I ■ ■■■ Vok XX, *4¿fe 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. -