As a group of six rushed down the eastern stairwell of Holt, student Bronche Taylor brings up the rear dressed in formal gear.
Taylor is one of the seven students that participated in Tuesday’s Spring Speech Showcase, a public demonstration of various speech and debate performances by Delta’s award-winning forensics team.
Students Dumarruis Steen and Johnny Williams started the presentation with a duo oral interpretation of an excerpt from the movie “Babyboy.” The two-man team recently traveled to Portland, Oregon and took first place in the national speech and debate tournament with the same performance.
Graham said, “We took a small team -six individuals- and they did fantastic. For all six people to place in their events is incredible. Considering that they were competing against four-year students, these guys did fantastic.”
Williams, a first year speech student, and Steen, a returning speech student, brought the room to applause with their choreographed movements, intricate dialogue and team synergy.
Student Maria Byington said, “I’m excited to see Dumarrius’s duo with Johnny because he expresses his pieces beautifully. They feed of each other’s energy.”
Taylor, who received a silver award at the national competition, followed with a dramatic interpretation of literary prose. He performed a selection out of “Truth Behind the Melody,” a narrative piece about the sex scandal between administration and students among the Harlem School of Boys.
His fidgety motions and soft inflections helped illustrate the innocence and fear of the young protagonist throughout the performance.
Addressing the topic of Stockton’s status as most miserable city according to “Forbes” magazine, the event ended in a debate between first-year speech student Bo Howard and veteran Benjamin Warheit. Howard, who was opposing the statement, brought up topics of city pride and growing employment.
However, Warheit’s arguments of foreclosures, unemployment and Delta students wanting to leave Stockton resonated with the audience earning the laughter and applause of students as they filed out of the room.
