Significance is a stock issue

Stock issues

In the formal speech competition genre known as policy debate, a widely-accepted doctrine or "debate theory" divides the deliberative elements of proving the resolution as affirmative affirmative into four logical issues, called the stock issues...

 in policy debate

Policy debate

Policy debate is a form of speech competition in which teams of two advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government or security discourse...

 which establishes the importance of the harms

Harms (policy debate)

Harms are a stock issue in policy debate which refer to problems inherent in the status quo. These problems may be either actual or potential...

 in the status quo

Status quo

Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...

. As a stock issue has fallen out of favor with the debate community almost all debaters and judges

Judge (policy debate)

A judge refers to the individual responsible for determining the winner and loser of a policy debate as well as assessing the relative merit of the participant speakers...

 now believe that any plan which is preferable to the status quo

Status quo

Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...

 is significant.

Significance derives from the word "substantially" which appears in most resolutions

Resolution (policy debate)

In policy debate, a resolution or topic is a normative statement which the affirmative team affirms and the negative team negates. Resolutions are selected annually by affiliated schools....

, and one can argue that Significance has been subsumed by the option for the negative to use a Topicality

On-topic

In the context of mailing lists, discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards, newsgroups, and wikis a contribution is off-topic if it is not within the bounds of the current discussion, and on-topic if it is....

violation on that word.