DOWAGIAC – When students entered their Speech 102 classes at the beginning of the fall semester at Southwestern Michigan College this year, they were presented with a challenge – perfecting their public speaking skills enough to compete in an Intra-School Debate Competition at the end of the semester.

John Morse

While students worked on mastering the fundamentals of public speaking throughout the semester, they also worked in teams of two researching assigned debate topics ranging from ‘Is it ever justifiable to execute a criminal’ to ‘Are beauty pageants harmful?” At the end of the semester, each team presented a 20-minute debate of their assigned topic with one student presenting the affirmative side of the issue and one team presenting the negative side of the issue.

The debates were evaluated by panels of guest judges and by the students’ classmates. At the end of the competition, the judges’ scores were used to determine the top advocate for each class and the students voted on which one of their peers should be awarded the Most Improved Advocate Award.

John Morse, of Jones, took the title of Most Improved Advocate for his Speech 102 class after wowing his classmates with his very persuasive speech advocating for the justice system to focus on retribution more than rehabilitation.

Morse, a 1961 graduate of Cassopolis High School, had worked steadily on his speaking skills in a class of mostly traditional age college students. Despite the age gap, Morse found common ground with the younger students in his desire to better his speaking skills and through consistently helping his peers and practicing his own speaking skills, Morse managed to rise to the top during the debate competition. Morse dealt with an extremely controversial topic that he summed up simply with the statement, “justice is justice.”

Source:  News release and photo from Southwestern Michigan College