Aug 07, 2024 At 03:50 PM EDT
Last weekend, the debate community gathered in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss the policy debate topic that students will argue for the 2025-2026 school year.
Twelve topic reports were submitted and five remain after a weekend of editing and deliberation, hosted by the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). For the 2025-2026 school year, students will tackle a topic that concerns an international subject.
The final five topics are: the Arctic, India, U.S. military presence, national state recognition and South Asia.
The full papers for each of the 12 topics presented this year can be found on the NFHS website. These are the resolutions for the top five topics:
Arctic – Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly increase its exploration and/or development of the Arctic.
India – Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its diplomatic and/or economic engagement with the Republic of India in one or more of the following areas: environment, free trade agreements or technology.
Military Presence – Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly reduce its military presence in one or more of the following: Bahrain, Japan, Kuwait or South Korea.
Nation State Recognition – Resolved: The United States federal government should grant state recognition to one or more de facto states.
South Asia – Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its defense cooperation with one or more South Asian countries.
The 2024 policy debate topic selection meeting, which is open to anyone to attend, brought together 61 delegates from 22 states and debate organizations including the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues (NAUDL), the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Catholic Forensic League and the National Debate Coaches Association.
"The more people we have involved, the better the entire process is going to be," NFHS Director of Performing Arts and Sports James Weaver told Newsweek. "We're getting a lot of returning people and as we're diversifying the authorship pool, we're seeing more and more people continue to stay in the process, which was the goal."
Weaver said hosting the conference in different cities every year helps increase the diversity of attendees.
"As we move it around the country, we're able to see that part of the country reflected in the process," he said.
This process begins long before the three-day conference in August. Topic authors spend months crafting their proposals that are submitted by July 1 to the NFHS.
The NFHS set up a fellowship process that matches new topic paper authors with veterans of this process to hold office hours with the committee chair and other debate consultants to ask questions and get feedback on their papers. There is also an additional review step at the outline stage to ensure that the final result is as good as it can be before it is put before the conference.
"They have been really direct in a respectful way, providing really direct criticism for the paper," Weaver said. "These are people who've been writing topics, and they've all been national topic authors and wording committee members themselves and [they] really change the process to make those reviews extremely valuable."
At the conference, the various delegates break into small groups to discuss each topic paper, which are typically 30- to 40-page research papers that introduce the problem area, provide background information, propose resolutions and include definitions of key terms and potential affirmative and negative arguments.
Weaver said there are three main criteria for analyzing topic papers.
The first concern is whether the topic is interesting and accessible to students, regardless of experience level, school budget or size or whether they live in a rural or urban area. Next, it must be timely. Since this topic won't be debated until next school year, it must be something that will be relevant in 2026. Finally, the topic must be balanced in terms of the number and quality of affirmative and negative arguments.
Bringing together representatives from different states, organizations and debate backgrounds ensures a lively and diverse discussion that incorporates various perspectives and priorities.
"I really love all of the individuals in this group. I think that it's a hard weekend of work that we all put in to make sure that there's a topic that can withstand a full year of debates going forward," Sara Sanchez, the director of programs and communications at NAUDL, told Newsweek.
She said some national circuit coaches at the meeting are thinking about the most competitive rounds that can happen during the year, while others might be thinking about how a topic can be debated locally within their individual state.
"We're a very diverse country," she said. "So the arguments that people gravitate to on different topics, there's gonna be a huge variety of them."
For NAUDL, as one of the institutional voices at the meeting, Sanchez said she is concerned with how the topic will impact recruitment needs—how appealing and accessible the topic is to get new people involved with debate.
"I tend to think of everything about these topics through novice recruitment, and can new teachers wrap their head around this and coach it," she said. "So I think all of those perspectives are necessary, and I think that we've made a lot of progress in making sure that those priorities are reflected in the topic."
At the policy debate topic selection meeting, roundtable discussions offer participants the opportunity to ask the topic paper authors questions and provide initial feedback about debatability.
Weaver said these discussions, which were first introduced at last year's meeting in Portland, Oregon, were a really positive part of the conversation.
"It made the resolution writing part so much more efficient and so much more valuable to the attendees because they had really dug into topic areas that they hadn't done before," he said.
They were especially helpful when the group broke into smaller committees and subcommittees to break down the resolutions and rework them until they had the perfect wording.
Sanchez said much of the discussion between participants involves debates around the difference between "significantly" and "substantially" and how to balance keeping phrases specific to a certain industry while making the resolution grammatically correct.
But amid the "intense nerdiness" Sanchez describes, there is a strong sense of community and collaboration within a small but mighty group.
"People are coming at it with the best intentions at heart," she said.
The final resolutions for each topic are decided in the small committees and presented to the entire conference for further discussion and voting over the weekend until the final five remain.
The NFHS will send another ballot to the debate community later this month which will be due back on October 11 that will narrow down the five topics to two. The final ballot will then be distributed, and members will have over two months to go through the topics, discuss them with their communities and vote for their top one. The final topic for the 2025-2026 school year will be announced on January 10, 2025.
For the 2024-2025 school year, student policy debaters will discuss intellectual property rights, the domestic topic that was presented at last year's meeting in Portland.
