About CARD

Collegiate Advocacy, Research, and Debate is both an organization for intercollegiate debate programs and a format of competitive debate rooted in evidence and advocacy, yet accessible, realistic, and enriching for a diversity of college students. The format is particularly geared for college students with limited prior debate experience. CARD has four major educational goals:

• Scholarship - To immerse students in scholarly literature related to pressing social and political controversies.
• Argumentation - To develop skill with building, testing, and critiquing arguments for a diversity of educated audiences.
• Problem-solving - To develop critical and strategic thinking skills, including working cooperatively with others.
• Community - To foster an inclusive community commited to the growth and success of all members.

Debate Tournament Event Description:

Collegiate Advocacy Research & Debate (CARD) uses a format that seeks to produce a student-centered debate experience that is rooted in evidence and rigor and yet accessible and realistic for students with increasing demands on their time, resources, and attention. There are four major goals the format hopes to achieve. First, it seeks to immerse students in scholarly literature related to pressing social and political controversies. Second, it seeks to develop student skill in building, testing, and critiquing arguments synthesized from that literature and honing their ability to do so in front of a diversity of educated audiences. Third, it seeks to develop skills related to critical and strategic thinking. Finally, the format emphasizes the educational and social benefits of forensics through community-building and a deemphasis on some traditional facets of tournament debating.

The event utilizes a collectively sourced article library of scholarship that has been cultivated by participating students and coaches, traditional policy debate speech sequences with shorter times, and a communicatively centered theory of argumentation to guide debates. A full description of the event and its theoretical norms are located here. It is worth nothing that the norms described therein are not intended as a set of exhaustive rules that speak to what students may or may not do, but rather a set of aspirational norms that reflect the goals of the activity.

Resolution:

The CARD 2024-2025 resolution focuses on the issue of national climate policy mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. The Viking Classic will use the most recent topic and library at the time of the event, published at https://www.westerndebateunion.org/topics

Article Library Details & Guidelines:

CARD debates utilize a collectively built community library as the sole sources of quotable evidence. The library, including links to full-text articles, can be located at: http://www.westerndebateunion.org/cardlibrary

Participants can utilize any portion of any article listed in the established article library.

Quick guide for CARD critics

A CARD critic is an educator, not merely an umpire fairly determining winners, because the CARD critic has two additional and more important responsibilities:

1. Teach students how to improve their arguments and advocacy
2. Nurture a learning environment that sustains student participation

ARGUMENT & ADVOCACY

The central question is whether a world with implementation of affirmative advocacy is better or worse than one without.

• EVERY TEAM: Must debate the current CARD topic (noted above under "Resolution"). While students can present any argument, including appeals to common, personal, and scholarly knowledge, only evidence from documents in the community library (also listed above) may be cited directly.
• AFFIRMATIVE: Must meet a burden of proof by offering clear and convincing arguments their topical advocacy is a necessary and sufficient response to the problems they outline.
• NEGATIVE: Must meet the burden of rejoinder by refuting and undermining the specific case offered by the affirmative.
• CARD CRITIC: The CARD critic is an educator - a critic of argument - tasked to help students understand how to improve their arguments and advocacy. Incomplete, incoherent, or inconsistent “arguments” do not constitute arguments, whether or not they receive a response. Critics should teach debaters why weak arguments are weak and how they could be improved. Critics should focus feedback on the arguments and ideas presented by students. Critics must help create an atmosphere of civil inquiry, learning, and belonging. Critics should announce the winner of a debate and explain their reasoning. Critics must BOTH submit an electronic ballot using their Tabroom.com account AND complete the CARD speaker evaluation form.

CONSTRUCTIVE SPEECHES: Initiate any argument germane to the topic

• 1st Affirmative (1AC): 6 minutes, present a topical case for change
• 1st Negative (1NC): 6 minutes, present arguments against the affirmative case for change
• 2nd Affirmative (2AC): 6 minutes, address negative arguments and develop the 1AC
• 2nd Negative (2NC): 6 minutes, develop arguments against the affirmative change

REBUTTAL SPEECHES: Focus attention on important arguments; no “new” arguments

• 1st Negative (1NR): 4 minutes, crystallize arguments against the affirmative case for change
• 1st Affirmative (1AR): 4 minutes, crystallize arguments for the affirmative case for change
• 2nd Negative (2NR): 4 minutes, explain why the world without the affirmative is better
• 2nd Affirmative (2AR): 4 minutes, explain why the world with the affirmative is better
• CROSS-EXAMINATION: 3-minute cross-examination after each constructive. The 1AC is questioned by the 2NC, the 1NC by the 1AC, the 2AC by the 1NC, and the 2NC by the 2AC.
• PREPARATION TIME: Teams have 5 minutes of preparation time to use outside speeches and cross-examination.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

The highest responsibility of debaters and critics is to create and maintain an enriching and welcoming educational environment that respects each person and encourages their participation and learning about argumentation, advocacy, and the topic. While this is a shared responsibility, critics, as educators, should judiciously intervene to help nurture such a learning environment. Successful CARD critics teach students how to improve their arguments and advocacy through quality feedback. CARD critics teach students where and how they should improve while helping them appreciate that it is in their capacity to improve. Poor critics leave students dejected, feeling unwelcome, or confused about how to improve.