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The biggest difference between BP and 3-on-3 debating is that there are 4 teams in a debate, two affirmative teams and two negative teams. At the end of the debate the adjudicator ranks all four teams, from first to fourth, and it requires a lot of strategy to beat three other teams!
The first affirmative team (hereafter called the "opening affirmative") and the first negative team (hereafter called the "opening negative") behave like the 1st and 2nd speakers of a normal 3-on-3 debate. Thus 1st speakers of the opening team must define the topic, provide a team split and provide positive arguments (the 1st speaker of the opening negative must also rebut the 1st speaker of the opening affirmative team). The 2nd speakers of the opening teams must also provide rebuttal, and postive arguments (positive arguments are arguments that you think up in your preparation time that prove your side of the topic, as opposed to rebuttal, which is when you attack what your opposition has argued in the debate).
The role of the second affirmative team (hereafter called the "closing affirmative") and the second negative team (hereafter called the "closing negative") is a little bit more complicated. These teams CANNOT say anything that contradicts what their opening team said - they must remain consistent with what has been said on their side of the debate. However, they also want to appear to be better than the opening team on their side of the debate, so they must provide more or new arguments, better analysis of the arguments and/or new examples.Closing teams do not rebut the opening team on their side of the debate, but they can rebut both teams on the other side of the debate. The 1st speaker of each closing team needs to provide rebuttal, and provide some new arguments for their side of the debate (these arguments are sometimes called a "case extenstion"). The 2nd speaker of each closing team spends the majority of their speech rebutting the other side (with a focus on the other closing team), then summarises their teams case (much like a 3rd speaker in a 3-on-3 debate).
It is tricky to find the balance between competing with the opening team on your side of the debate and trying to be consistent with them, but the basic rule is that you are trying to prove that your side of the debate is right (ie the affirmative or the negative side), but that your team is the better team on that side. Below are some examples of what a closing team should and shouldn't do in a debate:
If the topic was "That Australia should reintroduce the death penalty" , and the opening negative team had spoken about the moral problems with the death penalty and talked about how the death penalty does not prevent or deter crimes, the closing negative team would be able to bring up arguments about how the death penalty may lead to some innocent people being killed, or about how the death penalty will unfairly target poeple from poor background who have less access to good lawyers. They can still reiterate the ideas about how the death penalty is morally wrong and about how the death penalty does not prevent crime, but they should try to focus on the new ideas they have brought to the debate.
If the topic was "That we should go nuclear" and the opening affirmative team defined that to mean that Australia should use nuclear power AND start a nuclear weapons program, the closing affirmative cannot then argue against nuclear weapons - they must follow whatever the opening team defined the topic as. Of course if an opening team argues something that it is difficult to defend, the closing team must do their best to defend it, although they can try to shift the focus of the debate onto other issues (so they could try to spend as little time as possible talking about nuclear weapons, but they could not explicitly say that they disagreed with their opening team and they thought nuclear weapons were a bad idea).
In many ways it may seem that the closing teams have a harder job in the debate, but they also have some important advantages. They get the "last word" for their side, so the adjudicator is more likely to remember them. Also, they get to hear all the ideas of the opening team and then develop those ideas, which means it is easier for them to come up with more arguments, and they have more time to think up different arguments. There are advantages and disadvantages to every position in a BP debate, and there are no positions which are better or worse than others. |
