Ottawa University forensics department has been a part of the Alpha chapter of Pi Kappa Delta National Honorary for more than 100 years.
This year the OU Forensics Department reaffirmed their long founding devotion to the organization by hosting the national forensics tournament during the weekend of Oct. 16.
Vice President Leah Frey gives an understanding of what individual events are and also list some such as short stories, dramatic interpretation, persuasive, informative, communication analysis, after dinner speeches or funny persuasive, and many more. All of these events are split into two groups, platform speeches and literary.
“Besides platform speeches, everything else is literary, and we give credit to the author by performing with the book. For platform speaking it all comes through you, it is basically a big research paper that goes on for ten minutes,” said Frey.
All events except for impromptu speaking require the speaker to choose their own pieces.
Impromptu speakers, such as Aaprara Mills, are given their speeches at the event, as a few minutes to prepare for the speech, at which they are expected to give a 5 minute presentation over that information.
The tournament hosted one hundred competitors. Director of Forensics and the instructor of speech, Ryan Louis, reported the results of the event, with Michael Matos-Hoogliuter as fourth speaker, Danielle Fulmer as eighth speaker, Mills and Matos-Hoogliuter broke into quarter finals, Lee Nave and Melissa Bailey broke into quarter finals, and Lee Nave was seventh in impromptu speaking.
“Ten of our students participated, they debated and competed in their individual events,” said Louis.
“We had more individual event breaks than we have had yet. So they broke to finals. They only break in the top six in each event and every event can range between 15 and 45 people in it. The fact that we had four finalist was a very big deal,” said Louis.
The most recent of the team’s tournaments took place the weekend of Nov. 7 at University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.
Winners at the event included Fulmer received fourth place in oral interpretation for the first tournament and fifth place on the second tournament, Matos-Hoogliuter took fourth place in persuasive speaking and Joanna Woolens received fifth in poetic interpretation.
Louis and Mills give their ideas on how debate and speech is beneficial to those who are involved with it and why more students should be.
“Forensics is an activity that teaches speaking skills which is the most undervalued skill to have today. People who participate in speech activities are percentage wise more likely to do well in career environments, business, interviews, because they don’t just know how to communicate to bosses,” Louis said.
“I think that speech and debate or forensics is beneficial to a lot of people. I think that everyone should take the opportunity to at least give it a try. I mean it helps you with your confidence and speaking abilities, and it is a very useful skill to have, especially in the business world today,” Mills said.