State forensics competition comes to campus

The Wisconsin High School Forensic Association will hold its annual Wisconsin Speech Festival on campus on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, April 20-21.

There will be 4,937 students from 373 school districts around the state participating in the two-day event, along with 559 judges and 468 coaches.

Most of the activities will take place in Humanities, Helen C. White, Van Hise, Van Vleck, Social Science, and in Bascom Hall where the headquarters for the festival will be located. Scattered rooms in other buildings will also be used.

Motorists are likely to encounter some traffic congestion and delays on Friday afternoon when school buses drop off students at their destinations and head west on Observatory Drive to Lot 60.

There will also be family members and friends arriving on campus, in addition to the usual Friday afternoon traffic in the campus area.

The festival has been held on campus for more than 100 years and it continues to be a tradition. The first contest took place in Bascom Hall in 1895. The association, founded in that year, is the oldest of its kind in the nation.