Speech & Debate

Coolidge Illinois Open 2024

The Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation is proud to announce the first annual Coolidge Illinois Open, a one-day debate tournament that will be held on Saturday, October 19, 2024, at Willow Academy in Des Plaines, Illinois. We are excited to bring a Coolidge Cup qualifying tournament to Chicagoland for the first time!

Overview of the Tournament
Date: Saturday, October 19, 2024.
Times: Students should arrive and gather in the cafeteria by 8:30 AM. All four rounds and awards are scheduled to conclude by 6:30 PM.
Format: 1v1 Coolidge debate format.
Location: Willows Academy, 1015 Rose Ave, Des Plaines, Illinois, 60016.
Eligibility: All high school students (currently enrolled in grades 9-12).
Cost: Free.
Registration: Registration closes Tuesday, October 15, at 11:59 PM CDT. This tournament has a maximum capacity of 64 debaters and 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 do so.
Attire: Business professional.

Resolution and Research Brief
The resolution for this tournament is Resolved: For the United States, the benefits of reducing its immigration levels outweigh the harms. A research brief will be posted here on or before October 4, 2024, for you to read and use. This is intended to help you 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 Overview and Structure
This is a one-day tournament with one Open (Varsity) division. All students grades 9 to 12 from any school are eligible to compete, including independent entries and homeschool students. You will begin the day with opening remarks from tournament officials and hosts. We will have four rounds of competition for all students, with competitors 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 here.

Format and Style
Students will compete in the Coolidge 1v1 Debate format, the same format that is used at the Coolidge Cup. If you are new to debating in this format, we highly recommend you review our Debate Guide, which provides information about this particular format, style, and rules. Consistent with Coolidge Debate, 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. 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 Coolidge Foundation Debate Director Jonathan Peele (jpeele@coolidgefoundation.org).

Registration for Independent and Homeschool Competitors

If applicable, continue scrolling to find the form for registering as a volunteer judge. This form is intended for independent entries (students attending without the formal support of their school) and homeschool entries. For schools attending as a team, please visit this tournament’s page on Tabroom.com and register your students and judges there.

  • 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.

  • Permissions

  • 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!