Student Finds Her Place Through Poetry and Persuasion

Eva Reyes (pictured above, center) grew up in South Los Angeles with her “loud Afro-Latino family.”  In high school, Eva tutored at-risk middle school students and taught dance classes.  This helped her stay out of trouble and led her to work with youth and family services, specifically gang intervention.

After graduating high school, Eva started taking classes at South West College and attended many other colleges in the area before finding her home at LACC. After struggling with her classes in 2007, Eva took a break from school to focus on work.  She came back to LACC this Spring to acquire the knowledge to climb the career ladder.

Eva became interested in Forensics Speech and Debate after taking Communications 101 with Professor Harley Haas, who encouraged her to compete in the True Boardman Tournament on campus. At her first competition, she won first place for a persuasive speech about blood donation. After excelling in the competition, Eva got hooked and joined the team.  At the most recent competition held at PCC, Eva placed 4th against 327 students from 36 colleges and universities. She finds the tournaments very empowering and engaging.

Since coming back to LACC, Eva has gotten straight A’s. Unlike her first time at LACC when her mom paid for school, she is paying her own way and working really hard to get where she wants to be.  After LACC, she would like to get her bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University.  She hopes to obtain her Master’s in Public/Health Policy and become an executive director at a youth and family services organization.

ABOUT FORENSICS SPEECH AND DEBATE:

Forensics is intercollegiate competitive speaking that is held locally and across the nation on different College/University campuses.

Team members practice and compete individually or with a partner to uncover different kinds of truth through speech, performance, and/or debate. This activity serves as the applied or laboratory experience for many of the communication classes offered today (i.e. argumentation, public speaking, oral interpretation, etc.).

Students gain confidence and the necessary communicative skills to be competitive in their personal, academic, and career life. Plus it’s fun!

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