On the evening of December 3, the top 19 persuasive speakers enrolled in the fall semester of Communication Arts 100 competed in the CA 100 Speech Contest.
The speech contest is a long-standing tradition at the end of each semester. Teaching assistants from all sections of the course submitted the speeches of their top two students; from this group, a semifinal field of 19 speakers was chosen. They competed against each other in groups of seven, with the top two from each group advancing to the final round, which was judged by Professor Sara McKinnon, Dr. Sarah Jedd, and Communication Arts graduate student Marissa Fernholz.
Contest finalists, their TAs, and speech topics were:
- Ananda Deacon (Michael Dolan) Fighting Racism on UW Madison’s Campus (1st Place)
- Hirochi Ura (Lesley Stevenson) US Students Should Learn a Second Language (2nd Place)
- Spiros Demopoulos (Madison Edwards) Hunting in Namibia (3rd Place)
- Brock Mahoney (Juniper Lewis) No Football for Kids
- Annie Noel (Juniper Lewis) Ban Child Beauty Pageants
- Helena Gassman (Shannyn Kitchen) Problms with the Pink Tax
The six finalists are pictured above with their instructors. Front row from left to right: Brock Mahoney, Ananda Deacon, Annie Noel, Helena Gassman. Back row from left to right: Michael Dolan, Juniper Lewis, Lesley Stevenson, Hirochi Ura, Spiros Demopoulos, Shannyn Kitchen.
Congratulations to them—and to everyone who participated in the contest!