 All right, see you. We're good to go. Thank you, sir. All right, good morning everybody. How are you doing? Good. Excellent. Good morning everybody. How are you doing? Great. Fantastic. It's good to see all of you. Welcome to the NCAA Debate Camp. This top Cali lecture is going to be pretty surface level. Does anybody familiar with top Cali? How many people have debated before? I know this is not this lecture, but... Okay, so some of you have some experience and some of you probably have never heard of top Cali. What top Cali is. Top Cali, as you'll see, is a stock issue today. But it's a stock issue that is a little bit different from what you typically hear in debate rounds. You don't always hear top Cali. Well, why not? For those of you who have debated before. Yes, sir? Because you agree with all the definitions. Right. You agree with the definitions, right? Absolutely. Why else? Anybody have any examples? Think of why you might not hear it. That I don't know how to run it. You know how to run it, right? It's something that novices, a lot of people, for example, don't necessarily know how to run it. They don't know how to run it effectively. And so they stray away from it. People think that top Cali is a bad part of the debate. Some early debaters or people who are beginning debate actually despise top Cali sometimes. But in fact, it's truly, truly an important element of debate. It's a stock issue that must be upheld. Otherwise, the ability to have that debate just disappears completely. And we'll find out how that works today. So that being said, we know top Cali is a stock issue. We're working from that perspective. Secondly, you can see it says up there that the stock issue is a priority issue. What is a priority issue? Should we consider before any of the other issues? Absolutely. Should we consider before any of the other issues? Now, we've talked about what top Cali is in the essence of a stock issue. We've talked about it's an important issue that needs to come first. Can anybody tell me why? Why is top Cali so important out of all the stock issues? It's not worth having a debate if you can't agree on the definitions of the resolution. Absolutely. The definitions. This is a topic that you're going to discuss. How many of you have experienced, let's say, a casual conversation or casual debate with your friends and family? And all of a sudden you notice that you started perhaps here and over the course of an hour or two or three or four or five, you ended up here. You're like, how do we even get to this point in this discussion? We were talking about this issue and now we're talking about something entirely different. Top Cali ensures that the affirmative debate stays on topic. That they come into the debate with a topical plan and that's why it's such an important issue. That's why we call it an a priori issue. If the affirmative team entered our debate and they came in talking about anything in the rule they wanted to talk about, could the opposition or the negative, could they adequately have a debate and report that type of plan? Certainly not. And so we tell our judges that topicality is always an a priori issue. Whenever you finish running through your shell or through your entire topicality argument you need to outline that as an a priori issue and that the judge must vote there first. They must look to see whether or not the affirmative is topical. And then, and only then, if the affirmative is topical can we have the debate about the top-end, the substantial top-end. Think of topicality as like the gatekeeper. In essence, in reality we need to figure out whether or not the affirmative meets the resolution within the resolution. And then we can talk about impacts and harms and inherency and all the problems that we want to uncover within that debate. So you see there at the bottom of the last component of the slide in essence topicality is protection for the negative. I like to think of debate in terms of a box. Imagine this box being everything in the world you can debate about. Everything you can debate about in the world. Topicality and the resolution limit that debate topic and limit what you can discuss as the affirmative in that debate to this section here. Now, let's not to say that there aren't a lot of cases or a handful of arguments that you can maybe hear about this topic. If we look at the resolution over here we can see it says United States government should increase its development of the Earth's moon in one or more of the following areas. Energy, minerals and water. So you can make a case a number of different cases that are topical within the frame of the resolution but it disallows the affirmative and making arguments over here. That would explode. I think it is exploding the negative in essence. Because if you have to cover everything could you really have an active debate? No. Could you have the depth that we're really looking for to uncover these issues and resolve them without that limitation you simply would not. Alright. So let's think about T now in terms of the good, the bad and the ugly. Because as I mentioned a lot of novice debaters early on really hate this notion of topicality if you're warned. They want to talk about rare Earth minerals and the like. But in essence, topicality is important because without it there will not be equal division of ground quite simply enough. And without an equal division of ground in the debate we won't have a fair debate using the same box. Let's imagine now that this box is a football field or a soccer pitch whatever it might be. In a game each team has equal ground that they have to cover and equal ground that they have to defend in the debate. It would be unfair for example if all of a sudden we said you know what 49ers are playing I like them a lot and the dolphins are playing I don't like them. So let's go ahead and change the rules. Let's make it so instead of the Niners having to go all the way down the field 75 yards where now the dolphins have to go 75 yards to score a touchdown. It's obvious. And the same thing here with ground and fairness and argumentation if we allow or are affirmative to do anything they want to not be within this resolution as I mentioned again it's exploding that research for it. It's preventing you from being able to actually cover arguments that you want to in a debate adequately enough. So far, topicality is also an excellent argument because it ensures that we have rich education from these debates. Again the concept of the idea of depth versus breadth which do you think is more important than why? Depth of a topic being able to uncover everything you know or think about it or perhaps just tangentially learning about a million things. If we didn't have topicality the education as far as this topic goes would probably be well, surface level and in terms of the types of debates that we do there's plenty of doubles debates. We have the resolution here. We'll tell them into this topic we'll uncover everything we need this and we'll have research and articles and piles and piles of evidence that compile the course of the year. Whereas in parliamentary debates you'll have debates that again cover different topics as you know from your experience of our first few weeks of class those topics will be picked at random and you'll only have so much time to uncover and understand the full depth of those arguments to be made. Alright, the necessary evil, the notion behind this being necessary again lies in that and that we have to have a quality in the debate. We have to ensure that our murder of debaters or a flame bear and are allowing the opposition to have the adequate response and adequate rebuttal to the case and without topicality it's just not going to be there. Okay. I'm going to continue on because we're a little behind with the timing here. Let's see here. Okay, so some guidelines for topicality before we get into the actual format. We're going to go into the format next. The first rule of topicality and really debate persuasion in general is to know your audience. You'll find sometimes that judges will give you different opinions about what they think topicality or how topicality should be played out around. Have you ever experienced that before? Some debaters or some judge will tell you, I never vote on tea or I won't vote on tea unless you prove beyond a reasonable doubt and some judges are more apt to pull the trigger on topicality. It's important before you begin your debate to ask questions. Right? Read your judges' philosophy and when you're outlining your topicality case, be persuasive. Be persuasive. Don't just read the shell that your coaches give you, right? When your coaches give you an outline format of what topicality looks like go through it and understand it fully so you know the argument you're making and not just reading it off of a script. Again, it gets down to being more persuasive. I was to stand in front of you just to literally read your debate on what my coach had written for me. Me as a judge in the back of the room I'm going to question whether or not you really believe that argument or you know what you're saying especially when you get cross-examined for example or you're not able to respond without looking at that sheet of paper. To make sure that delivery is as persuasive as possible and that you are actually understanding the argument and not just reading it but more guidelines, the actual format and structure of topicality argument. Any questions so far? So, when you're constructing your topicality argument the first thing you need to do for a judge is outline the definition the interpretation of the word that you're raising in this topicality argument. Now, when you look at the resolution of the board here the United States Bureau of Government of Justice, et cetera, et cetera you look at the entirety of the resolution I look at a couple of words on this and I see the word increase and I see the word development perhaps the opposition perhaps as the negative in this debate I hear the affirmative outline their plan specific to this resolution and in the end I don't necessarily see them increasing anything perhaps when the affirmative reads their plan I surmise we're looking at my definition of what the word development means perhaps my definition of development is vastly different from what the affirmative's development plan actually is again this is specific to the plan text as the topicality is trying to critique that is the plan text specifically. When I find a word such as this development and I determine that my affirmative team my opponents in this debate are not actually developing anything in relation to the plan I need to first of all define for the judge what development means so your first step is to give a definition of the word or the term or the phrase within the resolution that you're going to say that the affirmative team is not leading I'm sorry yeah there we go secondly now is violation give the first step and outline topicality cases to tell your judge what the definition is the second step is to tell the judge how they don't meet the word is how your affirmative team does not meet your definition specifically again you're going to have to tell the judge look my definition of development for example is long term let's say that I have a definition that said development equals years and years of continual development if the affirmative plan was only to send let's say one mission to the moon and that was the end of it if this was the affirmative plan let's send out one package and see what happens and you think about your definition it says no no development means years and years of effort you're going to tell the judge step number one here's my definition of the word development step number two here is how and here is why the affirmative team is not topical in other words they are not resolutional they do not meet this term you tell the judge specifically what is the affirmative team doing affirmative team is sending one mission to the moon one space capsule to the moon whereas as I outlined in my definition my interpretation of that word judge this word development means that you need to have years and years of continual service once that's outlined from the judge they see the discrepancy in this debate they see where you're outlining the problem and why your affirmative is not topical the third and fourth step though are incredibly important because this is where the judge is going to lay in and determine why this matters because that's really what he or she will be asking themselves at this point sure you say it means development you know developing means continual they say it means one mission why do I care that third step is outlining a set of standards from the judge or you can think of it as the reason to care can anybody tell me some standards they've used or know of in terms of running topicality predictability predictability yes sir what does that mean that you imagine to this that you would know a way to I guess predict how they were going to define it and therefore you kind of see your prototype so back to that term of the definition of development if you expected it to be long term would you ever prepare yourself for a plan that was let's say a singular space module trip certainly not right if you are projecting that development means a certain thing and it means that long term action must be taken you would never consider it would explode your research burden you would have to go and find a plan that perhaps just spent maybe all two or three days on developing development wouldn't be substantial enough it would be outside of this resolution and it would be impossible for you to really cover that so what's another standard explain grounds for me because how they define the case they have more grounds than you do in the case right absolutely so the same notion again we talked about already with grounds of having the equity in this debate if your opponent explodes that research burden for you there's absolutely no way to be able to review that particular case what's another standard grammar grammar why and how is grammar important in a debate of top caliber so I think there was this case where the United States government should agree to more agreement with Mexico and the affirmative just added one agreement so the grammar was on the pass within the definition or within the resolution you'll also see the term and or does that mean you have to do both some people are going to have a definition that means it says yes you do other people of course love the definition that says no you don't but the point being is this is important in terms of the resolution and the way it's put out I've seen debate rounds as well for example where opponents have asked for a plan text and I see here a plan text written out fully and punctuation was missing in the debate we lost that debate because it means something is substantially different than the United States federal government and again I'll get into the nuance of that but it's important to know that grammar is without a doubt important and that it is it can without a doubt change what you're doing in the resolution plan if it isn't kept in check alright let's move on here so I'm making the argument now defining terms this is your format oh I forgot I'm sorry I got one more thing here we've got standards as our third and the last but not least we close out with the base in the top cali argument it's for voters to tell you what voters are and how they apply in the top cali argument this is what you tell the judge this is why you should vote for them so you need to tell the judge once you've got the standards for the base why in effect they need to vote for you you've given them what you think is important and now tell them specifically what are they going to vote on so for example you might tell them this is a a priori issue again I'll always tell the judge when you're telling them to vote for top cali that is an a priori issue which basically means look here first look here prior, look at any other argument as I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture you need to be topical and understand that we're make sure that the permeable is topical substantive component of the debate you can start off by saying hey judge, this tea is a priori for ground there's been a loss of ground and this debate on my side is a negative what's another voter there's no clash because there's no loss of ground absolutely no clash much like the standards they're quite similar you can tell the judge this is a voter for we have these debates for a reason to become more educated to affect change in the world and when your affirmative is outside of the debate when you come into this debate expecting a plan specific to the USFG is this topic here and they come in and say hey we should take blockbuster and I don't know maybe change it somehow there's no way you can actually rebut that with this ground and the ground on the standard I'm sorry, what if I break this ground on the both of us and the ground on the standard you use them both I'm not sure if I understand the question you said them twice yes, you said them twice, absolutely in effect when you're outlining the voters for the judge we usually keep them pretty short we keep them fashionably short because you've already done the explanation in effect you've already done the explanation of not lining the standards for that debate so in essence the reasons for the argument or the reasons that this argument has implications in the round is based on the standards and the voting issue at the end is just a summary of that you're basically telling the judge this is the voter for ground education, no clash predictability any of those terms that you use is basically a summary of that in the end what else do you have so far yes sir I'm having a little bit of difficulty understanding grounds as a standard alright so when we're playing a game I like to think of debate as a game strategically we're maneuvering pieces across this board but just like in any other game we both at the start of that game should have equity we should have equal opportunity equal ground thinking of it as a game we should have an equal chance in essence so while I'm not going to draw a chess board and of course a debate visually here think of it in terms of again a ball field when we allow the affirmative to talk about everything in the world that again is going to explode the research burden on the opposition side of this debate which is completely exploded there's no way you can actually that then provides them an endless, almost endless amount of topics that they can discuss for this debate that they can think of it like this and they can prepare for think of the prep work you do for the debate that after the debate should be equal to and she both had an equal opportunity to uncover equal arguments on that particular topic now when you go outside of that threshold of being this resolution the limitation of the debate when you say you know what, you don't have to be topical you can talk about rare earth minerals or energy and water in the moon but you can also talk about let's say US and Russian relations imagine a plant test and include something else in relation to energy minerals and water in the moon and a handful of Russia sense well we don't have any space anymore would you be prepared to talk about US Russian relations maybe they do not but if they were doing something outside of that resolution outside of that topic again you're taking that imaginary line in the sound and it's kind of sand that existed before the debate you're getting rid of that and you're giving them more arguments that they could make arguments that exist outside but in essence the affirmative then if they don't have to be topical has a lot more ground in this debate ground being arguments you can make cases you can make as compared to what you'd presume the negative or the opposition would have coming into the debate with the prep time they had beforehand does that make no more sense? other questions? concerns? okay let's continue moving on here yes sir just a quick definition interpretation you are giving your own redefinition or like your own redefinition correct you're not criticizing your definition that's correct that's under violation basically you talk first then affirmative absolutely the topicality argument is run will be the leader of opposition constructive or of course the one NC that's in fact when you run topicality this is an argument you should run right at the very top if you have two disadvantages and whatever else with your case counterplan before you even get to those a priori issue can be topicality knowing that we can't even really evaluate a disadvantage we can't evaluate a counterplan until we really know whether or not the affirmative is topical you want to start there first you outline your definition you don't tell the judge in that first component well look I think here's what's wrong with their definition you give it to them you give them your whether it's very dictionary perhaps it is an expert in political science who is defining something contextually any of those definitions will work in relation to your topics and then secondly once you're told you judge what you define development to mean you tell them how and you need to be specific but be specific in what it is the affirmative does not do what is it that the affirmative does or doesn't do that makes them topical or not topical thirdly then is standards but again as I mentioned these are your reasons to care as a judge you explain those in detail and then last and not least the voters are just where you just tell the judge in a word to this is a primary issue or fairness, education brown, whatever it is and then you write on to your disadvantage where in this do you specify which definition you are talking to which definition you're talking to does that make sense well you're not you mean the word how do you interpret it they interpret it this way that's a violation look they thought that development meant just simply doing one mission whereas my definition clearly articulates that we must be there for the long haul for the duration on that most people also name their topicality whatever they're attacking the definition this topicality development and then they go on and so if you have political disadvantage whatever it might be and then basically your voters you're literally just like restating your standards of why the judges prefer to end like you said that's exactly correct because restating them in a word or two that's all you need to do with voters so I mentioned up here real quick how the critic will see it and I'm not going to hang on this too long we haven't gotten to answering T yet as you see here each critic will see topicality differently there are going to be debate rounds where you feel you've won you've proven your side of the debate in terms of what development means and you've clearly outlined why the affirmative isn't developing the boon and you're going to say look I deserve that round well as you see here each critic is going to see it differently and there is no one correct answer some judges will look at topicality and say look if it's reasonable if it's within a reasonable interpretation of what I thought the framers intended that's fine where some will be more specific and nuanced to looking at again like a grammar topicality where you're looking at periods and dotted lines and crossing p's so everyone will see it differently and that's why it's important to be able to explain how your opponent isn't topical be able to articulate that there is abuse in this round okay so note the terms which you'll be challenged on this is getting into answering topicality as I mentioned at the top here the resolution of the board outlines every term that the affirmative has to meet terms such as increase what does it mean to increase something terms such as development we all have different definitions or interpretations of what it means to develop something and or etc etc look at all these terms of the resolution and know and think about both sides of them have responses so when you're of course running on the affirmative you know how to answer that when you're in opposition you know how to adequately fight your opponent as well let's see here in addition no reader arguments it gets pretty sloppy by the end of the debate a topicality that doesn't have clearly numbered arguments really any case for that so for example when you are rebutting let's say a standard line by line much like you see a number of these four components of the topicality show here if I was going to get into standards and I wanted to rebut their standard of education perhaps I thought that this was actually a very educational round and I wanted to point out why naturally when you're answering T tell the judge where you are on your flow sheet say listen judge on the topicality getting down line by line you go through the definition you get your counter definition first of all you tell the judge how you are not violating the term development of course through the standards and voters if you want but in a number of those arguments and tell us here's the first reason why I feel my interpretation of topicality or of this development is educational here's the second reason why or similarly just rebutting them one by one remember those all the way out so that in the end the judge can look at each one of those and say alright and they can make a determination on how they feel about that and then and only then we'll get down to the notion of voters and say well okay I have to pull the trigger I have to go for the against the affirmative in this round so answering T as the affirmative the first thing you need to do is give your counter definition in partly you'll give a definition in the prime minister constructive we already know that so we have Lincoln Douglas in partly the prime minister constructive will give their own definition to start off that debate but in Lincoln Douglas you're going to have the definition from the affirmative team come out in its second speech in the second constructive you need to give a counter death as the affirmative outline secondly how your interpretation of this of this word like development is preferable and then secondly why your definition does not violate your own excuse me why your definition of development does not violate that term that you got on the top does that make sense so you think development means long term and your plan clearly is long term because you're going to be in the moon for maybe 25 years and that as the outline does not violate what I determined development to mean how your definition perhaps increases education you can talk secondly about how it does not decrease education shown in number one and it doesn't decrease number two the areas and examples of where a term like this actually increases the education that comes from this round etc etc questions on answering so far about two minutes yes so you're affirmative you're responding you again you're restating your definition basically saying because we finally this as this way we're not in violation that's correct exactly yeah when you outline that your definition is long term and that this definition comes from a reputable source in other words the term typically think about the term like in field contextually speaking secondly and you tell the judge look ergo I did not violate I am not non-topical because this is all the means so all these standards that the outline for you one two and three all the fairness issues they brought up in this debate they no longer apply tell the judge that why you are not unfair and because this doesn't apply then therefore you have nothing to vote on and no reason to go accept exactly that's exactly it and extend also don't just say look I'm not that that's a defensive argument I'm not being unfair explain to them particularly how you are how your term actually provides more again allows for a better debate to occur any other questions about top your concerns alright everybody thanks for coming on this morning I will see you a little bit later on this afternoon good luck for the rest of the day with these debates bye