Group photo of the Chabot Forensics team
The Chabot Forensics Team looks promising this season with both returning contenders and students new to forensics. After going to Nationals last season, the students are eager to go to Nationals again this season.
Forensics is an umbrella term that covers speech and debate, which can be broken down even further. Colleges all over the country compete with each other in teams and individually in the different forensics events.
One debate event the Chabot College Forensics Team participates in is Lincoln-Douglas debate. Lincoln-Douglas debates are one-on-one person debates that have a topic for a whole season. This season’s topic is the actions of Cyber Command in the realm of cyber community.
Another debate event is the parliamentary debate which is a team debate with teams of two. Unlike Lincoln-Douglas debates, the topic for parliamentary debates changes every round. Each team has 20 minutes to prepare for the topic, usually about current events.
“I’m completely confident in my ability,” Stated Joel Brown, Captain of the Forensics Team. “I love both, [Lincoln-Douglas and parliamentary debates] that’s why I do both,” Joel answered when asked about which debate event he prefers more.
While Joel participates in both Lincoln-Douglas debates, he also participates in Parliamentary debates with his debate partner DaCobi Anderson. “With Joel and me, I think we have beautiful chemistry together. It’s like mixing sugar and spice, and we’re making everything nice.” DaCobi stated.
Within the speech category of forensics is the persuasive speech. Where the speaker tries to convince the audience to do something such as change their viewpoint or change a law.
“I feel pretty confident. My speech is about at-risk youth, and why they are at-risk youth. I came from that background, and I am trying to do something better.” Danny Muñoz stated when asked about this season.
Another speech event is prose interpretation. This is a speech event where the speaker speaks for 10 minutes, and the contents of their speech are from a book to tell a story.
“The simplest stories can be, so heart-wrenching, so heartbreaking, and if you perform it correctly, it’s beautiful. This year I’m doing a prose interpretation on a teacher who was in a school shooting, and his wife dies during the school shooting.” Kivraj Singh recalls when asked what his favorite speech event was.
The Chabot Forensics Team is strong this year, beating teams from both community colleges as well as four-year universities. The team is eager to keep winning and head to nationals again.
The season for forensics starts in the fall and ends in the spring. Students that take the forensics class this semester continue the season in spring as well under the class Comm 48.
“The forensics community is tremendous in its ability to produce high level, in-depth education and knowledge production about a variety of different topics. For those here at Chabot who are interested, who are passionate, about social justice or public policymaking: Forensics is a great way to engage in that passion,” stated Joel for those interested in Forensics.