Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
The forensics team at the University of Maine has never solved a murder. Its members have probably argued about a few though.
The speech and debate team, comprised of eight students, won the North Eastern Regional Tournament, a debate competition which was in Boston this year. They trampled schools, including Harvard and Emerson, with their speaking skills and research. The team persevered without competing in all of the events, without much funding and with only four years of experience.
It takes about 20 hours per week of research from each team member to prepare for a speaking competition, according to team member Jenny Cohen. Each member needs to stay informed on current events. This requires reading hundreds, if not thousands of news articles.
For instance, in a seven-minute improvised competitive speech, the team member must use eight to 12 sources. The team is not given, and not allowed, to use research materials. This means they get out the box. The team uses the weeks before the tournament to fill its rubber bin with information. Articles and other research pack the box. Before these improvised events, the members have a few minutes to gather their research.
The team competed in 10 of the 11 speech events and none of the debate events. Thankfully for the team, the debate events are not weighted as heavily as the speech.
One of these is an improvised speech, which needs to be five and a half minutes long. For this, the competing member must give one quotation. The member is given a minute and a half for research before he or she must go on. How Mike Huckabee likes biscuits and gravy was the topic Moran had to speak on. “I don’t want to say any of it is complete bulls—,” he said.
The team, though qualified to go to nationals, will not. Though rich with devoted members and research, it is otherwise poor.
“It is difficult because we have to travel the farthest,” Moran said. This year nationals are in Tennessee. He said the schools the UMaine team competes against have coaches, funding and scholarships for forensics. “It is not too intimidating,” Moran said.
Members have started to fundraise for next year in the hopes to going to nationals. Past fundraisers included auctioning off one of their members for a date.
Although speech and debate seem to come easy for the members, getting to the competition can be a challenge. Last year the group took a wrong turn into the Bronx when the driver and another member argued about TABOR and missed their exit. “That was an adventure,” Moran said. Library fines were another debate which caused the team to again get lost.
The Northeastern event starts at 8 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m. It would be too expensive for the team to stay in a hotel for the night. Instead they make this, and the driving, a one-day trip. In university vans – to save funds – the group breaks into spontaneous song. “None of us know all the words,” Moran said between the eight members, they can usually get all the lyrics.
Though the team is new, winning is not. “We only had time to do two tournaments, but even then we were bringing home trophies,” said founding member Lyndsy Shuman of the team’s first semester.
Shuman now acts as a judge for the team – each team must provide a judge, who assesses the other teams. “They tend to try to eat you alive,” Cohen said. In some cases the competitor gives their speech to a judge in a one-on-one setting. “It is intense,” Shuman said. “They are judging just you.”
