A total of 17 ballots were cast and using an IRV vote system the two members are:

Robert Maxwell (on the right)

David Saulet (on the left)

So the new executive committee will be: Danny Cantrell (Rio Hondo), Mike Marse (Cal Baptist), Michael Miller (Glendale), Robert Maxwell (Concordia-Irvine), and David Saulet (El Camino). Thanks to Nick Matthew and Jesus for offering to serve!

First order of business will be to draft governing documents – We’ll try to post those in the next few weeks.

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Four students were interested in serving on the board for next year. Thus, we will need to have an election. The qualifications to vote are that you must be a student from Southern California, competed in at least 1 NFA-LD tournament last year (2009-2010 season), and be interested in participating in NFA-LD next year. Please email me at info@socal-ld.net with your ballot ranking the following four students 1-4. Please rank all four students or your ballot will not count. We’ll use Instant Run off voting system with the ballots (video demo).

2010 Ballot

Your Name: _________________ Your School: ____________
Tournament you competed at last year: _________________

Rank: ___ David Saulet – El Camino
Rank: ___ Jesus Caro – CSU Long Beach
Rank: ___ Nick Matthews – UCLA
Rank: ___ Robert Maxwell – Concordia-Irvine

You can read the candidate statements in the comments to the previous thread. Ballots are due in two weeks by June 24, 2010 to info@socal-ld.net On your ballot please indicate your name, school, the tournament you competed at last year, and your votes in preference order.

So far about 15 people have voted.

Good luck!

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The duties of the executive committee are to:
1) Write a constitution for the group
2) Iron out season sweepstakes procedures for 2010-2011
3) Help plan and administer the 2011 Southern California LD Championship.
4) meet twice each year – perhaps at Fall & Spring Champs although the group can decide its meeting time
5) contribute at least 1 post per week to the website

The membership will include 2 active coaches, 2 active students, and me as founder of the site. My hope, however, is that my level of involvement will be minimal and that the 4 other members will decide through consensus. If there is a 2-2 tie I’ll vote to break the tie.

Each member (the two coaches and the two students) will serve a 1 year term from July 1, 2010 through May 1, 2011. May and June will be the months to nominate and elect new representatives.

Coaches

Two coaches indicated their interest to serve so we will not need to have an election.

Mike Marse - Cal Baptist

Mike has been a regular contributor to SoCal-LD since the very beginning in October 2006. His students have consistently won awards in NFA-LD over the past 4 years. Thanks Mike for serving.

Michael Miller – Glendale

Michael Miller has been a contributor to the blog through numerous comments and suggested links for research for the past two years. His dedication to debate is evident in his tireless advocacy and promotion of the best skills of NFA-LD including eloquence, argumentation, and research.

Students

Four students were interested in serving on the board for next year. Thus, we will need to have an election. The qualifications to vote are that you must be a student from Southern California, competed in at least 1 NFA-LD tournament last year (2009-2010 season), and be interested in participating in NFA-LD next year. Please email me at info@socal-ld.net with your ballot ranking the following four students 1-4. Please rank all four students or your ballot will not count. We’ll use Instant Run off voting system with the ballots (video demo).

2010 Ballot

Your Name: _________________ Your School: ____________
Tournament you competed at last year: _________________

Rank: ___ David Saulet – El Camino
Rank: ___ Jesus Caro – CSU Long Beach
Rank: ___ Nick Matthews – UCLA
Rank: ___ Robert Maxwell – Concordia-Irvine

I will let each of the students speak for themselves in the comment section why they should be elected. Ballots are due in two weeks by June 24, 2010 to info@socal-ld.net On your ballot please indicate your name, school, the tournament you competed at last year, and your votes in preference order.

Thanks!

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Executive Committee Me (Danny Cantrell), 2 students and 2 other coaches. I would not vote on any executive committee decisions except to break ties. My hope is that the committee would work through consensus (ie, making decisions that are 4-0 rather than 2-2). The committee would come up with a constitution to spell out it’s functions but right now I’m thinking…

Duties

1) Run and Manage the Southern California LD Championships
2) Create, Administer, and Award the Sweepstakes
3) Post regularly to the site (1 post/week per member).
4) Promote and encourage schools to participate in the event

If you have additional ideas or thoughts please post them in the comments. Given the site is geared towards Southern California only coaches and students from programs in Southern California will be eligible. If we have more than 2 coaches or 2 students run we’ll have elections.

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In order to be accepted for consideration, the topic area must be in the form of a 1-2 page brief which includes:
1. A statement of the significance of the topic area in current events;
2. A statement of why the topic is interesting, challenging, and/or provocative;
3. A statement of the perceived educational value of the topic area for debaters;
4. A brief bibliography of selected readings (5-10) that capture the nature of the controversy surrounding the area; and
5. Contact information should the committee need further clarification.
Remember, in order for a brief to be accepted, it must meet all of the above qualifications.

I think the best thing we can do now is start searching for the 5-10 readings that capture the nature of the controversy in space exploration right now. Once we have those 5-10 we should be able to craft 1-3 pretty easily. Nick has actually already done a lot of the work in his comment to the poll post. Remember that you are limited to 1-2 pages so this needs to be brief rather than exhaustive.

I know that the high school topic in 1990-91 was “Resolved: that the United States Government should significantly increase space exploration beyond Earth’s mesosphere.” That year, if I remember correctly, the topic was amended after it was announced to add “mesosphere” because the literature base was just too much without “beyond Earth’s mesosphere.” But remember that at this step we’re not proposing a resolution – just a topic area.

If you find a particularly good article regarding space exploration please post it in the comments.

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Nick recommended space exploration
Mat recommended indigenous people
Shantal recommended education in the middle east.

I think we should approach this as a community. We’ll have a poll and whatever topic area get’s the most votes we’ll rally behind. We’ll then have two weeks to write the topic paper (whoever wins is responsible). As a community we can recommend research to include and help revise/redraft the topic area. We can then be sure it’s ready to be submitted by Feb 1.

The poll will close on Friday night.

Please feel free to justify your decision in the comments section people to try and persuade others

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Since the blog was launched in 2006 the site has pretty much doubled its hits each year. In the first full year of 2007 we had a total of 7,475 hits, 2008 had 14,608, and 2009 had 39,980.

Coming up locally is the Pt Loma tournament (one of the biggest national draws in Southern California – a good warmup for NFA), the Glendale tournament, the SoCal LD Championships in February (details soon), and Spring champs. Then the CA State Championship for 2 yr schools and of course NFA. I hope we can get some more CA participation out at NFA this year!

Thanks for making the site one of the largest NFA-LD sites in the country. I hope the spring semester brings some more great debates!

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As we get closer to Dec 31 I thought we could do our first contest on the site – guess the total number of hits for SoCal-LD.net for Fall 2009 (Aug 1 – Dec 31). The person coming the closest (as measured by the absolute value of the difference (ie, total – your guess and then made positive – so if the total was 10, and you guessed 11, the difference would be 1. If you guessed 9 the difference would also be 1).

The winner of the contest will get this nifty debate timer:

To be eligible for the contest simply add a comment to this thread – I’ll collect all the unique email addresses (so please only post once to the comment thread – multiple comments will not increase your chances of winning) and randomly select a winner. (Note: for fairness, any students at Rio Hondo (my school) will not be eligble.)

Hopefully we can get a gauge of how many people are visiting the site. I had a lot of nice comments at fall champs with students thanking me for the site – let’s all get involved in the discussions!

Thanks again for helping to make the site helpful for the NFA-LD community. With the roughly 60 LD entries at Fall champs it’s likely that over 100 different students participated in NFA-LD so far this school year – that’s really incredible and a testament to all the hard work the community has been doing to get students involved in NFA-LD.

Submit your comment with your guess by midnight on December 31 to count!

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2009 Concordia Invitational – LD Results

2010SeasonSweeps-Update2

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2010-SoCalLD-SeasonSweeps-Update1

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