Mount Carmel School announced recently that it will host the island’s first ever invitational mock trial competition early next year. Invitations to the competition have been extended to all public and private middle schools and high schools in the CNMI.
School president and mock trial coach, Galvin Deleon Guerrero, hopes the competition will help students interested in mock trial continue their passion, especially in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yutu. Deleon Guerrero said, “We know that many students have lost some practice time due to the typhoon, so this invitational will be a way to help them get back on track.” He added, “Invitational competitions are also a great way to help students hone their craft, gain much needed practice, and network with other mock trial teams in a less competitive and more fun atmosphere.”
In addition to helping mock trial students, Mount Carmel School hopes the competition will help the CNMI Mock Trial Program. Given the current state of the CNMI Judiciary’s courtrooms, it is not clear how this year’s CNMI competition will be held. Mount Carmel’s invitational competition will be one way to experiment with holding mock trial rounds at a school, much in the same way that speech and debate events are held at CNMI schools throughout the year.
The Mount Carmel School invitational competition will be a two-round tournament with each team playing each side once and winners determined by point accumulation. The case to be used will be the 2018 CNMI Mock Trial Case, CNMI vs. Lou Perez. The school decided to use that case since many current mock trial competitors may still be familiar with the case because of their work on it last year. Also, the competition will use the CNMI Mock Trial Competition Rules and the National High School Mock Trial Competition Federal Rules of Evidence. Schools and students from 6th—12th grades are welcome to participate. Each team must have a minimum of seven (7) students to compete, with six (6) competing and one (1) serving as a time keeper.
While Mount Carmel School will host the competition, the school emphasized that her students would not compete in order to ensure fairness for all competing schools. However, if an odd number of teams register, the school would field its junior high team to balance out the number of teams.
The competition will be held at the school’s campus on Saturday, January 26, from 8:00 am to 2:00 pm. Registration for the competition is free and may be completed online at the following www.surveymonkey.com/r/
If you have questions about the competition, contact Deleon Guerrero at galvin.deleonguerrero@gmail.
