The Indiana University East Annual High School Speech Tournament will be held on Saturday, December 1, 2012, in Whitewater Hall. Registration is from 7:15-8 a.m. and the tournament will end by 3:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

The speech tournament is presented by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and is sponsored by Summersault.

The tournament will include high school students from surrounding counties. Students will present various speeches in 15 different categories including broadcasting, congress declamation, discussion, dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, impromptu, international extemporaneous, memorized duo, original oratory, original performance, poetry interpretation, prose interpretation, scripted duo, and U.S. Extemporaneous.

All Indiana High School Forensic Association (IHSFA) rules apply for the tournament. Area coaches, Susie Hittson and Holly Hathaway, are organizing the tournament with event chair Elvinet Piard, assistant professor of communication studies and speech coordinator at IU East.

There are no entry fees for the tournament.

“I’m really excited about the fact that we are offering congress as an event this year. It’s a debate event, while all the others are speech events,” Piard said. “One of our goals this year is to increase IU East faculty, staff and student presence at the tournament. HSS faculty have already volunteered to serve as judges and public speaking students will have an opportunity to earn extra credit for observations and analysis of strategies the high school students use. We are excited and hope this will be an educational and enjoyable activity for all those involved.”

There will be four straight rounds and no final. Top place finishers in each category will be offered an $800 Red Wolf Scholarship to IU East ($200 per year, renewable for up to four years). Team Trophies will be awarded to the top five teams overall and ribbons presented to the top ten in each event.

The awards ceremony will feature door prizes and fun IU East memorabilia giveaways.

Piard encourages high schools that are new to speech competitions to review IHSFA rules at ihsfa.org or contact tournament organizers Holly Hathaway (hollyhat1@gmail.com) or Susie Hittson (hittsons@nccsc.k12.in.us) for more information on how to participate.

High schools participating in the speech tournament should register online at http://www.speechwire.com. Entries are due by November 26, 2012.

For general questions about IU East or about the scholarships being offered as prizes to top finishers call (765) 973-8208 or call toll free 800-959-EAST.