---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Jim Maritato" <
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Date: Oct 2, 2011 6:03 PM
Subject: Join the Trojan Web Debates - USC's Fall Online Tournament!
To: <
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Dear Friends and Colleagues in the Northeast
Greetings from the west coast! I hope that the start to the
2011-2012 debate season has been great for you and your students thus
far.
We are roughly two weeks away from the start of the
Trojan Web Debates
- USC's Fall 2011 Online Tournament taking place between 10/17 and
10/28. I am writing you to ask for your support and to encourage your
students to participate in this exciting opportunity to debate in an
innovative platform. This tournament is similar in format to the
Annenberg Digital Debates
- the first online debate tournament we hosted in April, and that
included several policy and World's BP debaters from the Northeast. Our tournament model allows
students to engage in two debates (one affirmative and one negative)
over the course of one week. Students alternate between responses in
their affirmative debate and their negative debate each day. Debaters
record a 3-5 minute response each day between Monday and Friday and
judging takes place over the weekend. The top 10 debaters advance to a
second week of competition to determine overall tournament winners. A
complete explanation of rules and format is available at
http://www.usctrojandebate.comAs October is LGBT History Month
and Coming Out Month, we have focused this semester's tournament around
the discussion of LGBT equality. Thus, students are asked to engage the
following question:
Should same sex marriage be the top priority of the LGBT civil rights movement?
The goal of these debates is to encourage students to engage in a
discussion of movement priorities and tactics, wherein they defend the
prioritization of same-sex marriage on the affirmative, and offer a
competing issue of priority when on the negative. Students are
encouraged to make well reasoned arguments supported by evidence, but to
present their arguments in a style appropriate for a public audience.
We
are asking for a small $10 donation to the International Gay and
Lesbian Human Rights Commission from each student participating in the
tournament as an entry fee to the tournament. Prizes and awards for the
top 10 competitors (including Amazon.com Gift Cards between $25-$100)
will be provided by the Trojan Debate Squad. We encourage debate
directors to consider entering students in this tournament as a cost
effective strategy to increase opportunities for students to debate this
semester. However, if you or your students face barriers to entry due
to donation costs please feel free to contact me to discuss an alternate
arrangement.
The goal of these debates is to encourage students
to engage in a discussion of movement priorities and tactics, wherein
they defend the prioritization of same-sex marriage on the affirmative,
and offer a competing issue of priority when on the negative. Students
are encouraged to make well reasoned arguments supported by evidence,
but to present their arguments in a style appropriate for a public
audience.
Some reasons to participate in our event include:
- Easy access to at least 2 (and possibly 4 based on performance) debates, judged by experienced critics of argument. All judges in our competition will have at least a Bachelor's degree and substantial experience in debate and argumentation.
- Low entry fee, and no travel/hospitality/lodging costs!
- Entry
fees benefit a good cause, and contribute toward ending violence and
discrimination of persons based on their gender expression and/or sexual
identity!
- Little to no competitive trade off with other debate events
- there are no college tournaments hosted during competition days, with
the limited exception of Week 1 beginning on elim day of the UNLV
tournament.
- Easy process, small time commitment - debates are roughly 20 minutes in length, and students post speeches that are no longer than 5 minutes per day.
- Opportunity to research as the debate progresses --
as the tournament is "asynchronous" in nature, students have 24 hours
to respond and can thus engage in research to support direct engagement
with their opponents' points from speech to speech
- It's fun!
Feedback from our April tournament was overwhelmingly positive, with
many students commenting that they enjoyed facing off against debaters
from a variety of different speech and debate activities, sharing their
debates with their friends, and learning from and with their opponents.
University faculty and administrators also found our event inspiring,
and have noted the potential for our model to create additional avenues
of access to debate and argumentation training and actitivities.
- You can debate from almost anywhere!
Our use of YouTube as a platform for the debates allows students,
judges, and audiences to participate using traditional laptops or
netbooks, but also facilitates participation from students with mobile
phones with cameras and Internet access.
The Trojan Web
Debates are an important "next-step" in the evolution of
our tournament model. The most significant difference between our last
event and the Trojan Web Debates is that this tournament will be
conducted via YouTube rather than DebateHall.com. A substantial aspect
of this project is not simply to replicate the tournament model we
created in April in a new platform - but to develop a model and rubric
that can be easily deployed by any number of debate programs, student
organizations, etc. to easily host debate competitions that allow
students to participate independent of the costs of travel. We also
believe these tournaments are an important step toward connecting debate
communities and students who wish to debate, who lack the institutional
support of their colleges and universities. Moreover, shifting to
YouTube allows students who have access to cell phones with video
cameras and mobile Internet to participate in our event. While our
ability to leverage social media in the last iteration of our tournament
model was limited, we anticipate posting debates to Facebook, Twitter,
and a variety of other social media to encourage public engagement, as
well as facilitate easy sharing of debates between debaters and their
peers.
Please join us as we take the next step in creating new opportunities
for student and public engagement with debate. Please feel free to pass
along this e-mail or any information about our tournament to students,
and to contact us if you have any questions.
Thanks,
Jim Maritato
Assistant Director of Public Debate & Forensics
Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
University of Southern California
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973-879-3303