Camp Hain

021 Building a Strong 1AC and Crafting Meaningful Harms in Team Policy Debate

• Tia Hain • Season 2 • Episode 21

Share episode

Master the First Affirmative Construction (1AC) in Team Policy Debate

In this episode, Tia Hain delves into crafting a solid first affirmative construction (1AC) for Team Policy Debate, geared specifically for Classical Conversations Challenge 1 students. The tutorial covers the essential steps, including introductions, definitions, harms, the plan, and advantages, culminating in a comprehensive conclusion. Tia further explores the importance of accurate citations, signposting, and how to effectively build and present harms using credible sources. Supplemental materials and templates are available at camphain.com to aid in constructing a compelling argument. Join the Camp Hain adventure for detailed insights into making your debate case clear, compelling, and confident.

00:00 Introduction to the 1AC and Harms
00:36 Welcome to Camp Hain
01:26 Episode Overview and Key Topics
02:10 Breaking Down the 1AC Structure
02:35 Detailed Walkthrough: Introductions
03:30 Detailed Walkthrough: Definitions
04:04 Detailed Walkthrough: Harms
05:40 Detailed Walkthrough: The Plan
07:24 Detailed Walkthrough: Advantages
09:01 Detailed Walkthrough: Conclusion
09:49 Template Walkthrough and Signposting
17:03 How to Build a Harm
23:07 Final Notes and Q&A
24:41 Next Episode Preview and Closing Remarks

Find Camp Hain on:
Website
Instagram
X

021 Building a Strong 1AC and Crafting Meaningful Harms in Team Policy Debate

Tia: [00:00:00] Every great debate starts with a strong foundation. And that foundation is your 1AC. In this episode, we'll walk through how to build a solid first affirmative construction and write meaningful harms that make your audience care. This is episode 21. Team Policy Debate, part four, writing your 1AC and how to build a Harm.

Please note this is geared to Classical Conversations Challenge 1, the grammar phase of learning Team Policy Debate. Get ready to make your case clear, compelling and confident. Let's dive in, but first.

Welcome to Camp Hain, the Adventures of a Catholic family that homeschool public schools, online schools, and has one super obsessed with baseball kid. Currently I, Tia Hain. am a Classical Conversations Challenge 1 director. I directed Challenge 1 a few years ago as well as direct a Challenge A before too, we love our adventures, so come along for the ride. And click subscribe or follow if you are a homeschooler or are thinking about homeschooling [00:01:00] or even if this content just interest you. There, I've said the things and let's move on into the content.

Before we go any further, I just wanna let y'all know that I do have copies of this supplemental that I am referring to, as well as copy of templates that I made, and they're available at camphain.com. That's C-A-M-P-H-A-I-N. But let's go ahead and dig into this episode number 21.

This is what we're gonna talk about in this episode. We're gonna talk about your 1AC, the foundation for your debate, for the whole debate. We're also gonna talk about all of its parts, so I'm going to explain all of its parts, and then we are going to do a template walkthrough. The template that I'm referring to, once again, you can go get at camphain.com, but I'm gonna walk through the template that I have so you can hear how it's supposed to sound.

And then we're going to go over how to build a harm because building a harm sounds [00:02:00] easy at first until you really dive into it and then you realize there's actually a few parts to it to build a really strong harm. We're gonna walk through how to do that.

Let's go ahead and dive into the 1AC and its parts. We start with your introduction and then you're going to do your definitions, and then the next part is your harms, and then the next one is your plan. And then you talk about your advantages and then you have a conclusion. Now, don't worry, I'm going to dive into each one of these very specifically right now.

Let's start with introductions. Introductions are where you address the judges and the timer. You ask them if they are ready. You need to make sure that they are ready, because if you just start without making sure that they are ready, the judges won't be able to hear your wonderful 1AC. You want to address them, acknowledge them, and make sure that they acknowledge you.

Then what you want to do is [00:03:00] introduce yourself and your partner, because it's the introductions, right? You state who you are and state who your partner is. When I go into the template, I will give you exact wording for how to do that. Then what you want to do is introduce the resolution. The resolution is the proposed change in policy, and then you wanna give reasons why it matters.

You can do a quote or you can have some evidence to help support that for your introduction as well.

That's introduction. The next one you go to is definitions. You'll hear when we go through the template. This is called observation one, but we'll dive into that a little bit more when we actually get to the template.

The next part is your definition. What you want to do here is define any terms that might have another meaning or could be confusing or might be construed in another way than what you have intended. And then you also wanna cite your source from where you got those. It's usually like [00:04:00] dictionary.com or Merriam Webster. Something simple that everybody knows and we go, okay, yeah, we agree on that.

The next part after definitions is the harms. Harms are extremely important. It's what your debate is based on. It is the reasons why action is needed, because as the affirmative, you are asking the judges to change the status quo. They need to make a change in policy. You have to give them reasons why they have to make that change in policy. That's what your harms are.

What you wanna do is you're gonna state your harm, then you want to state a quote. To support that it is a harm, and then you want to cite your source. You want to have very credible sources. We will go into that when we talk about building a harm.

And then after that, what you want to do is summarize. You want to put your quote into layman's terms so your audience can understand exactly how your quote really supports that it is a harm.

[00:05:00] And one last thing is you want to have three harms. You want enough harms to show that this is really a problem that needs to be taken care of now, but you don't want so many that you're gonna go over your time limits.

As I stated in one of my previous episodes, I don't remember which, but I'll restate it here. Your first affirmative construction is only six to eight minutes long. You'll be cut off at eight minutes. If you don't finish your construction at eight minutes, then you just don't have those points. You want enough harms to show that it really is a big problem, but you don't want so many that you're gonna spend your entire eight minutes talking about the harms.

Next on our list, here is the plan. For the plan, you want to state the changes in policy that are needed, and then you want to state the agency that is going to make the change. You need to make sure that the agency is the one who has the ability to make the change. And [00:06:00] then you want to talk about how it will be enforced. You have to give an example of how it will be enforced.

And then you also need to talk about funding. State any funding needed and where the funding is coming from. So Often I hear the mistake of the person who is doing the first affirmative construction say No funding needed. Everything needs funding. No matter what you do, you are changing something. There needs to be some kind of funding for how this is done.

Now, if when you have your plan that takes away something else, so let's say it stops something else from happening, you can say the funding from that funding will now be used towards this instead.

But just don't say no funding. There is always funding needed, even if it's something as simple as. You need to create flyers that have to go up in all the different stores for the new policy change because you're, [00:07:00] well, one example that we did was we banned the sale of energy drinks to minors. That was what our resolution was.

And so it's like, okay, well you can't just not have funding for that because you're gonna need to create flyers. They're gonna have to go up in stores, you're gonna have to do training for all these people 'cause you're completely changing something over. They tried to get away with a no funding and I did not let 'em do it. Just know that there will always be funding needed.

All right, next step. We have advantages. This is observation four. Sorry, I know I've kind of dropped the whole observation thing, but like I said, I'll get into that when we actually go through the template. Don't worry. Advantages are your reasons why your particular action is a good idea, why your action is the best action. And if we enact this plan, will there be any other benefits?

Not only will we negate the harms, you do wanna be able to tie to your harm, saying these will no longer be harms. There might be some other benefits that you want to bring up.

I have an example of when my Challenge 1 class a few years ago, we did [00:08:00] banning the death penalty, and I came up with a kind of silly example that they could have used for an extra advantage. Just realize. This is an example of the advantage. I don't think we actually use this in the debate.

But if the death penalty is made illegal nationwide, no one would be performing the task, there would be fewer people needed for mental health services to deal with the issues of the people performing the task, having to have therapy because they're killing people. Therefore, more psychologists would be available to help others. And considering we currently have a shortage of mental health workers and psychologists, this is a benefit that would help society.

Now, after you do that, you want to state the advantage itself. You want to cite your source. And then once again, you want to summarize. You wanna put it in layman's terms, so your audience ... your judges... can understand how this source really helps and shows [00:09:00] that there will be an advantage.

Okay, so next we have conclusion. This is just not the conclusion of this podcast that you're listening to, but the conclusion of your 1AC. What you want to do is just to remind the judges of your position. And you want to support with a quote if possible, like you did with your introduction.

If you could have a nice quote, it often leaves a good memory, especially if you can have a quote from someone famous some, a quote that we even all know, or someone that we all trust, like Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or someone like that. That's always good to have.

And then you want to thank them for their time because they are giving you their time, and so it's always a nice touch to thank them for their time. And then you say you're ready for cross examination.

That is walking through all the bits and pieces of your 1AC. Next we are going to talk about the template walkthrough. I'm going to get into more of the nitty gritty of what we're doing with that, and I [00:10:00] will give you some wording to use as well as we're going through the template walkthrough.

But one important thing I wanted to tell you, and I will do it in the template walkthrough, is something called signposting. What we do with signposting is what I had mentioned earlier where we state what the observation is.

As you're going through it, your definitions are your first observation. Your harms are your second observation. Your plan is your third observation, and your advantages are your fourth observation.

You do your introduction and then you say observation one, definitions. Then you do the definitions. Then when you come to the harms, you say observation two, harms. Then when you come to the plan, you say observation three, plan. Then when you come to the advantages, you say observation four, advantages.

This sign posting helps keep your judges on track with what you're doing, as well as keeps yourself on track. You want to make sure you are signposting when you are going through your 1AC.

Okay, so let's go through the template [00:11:00] walkthrough. I am going to hold my lovely template up here and read from it so you know exactly what's going on and you know that you can find this template at camphain.com, like I keep saying. 

The first thing we're gonna talk about is the introductions. In the template here, it says, greeting an introduction. Greet your opponents and the judges.

And then I put in quotes so they know that this is what they're supposed to say. Are the judges ready? Is the timer ready? Good morning, afternoon, or evening, judges and audience. My name is, and then you state your name. My partner... state your partner's name and I stand resolved...

And then you state your resolution exactly how you've decided your resolution is going to be. What you and the negative have agreed upon.

And then it says reasoning, and then in parentheses it says, why do you believe in this cause? What are you going to prove today?

Basically what you wanna do is give the audience the reason why you're there.

And then support it with a quote if you can. [00:12:00] That's always nice to have, and if you do that, you wanna state your source.

I have down here that it says source, date, and author. Now what you want to do with that is most of the time, whenever you're doing any of these quotes, you can just say your source, but you want to have that information available. If the other team calls you on it on cross-examination, they can say, well, when was that study actually done? Or Who actually wrote that study? Is that person trustworthy?

You don't necessarily need to state it when you're doing your construction, but you do wanna have it available.

If the author and or source is someone or something that would hold a lot of credibility, then go ahead and state it. If you're gonna do a quote from Benjamin Franklin, give your quote and you can say, that was from Benjamin Franklin. Or you can just say Benjamin Franklin. You don't have to get kind of snotty about it like I just did there.

After you've done that, you want to do your summary.

This is where you want to explain the quote in your own words. Unless you think the quote is [00:13:00] sufficient enough of an explanation. Hopefully that makes sense. Sometimes we just wanna do a nice quote. People can totally understand it, but if it's not, you want to give a nice summary of it.

That is your introductions. Now we are going to move on to definitions. This is where you state. Observation one, definitions, and then you say definition, and then you give the term that you want to define. And here's where you want to define key terms from your resolution. Like with the harms, you want to limit it.

You don't want to define absolutely everything 'cause that will eat up your time for your construction. But you do want to define certain terms that could have. An ambiguous meaning, or it could be taken another way. Make sure you do have those definitions, but you don't necessarily have to define everything.

This is where you go through all the definitions and then you cite your source. If they're all from the same source, you can just say, All definitions are from Merriam Webster dot com or Merriam Webster Dictionary, et cetera.

After your definitions you want to say [00:14:00] observation two harms. Now you want to identify with evidence, two to three problems that need fixing. Preferably three. That's a good number to have. You could do two if they are really extreme and you could show like, this has to be changed, but I would try to find three if possible.

You state what the harm is. And then you give your quote to support that it is a harm. And then you have your source from where you got that quote. It has source, date and author on here, so have them ready and available in case you need it, but you can just state your source to begin with.

And then do the summary. Explain the quote in your own words, unless you think the quote is sufficient enough explanation. Make sure you do a summary if it is needed.

I can almost guarantee when you're talking about harms and you're using different sources, especially when I am gonna go through how to build a harm here in just a few minutes, it is going to be three different sources that I use to build this very strong [00:15:00] harm. It's probably a good idea to go ahead and use a summary to wrap up what all this information means.

Then I have harm two. You do the same thing and harm three. Yeah, do the same thing.

All right. I'm guessing you can hear my pages turning here 'cause it's right next to my microphone. But we are going to move on to the plan.

 Observation three, the plan. Make sure you state this state the changes in policy that are needed. You might have one, just one change that is needed. Sometimes you need two or three. I have enough space for three different mandates here, and it just says mandate one, and then you're gonna state the agency that is going to make this change. You're going to state enforcement, so how it's going to be enforced. And then you're gonna state funding for where the money is coming from.

You're gonna do that for each mandate you may have one, two, or three. It just depends on what you decide to do for your plan.

Next page. We have advantages.

Then you state observation four advantages. Identify two [00:16:00] to three key benefits of your plan with evidence. Here it says Advantage one. You write out what your advantage is. Give a quote to support it, source, date, and author. And then a summary, 'cause you want to explain the quote in your own words.

And then you have advantage one, two, and three listed here in the template. Try to do three if you can. Like I said before, you want to tie them to your harms if possible, like how everything's gonna be different and so much better. But if you have some other great benefits, make sure you bring those up. ' Cause the more benefits the better. Right?

We've done advantages. Next we have conclusion.

Okay, so on here it says, remind the judges of your position, repeat the resolution and thank them for their time. You may reference a quote to support your position. It's not required, but it can be more persuasive.

You just write out what your conclusion is and then you say, therefore my partner, whomever that is, and I urge the judges to vote for the resolution. And then, thank you. [00:17:00] I am now ready for cross-examination.

That was our walkthrough. Next, we're going to get into How to Build a Harm.

When researching it is not always easy to find something that states such and such is a harm caused by.

Sometimes it's easier to find what is considered an advantage of changing the status quo of a current situation.

We are doing the resolution of Instating Conscription for adult males age 18 or over for two years.

When my students were looking for research, one of my students actually found 19 Advantages and Disadvantages for the US Instating Conscription.

What it listed were like, Hey, if we had conscription, this would be great and this would be great and this would be great. While those things are awesome, it doesn't actually give you what the harm is. It just gives you what the advantage is. You look for that advantage and then you are going to look for what the problem [00:18:00] is, and then you want to look for statistics, something to lead us to that conclusion that there is a harm, so therefore we need this advantage.

I'm gonna build one for you here in just a second, so that will probably make a little bit more sense.

Let's talk about this example.

The resolution is the United States should instate conscription of two years for eligible men over the age of 18. One article stated many advantages. Well, I just went over it.

19 Advantages and Disadvantages of Compulsory Service.

In the supplemental I have, I even give you a link to that article so you could look at it for yourselves.

In that article it stated one particular advantage is conscription adds another layer of accountability to the government. Okay, that's great, but that's not enough.

The next step would be to show why this extra layer of accountability is needed, and a good place to look for these types of statistics is Pew Research Center. [00:19:00] I also gave you the link for that in the supplemental as well.

Pew Research Center is a very trusted source. It's been around forever. It's a good one to use and it's also a good one to mention, which I will go over in some notes here after I've gone through this.

You want to state that this is where you got your statistics because your judges are gonna know that this is a trusted source. My guess is your judges are probably gonna be a mom or a dad or a grandparent, and they've grown up knowing that this is a very trusted source.

As we're looking at Pew Research, I did a search there and brought up an article from June, 2024 entitled Public Trust in Government from 1958 to 2024. This shows how the public trust in government has been falling over that entire time.

In addition, you might wanna show how this lack of trust harms all involved. A quick Google search brought up another article from Our Public [00:20:00] Service about State of Trust in Government 2024.

Now we've got three articles here and we're going to use this to build our harm.

First you want to figure out the wording to show it is a definite harm. You want to remember that you are on top of the burning tower. You have to show that right now, things are so horrible. We are on top of the burning tower. We have to change it now.

Now we're going to use these three sources and this is how we're going to build this harm. How you would word this, you would state: Harm 1, Trust in the United States government is at an all time dangerous low, but conscription can add another layer of accountability to the government. And then you want to give your quote, which, here's how I built it.

According to Pew Trust, as of May 2024, 22% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right, just about always, or most of [00:21:00] the time, which was among the lowest measures in nearly seven decades of polling.

When people don't trust their government, they are more likely to opt out of voting and other types of civic participation. With less engagement, the public feels, the government hears people's needs and preferences less.

As a result, the points of interaction between our government and the public deteriorate and a fundamental disconnect emerges between Americans and the only institution in the country with the resources, responsibility, and authority to serve all. This breakdown, hampers agency's ability to provide services that respond to the major challenges threatening the health, national security, and overall wellbeing of our nation.

Okay, so that part right there, that big paragraph I have in quotes, that was from the second one that I told you about, about Our Public Service. See how it's nicely worded? It fits right in there.

Now, this is the last quote [00:22:00] from the first thing that we found, which was the advantages. Conscription adds another layer of accountability to the government.

When there is a compulsory military service in place, then more households are directly involved in the daily affairs of their government. There is significant desire to understand more about the threats that their government is attempting to counter providing a voice that offers more support. At the same time, this level of interaction keeps elected officials accountable to their decisions, which means more people can eventually come home.

Now, the source on that is PewResearch.org, OurPublicService.org and FutureOfWorking.com. I also have the date and author down here.

And then summary. Trust in the United States government is at an all time dangerous low. Our government is less connected to citizens it is supposed to be serving, but conscription can add another layer of accountability to the government, thus strengthening the connection between citizens and their [00:23:00] government.

You see how all those different sources I use to build a harm, this is what you wanna do for each harm.

I'm gonna go over a few notes here. I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget to tell you guys about these things. The first one is definitely name the organization within your quote if it will instill automatic trust from your judges. Pew Research Center is definitely a trusted organization.

When I was telling my students about this, I had a mom in the back of the room. She was like nodding your head, oh, yep, yep. Definitely wanted to do that. Pew Research is definitely trusted.

The next one is if you need to add words for clarity, make sure you add them in brackets. You want to make sure you're not actually changing the meaning of the quote. If for some reason the opposition calls you out on it, you can show that I was just adding it for clarity, like I needed to add a the or an and or something like that somewhere.

Do not change what the original quote was because they could ask you what your original quote was and what it actually meant.

And then if you need to remove words for brevity or that it doesn't make sense, you can use [00:24:00] parentheses and ellipsis. Same thing. You want to make sure you're not actually changing the meaning of the quote with that, because they can't call you out on it.

Just make sure it's just so you're not having to use all your time on that one harm.

If you have any questions about what I have gone over, please leave it in the comments. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. It's hard when you're first learning Team Policy Debate. There is a lot of information that is thrown at you. I've been doing this for a couple years now, so I am trying to explain it as best as I can for people that are brand new to it, because when you come into it, it's like you don't know what you don't know.

Please leave any questions you have in the comments.

Next week will be all about the negative side if the affirmative builds the negative tests. In the next episode, we unpack what it means to be a great negative team from finding weak points in the 1AC to crafting strong counter plans and arguments that stand firm. Make sure you [00:25:00] subscribe to get notified when that podcast episode is up and if you made it this far, please give this episode a like.

Until next time,