Professionally dressed with portfolios in hand, students from various universities around the region filled the hallways of the Howard University's School of Communications in preparation for the SNAFU Charity Invitational, Howard University's first speech tournament.
The tournament consisted of university teams, inlcuding th Martin Luther King Jr, Forensiic Society Speech and Debate team, broken down into individual student rounds. Student chose from a specific genre, categories like "SNAFU", "Impromptu", and "Dramatic Effect", prepared within the given time frame, and presented their argument in ten-minute intervals in front of a scoring judge.
Judge Meagan Orpor, a graduate student from Liberty University said that having Howard host the tournament was quite a change from other schools her team usually travels to.
"Usually, host institutions have a long standing history of inviting teams, this being Howard's first year," she said.
She added, "Also, the urban area was something different from the other suburban college towns."
She did however give advice to contestants saying that, "professionalism and persuasion is key in forensics."
Quite a lot of competition teams came from the local D.C. area institution such as George Washington, American University, Georgetown, as well as a few who have traveled from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.
There were also non-competitors who looked to the event to support their friends, roommates, and students from their respective schools.
Al'Asia Davis, a freshman undecided major from Howard University showed up to the event in support of her suitemate.
"At first, I was thinking that it was going to be in a big auditorium, I'm thinking like presidential debate," she said.
If asked whether or not she could see herself participating in the future, she said, "If anything, it would be in the poetry/dramatic genre."
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