CUSID By-Laws

CUSID BY-LAWS

OUTCOMES RULE

1. Adjudication may be by secret ballot or by consensus; the method of adjudication shall be made clear in the tournament invitation and briefings.

2. If adjudication is by secret ballot, the following rules shall apply:

a. In determining the outcome of a debate, each judge shall have one vote;
b. If a judge awards a higher point total to one team than to the other, the judge shall be deemed to have voted for that team. If a judge awards an equal point total to both teams, the judge shall be deemed to have voted for the Government;
c. If the result of the vote of the judges is a tie the Government shall be deemed the winner;
d. These rules do not apply to public or open rounds which combine the results of a panel of judges and a House vote.
e. Adjudicators may confer upon and discuss the debate with each other at the discretion of the tournament director(s).

3. If adjudication is by consensus, the following rules shall apply:

a. One adjudicator in each room shall be appointed Chair;
b. Adjudicators shall confer upon and discuss the debate with the Chair and other adjudicators;
c. The adjudication panel shall determine the winning team;
d. Each judge shall award speaker scores individually although the panel may confer on the matter;
e. The adjudication panel shall attempt to agree on the adjudication of the debate;
f. Should the adjudication panel be unable to arrive at a consensus, the decision of the majority shall prevail; in case of a tie, the chair shall prevail;
g. Adjudicators may register a dissenting opinion with the Tournament Director.

4. This by-law applies to CUSID-sanctioned tournaments and, as far as is enforceable, to all other tournaments.

NATIONALS PARTICIPATION RULE

1. Only members in good standing and provisional members can attend the National Championship.

2. Provisional members are entitled to send three teams to the National Championship.

3. Members in good standing are entitled to send at least six teams to the National Championship.

4. Bids to host the National Championship must include information as to how many teams a potential host will allow each CUSID member in good standing to be represented by. Any deviation from this established figure must be ratified by the Executive or, if possible, at a General Meeting of CUSID prior to the National Championship.

5. The host of Nationals shall be empowered, subject to Section 7, to establish a pre-registration deadline for schools planning to attend the tournament to submit all necessary deposits and team count information to the organizers of the tournament. The date of the pre-registration deadline shall be no sooner than two weeks prior to the scheduled date for the tournament to commence.

6. Pursuant to Section 5, the host shall be under no obligation to honour the registration requests of schools who submit such information after the established deadline for pre-registration, though they are encouraged to attempt to do so.

7. If the host of Nationals establishes a pre-registration deadline as outlined in Section 5, the host shall be required to reasonably communicate that fact to the membership of CUSID in written form with all necessary information, including the total cost per team and adjudicator, deposit requirements and accommodation arrangements. Such notification must occur at least four weeks prior to the scheduled date for the tournament to commence.

8. Notwithstanding the foregoing, no CUSID member in good standing shall be represented by more than nine teams.

CUSID-SANCTIONED TOURNAMENTS ALLOCATION RULE

1. CUSID-sanctioned tournaments shall be the Regional Novice Tournaments, the National Championship, the French National Championship, the British Parliamentary Debating Championship, and the three Regional Championships.

2. The Central Region Championships shall also be known as the Leger Cup. The Western Region Championships shall also be known as the McGoun Cup.

3. The Regional Novice Tournaments will preferably be the first tournaments of the year, held in September.

4. The British Parliamentary Debating Championships will be held during the Fall Semester, preferably October or November. The format of this event shall follow that practiced at the World Universities Debating Championship.

5. The site of the National Championship shall, as far as is practical, be rotated among CUSID’s three regions. The sites of the Regional Championships and the Regional Novice Tournaments shall be rotated, as far as is practical, within their respective regions.

6. Only members in good standing shall be allowed to submit a bid to host a CUSID-sanctioned tournament.

7. Members planning to submit a bid to host a CUSID-sanctioned tournament are requested to provide advance notice of such a bid to the membership and to the Executive. The bid must detail whether Points of Information will be included in the adjudication criteria.

8. The membership may select a host from among competing bids, if any, for the National Championship. If no host is selected by the membership, the Executive shall be responsible for selecting an appropriate host.

9. The members of each region may select a host from among competing bids, if any, for the Regional Championship and Regional Novice Tournament. If no host is selected by the members of a region for one or both of these tournaments, that region’s Regional Vice-President shall be responsible for selecting an appropriate host.

NATIONALS ALLOCATION RULE

1. Member soutside of the current year’s National Championship host-region shall have advance opportunity to submit a bid to host the National Championship.

2. Members planning to submit an advance bid for the National Championship are requested to provide advance notice of such a bid to the membership and the Executive.

3. The Executive may set deadlines for notice and presentation of advance bids to accomodate general meeting dates.

4. The membership may select a host from competing advance bids, if any, for the National Championship.

5. If only one bid is submitted, the membership may, upon a majority vote, grant conditional acceptance of the bid pending specific changes to the proposal.

6. If no host is selected from advance bids, submissions from all three regions shall be considered.

7. The membership may select a host from among competing bids, if any, for the National Championship. If no host is selected by the membership, the Executive shall be responsible for selecting an appropriate host.

8. A 2/3 majority is required to confer Nationals to a host in a region when competing bid from another region which has hosted Nationals less recently exists.

ELIGIBILITY AND REPRESENTATION RULE

1. To be eligible to attend CUSID-sanctioned tournaments and, as far as is enforceable, any other tournaments, a debater must be both a representative of one of CUSID’s full or provisional members and a registered student at an academic institution represented by that CUSID member. Furthermore, a registered student is either a full or part-time student in a program working towards a degree. A students’ official status is verified by a letter from the registrar of that institution.

2. Not withstanding Section 1, debaters will not be required to be a representative of a full or provisional member of CUSID in order to attend the British Parliamentary Debating Championships.

3. The Executive may grant an exemption to section 1 if the following conditions are met:

a. the debater attends a post-secondary institution in Canada,
b. the debater’s post-secondary institution is neither a full nor provisional member of CUSID,
c. the tournament is either a Regional Novice Tournament or the French National Championship.

4. Subject to section 6 and notwithstanding section 1, and excluding any competition as a representative of a CEGEP, no debater shall be eligible to attend tournaments after having completed in at least one tournament for five different years.

5. A year shall be defined for the purposes of this by-law as beginning on May first and ending on the following April thirtieth.

6. A debater may retain eligibility beyond the limits of section 4 by being a full-time student, as defined by the academic institution the debater is registered. Those students competing as a result of this section should report that fact to the Executive before attending tournaments in a given year.

7. In any year, no debater shall represent more than one member of CUSID. The only exception shall be in cases where the debater has completely ceased to be a member of one institution and has registered at another institution.

8. A hybrid team shall be defined as being a team in which both debaters are not representatives of the same CUSID member.

9. Hybrid teams are prohibited from participation in CUSID-sanctioned tournament, except in the case of the British Parliamentary Debating Championship and the French National Debating Championship.

10. Where a debater violates any of sections 1 to 5, the Executive shall have the ability, subject to ratification or amendment by the membership, to prohibit that debater, otherwise eligible, from competition at CUSID-sanctioned tournaments for not more than one year.

11. An individual shall be excluded from claiming novice status if the individual:

a. has competed in the debating portion of one or more post-secondary level debating tournaments hosted by a CUSID member in any previous year, or
b. has competed in the debating portion of one or more post-secondary level debating tournaments recognized by the American Parliamentary Debate Association, National Parliamentary Debate Association (United States), World Universities Debating Council, or any other national or international debating organization recognized by the President. Such participation shall have taken place in any previous year.Furthermore, to be excluded from claiming novice status, the individual must have been a registered post-secondary student, or was representing a post-secondary institution or a CUSID member at the time of their participation in (a) or (b).

12. If there are questions as to eligibility or novice status, the President, in consultation with the rest of the Executive, shall determine the status of the individual. The method of appeal of the President’s ruling shall be a motion passed by the CUSID membership.

RESULTS REPORTING RULE

1. Within two weeks after hosting a tournament, a member so hosting is required to provide CUSID with a complete set of results.

2. A member attending a tournament host by a non-CUSID member is requested to provide the CUSID President with a complete set of results of that tournament.

3. A submission under either of the above sections should include the results of any and all rounds of debate and public speaking, including the final rounds.

4. This rule is enacted for the purposes of maintaining records of competitions involving CUSID members and assisting in the resolution of eligibility issues.

PROXIES RULE

1. Members in good standing may attend and vote at CUSID meetings by proxy. The means for doing so shall be by way of a proxy form.

2. Proxy forms are to be in the name of the CUSID member, appointing an individual or another CUSID member in good standing as its proxy nominee.

3. The proxy must be in writing.

4. Proxies must be in respect to one particular meeting, the approximate date of which must be indicated on the proxy form.

5. Proxy forms must be produced at the meeting in respect of which they have been given.

6. Proxy forms may provide specific instruction as to how the proxy nominee is to represent the member attending by proxy. These instructions bind the proxy nominee. Where a proxy does not explicitly bind the proxy nominee, the proxy nominee is to exercise its discretion in the best interest of the member attending by proxy.

7. A member that has appointed a proxy nominee can revoke the proxy at any time before the start of the meeting in respect of which the proxy has been given, by providing written notice of revocation to the proxy nominee.

8. Members are not limited in the number of proxies they can hold.

9. Schedules A of this by-law are sample proxy forms. These are provided by way of illustration only; other forms which meet the requirements set out above will be equally valid.

Schedule A – Sample Proxy Form

I, your name, President of the name of debating society appoint name of proxy individual of the name of proxy individual’s debating society to act as my proxy nominee. This proxy notice shall apply for the CUSID General Meetings to be held on the weekend of March 14th to the 16th, 2003 at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia).

The individual named above is instructed to represent and vote in the following manner on the following issues:
optional – your directed proxy instructions

Signed,
your name

BALANCED BUDGET AND ACCOUNT RULE

1. The CUSID Executive present to the membership a balanced budget, to be approved by the majority of the CUSID membership at the first CUSID meeting of the academic year.

2. CUSID fees be assessed by dividing the total expenses equally between all Schedule A schools.

3. That additional contributions to the surplus, if any, be submitted as an independent line-item in the budget, and must be approved by the majority of the membership at a meeting called for this purpose, with two weeks notice being given.

4. The President and the Treasurer shall have joint signing authority over the CUSID account. If the President is unable to execute this duty, the Executive Director shall act in his or her place.

5. The Treasurer shall be responsible for the preparation of a Statement of Cashflows reconciling the opening CUSID bank (cash) balance with the year-end CUSID bank balance. All line items of the Statement of Cashflows must be accompanied by appropriate receipts.

BID REQUIREMENTS BY-LAW

1. A bid for a CUSID-sanctioned tournament must include information regarding:

a. Debating Style & Format for all the days of the tournament including, but not limited to:

type of resolutions being used (e.g. straight, squirrelable, or tight-linked),
whether points of information will be permitted,
whether there will be protected times during constructive and rebuttal speeches

b. Tabulations System for the all days of the tournament including, but not limited to:

description of the computer program,
method of pairings,
constraints being used in pairings,
method of pull-ups in pairings,
method of selecting government and opposition positions,
method of ranking individual speakers and awarding speaker awards

c. Awards being presented to competitors.

2. A bid for a CUSID-sanctioned tournament should, wherever possible include information regarding:

a. The Debating Society including, but not limited to:

the history of the society,
current membership size,
expected membership size during hosting of the tournament,
previous tournament hosting experience of the society

b. Judging for all the days of the tournament including, but not limited to:

description of local judging pool

c. Fees & Judge Requirements
d. School Cap
e. Entertainment including, but not limited to:

a commitment to the all-ages accessibility of all tournament events.

f. Accommodations
g. Awards being presented to competitors
h. Tentative Dates & Schedule
i. Possible or tentative Tournament Staff – specifically Tournament Director, Chief Adjudicator, Tabs Coordinator, Equity/Complaints Officers (different person for each position)

3. A member successful in its bid to host a CUSID-sanctioned tournament is bound by the bid at the time of acceptance by the membership. Furthermore, commitments made at the meeting where the bid selection takes place will be considered part of the bid and therefore binds the successful bidder. Changes to or deviations from the bid require the approval of the Executive for the National and North American tournaments and the regional VPs for regional tournaments, three weeks prior to the tournament commencing.

4. The Executive may stipulate further required bid information prior to the bid selection meeting.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULING BY-LAW

1. The purpose of this by-law is to minimize scheduling conflicts of tournaments hosted by CUSID members in order to ensure a maximization of attendance at those events in as fair and mutually beneficial a manner as possible.

2. For the purposes of this by-law:

a. an “invitational” shall be defined as a non-sanctioned tournament hosted by a CUSID member;
b. a “regionally-sanctioned tournament” shall be any of the Western Canadian Championship (McGoun Cup), Central Canadian Championship (the Leger Cup), Atlantic Canadian Championship and Regional Novice Tournaments;
c. a “nationally-sanctioned tournament” shall be any of the British Parliamentary Debating Championship, the French National Championship and the National Championship;
d. The definition of a “nationally-sanctioned tournament” shall also include the North American Debating Championship when held in Canada and by vote of the Executive when held in the United States. Further this shall also include the World Universities Debating Championship.

3. The President shall be responsible for coordinating the schedule of CUSID for a given year and the Executive Director shall be charged with publicizing this schedule, pursuant to their duties as outlined in the CUSID Constitution. The President may at his/her discretion request the assistance of the Regional Vice-Presidents in communicating with clubs in the various regions to further assist in creating a schedule.

4. CUSID members planning to host events during the Fall semester of a given CUSID year (September to December), shall be entitled to submit a list of dates, ordered by preference, to the President, to be reviewed without undue prejudice (subject to Section 6), no later than August first of that year. Submissions made after this date shall still be considered by the President and incorporated to the best of his/her ability however preference shall be given to those submitted by August first.

5. CUSID members planning to host events during the Winter semester of a given CUSID year (January to April), shall follow the same procedures as outlined in Section 4, however the date for submissions shall be October first of the calendar year preceding the proposed dates.

6. Subject to Sections 4 and 5, preference in scheduling, within reason, shall be given in the following order:

a. nationally-sanctioned tournaments;
b. regionally-sanctioned tournaments;
c. invitationals.

7. On dates where a nationally-sanctioned tournament is scheduled, no other tournaments may be scheduled.

8. On dates where a regionally-sanctioned tournament or an invitational is scheduled, no other tournaments may be scheduled which would also occur within the same region (West, Central, Atlantic).

9. Ultimately in the pursuit of creating a schedule for CUSID, the President shall be charged with mediating and solving any disputes that may arise amongst CUSID members. CUSID members dissatisfied with a decision made by the President have the right to appeal to the Executive, or if feasible, at a General Meeting of CUSID.

10. The success of the implementation of this by-law rests upon the goodwill of CUSID members. Attempts to circumvent the procedures and guidelines set forth in this by-law may lead the Executive to:

a. deny the event in question entry onto the schedule;
b. encourage CUSID members not to attend said event;
c. submit such an incident for consideration of the membership of CUSID at a General Meeting for possible further reprimand.

11. The Executive shall also be empowered to maintain a schedule, separate from the schedule established within this by-law, of non-CUSID domestic or international tournaments that may be of interest to CUSID member teams.

last updated 2005/11/05.