Update: Week Four

Image description: the header of our Change.org petition showing 169 supporters. Description reads "1AC is a community organization dedicated to making speech and debate a more accessible activity for all."

Hello all! What an energetic week it has been.

Thanks to Andrea Chow, we amassed more than 100 signatures this week. What a milestone that was. Trying to imagine 170 (I am gently rounding up) people in a room, I feel so encouraged that this many people have lent their support to our cause.

Andrea and I have also begun planning the nitty gritty details of the exhibition tournament. We submitted the tournament for approval on Tabroom, it has been one and a half business days since then, but I am still very eagerly awaiting its approval. There are lots of details to work out still. Andrea and I talked about many aspects like incident reporting, judge bias training, and altering long-held norms at length. My goal for this week is to have a solid plan for most of the details figured out.

One challenge I see ahead boils down to money. I want to offer ASL interpretation for competitors who may need it. But here is the thing, this tournament totally does not have the money to pay interpreters much. They can be pretty expensive to hire. We only have $300 to cover NSDA Campus hosting so no one has to pay an entry fee. I am thinking of reaching out to a school for interpreters and seeing if I can hire people looking for experience and then offer a $50 honorarium from my personal wallet as a show of thanks. People's time and labor is valuable, and I really do not want to even ask anyone to do it for free. I really wish we had more funds for this. However, I do not want to turn to fundraising because that comes with loads of tax law that I do not understand. But again, as with other problems that have come up with this organization, I have all the will in the world to figure it out.

Until next week,

Alanna