Speech & Debate

Coolidge Arkansas Open

The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation is proud to announce its annual Coolidge Arkansas Open, a one-day debate tournament that will be held on Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Rogers, Arkansas. We are excited to bring a Coolidge Cup qualifying tournament to Rogers Heritage HS and the northwest Arkansas region for the first time!

Overview of the Tournament
Date: Saturday, March 15, 2025.
Times: On Saturday, participants should arrive by 8:30 AM. Awards will conclude by 5:30 PM. A detailed schedule will be posted soon.
Format: 1v1 Coolidge debate format.
Location:  Rogers Heritage High School, 1114 South 5th Street, Rogers, Arkansas, 72756.
Eligibility: All students currently enrolled in grades 9-12.
Cost: Free with lunch provided.
Registration: Registration closes Tuesday, March 11, at 11:59 PM CDT. Entries will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. If and when we reach capacity, we will move to a waiting list ordered by time of entry.
Judges: Volunteer citizen judges are provided; attendees have no requirement to provide judges but are encouraged to provide judges at a ratio of one judge for every two competitors or fraction thereof.
Attire: Business professional.

Resolution and Research Brief
At this tournament students will debate both sides of “Resolved: On balance, increasing tariffs on Mexico benefits the United States’ economy.” The Foundation will soon share the research brief its preparing to aid in your preparation. You are not limited to the arguments or evidence in the brief. In fact, you are welcome and encouraged to use the brief as a starting point and build upon it by doing your own additional research and case writing.

Tournament Structure
This is a one-day tournament with an Open/Varsity division. All students grades 9 to 12 from any school are eligible to compete, including independent entries and homeschool students.

Participants will begin Saturday with a topic seminar from a subject matter expert with lunch and four rounds of competition for all competitors to follow. Competitors will be paired randomly for round one, and paired high-low within brackets thereafter. To clarify, this means students debate an opponent with the same win-loss record as their own from round two onwards.

The top four finishers will each receive an invitation to the 2025 Coolidge Cup, which is a national invitational speech and debate tournament sponsored by the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and held in President Coolidge’s historic hometown of Plymouth, Vermont, on July 2-4, 2025. Learn more about the Coolidge Cup.

Format and Style
Students will compete in the Coolidge 1v1 debate format, the same format that is used at the Coolidge Cup. For those new to debating in this format, we highly recommend reviewing our Debate Guide, which provides information about this particular style and rules. Consistent with Coolidge debate’s mission, this tournament will recruit and use volunteer citizen judges. Schools are not required to provide judges for this tournament, but are encouraged to do so at a ratio of one judge for every two competitors or fraction thereof. Please ensure that any volunteer judges you recruit are familiar with the Coolidge format and its mission to remain accessible and persuasive for a broad, civic audience.

Questions
If you have any questions about the tournament, the Coolidge Cup, or about judging, please contact the Coolidge Foundation’s Director of Speech and Debate, Jonathan Peele.

 

Registration for Independent and Homeschool Competitors

Students attending independently (not as part of a school-approved trip or group) and homeschool competitors should register below using this form. Debaters attending as part of a school-approved team should be registered as a group by their coach for this tournament on Tabroom.com.

  • Help us get your name right. Put accented syllables in all-caps. (e.g., CAL-vin COO-lidge)
  • What high school do you attend? (Or if homeschool, write Homeschool.)
  • What grade are you in for the 2024-2025 school year?
  • We're curious to know what your "home" league is, if you have one.
  • (If you do not have a debate coach, leave blank)
  • (If you do not have a debate coach, leave blank)

  • Parent / Guardian Information

    Please enter the following information about your parent or guardian.
  • High school students may choose between the Open/Varsity division or the Novice/Middle School division, with Novice generally being defined as in your first year of high school competition. Middle school students must select Middle School/Novice division.

  • Permissions

  • Provide the name of the supervising adult who will be on campus with you throughout this tournament and note their relationship to you. This individual must be your parent/guardian, or another adult authorized by your parent/guardian to act in their place (e.g., your coach, an older sibling, a grandparent).

  • Click here to download our required Medical and Media release forms.

  • To complete your registration, you must upload these documents after they have been completed and signed. For students under 18 years of age, a parent or legal guardian signature is required on the Medical release and Media release forms. PDF submissions are preferred, but clear photographs of the entire page taken in such a manner that they resemble a scanned document are also permitted.

 

Registration for Judges

  • If you are affiliated with a school attending this tournament, please provide the name of that school. For example, the parent of a student competitor would list the name of the school their child attends. A recent alumni of an attending school would list their alma mater. If you do not have an affiliation with an attending school, write none.
  • Have you ever used Tabroom.com as part of judging at a speech and debate tournament before? If so, do you have a log in on that site?
  • Generally volunteer judges will be available for the entire tournament day (see the schedule posted on this tournament's information page on the Coolidge Foundation website). If you anticipate any limitations on your availability during the tournament, please describe those.
  • If there are any debaters at this tournament who you should not be assigned to judge, please list them here. For instance, if you have any children competing, or if there are students whom you coach.
  • Are there other important pieces of information that tournament officials should know that will help us run an educational, efficient, and fair competition? If so, please share those with us!