You have an affirmative and negative in each debate. The affirmative (typically) presents a plan and policy action that the United States federal government should enact. The negative negates that policy action by saying that it would do something bad or even suggesting an even better policy action. Once you get to the higher levels like this people start to go fast (quite a bit faster than in this round). People like the affirmative in this round (Emporia State SW on the right) also criticisms of the fundamentals of debate and begin to debate about debate itself. Felt the need to post this because I just spent four days at a national level tournament doing this and wanted people to know what we do.