Six prizes were awarded across three categories in the annual Public Speaking Competition on Saturday, March 3, in the Chapel. The finalists were chosen after an open preliminary round held in February. Speakers’ presentations were either persuasive or informative in nature, and in one category students were asked to address an assigned topic.
In the McKinney Prize competition, a prize is awarded to one student from each class for a 5-8 minute persuasive speech that is socially relevant and of interest to the extended Hamilton College community.
The 2013 McKinney Prize recipients and their topics are:
Class of 2013: Mia Falzarano, “Reevaluating Summer Opportunities”
Class of 2014: Daniel Lichtenauer, “Barking Mad”
Class of 2015: Jack Boyle, “Our Abysmal Attitude toward American History and How We Can Change It”
Class of 2016: Newton Hunter Green, “Solitary Confinement: An American Epidemic”
The Clark Prize competition is open to all members of the senior class and calls for participants to address an assigned topic through both written and oral presentations. The 2013 Clark Prize recipient is Evan Van Tassell ’13 on the topic “The Problem of Science in the Interstellar Age.”
The final prize category, the Warren Wright prize in informative speaking, is open to those students who have enrolled in the college’s public speaking course. Participants also respond to questions from the audience, and their responses are included in the judges’ evaluations. The Warren Wright Prize recipient is Sandhya Rao, 2015 whose topic “Facebook: The New Big Brother.”
Prizes will be awarded to all winners on Class and Charter Day.
The Public Speaking Competition was organized by the Oral Communication Center.
