Intellectual Property Rights Set to Be Next School Year's Policy Debate Topic

Jan 16, 2024 At 11:16 AM EDT

As the new year begins, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) has announced the policy debate topic for the 2024-2025 school year.

Starting this fall, high school policy debaters will discuss the topic of intellectual property rights. This was chosen over five other topics, including the other finalist, nuclear weapons reduction.

James Weaver, the NFHS director of performing arts and sports, told Newsweek that the timeliness of the topic couldn't be any better.

"We're going to have some of the smartest high school minds debating intellectual property rights, and bringing it to the forefront is really important," he said.

Intellectual property rights was chosen by a vote of 25-17 in the final balloting process. The voting body included 42 states and 38 state debate associations, including the National Speech and Debate Association, the National Catholic Forensic League, the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues and the National Debate Coaches Association.

The resolution, or statement that students will argue, is: "The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks."

Preston Stolte, the director of debate at Winston Churchill High School in San Antonio, Texas, authored the proposals for this topic.

In his written proposal, Stolte said that this topic is relevant because, "as technology continues to advance and new industries emerge, the question of how best to balance the need for strong intellectual property protections with the need for innovation, competition, and access to information is likely to become even more pressing."

The national topic is what thousands of high school students will research, formulate arguments for and debate across the country throughout the next school year.

"Intellectual Property Rights is a relevant and fascinating topic for our students to debate," Weaver said. "The 2024-25 resolution focuses on navigating a topic and resource that is just now becoming more obvious to the public."

The process to choose the national high school policy debate topic included three rounds of voting that began last August at a conference in Portland, Oregon. The meeting brought together 61 delegates from 21 states and several debate organizations to discuss multiple topic choices, craft resolutions and narrow the field to the top five.

Then, those topics and their resolutions were sent out to states and organizations to be ranked by preference and returned in October.

The NFHS reported back-to-back record voter turnouts for the first ballot, Weaver previously told Newsweek.

"We've had really high turnout for this part of the process for quite a long time, I think we're in our second-highest voting for this part," Weaver told Newsweek. "My goal has always been to try to increase that participation at the beginning part of the process where the voices really help formulate everything that's going on."

In the first round, nuclear weapons reduction earned the most number one rankings, followed by intellectual property rights. The final round of voting took place last fall and results were returned earlier this month.

After a brief respite for the team, the NFHS starts putting together a resource packet called The Policy Debate Quarterly, a four-volume series that breaks down the national topic primarily authored by Dr. Richard Edwards, a professor of communications at Baylor University, that will be available for schools by May 2024.

The "in-depth" packet includes a resource bibliography and breakdowns of the topics for both the affirmative and negative sides, Weaver said.

As schools prepare to debate the 2024-2025 topic this fall, next year's topic selection process has already begun. Weaver said the NFHS started to receive topic papers and outlines from about 25 authors in December 2023, with the next deadline coming at the end of January.

Many of the new authors participating in the process attended the topic selection meeting last August as observers to see how the process works and were inspired to participate themselves, Weaver said.

He credits the "inviting" tone of the selection meeting and the support systems for new authors for the level of participation and enthusiasm.

The 2024 Policy Debate Topic Selection Meeting will be held in Des Moines, Iowa, from August 1-4.

Update 1/16/24, 10:40 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to include comment from James Weaver.