FGCCFL

Author: Josh Schneider

Registration is open on Tabroom for FGCCFL All Events 6, to be held January 18, 2025, at Riverview High School in Sarasota. To help our students prepare for the NSDA District Tournament, we are offering Program Oral Interpretation and Informative Speaking in addition to all NCFL events.

You can view the invitation here. The registration deadline is 9:00 pm on January 9. We look forward to seeing you at Riverview!

The FGCCFL Judge “Cheat Sheet” has been updated for January 2025 with the LD resolution for January/February:

Resolved: The United States ought to become party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and/or the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

and the PF resolution for January:

Resolved: The African Union should grant diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Somaliland as an independent state.

This cheat sheet will be valid for FGCCFL All Events 6 at Riverview. The NSDA speech events POI and INF do not appear on the sheet; however, POI’s judging criteria are similar to OI’s (except there is one program that contains at least two of poetry, prose, and drama), and INF’s judging criteria are similar to OO’s (except that a visual aid is permitted).

NB: the LD topic on this sheet sheet will also be used at FGCCFL Grand Finals and NSDA Districts in February, while the PF topic for those tournaments will be printed on the February cheat sheet.

The Congress docket and seating charts for FGCCFL All Events 5, to be held December 7 at Sarasota Military Academy, have been posted. They are also available (and will be updated) on the tournament’s Tabroom page.

Please note that four items of legislation were not approved for this tournament because they were not written in FGCCFL format and/or addressed stale topics without being timely, significant, or novel enough to justify their inclusion. Please review the legislation templates and the Congress Manual, which may be downloaded from the Congress Resources page.

FGCCFL has adopted its own legislation templates for use in Student Congress. These templates are designed so that legislation will be correctly formatted and can rapidly be assembled into a docket for publication shortly after the registration deadline. They differ from both the NCFL and NSDA templates because they are intended to meet the League’s needs.

The templates are meant to be opened in any word processing program (Word/Microsoft 365, Google Docs, Pages, LibreOffice, WordPad, etc.), then edited by typing the legislation text into the document, replacing the highlighted guide text. The finished product is then to be saved/exported in Microsoft Word (.docx) format and uploaded to Tabroom.

Legislation that is not submitted as a Word document, using the template as directed, WILL NOT be considered and WILL NOT admit students to an FGCCFL tournament. This includes legislation using another league’s template, legislation with section breaks, legislation using a table for line numbering, legislation whose formatting has been altered to fit more text on the page, and anything in PDF. Such items, if uploaded, will be deleted without further explanation.

A few tips for using the templates:

  • Read the guide text before you delete it. It explains what goes where and what is and isn’t necessary. Any text that’s not highlighted should probably stay unless you have a compelling reason to change it.
  • Type the legislation text into the template rather than pasting. If you must paste, choose the “Keep Text Only” option or Paste Special as unformatted text. This is to avoid overriding the template’s carefully constructed formatting.
  • Don’t worry if you don’t see the line numbers in your word processor. They will appear in the right place once the legislation is on the docket.
  • The indentation and tabs have been set so that you should generally just be able to type. You don’t need to press Enter at the end of every line. If you’re adding a subsection to Section 2 or 3, press Enter, then Tab.
  • Be wary of “immediately upon passage.” It will generally take time for people to comply with a new law, and it will take a minimum of six months to a year for administrative rulemaking. Better to choose a period of time after passage or a date certain. If using a date certain, write it as “April 14, 2025,” NOT “April 14th,” “14 April,” “4/14/25,” etc.
  • There’s more than one right way to do things, but the templates will never be the wrong way in FGCCFL.

Good luck and happy drafting!

The FGCCFL Student Congress Manual has been updated to Revision 24.11. The only substantive change is a return to four 90-minute sessions, with PO service recorded and scored as one speech.

Additionally, the tournament invitation has been posted for FGCCFL All Events 5, to be held December 7 at Sarasota Military Academy. Please note that due to the Thanksgiving holidays, the registration deadline for this tournament is noon on Monday, December 2, i.e., after the holiday.

Due to preparations for and the potential effects of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Helene, the registration deadline for FGCCFL All Events 2 (October 5, Imagine School at North Port) has been extended to 5 PM on Monday, September 30. The new deadline applies to registrations, judge names, lunch orders, and Congress legislation.

The Congress docket, chamber assignments, and seating charts will be published Monday evening. Drops, name changes, and IE titles may be submitted online until midnight.

Stay safe, everyone! We look forward to seeing you at Imagine School.