July 25, 2008

Dear Colleagues: The University of Northern Iowa is pleased to invite you and your students to our annual Ulrich Season Opener Debate Tournament. This year, we continue on our regular weekend; we will hold the 2008 UNI Ulrich Season Opener on September 20-22, 2008. We believe that there are several reasons that you should consider attending the UNI tournament this year.

1) COST - Located in the center of the country in a town with reasonable prices, attending the UNI tournament can SAVE YOUR TEAM A SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF MONEY. Our hotel rooms are a mere $75 per double/double room per night. Our entry fees are only $85 per team in all. Parking in the hotel and on campus is FREE. And, there is FREE WIRELESS AT THE TOURNAMENT (in Lang Hall on Saturday and Sunday) and IN THE TOURNAMENT HOTEL AND AT THE CONVENTION CENTER where out-rounds will occur.

2) WE RUN ON TIME - We pledge that you walk out of the building after round 4 on Saturday and it will still be daylight. On Sunday there will be no need to search for your dinner at 10:00 p.m., and there will be no need to stay up until 3:00 a.m. for finals.

3) COMPREHENSIVE CASELIST - We will provide a comprehensive case list, in both print and electronic formats updated daily.

4) HOSPITALITY - We offer breakfast, delicious free trade shade grown organic hot coffee, and a cornucopia of snacks all 3 days. There are several very tasty lunch options within a few minutes walk from campus. And, Cedar Falls now has an outstanding Thai restaurant.

5) GREAT UNIVERSITY FACILITIES - The bulk of the tournament will be in lovely Lang Hall. Again, this year, we will have FREE INTERNET ACCESS on campus for all both Saturday and Sunday. The tournament will be held in 3 or 4 buildings, and all of the buildings are within 100 yards of each other.

6) POKER - The new Isle Casino in Waterloo is now open, is within 5 minutes of the hotel, has a poker room, and is looking to take your money. For more information about the casino, visit its website: http://www.theislewaterloo.com/ So, think about sending your teams to UNI this year.

The tournament will be INEXPENSIVE, COMPETITIVE, and RUN ON TIME. We'd love to have you join us for the Ulrich Season Opener tournament. Additional details about the tournament appear later in this invitation. Please call if you have any questions. We look forward to welcoming you to our campus in September. Sincerely,

Kate Lavelle, Director of Forensics, (319) 273-7200, katherine.lavelle@uni.edu

Cate Palczewski, Director of Debate, (319) 273-2714, palczewski@uni.edu

Kelsey Harr, Debate Coach, (319) 273-7290, kharr@uni.edu

UNI HOTEL INFORMATION: The Tournament Hotel for the UNI tournament will be the Ramada Inn and Convention Center, at 4th and Commercial in Waterloo (just a 15 minute drive to UNI). BOTH THE TOURNAMENT HOTEL AND CONVENTION CENTER HAVE FREE WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS. Registration for the debate tournament (Friday, September 14) and release of debate pairings each morning will all be held at the Ramada Inn. Please contact the Ramada Inn directly for reservations: (319) 233-7560. When making reservations SPEAK ONLY to the front desk manager or assistant manager. They are available Monday 8am-5pm, Tuesday through Friday 8am-10pm, and Saturday 6 am-2pm. If they are not available leave a detailed voicemail message and they will return your call ASAP. If there are problems, ask to speak to Sandy Thomas, the director of sales and marketing. The tournament rate is a flat $75.00 per room. When you call, tell them you are attending the UNI Season Opener Debate Tournament.

The hotel is only guaranteeing the availability of our block through August 24, so make your reservations early. Please plan on staying at the Ramada, as we need to use the block of rooms to maintain affordable access to the Convention Center (which helps keep our costs low). For questions about the Ramada's tax exemption policy please call the Ramada and ask for Sandy Thomas. For more information on the Ramada or for driving directions please visit their website: www.ramadawaterloo.com (please do NOT use the web site or the Ramada 800 number to make reservations—it will only create confusion). If you have to consolidate or drop rooms, please let Sandy Thomas know ASAP, so that other teams are able to use those rooms in our block. If you have any trouble with the hotel, please let Cate or Kate know. Sandy Thomas is our primary contact at the Ramada Inn and is happy to help you solve any issues that may arise. Feel free to contact her directly at (319) 236-9502 or via email: sthomas@ramadawaterloo.com.

ENTRY INFORMATION As in past years we will be offering an open, junior varsity, and novice division in policy debate. Given any viability for a novice-only division, we will not collapse the novice and JV divisions. We also will be offering a flexible novice workshop during rounds 1-4. For those who need a little help, they will workshop for rounds 1-2, and then have 6 rounds of debate. For those who want a little more help, they will workshop for rounds 1-4, and then have 4 rounds of debate. As in the past, we anticipate compiling an exhaustive list of each school's affirmative and negative arguments, and distributing a printed or electronic copy of the case list to each school attending the tournament, with a preliminary list distributed along with pairings on day 2. We are delighted to again start the season by using the joint CEDA-NDT policy topic.

The time limits will be 9-3-6, with 10 minutes of preparation time per team.

Deadline: The entry deadline is Wednesday, September 17, at 4:00 pm, cst. Use the Bruschke webpage: http://commweb.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/web/index.aspx Fees: This year the registration fee will be $85.00 per team.

Judging: Each school is expected to provide qualified judges to accompany their teams. Each school is responsible for providing four rounds of judging for each team entered. All judges are committed through the second elimination round, or one round beyond when their team is eliminated (whichever happens later). Judges should be able to cover a school's commitment despite potential scheduling constraints (for example, a judge committed for 8 rounds who restricts him/herself to the JV division is not mathematically useful for all 8 rounds and will not count as an 8 round judge). We don't have a very large pool of hired judges that are available in Cedar Falls/Waterloo, so please try to find someone rather than hiring from us. If you do need to hire a judge, the fee will be $100.00 per team. If you must hire a judge from us, please give us at least one week's advance notice to try to locate someone. If you have extra judges available from your school, please let us know--we will almost certainly hire them for as many rounds as they want to work.

Note that UNI uses preference/strike sheets for preliminary and elimination debate rounds. Preferences will not be available on the Bruschke system because of the vast quantity of changes made in judging, given that this is the first tournament of the year. Preference sheets will be available at registration. We will make every effort to have strikes go into effect in round one, and guarantee that they will be in effect by round three. Preferences will take effect in round 4. All judges at the tournament are expected to render a decision where they indicate one, and only one, team that won the round (did the better job of debating). Judges' ballots not adhering to this principle will be "corrected" by the tab room through use of a coin flip.

Elimination rounds: We WILL clear half of the field in each division, as long as those teams have (at least) a .500 record. In order for this to work, all judges must be committed through the first two elimination debates and available to judge during partials. Depending on the number of rounds in partials, we may hold the first elim round on Sunday night instead of Monday morning. We will let the tournament know when the first elim round will be as soon as we have a clear idea of the number of teams breaking. We will not break brackets in elimination rounds. We plan on using side equalization in elimination rounds. For a description of the system to be used and an analysis of the various systems go to www.uni.edu/palczews/sideeq.

Awards: Awards will be provided to all teams participating in the elimination rounds, and to the top speakers in each division. Unusual situations: We believe in maximizing the competitive opportunities for eligible students. Thus, if two schools each have an extra debater, we would allow a combined team from two institutions to compete in the preliminary rounds of the tournament, and would allow those individuals to be eligible to receive speaker awards and advance to elimination rounds according to CEDA rules for hybrid teams.

UNI Transportation Information

By Air: Waterloo/Cedar Falls is served by Northwest Airline. If you don't mind small propjets, this airport might offer the best rates. The Cedar Rapids airport is approximately an hour from Cedar Falls, offering jet service by most major carriers. Other airports used by tournament participants in the past have included Des Moines, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Chicago.

Ground Transportation: If you are flying, we encourage you to make van or mini-van reservations early. Due to on-campus regulations regarding university vehicles, we will not be able to provide local transportation. However, the area taxis operate at reasonable rates, and many of the local hotels offer airport transportation. By Car: From Chicago, take the Northwest Tollway (I-90) to U.S. 20. From Central Illinois or the Quad Cities, take I-80 to I-380 to U.S. 20. From Des Moines, take I35 North to US20 East (there is a more complicated route that is quicker. If you are up for an adventure, email Cate). From Minnesota, take I35 to U.S. 218 south. Parking: Parking at the structure across the street from the Ramada is free, and you should have no problem parking on-campus on Saturday or Sunday.

UNI Team Policy Debate Schedule:

Friday, September 19

7:00 - 10:00 p.m. Registration and Coaches Reception, Ramada Inn Waterloo.

Saturday, September 20

7:00 a.m. Pairings Released, Rounds 1 & 2, Ramada Inn Waterloo

7:30 a.m. Continental Breakfast, UNI Campus, LANG HALL

8:00 a.m. Round 1 Required Starting Time

10:30 a.m. Round 2 Required Starting Time All Round 1 ballots should be in, Rounds 3 & 4 released

1:00 p.m. Lunch, All Round 2 ballots should be in

2:00 p.m. Round 3 Required Starting Time

4:30 p.m. Round 4 Required Starting Time, All Round 3 ballots should be in

7:00 p.m. All Round 4 ballots should be in

Sunday, September 21

7:00 a.m. Pairings Released, Rounds 5 & 6, Ramada Inn Waterloo

7:30 a.m. Continental Breakfast, UNI Campus, LANG HALL

8:00 a.m. Round 5 Required Starting time

10:30 a.m. Round 6 Required Starting time, All Round 5 ballots should be in

1:00 p.m. Lunch. All Round 6 ballots should be in

2:00 p.m. Pairings Released, Round 7

2:30 p.m. Round 7 Required Starting Time

5:00 p.m. All ballots should be in 6:00 p.m. Pairings Released, Round 8

6:30 p.m. Round 8 Required Starting Time

9:00 p.m. All ballots should be in 9:15 p.m. POTENTIALLY first partial debate

A list of teams participating in elimination rounds and the judges and standby judges will be posted at the Ramada Inn Waterloo as soon as possible after the conclusion of Round 8.

Monday, September 22 -- We have adhered to the following general elimination round schedule, pretty much forever:

7:00 a.m. Pairings Released, Ramada Inn Waterloo, side-equalization con-flip

7:30 a.m. Continental Breakfast, Waterloo Convention Center

8:00 a.m. First Elimination Round Required Starting Time, Waterloo Convention Center

11:00 a.m. Speaker awards, awards for first elimination round

Noon Second Elimination Round Required Starting Time

3:00 p.m. Third Elimination Round Required Starting Time

6:00 p.m. Fourth Elimination Round Required Starting Time

9:00 p.m. Final Elimination Round Required Starting Time

REMINDER: We will be using Lang Hall as the tournament headquarters location. We appreciate the efforts people made during the last few years to protect this space. Once again we ask that tournament participants DO NOT MOVE THE TECHNOLOGY CARTS IN LANG HALL, OR PLACE FOOD AND DRINK NEAR THESE CARTS.

Eligibility Requirements: Open: Any undergraduate student meeting AFA eligibility requirements (don’t forget—those rules have recently changed, consult the AFA web site for more information) may participate in the Open Division. 8 preliminary rounds, and elimination rounds occur as described above.

Junior Varsity and Novice: These divisions will be restricted to students meeting CEDA eligibility requirements. If folks are interested, we will have a novice workshop during the first 2-4 rounds, and then novice debates during rounds 3 or 5-8.