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• Policy Debate (CX debate) – Policy debate is a form of debate in which a team of two on the affirmative debates against a team of two on the negative. This style of debate is primarily concerned with the passing of a particular policy, or plan, based on a given resolution which stays the same all year long. The affirmative argues why the benefits of the plan outweigh the disadvantages, while the negative argues why the plan is not viable, or why alternative plans may be better. In recent years policy debate has been characterized by a high emphasis on evidence, and as a result, the speed of debate has increased, so as to present as much evidence as possible.
• Lincoln-Douglass Debate (LD debate) – LD debate is a one-on-one event in which one affirmative debater argues against an individual negative debater. Like policy debate, there is an affirmative and a negative but unlike policy debate, there is no plan which is debated over. Rather, the affirmative adopts a moral statement—also known as the resolution—to be true, while the negative argues why that statement may not always be true. These resolutions change every two months. The key to the debate is determining which philosophical issues are most important to understanding morality. While LD was created to counteract the high-speed nature of policy debate, in recent years LD debate has grown to be nearly as fast as policy debate, at least in the national tournaments.
• Extemporaneous speaking (Extemp) – Extemporaneous speaking is not a debating event but rather a speaking event. The speaker is given three topics, chooses one, and has a set amount of time to plan a speech that is both content-heavy and eloquent. This event more closely resembles what most people consider to be public speaking. Extemporaneous speaking is actually divided into two separate events: domestic extemp and foreign extemp. Domestic extemp focuses on American issues while foreign extemp focuses on global issues.
• Original Oratory (OO) – Like extemporaneous speaking, oratory is not a debating event but rather a public speaking event. In oratory, the speaker prepares one well-thought out, extensively researched, and thoroughly practiced speech before the tournament even starts. At the tournaments the speaker simply recites this speech to the judges. Oratory is generally characterized by extremely insightful topics that virtually everyone finds interesting.