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Novice CD Debate Topic Limits
For Wyoming Tournaments Only

PROBLEM AREA: Space

What follows are the several Agreements coaches who host a novice division of policy debate agree to abide by for the tournament they host. Teams attending such a tournament agree to abide by these parameters.  The agreements extend to case areas and arguments. The intent of these agreements is to insure novice debaters on the affirmative and negative have a reasonable sense of the nature of the issues they may confront.

2011-2012 CX Topic:  Resolved:  The United States federal government should substantially increase its exploration and/or development of space beyond the Earth’s mesosphere.

Argument Limits

November – The cases listed by the National Federation of High School Association define affirmative ground.

Negative may argue any traditional issue: harm, solvency, significance, inherency and disadvantages. Negatives may not make a counterplan or Kritic argument in the early season.

Negative may make a topicality argument that is binding upon the judge, if the affirmative case is not one of the four listed case areas.

December – Continue with affirmative and negative limits.

January – Counterplans and are now permitted.

February – Argument limits are no longer in effect.

Affirmative Case Areas

Each year the National Federation of High Schools publishes novice case areas that they approve for that year's topic.  These are published on their website, but if you do not go there very often, you may not be aware of them.  Here they are!  This is an easy way for you to get involved in policy debate. 

The following topics are suggested as "Potential Novice Case Areas" by the NFHS for the 2010-2011 National Policy Debate Topic:

1.  Planetary defense: The plan would propose to improve the system for spotting and/or deflecting near-Earth objects. 

2  Space-based solar power satellites: The plan would propose to solve global warming and peak oil issues by building space-based solar satellites.  

3.  Ballistic Missile Defense: The plan would build a space-tier in the U.S. missile defense system in order to protect the American people and/or allies from missile attack.   

4.  Moon mining: The plan would reverse the Obama administration's decision to de-emphasize the Moon in NASA's exploration plans; advantages could be restoring U.S. leadership in space or gaining energy and other resources from mining the Moon. 

Cases not drawn from these four areas may be objected to on ground of Novice Topicality by the negative team. If the judge concurs that the case presented is not represented on the Novice Topic Limits Webpage of the wyforensics.org site, the affirmative team forfeits the round.

Please see:

http://www.nfhs.org/cxdebate.aspx  and 

http://www.nfhs.org/content.aspx?id=5412&terms=1.%c2%a0%20Planetary%20defense%3a%20%c2%a0 

for more information and potential resources.