New season and additions to forensics program
September 16, 2013
Spencer Waugh, instructor of speech and debate, is excited to start another year with Simpson College’s forensics teams.
Waugh said last year Simpson only offered public forum debate. Now Simpson has formed a forensics team focused on the individual events in speech.
“Speech and Debate are two different things,” Waugh said. “The debaters are focusing on building arguments on given topics and then they prepare their audience for a judge. The judge listens to both teams’ arguments, then decides on which team best presented their
arguments.”
With a successful 2012-13 season, Simpson decided to add speech into the forensics mix.
“Speech has two events,” Waugh said. “We have the original events and the interpretative events.”
In the original events, students craft their own speeches. Interpretive events are where students take an already published work and present it as if they were the character, author or narrator.
Waugh said interpretive events require students to have polished facial expressions and intonation.
This year, Simpson’s forensics teams will also participate in parliamentary debate. On Sept. 20 and 21, the debate team will head to Indianapolis for the Indy 500 tournament. No Simpson student has participated in parliamentary debate, but three teams will be trying the event at the Indy 500.
In addition to the three parliamentary teams, five speech teams will head to Indianapolis to compete in the Indy 500 this Friday.
Pi Kappa Delta, a forensics honor society, recognized sophomores Jacy Gomez and Ethan Fredrick as the top public forum debate team in the country last year. Both Gomez and Fredrick hope to accomplish even more this season.
“I enjoy the competition aspect, but I think most of all, I enjoy the people on the team,” Gomez said. “I would like to see both our speech and debate teams succeed, of course. I would like to be national champions again, but success in general for a new program
would be awesome.”
Fredrick said he was drawn to Simpson’s forensics program after his involvement in high school and seeing how passionate the team is.
“(I) didn’t know if I was going to do it in college, but the wonderful staff here (such as) Spencer Waugh and the other people on the team really drew me to it,” he said.
Waugh said Simpson’s debate team succeeded in public forum tournaments last season and hopes to see the team bring home the top rankings again this year.
“(We) essentially (won) every tournament we attended,” he said.
Fredrick hopes the forensics teams will showcase Simpson’s success in all areas, especially for prospective students.
“I hope to really build a team atmosphere where people coming into the school will be excited to be a part of it,” Fredrick said. “We are all one big family.”
