly is the meaning of this rule? If a Gov team loses a topicality argument will they now also lose all their speaker points automatically? If the Opp runs a critique that doesn't seem to link clearly to the resolution then will they automatically lose also?

This seems to almost encourage intervention on the part of judges who don't like the interpretation of a resolution presented by a Gov team.

-Aaron

[truthisjust]

Well I guess that is the way it could be interpreted. I think the meaning of the rule probably has more to do with teams who do not wish to debate a certain topic and instead don't debate at all. Though who really knows what Santa Rosa means anymore.

[pattybar]

It seems to me that they are simply sying that if, after hearing the topic, you decide not to debate it you both lose the round and forgo speaker points for that round.

It is a bit ambiguous, although I think that the ambiguity is in terms of what it means to 'debte the round'.... and it seems that speaking would suffice.

Patty

[NonEcdicus]

Well, yeah, I would want it to mean nothing more than that not debating at all equals a forefeit. However, that's kind of a given. I would tend to fear that it means something more--like even what Aaron suggested--simply because they went so far as to expressly state something as a rule at all.