The Varsity Program at NDF is designed to give students who have competitive varsity experience the instruction necessary to compete at the highest level of debate – be it at local, regional or national tournaments.

Students who are varsity level competitors are given the opportunity to learn advanced casing techniques and rebuttal strategies. This enables students who leave the Varsity program to be ethical and professional debaters who know how to conduct good research, write outstanding cases and give effective rebuttals in front of a variety of judges.

Students are all individually unique and have different strengths and weaknesses. The Varsity program works with each student individually to ensure that they leave camp having improved in the areas most important to their competitive success the following season.

The Varsity program provides students in-depth lectures on these topics:

• Effective and Ethical Research Methods
• Advanced Values/Criteria - Framework
• Affirmative and Negative Casing
• Topicality and Resolutional Burdens
• Cross Examination
• Affirmative Rebuttal Strategies
• Negative Rebuttal Strategies
• Crystallization Strategies
• Weighing
• Theory Applications in LD – what’s its role?
• Legal issues in LD
• Confusing Positions
• Critical Legal Studies/Critical Race Studies
• Debating Empirics
• Judge Adaptation

Like our other programs, the Varsity Program will ensure every student gets the most out of their institute experience:

• An experienced staff that is actively coaching high school debate
• Limited enrollment to ensure a collegial and positive learning experience
• Outstanding student/faculty ratio that ensures every attendee the “top lab” experience
• One-on-one office hours with access to EVERY staff member at the institute
• A minimum of 12 fully critiqued practice rounds
• Access to top-notch research facilities