Members Marcus Harvey, Ciara Williams, Maggie Smith, and Jeremy Washington, and faculty advisor Janis Crawford represented the team when Butler was inducted during the Pi Kappa Delta (PKD) National Conference Tournament last week in St. Louis. Alumni Lauren Lupkowski ’12 and Greg Moser ‘07 also attended as judges at the society’s 100th anniversary tournament.

Crawford, who is director of forensics in the College of Communication, was nominated and elected as Governor of PKD’s Heartland Province. For the next two years, she’ll oversee communication, leadership, and growth of the province, which includes 22 school chapters in six states.

“I am very excited about the opportunity and national visibility that this position will bring to Butler University,” she said.

PKD is a division of the National Communication Association (NCA). Crawford said that she has already proposed that NCA convene a panel to examine the role of the PKD governors and how they can help expand and develop the organization’s six provinces.

“PKD is committed to ‘Persuasion, Beautiful and Just,’ and, as such, we will be focusing on education and service for our students,” she said. She expects the panel to be approved for action in 2014.

Butler will work with the University of Indianapolis and IUPUI to co-host Pi Kappa Delta’s national tournament in Indianapolis in March 2014.

The Butler Speech and Debate Team travelled to IUPUI again on March 2 to compete in the “Last Words” tournament where Junior, Marcus Harvey took 4th in Poetry and Senior, Molly Kordas took 5th in Programmed Oral Interpretation. The team will be traveling to St. Louis for the PKD National Conference and Tournament during Spring break next week.

The speech portion took place on Saturday, February 16 and the parliamentary debate portion took place on Sunday, February 17.  Eight students competed on Saturday.  Senior, Andrew Wray took 6th place in Extemporaneous Speaking;  Junior, Marcus Harvey took 6th place in After Dinner Speaking, and newcomer, Funmi Arogbokun took 6th in Novice Extemporaneous Speaking.  Molly Kordas, Ciara Williams, Amanda Lewis, Tony Ranieri, and Jeremy Washington rounded out the team.

The Debate team competed on Sunday.  Andrew Wray and Kelsey Coy competed in the varsity division.  Tony Ranieri and Phillip Tock competed as a Junior team.  Ranieri and Tock made it through the semi-final round and into the final round only to be defeated by IUPUI!  Tony Ranieri was named 3rd speaker overall in the Junior division.

Five students presented their speeches at the University of Michigan Tournament on February 9th as a warm-up for the State tournament.

A great time was had by all!

The team placed 3rd overall in the small entry division.

I would like to thank the College of Communication faculty, Dean Edgerton, Associate Dean Savage, Director of Debate, Dr. Casey Kelly, Mae Pierce, and the Butler Speech and Debate Team for all their support for this exciting event. Faculty and students gave of themselves during the last week of classes and that means a well run tournament and, hopefully, impressed students who will want to come to Butler in the future!

Thank you

Our next exciting event is the High School tournament we are hosting here on campus on December 8. We will be host to 18 Indiana High Schools and over 200 students.

We are traveling after Fall break to Ball State University for the Age of Aquarius tournament which will include speech and debate.