The Atlanta Urban Debate League is committed to providing excellent debate education programs, services, and opportunities to diverse students, educators, and members of the community!
UPDATED: August 4, 2020
We hope all of our students, educators, and community members are safe. As the fall semester is quickly approaching, we wanted to offer some insight as to what the fall will look like, with more detailed information to follow over the next couple of weeks.
At this time, the Atlanta Urban Debate League (AUDL) intends to offer 100% of debate programming virtually in the fall, utilizing both live and asynchronous debate opportunities. Over the summer, we have offered virtual site visits to our member schools, an initiative led by an amazing team of AUDL student interns, which will continue throughout the fall. The Digital Debate Center, through discussions and panels, will cover a greater breadth of topics as we focus on teaching the skills we want our students to gain through their participation in debate, and focus less on tournament preparation. The AUDL will offer some virtual Saturday tournaments for AUDL member schools, but in a much more limited capacity than in person tournaments. We will also launch an asynchronous argumentative speech competition, throughout the fall semester, that will be based on a bracket advancing system; and, asynchronous Civic Scholars programming in an effort to provide students with a platform to speak on topics of the day.
In addition to AUDL-exclusive programming, we will also seek and promote additional debate opportunities to our community to expand the number of competitive offerings and opportunities for student engagement. While most of these opportunities are intended for high school students, we will try to ensue additional opportunities for students participating in our elementary and middle school divisions. The AUDL will focus on promoting tournaments and activities that are free or have a low cost for entry; and, we will try to provide volunteer opportunities for Emory’s Barkley Forum and competitive debate alumni to help with judging obligations for schools who choose to participate.
While it will certainly look different, the AUDL is looking forward to the upcoming academic year and the opportunity to reconvene as a community, even if it begins at a distance.
Sincerely,
The Atlanta Urban Debate League