San Jose State University Forensics

Program Philosophy

The forensics program exists to foster life-long learning skills for competitors. This activity should be an enjoyable learning experience. If you win along the way, that's great, but our goal is learning. We don't compete to win, we compete to learn.

Earning Units

Intramural Tournament Fall 2011

If you're a COMM 20 (Public Speaking) student, use your informative and/or persuasive speeches to compete in Platform Speaking for our end of the semester tournament.

Want to test your debating skills? If you are a COMM 40 student, we invite you to compete in Parliamentary Debate. We've also added a new event for COMM 21 students -- an Oral Interpretation competition.

Intercollegiate Competition

We also field a traveling team that competes intercollegiately. This involves weekend travel to tournaments throughout California, the United States, and occasionally the world - (China, Portugal, Canada, Czech Republic and Italy so far!) Sign up for 191A, 191B, or 191C and earn a unit for every tournament that you attend. For more information, stop by one of our practice sessions (Tues. or Thurs. 3:00-5:00 in HGH 229 or drop by our office HGH 214).

Judging

Too busy to travel? Make a difference, be a judge. We offer:

• COMM 91J Judge Training
  • 1 unit credit/noncredit
  • Learn to judge competitive speaking events.
• COMM 191J Judging
  • 1 unit credit/noncredit (up to 3 units)
  • Judge local area high school tournaments and/or SJSU intramural competitions