Forensics Team Caps Year of Growth and Achievements

“Telling stories that matter.”  This is the simple goal of the Liberty University Forensics Speech & Debate team. On the evening of April 26, the team showcased just a few of the most powerful stories they have told throughout the year.

 

According to the team coordinator Denise Thomas, the 2017-2018 academic year has been an incredible year for the team.

 

“Our reach has grown,” Thomas said. “Two years ago, when I became the team coordinator, we had about 15 members. We’re ending this year with 20. That may not sound like a lot more, but a few years ago, students were doing one or two events. Now we have students doing four to five. That explains the number of awards we’ve been getting.”

 

The Spring Showcase allowed the forensics team to display certain outstanding pieces ranging from informational speeches, extemporaneous “after dinner” speeches to dramatic interpretations of literature.

 

The team attended the National Christian College Forensics Invitational competition from March 8-10, hosted at Azuza Pacific University in Azuza, California. There, the team won first place in the reader’s theater category with their piece “Edge of Death.”

 

The team reprised their performance of “Edge of Death” at the Monument Terrace in Downtown Lynchburg on April 27, a day after the Spring Showcase.

 

Thomas hopes that after the team’s accomplishments and growth this year, people can better understand what the university-sponsored team actually does, and maybe consider joining for both the academic and personal empowerment that forensics provides its participants.

 

“We want to continue growing,” Thomas said. “We want more diversity on the team. We want to better represent our student body at Liberty. We want to invite students to tell stories, whether in an original platform speech or to interpret works by great writers.”

 

Britta Hinten, a graduating senior at Liberty, demonstrated how personal and far-reaching the forensics team’s presentations can get. Hinten performed a dramatic prose interpretation piece called “A Plan Gone Awry” by Monica M. LeMoine, about a woman dealing with life alongside her husband after suffering several miscarriages.

 

“I picked this topic of stillbirth, miscarriage and infant loss because last summer, I nannied for a family in Taiwan who had a child that lived for only ten days,” Hinten said. “I wanted to find a truthful story to share that would bring light to the issue. I wasn’t aware of how prevalent an issue it was in everyday people’s lives. I looked through memoirs at the library and found this one. I thought she was so real here.”

 

Hinten said that among all the improvements she has seen in the team since she joined three years ago, critical thinking skills prevailed.

 

“This team has been such a great place to facilitate that,” Hinten said. “You hear about all sorts of topics that you didn’t necessarily care about before. In this instance, you have to sit there and think ‘How does this fit within my worldview? How does this fit in society?’ We’re talkers, so we talk about all sorts of political and social issues, so we make each other grow. We ask hard questions. We know what we believe and why, and how to answer for it.”