Dear Debate Community,
We recognize that running a program that consists of competitors attending different schools from across the United States presents significant logistic and competitive hurdles for tournament directors and our colleagues. The purpose of this document is to clearly and succinctly articulate relevant DebateDrills policies.
We are adamant that our students maintain high standards of conduct at tournaments and respect their competitors and judges. Each student has full-text linked our Code of Conduct and Harassment/Bullying policies on their wiki entries. You can additionally access the full-text of our policy here and report incidents here.
As part of our commitment to transparency, we will err on the side of caution to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. The rest of this webpage contains a roster of students on our team. While we will strive to check every single conflict to ensure that we are constantly leading the charge in best practices, it is possible we will occasionally make mistakes. If you have any concerns about who is judging our students at any time, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Warmly,
John Nahas and Morgan Swigert
leadership@debatedrills.com
“I think the real test should be this and the question is a simple one. Did you or persons with whom work closely have a direct and/or regular influence on or presence with the preparation, development, articulation, and presentation of arguments for this competitor for this tournament or tournaments within this competitive season… that they may use for this tournament? If the answer to that question is "yes," then you need to conflict yourself from judging those competitors. If you did not do those things, then there should be no conflict.”
- Dave Houston, April 22nd, 2018
In the spirit of this email sent before the 2018 Tournament of Champions:
Every DebateDrills student will be required to conflict an independent coach any DebateDrills teammate brings to any given tournament. By way of example, if Student A has Person X coaching them privately in addition to the DebateDrills Coaching Staff, every other student at the tournament must conflict Person X at said tournament. For further clarity, if DebateDrills Club Team Member Rex Evans (Santa Monica RE ’19) hires coach Cameron Baghai privately in addition to the DebateDrills Club Team Coaching staff, and, Rex decides to bring Cameron to Tournament Y, all other DebateDrills students at Tournament Y must conflict Cameron Baghai, regardless of any previous affiliation with Cameron.
If any DebateDrills student hires a judge at any given tournament solely to fulfill the tournament’s judging obligation requirement, other students attending said tournament may not conflict said judge given that the judge isn’t coaching the student in question. By way of example, if DebateDrills Club Team Student Tej Gedela (Enloe TG ’19) hires Tara Norris to fulfill a judging obligation at Tournament Z, no other DebateDrills student attending Tournament Z may conflict Tara Norris.
All previous DebateDrills Club Team Coaches will be conflicted from judging DebateDrills students’ until they no longer have a relationship to any student on this year’s roster. By way of example, if Paras Kumar worked on the Club Team from 2016-2018, Paras may only judge students affiliated with DebateDrills after there are no students on DebateDrills’ current roster from Paras’ tenure with DebateDrills.
All previous DebateDrills students who graduate from our Club Team and then judge on the national circuit will be conflicted from judging DebateDrills’ students until either a) 4 years have elapsed or b) they no longer shared preparation with any current members on the team. By way of example, San Marino ED (Eric Deng) was on our Club Team for 1 season (2017-2018). He will be conflicted from judging our students until either a) the 2022 season or b) he no longer shared preparation and materials with any of the students on the current DebateDrills Roster.
We strongly recommend debaters disclose on the NDCA PF wiki but do not mandate disclosure. The only disclosure-related practice we mandate is that teams disclose their DebateDrills affiliation on their disclosure page, even if they elect not to post their positions on the wiki.
Every single piece of evidence cited in a Club Team assignment must have an accompanying cut card, according to our formatting policy. There will be no mandated way of presenting evidence in a debate, but it is very strongly encouraged to read direct quotations, as it preserves evidence ethics and increases credibility. All evidence must be stored and made available to your judge and opponents in cut-card form. Cut cards must be pasted in the order that the evidence appears directly under the paraphrased block. If students have concerns or questions about how to execute this policy, they are welcome to email us at leadership@debatedrills.com.
Name
School Code
Other Coaching
Zachary Apel
North Broward Prep AS
Shree Awsare, Drew Peterson, Cade Blenden
Payton Shen
North Broward Prep AS
Shree Awsare, Drew Peterson, Cade Blenden
Harshil Avlani
Basis Chandler HA
NA
Nathan Han
BASIS Chandler HA
NA
Andy Sun
Enloe SK
NA
Sumedh Kotrannavar
William G. Enloe KS
NA
Hannah Xu
N/A
Alex Li
Erica Chen
N/A
Alex Li
Xiayang Huang
Hunter H_
NA
Shaomin Kee
Lambert KS
NA
Rachel Zhou
Amador Valley JZ
NA
Pranav Pradeep
Mira Loma MP
NA
Nina Pan
Lynbrook PR
NA
Miraya Jain
American RJ
NA
Manya Nallagangu
Enloe CN
NA
Leonardo Jia
Saratoga GJ
NA
Leeya Chaudhuri
N/A (competing as DebateDrills)
NA
Krishi Jaladi
Amador Valley JZ
NA
Albert Cao
Centennial CC
NA
Hanming Sun
Lambert KS
NA
Brielle Jani
N/A
NA
Devansh Roongta
Centennial CR
NA
Brad Cao
Centennial CC
NA
Ashish Goswami
Saratoga GJ
NA
Arnav Mahendra
Mira Loma MP
NA
Arnav Nigam
Hamilton Independent NT
NA
Andrew Chen
Centennial CR
NA
Aarthi Raghavan
American RJ/ American JR
NA
Aadharsh Rajkumar
Lynbrook RP
NA
Conflict Name
Reason
Morgan Swigert
Coach
Sully Mrkva
Coach
Claudia LeDuc
Coach
Gautam Mohandas
Coach
Ishan Rao
Coach
Nicole Rodriguez
Coach
Sebastian Dunbar
Coach
John Nahas
Coach
Grace Homan
Coach
Sasha Haines
Coach
Sanjita Pamidimukka
Coach
Felix Leonhardt
Coach
Neval Mulaomerovic
Coach
Alec Boulton
Coach