While COVID-19 has created a lot of debate across the world, it has also created a void within the University of North Georgia debate and speech club. While Zoom has helped the club fill that void via online practices, the in-person quality of debate practices had vanished. That is, until now.

The UNG Debate and Speech Club is one of the schools most prestigious clubs, winning placement and speaker awards in some of the nations most highly recognized tournaments. UNG makes their presence known in tournaments, allowing and encouraging public speaking students to take a crack at the competitive side of things. Because of this, UNG is known for having the highest quantity of students at tournaments.

The high quantity of competitors does not distract from equally high quality speakers that compete for the school. The team as a whole won the state speech competition last year. Individual awards also include winners at the state level in extemporaneous speaking, impromptu sales speaking, program of oral interpretation, poetry interpretation, and duo interpretation. The club also competed in an international tournament located in South Africa.

While there are many extremely experienced speakers on the team, they welcome anyone and everyone that is interested. Vice President of the club Taylor Mullikin encouraged people to come check the club out.

“Anybody who wants practice with public speaking or is interested in making connections with people at other universities should check us out.” Mullikin stated.

The club will be having their first in-person meeting of the year Thursday, Feb. 25 at 6:30 in Nesbitt 3107. Members encourage anyone who can “speak pretty” to come check out the club!