Stanford National Forensic Institute

The three week Accelerated Program provides the same high quality seminars and lectures of the Core curriculum, but with an incredible student to staff ratio of 6:1. This allows the Accelerated Program to guarantee unusually strong personal attention to students during argument construction and discussion, while allowing the a continued focus on in-round technique and strategy.

Three lab options are available for the Accelerated Program (scroll down to read more about each lab option):

• Regular Three-Week Accelerated Program

• Swing Lab

• Sophomore Scholars Lab

Regular Three-Week Accelerated Program

The SNFI strongly believes in the value of personalized debate instruction. Students have ample opportunity for one-on-one consultations with their instructors repeatedly during the camp. This continuous personal attention results in real improvement and a more sophisticated understanding of the upcoming topic. In addition, the low student to staff ratio helps ensure that each student in this program receives several more expertly critiqued practice round than Core Program participants, many utilizing stop-and-go techniques which allow for instantaneous feedback from our faculty. These extra practice debates late in the summer helps students become far more prepared to participate in the competitive season.

The Accelerated program will feature groups led by a balanced and talented staff. Accelerated students will receive a disc of all evidence produced at the camp as well as paper copies of all negative evidence and all affirmative evidence produced in their lab.

Swing Lab

The Stanford Swing Lab program is the finest academic preparatory program available for advanced policy debate students. The program is designed to provide a continuation of participants’ prior camp experience, with an advanced peer group and the best instructors. Depending upon enrollment, multiple labs may be part of the Swing Lab program. The Swing Lab program will be led and taught by one of our most talented and experienced instructors, jon sharp. Students will be placed with others of similar experience levels. To be eligible, students must be varsity level and must have previously attended at least one rigorous debate institute during the summer of 2009. The Swing Lab program has a phenomenal track record: the 1994 - 2008 graduates advanced to elimination rounds at every major national circuit tournament and have twice won the Tournament of Champions, twice won the Glenbrooks, and won MBA, Stanford, Berkeley, and other major tournaments. The Swing Lab program is part of the SNFI Accelerated Program, and as such participants will enjoy the incredible 6:1 student to staff ratio.

The curriculum of the program focuses on three areas.

Expertly Critiqued Debates: Swing Lab students will participate in a rigorous series of approximately eight expertly critiqued practice debates; these debates begin on the second day of the camp with an emphasis on stop-and-go rounds and rebuttal rework debates.

Research, Evidence and Topic Inquiry: The Swing Lab program provides intensive instruction in argument construction and advanced level technique. Students will gain expertise in the upcoming policy debate topic. The arguments produced by other institutes will be used by program participants to construct detailed positions which will include extension blocks.

Advanced Theory: Students will be immersed in advanced theory through special seminars that offer unique and competing views on a variety of issues from the cutting edge of current theoretical discourse.

New additions to this summer’s swing lab include:

• A round-robin style tournament within the lab

• A new twist on the evidence production process aimed at both augmenting files/ arguments and innovating new strategies.

• A new judge mentoring program designed to give students a new perspective

To Apply to the Swing Lab: Students desiring to attend the Swing Lab program will be admitted on an application basis only, and are required to attend at least one rigorous debate institute during the summer of 2009 prior to attendance at the SNFI. One-week camp participants will be considered only with a strong recommendation from their instructors. Depending on enrollment there may be more than one Swing Lab. Swing Lab placement is based on experience and is at the discretion of the program directors.

Sophomore Scholars Lab

Returning for the summer of 2009 is our Sophomore Scholars Lab. This lab is designed for rising sophomores to make the leap from novice to junior varsity or varsity debate. Led by veteran instructor Judy Butler, the lab will focus on extended, heavily critiqued practice debates and step-by-step instruction of the evidence production process. For the same cost as our accelerated program, students will enjoy the 6:1 student to staff ratio designed to grant each student maximum personalized attention from our highly knowledgable teaching staff. Practice debates will all be stop-and-go and will be alloted 3-4 hours each to maximize extensive critique. The evidence production process will also be given extra time to ensure that students leave the camp with a thorough understanding of the necessary steps to producing a quality, debate-ready file.

Admission to this lab is highly selective and is first-come-first- serve. Please select the Sophomore Schoalrs option on the application to be considered for admittance.

Director's Note

I wanted to take some time to inform you of what we have in store for this summer at SNFI Policy. My name is Corey Turoff, and I am returning for my fourth year as director. I debated at the University of Southern California as an undergraduate and since have coached debate for the past seven years, starting at Damien High School and Chaminade College Prep and am now finishing my fifth year at the Head Royce School in Oakland, California. Speaking on behalf of the staff and myself, I can say we think of ourselves as teachers first and debate coaches second. Our approach each summer involves thinking of interesting ways to use the topic as a vehicle for teaching students how to compete successfully during the year. The focus, then, is on critical thinking and strategy: taking well-reasoned argument and tying it to evidence researched by the students on any given topic, and enhancing that argument in later rebuttals with strong analysis and expert vision. We also teach that every argument matters, even the ones whose legitimacy you question. Students should walk out of the SNFI experience with a confidence that they can compete in every debate round, regardless of the arguments being made because ultimately, our goal is to instill a love for debate derived from being prepared for anything, not just the evidence produced by a certain lab on a certain topic.

To accomplish these goals, we employ an unbelievably qualified and mature staff with a cumulative century of debate experience. Each works as a professional debate coach in some capacity during the school year and has worked with/attended the SNFI before. For the past several summers, we have made a renewed commitment towards hiring staff with teaching quality in mind, rather than on the draw that “names” could bring to the institute. We believe that our staffing this year accomplishes that in spades! They represent one of the longer running continuous staffs at institutes across the country and a very tight-knit group of friends whom refuse to allow their competitive natures to come at the expense of your student’s education. Whether through our extreme disclosure requirements during the camp tournament or the occasional friendly intra-lab practice debate, opportunities to teach skills such as block writing and in-round prep usage are never missed.

Through our staff’s experience as teachers, SNFI Policy has created a very simply pedagogical approach to the institute: student-driven learning. The quality of our files is not determined by the quality of the evidence found by an instructor but rather by the students themselves. And while the staff does not cut evidence directly, we use an extensive back-reading system and group sorting process to ensure quality control. Students choose the topics for seminars, and each lecture ends with a lab meeting so that they each have a chance to ask questions while the information is still fresh in their minds. Moreover, the choice in lab program (Swing Lab, Sophomore Scholars, Accelerated Lab, and the Core Lab) gives students greater control over their camp experience than any other site in the country. And unlike other camps, the majority of rounds judged, including the tournament, are judged by full-time instructors rather than recently-graduated high school students. The few younger staff we do employ are former students of staff members whose teaching credentials are verified before they arrive on campus, and most importantly, are disclosed as members of the staff before final decisions are made, which we feel is a stark contrast to finding out from your students in September with whom they worked during the summer.

Thanks for you time and I look forward to working with your students in beautiful Palo Alto, California this July!

-Corey Turoff, Policy Division Director