Congressional Debate - Procedure - Chambers and Sessions

Chambers and Sessions

Students attending each tournament are divided up into groups of somewhere between ten to thirty (usually between fifteen to twenty). These groups are called chambers, Houses, or Senates, depending on the region and the tournament (some tournaments include both Houses and Senates).

Time-wise, a tournament is divided into several sessions, each of which are several hours long. If a tournament lasts several days, there is often one session on the first night of debate, followed by several more on the subsequent day.

In most tournaments, congressional debaters go through preliminaries, semifinals, and finals, though other tournaments break straight from prelims to finals or have no break rounds. The top ranked debaters in each chamber (usually top six or top eight) advance to the next round until they reach finals. Debaters below eighth in their chamber are usually left unranked.