# National Parliamentary Debate Association

The National Parliamentary Debate Association (NPDA) is one of the two national intercollegiate parliamentary debate organizations in the United States. The other is the American Parliamentary Debate Association. Its membership is national with participating schools throughout the country. In 2015, NPDA was the largest debating organization in the United States with around 200-250 participating schools in any given year.

## Rules

In tournaments sponsored or sanctioned by the NPDA, teams of two debate head-to-head. Tournaments issue a new topic each round, generally on issues such as politics, philosophy and current affairs. After the announcement of the topic, the two teams have 15 minutes to prepare plus the time it takes to walk to the furthest away round in which debates will be taking place (usually rounded to 20 minutes), during which to write out their respective cases.
The standard time limits for an NPDA debate are:
* Preparation period: 20 minutes
* First proposition speaker: 7 minutes
* First opposition speaker: 8 minutes
* Second proposition speaker: 8 minutes
* Second opposition speaker: 8 minutes
* Opposition rebuttal: 4 minutes
* Proposition rebuttal: 5 minutes
There are tournaments, however, at which these are modified, generally to a 7-7-7-7-5-5 format. The Claremont Colleges tournament, for instance, uses this 7-5 format. During constructive speeches, debaters may introduce new arguments and the speaker's opponents may rise to ask questions of the speaker. Constructive speakers can accept or reject any given question. Rebuttals are exclusively for summarizing the arguments that were made during constructives.
Over the past few years, many coaches and competitors have referred to the official title of speeches with different names. These are unofficial yet very popular with many judges:
* Prime Minister Constructive
* Leader of Opposition Constructive
* Member of Government Constructive
* Member of Opposition Constructive
* Leader of Opposition Rebuttal
* Prime Minister Rebuttal
Debaters may not bring in printed, published evidence and consult it during the round. It is expected that debaters will use their own pre-existing knowledge and research conducted prior to the start of the actual round to back their arguments with reasoning and empirical data. This places parliamentary debate in stark contrast to the other common intercollegiate debate format, policy debate, where debaters may utilize quoted evidence.

## Championship Tournament

The NPDA runs one debate tournament each year: the NPDA Championship Tournament, held in late March or early April at rotating host sites. While the inaugural tournament in 1994 only hosted around 40 teams, the 2004 Championship Tournament had over 300 in the field from over a half-dozen nations. The tournament's practices are generally modeled by smaller invitational tournaments, which provide the bulk of year-long competition. NPDA sanctions many of these tournaments, and the school that does the best at sanctioned invitationals over the course of the year is awarded a year-long sweepstakes championship.

## Relationship to other tournaments and organizations

There are usually several NPDA-sanctioned invitational tournaments in the US to choose from on almost every weekend of the academic year. The largest of these tournaments include the Mile High Swing held in January co-hosted in recent years by Texas Tech University and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, the season-opening Bowman Debates at William Jewell College in September, the Steve Hunt Classic held at Lewis & Clark College in October and the Paul Winters Invitational at the University of the Pacific in November.

## Communicating between tournaments

Almost from its inception, the NPDA community has taken advantage of the Internet to continue debates (and to debate about debates) between tournaments and in the off season. For years, this took place via the official electronic mailing list, much to the chagrin of those who saw that resource as best used for official communication such as posting tournament invitations and results.
Today, much of the online debate (especially between competitors) in the NPDA community takes place via the online forum Net-Benefits.net, founded by University of Southern California then-undergraduate Jed Link. The name Net-Benefits is a pun, referring to the debate paradigm by which the debate judge weighs the net benefits of two competing policies. The site is now an electronic hub for discourse and information on parliamentary debate.

## National champions

Every year since 1994, the organization has held a national championship tournament. Winning teams include:
| Year | Team | School |
| 2025 | Alexa Grechshkin & Isabel Mathy | Whitman College |
| 2024 | Tristan Keene & Brenna Seiersen | Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley |
| 2023 | Tristan Keene & Brenna Seiersen | Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley |
| 2022 | Jacob Tate & Maximus Renteria | Rice University |
| 2021 | Amanda Miskell & Ryan Rashid | Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley |
| 2020 | Mitch Deleel & Adeja Powell | McKendree University |
| 2019 | Co-champions: Jessica Jung$^1$ & lila lavender$^2$/Tom Kadie$^1$ & Henry Tolchard$^1$ | Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley$^1$/Western Washington University$^2$ |
| 2018 | Kyle Bligen & Jazmine Buckley | Mercer University |
| 2017 | Co-champions: Ryan Kelly & Kaitlyn Bull/Will Starks & Quintin Brown | Washburn University |
| 2016 | David Hansen & Katelyn Johnson | William Jewell College |
| 2015 | Matt Casas & Anthony Joseph | Kansas City Kansas Community College |
| 2014 | Joshua Rivera & Benjamin Campbell | Southern Illinois University Carbondale |
| 2013 | Josh Rivera & Mike Selck | Southern Illinois University Carbondale |
| 2012 | Lauren Knoth & Josh Ramsey | Washburn University |
| 2011 | Hank Fields & Matt Gander | University of Oregon |
| 2010 | Brian Horton & Adam Testerman | Texas Tech University |
| 2009 | Max Alderman & David Pena | University of Nevada, Reno |
| 2008 | Kristen Owen & Anthony Putnicki | Texas Tech University |
| 2007 | Tim Kamermayer & Griffith Vertican | Point Loma Nazarene University |
| 2006 | Josh Anderson & Rachel Safran | University of Puget Sound |
| 2005 | Meredith Price & Paul Bingham | Lewis & Clark College |
| 2004 | Ian Samuel & Marie Tenny | Truman State University |
| 2003 | Michael Owens & Joshua Wilkerson | University of Wyoming |
| 2002 | Ben Garcia & Chris Richter | University of Alaska Anchorage |
| 2001 | Danny Barak & Will Trachman | University of California, Berkeley |
| 2000 | Ryan Kennedy & Jacob Stutzman | Truman State University |
| 1999 | Geof Brodak & Bill Herman | Colorado State University |
| 1998 | Heath Curtis & Rebekah Gilbert | Concordia University, Seward |
| 1997 | Dan Nelson & Marcus Paroske | Regis University |
| 1996 | Ryan Levy & Scott Ruthfield | Rice University |
| 1995 | Meredith Marine & Neal Sample | University of Wyoming |
| 1994 | Marcus Paroske & Tammy Schultz | Regis University |

## Top speakers

| Year | Speaker | School |
| 2025 | Rija Naqvi | Rice University |
| 2024 | Jas Liu | Whitman College |
| 2023 | Brenna Seiersen | Parliamentary Debate at Berkeley |
| 2022 | Arshita Sandhiparthi | University of the Pacific |
| 2021 | Cam Wade | Mercer University |
| 2020 | Raine McDonagh | Lewis & Clark College |
| 2019 | Fiker Tesfaye | Texas Tech University |
| 2018 | Logan Kelley | Texas Tech University |
| 2017 | Grace Miller | University of Nevada, Reno |
| 2016 | Ashe Tippins | Western Washington University |
| 2015 | Jazmine Buckley | Mercer University |
| 2014 | Marten King | Whitman College |
| 2013 | Miranda Morton | Whitman College |
| 2012 | Ben Reid | McKendree University |
| 2011 | Max Alderman | University of Nevada, Reno |
| 2010 | Will Van Treuren | University of Colorado, Boulder |
| 2009 | MaryAnn Almeida | Willamette University |
| 2008 | Kevin Calderwood | Southern Illinois University Carbondale |
| 2007 | Ryan Lawrence | University of California, Berkeley |
| 2006 | Joelle Perry | Western Kentucky University |
| 2005 | Marie Tenny | University of South Carolina |
| 2004 | Ian Samuel | Truman State University |
| 2003 | Kyle DeBeer | Colorado College |
| 2002 | Audrey Mink | California State University, Long Beach |
| 2001 | Katie Angliss | Point Loma Nazarene University |
| 2000 | Andrew Vogt | Colorado College |
| 1999 | Bill Herman | Colorado State University |
| 1998 | Daniel Nelson | Regis University |
| 1997 | Marcus Paroske | Regis University |
| 1996 | Ryan Levy | Rice University |
| 1995 | Nick Coburn-Palo | Weber State University |
| 1994 | Andrea Roth | University of New Mexico |

## Commonly used books

* The Parli Prepbook compiled by Kyle Dennis and written by several coaches and renowned competitors, a community-driven guide to modern parliamentary debate
* Strategic Argumentation in Parliamentary Debate by Eric Robertson, good for beginners and intermediate
* Art, Argument, and Advocacy: Mastering Parliamentary Debate by John Meany and Kate Shuster, best for intermediate and advanced
* On That Point: Introduction to Parliamentary Debate by John Meany, good for beginners
* Burden of Proof: An Introductory Guide to Argumentation and Guide to Parliamentary Debate by Mark Crossman, good for beginners
* Competitive Debate: The Official Guide by Richard E Edwards, good for high schools and not just parliamentary debate