I ■ ■■■
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Clackamas Community Collega
Frisco tourney catapults speakers to nationals
by Terri Grayum
■ff Writer
■Thirteen bright, enthusiastic
students have catapulted the
etc speech team to national
standings among community col-
■es.
■After participating in a na-
tiinal invitational tournament at
San Francisco State University
March 19-22, the Cougars,
already in sixth place nationwide,
should jump to third or fourth
place. Competing against 25 col-
lacs at the SFSU meet, the
Clackamas group had two debate
teams tied for third, two that
placed fourth, and the fifth team
ended as quarterfinalists.
■National standings are based
on overall win/loss records, and
the official results will arrive
Minetime this week.
Frank Harlow, the group’s ad-
Hor, described them as a “hot
■rn, full of energy.” The team
■s its beginnings in the Speech
112 class, where debate techni
ques are learned. Starting out fall
tern; ’86, in Projects in Speech as
a one team group of three
students, the class quickly gained
napmentum and now consists of
five teams and thirteen members:
Barbara Clark, Mike Sheets,
Richard Burroughs, Brett
Blanch, Eric Nordhagen, Monte
Clackamas Community Speech Team from left to right; Frank Harlow, Brett Branch, Shelly
Kiser, Kelly Orfield, Jill Overfield, Michael Sheets, Rich Burroughs, Vince Van De Covering,
Barbara Clark Marietta Anderson, David Gloden, Gumby and Pokey.
_
Photo by Von Daniel
Campbell, Dave Gloden, Tony
Fetters, Kelly Orfield, Shelley
Kiser, Jill Overfield, Marietta
Anderson,
and
Vince
VanDeDoervering.
Participating in the Nor
thwest Forensic Conference
throughout the school year with
twelve other community col
leges, the Cougars are in second
place in that league. The rank
ing is determined by ac
cumulated points for three tour
naments.
Nationwide, the community
college speech teams all debate
the same issue throughout the
year. A panel of professors
chooses several topics, then the
college advisors vote to select
one. This year’s topic questions
whether it is an invasion of
privacy to require employees to
be tested for controlled
substances. At a tournament,
each team debates one side of
the issue for one round, then
they reverse points of view for
another round, until a total of
six rounds are debated. In addi
tion to the debates, individual
speech competitions are held at
the meets. The CCC team
members, at all the contests,
have typically walked away with
many trophies for their efforts.
Harlow, who has been in
structing. speech and debate
classes at CCC for twelve years,
remarked that it was “tragic
that these students couldn’t
receive the funding necessary to
compete in the nationals in
Odessa, Texas this week.” He
estimated that it would have
cost a total of $3,000 to send
five of the members and that
they most likely would have
come away with top honors at
the competition. The bills for
the conferences are paid for by
the student activity fund.
Harlow said that when speech
teams attend tournaments, they
must travel austerely due to the
small amount of money allotted
them for expenses.
The rest of the school year
holds in store some more excite
ment for the crew. Two more
competitions remain (which will
not count in the overall stan
dings): a regional in Kelso, WA,
April 24-25, and an invitational
at home base May 1-2, followed
by the awards banquet May 6th,
which should prove to be a full
evening for this gifted group of
students.
The Dead Tone
by Heleen Veenstra
News Editor
“It (the D.I.A.L. telephone
system) won’t go back in unless
we are reasonably sure it will
work,” Louise Slawson from
Telecommunications said.
The D.I.A.L. phone system
was removed on Friday, March
13.
The problems, which weren’t
in D.I.A.L. but in the software,
were that it didn’t return calls
back to the switchboard if the
phone wasn’t answered after a
certain amount of rings, but to
the person the call originated
from.
The advantage of D.I.A.L. is
that it saves time and it takes the
pressure off of the operator.
When somebody calls to the col
lege and knows the extention
number, the call would be
transferred to the switchboard
right away, and not to the
operator first.
D.I.A.L. was in operation for
a day and a half. The rest of the
two weeks the college worked
SN: OL0055
with Communication Resources
and AT&T to try to find a solu
tion to the problem.
After those two weeks there
wasn’t a reasonable solution, so
the system was removed, Slawson
explained.
The college has also rented
their equipment from AT&T for
nine years now. The Telecom
munications Committee here on
campus is considering to buy that
equipment or to buy a new,
system.
The reasons for buying the
equipment is not because of the
failing of D.I.A.L., but for
economical reasons, Slawson
said.
With the new equipment and
upgraded software the D.I.A.L.
system will be tried again.
Slawson concluded that the
system will eventually work
because it works at many other
places such as, Portland Com
munity College, Hanna In
dustries, and Northwest Natural
Gas. -