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Goshen College

Annual C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest set for Feb. 21

February 7, 2017

Alma Rosa Carillo
Yazan Meqbil
Dona Park
Mimi Salvador
Hitesh Sharma

Five Goshen College students will present speeches during the 2017 C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest on Tuesday, Feb. 21. The annual event will take place at 7 p.m. in the Umble Center and is free and open to the public.

This year’s participants and their topics are:

  • Alma Rosa Carrillo, a senior interdisciplinary (nursing, sociology, peace, justice and conflict studies) major from Mexico City, Mexico, will speak on “Quisieron Enterrarnos, Pero No Sabian Que Eramos Semillas: They Try to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds. Remembering and Continuing the Fight for Justice of the 43 Missing Students From Ayotzinapa.”
  • Yazan Meqbil, a sophomore molecular biology/biochemistry major from Hebron, Palestine, will speak on “Beyond Occupation of Mind and Body.”
  • Dona Park, a senior history and art major from Abbotsford, British Columbia, will speak on “A Perspective of a Korean Canadian Something Maybe American.” Park was the first-place winner in the 2015 contest.
  • Noemi “Mimi” Salvador, a senior peace, justice and conflict studies major from Tena, Ecuador, will speak on “Indigenous Motherhood in Defense of Life.” Salvador was the first-place winner in the 2016 contest.
  • Hitesh Sharma, a junior accounting major from Kathmandu, Nepal, will speak on “Locked Doors, Exploited Modesty and Stripped Autonomy: Feminism Outside the Borders of the United States.”

The participants will deliver 8- to 10-minute speeches on topics of their choosing that relate to peace. The speeches will be judged on originality, integration of the topic and a peace position, and general standards of delivery. Refreshments will be provided while the judges deliberate.

The C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest is a U.S./Canada Mennonite Central Committee-sponsored event. Participants compete for cash prizes provided by the trust of C. Henry Smith, a Mennonite historian and professor at Goshen and Bluffton (Ohio) colleges. The purpose of the contest is to give students the opportunity to become involved with the cause for peace and develop rhetorical skills.

Speech contests have been a tradition at Goshen College since the early 1900s. The C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest provides the opportunity for the campus community to hear about contemporary peace issues.

See the archive of past winners