{"id":959,"date":"2018-03-25T13:20:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-25T13:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/?p=959"},"modified":"2018-07-25T13:21:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-25T13:21:35","slug":"six-speakers-present-at-lebow-53-oratorical-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/2018\/03\/25\/six-speakers-present-at-lebow-53-oratorical-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Speakers Present at LeBow \u201853 Oratorical Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Noah Bergam ’21<\/strong><\/h4>\n

On Friday, February 23<\/span>rd<\/span>, Upper and Middle School students joined together in Hauser Auditorium for the 2018 Robert H. LeBow \u201858 Oratorical Competition. The competition, held annually and open to juniors and sophomores, was founded in 2005 by William Hetfield \u201858 and the Class of \u201858 in memory of Dr. Robert H. LeBow. Dr. LeBow, a renowned public speaker, traveled through developing countries with his wife, providing medical services to underprivileged communities. <\/span><\/p>\n

Organized by Spanish and French teacher Mr. Richard Karrat, the assembly featured four-and-a-half- to six-and-a-half-minute-long speeches from six juniors who had qualified in the initial round.<\/span><\/p>\n

The contest opened with a speech entitled \u201cThe Pingry Story\u201d by last year\u2019s runner-up Avery Didden (V). Didden celebrated the Pingry community for its members\u2019 unique passion for learning. She illustrated this point with the trivia game show HQ, noting that, while people she knew from other schools slowly forgot about the game, Pingry students continue to play. Pingry students understand, she explained, that the game is about more than just its prize money, and they embrace the spirit of trivia and learning the game promotes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next speech was \u201cThank You\u201d<\/span> by Jonathan Chen (V). Chen began the speech by reminiscing about the childhood days when his father and mother cheered him on at soccer games and swim meets. He then transitioned into the memory of his parents\u2019 divorce and the devastation of seeing his parents split, as he regarded them as the \u201cbest team.\u201d Despite the feelings that came with the divorce, Chen recognized the \u201cendless love and support\u201d his parents continue to provide him; his final message was to \u201cthank your parents\u201d for all the hard work that they do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rashida Mohammed\u2019s (V) \u201cA Trust Fall\u201d followed. Mohammed opened the speech with an anecdote about a friend confessing to her about having an anxiety disorder. Later on, Mohammed confessed, \u201cThat friend I mentioned\u2014that was me.\u201d She offered inspiring words as she spoke about living with the disorder. Near her conclusion, she recognized that \u201chaving any form of anxiety is on a spectrum\u201d and highlighted the importance of representation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, in traditional Chinese dress, Alisa Chokshi (V) opened her speech, \u201cLet Your Spark Ignite,\u201d by singing \u201cChengdu\u201d by Zhao Lei. Chokshi shared her life-changing experience as a member of a Chinese language immersion program, through which she resided for six weeks last summer in the city of Chengdu. As an American, Chokshi spoke about recognizing her inner ethnocentrism, the \u201cviewing [of other cultures] with the bias of one\u2019s own culture,\u201d and how her perspective changed while living in China.<\/span><\/p>\n

The penultimate speech was \u201cBreaking Brand: Looking Past Brands for the Better<\/span>\u201d <\/span><\/i>by Miroslav Bergam (V). Bergam opened the speech with a story about how his family overlooked a cookout in South Carolina summer after summer due to its lack of branding. Bergam deconstructed the illusion of branding all around our lives and community, from cereal to computers to clubs at Pingry. He went on to highlight the \u201cdark side\u201d of branding: the exclusion and subsequent elitism between those who are \u201cin on the brand\u201d and those who are not. His final message was to be wary of the impact brands have on our lives and personalities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The final speech was \u201cHow Media Makes Us Smarter\u201d by Ketaki Tavan (V). Tavan questioned the ways that television, movies, and other forms of visual media are seen by our culture. She challenged the assumptions that \u201cTV rots your brain\u201d and \u201champers creativity\u201d by arguing that one can \u201cconsume visual media\u201d with as much critical analysis as one can with literature. Tavan continued by analyzing <\/span>Mudbound<\/span><\/i>, a 2017 movie involving race relations on a farm in the Mississippi Delta, and <\/span>Shameless<\/span><\/i>, an ongoing television comedy about a dysfunctional family living in South Side, Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the assembly drew to a close, Mr. Karrat named Mohammed the runner-up of this year\u2019s competition and then announced Bergam as the winner. Everyone in Hauser walked away enriched and though-provoked by the six fantastic speeches they had heard. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Noah Bergam ’21 On Friday, February 23rd, Upper and Middle School students joined together in Hauser Auditorium for the 2018 Robert H. LeBow \u201858 Oratorical Competition. The competition, held annually and open to juniors and sophomores, was founded in 2005 by William Hetfield \u201858 and the Class of \u201858 in memory of Dr. Robert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[68,83,10],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school-news","tag-assembly","tag-lebow","tag-school-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.pingry.org\/record\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}