Current Issues and Events

Current Issues and Events (commonly known as Current Events) is one of several academic events sanctioned by the University Interscholastic League. The contest began in the 1990-91 scholastic year.

Current Events is designed to test students' knowledge and understanding of significant events which have taken place during the current school year.

Eligibility

Students in Grade 9 through Grade 12 are eligible to enter this event. All grades compete in one division.

The test covers current events which have taken place during the school year. For test purposes, the beginning of the school year is defined as September 1. The ending date for district and regional competition is one month prior to the competitions; for the state competition the ending date is two weeks prior to the competition.

Each school may send up to four students; however, in districts with more than eight schools the district executive committee can limit participation to three students per school. In order for a school to participate in team competition, the school must send at least three students.

Rules and Scoring

The test consists of two parts, a multiple choice section and an essay section.

The multiple choice section consists of 40 questions. The questions may be answered in any order; there is no penalty for skipping questions.

The essay section follows, which includes a quote or two and a prompt. The contestant must write an informative essay explaining the issue, while answering any questions in the prompt.

Both sections must be completed in one hour; students who do not complete the essay section are immediately disqualified. No time warning is given during the test; at the end of 60 minutes contestants must cease writing.

The multiple choice section is scored first. Contestants are given one point for each question answered correctly, with no points being deducted for incorrect answers.

After the multiple choice section is scored, the top eight students will have their essays scored. The essays are judged based on four criteria (the maximum points awarded for each criterion are shown in parentheses):

* Showing a basic understanding of the topic (5)
* Analyzing and/or interpreting the topic (2)
* Providing concrete details and/or apt quotations (2)
* Using proper sentence structure and grammar (1)

In addition, points may be deducted from the essay if it is sloppily written, poorly proofread, poorly worded, and if it editorializes. Each offense yields a maximum deduction of one-half of a point, with the exception of the essay being poorly worded, which yields a maximum deduction of one point.

Determining the Winner

The top three individuals and the top team (determined based on the scores of the top three individuals) will advance to the next round. In addition, within each region, the highest-scoring second place team from all district competitions advances as the "wild card" to regional competition (provided the team has four members), and within the state, the highest-scoring second place team from all regional competitions advances as the wild card to the state competition. Members of advancing teams who did not place individually remain eligible to compete for individual awards at higher levels.

For in individual competition; the essays of the tied contestants are judged against each other to break the tie.

For team competition, the score of the fourth-place individual is used as the tiebreaker. If a team has only three members it is not eligible to participate in the tiebreaker. If the fourth-place score still results in a tie, the individual tiebreaker rules will not apply, and all remaining tied teams will advance. At the state level ties for first place are not broken.

For district meet academic championship and district meet sweepstakes awards, points are awarded to the school as follows:
*Individual places: 1st--15, 2nd--12, 3rd--10, 4th--8, 5th--6, and 6th--4.
*Team places: 1st--10 and 2nd--5.
*The maximum number of points a school can earn in Current Issues and Events is 37.

List of prior winners

Individual

NOTE: For privacy reasons, only the winning school is shown. [ [http://www.uil.utexas.edu/academics/archives/ UIL: Academics - Archives ] ]

Team

[ [http://www.uil.utexas.edu/academics/archives/ UIL: Academics - Archives ] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.uil.utexas.edu/academics/current_events/index.html UIL Current Issues & Events Information Page]
* [http://www.uil.utexas.edu/policy/constitution/academics/07_08sec932.pdf Official UIL Rules for Current Issues and Events]