1. Date of Round Two
We have had a considerable number of emails today, as a result of the decision to change the date of Senior Open Round Two to Wednesday 8th April.
The reason we opted to change the date was because a number of host schools had parent teacher interviews on the original scheduled date (Tuesday 8th April). This meant it was untenable for the date to be kept as it was.
It seems that many other schools have parent-teacher interviews around this date - some on monday, some on tuesday, and some on wednesday.
The number of defaults and adjudicator re-allocations has meant that the Committee has made the decision to cancel round two, and proceed with round three as normal (on Tuesday 12th May). Some teachers were under the impression that moving round two to Wednesday meant that this would have impacted future rounds. This was not the case, as it was a temporary change only. We apologise for the confusion this caused.
In terms of how this impacts on the catch up round, we would like to assure coaches that teams will not be adversely affected by this decision, and will still have a chance to debate if they had elected to move their debates to the catch up round.
Coaches who had emailed in to default for round two or request their debates for round two to be moved to the catch up round will be disregarded. A new draw with a new advised topic will be posted on the website in the coming weeks.
2. Advised Topic Rounds v Prepared Rounds
Unfortunately, an email was sent out by mistake this afternoon that revealed the moot that was going to be used for round two. This was an oversight on our part, and we sincerely apologise again for the confusion it caused.
The next two rounds will be run under the advised topic format. This means that teams will be notified of the topic a week before the round begins. Teams will not know the exact wording of the moot until the day of the round, from whence they will have one hour to prepare.
ASD Committee
