Freedom of Expression
Viewpoint Diversity
Intellectual Humility
Critical Thinking
Undergraduate Finalist Speeches
Deanna Wilbourn
*Winner*
Speech Transcript:
To be entirely frank with you, the Declaration of Independence has ruined my opportunity to have a good struggle story. I have a grandfather who survived Siberia and immigrated to America, knowing no English. The only reason I know this is because he told me… every. day. So I don’t know how you used to do your homework after school, but every day for me it was, “Диана, are you working hard? Just remember, you need to work harder.” He’d also remind me of how he walked to school over 3 kilometers every day in the blizzard or how he had his first dentist appointment inside a gulag. The number of times I heard about the Soviet Union in my daily life, you would think it still actively existed. When your family is an immigrant family, it feels like you can’t complain about anything.
But when you think about it, the most American thing that we can do, as illustrated in the Declaration of Independence, is to complain. Yes, you heard me! The Declaration of Independence is the parchment version of a strongly-worded Yelp review that's about to go viral or like a crowd of French people shouting for bread in the acclaimed theatrical production, Les Mis. But the key most important difference between the Declaration of Independence and its Founding Fathers [pause] and my grandfather is that the Founding Fathers were able to complain successfully. They were able to create real change, resulting in our nation’s independence. And since then, Americans have exercised our right to complain throughout history.
Our complaints have brought about extraordinary changes. Some of our nation’s brightest moments- like in 1920 when women got the right to vote, in 1964 when the civil rights act outlawed race-based discrimination, in 1965 when we eliminated the federal immigration quota for those outside of Western Europe via the Hart-Cellar Act, or in 1990, when our government outlawed discriminating against Americans with disabilities- all of these moments illuminate the principles that America truly stands for- the ability to see that what today promises us isn’t enough, but together, we can build the promises we deserve for tomorrow. I know I just listed several historical moments, and I realize that those are our most positive and proud moments, but the truth is that there isn’t a single historical event that encapsulates the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence… because they all do.
And this is why. My family found themselves in Kyiv, Ukraine, during Chernobyl. My grandparents sent my mother to Russia to escape the radiation, but the ruling party ordered families to recall their children, continuing the lie that all was well. My mother tells me about how she was chronically sick with a cold and her hair fell out. My grandmother, Людмила, developed fatal brain tumors. My family and millions of fellow Ukrainians were at the mercy of a government that prioritized protecting itself over its people.
In the US, we throw around the phrase “know your rights,” without realizing how much of a privilege it is to have them. My family didn’t have the right to complain against the USSR. And even in America, they didn’t have the right to become immigrants without the monumental Hart Cellar Act. Any liminal progress we have ever made to move our nation forward was because we had the courage to recognize that the reality we were living in shouldn’t be the reality for Americans tomorrow. I understand this all too well as someone that helped throw a party for my grandparents the day they got their green cards. It’s a privilege to say your opinion out loud- to make it a promise through purposeful action- to make a better tomorrow possible.
Through our founding principle, we recognize, we realize and we verbalize that we can do better. We have the freedom to say it, and the audacity to do it. We strive, we complain, we work so that our children have an even harder time writing their college entrance struggle-story essays.
Спасибо всем and thank you!
Anant Gautam
Speech Transcript:
It’s September 4th, 1957.There’s palpable tension in the air. It’s been three years since the landmark Supreme Court Case, Brown v Board of Education, declared segregation unconstitutional. Now, 9 African American students are standing outside Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas, about to take their first steps into a previously all-white school. In one famous photo, you can see hordes of anti-integration protestors outside Central High, one of them screaming with anger. But the subject of the photo isn’t the protestors. Instead, the subject is Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, elegantly marching into
the school wearing sunglasses, unfazed.
Almost 200 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson is in his house in Philadelphia, writing the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. In it, Jefferson famously noted that by the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” -- that, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men” -- and that, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”.
That’s exactly what happened at Little Rock. After Brown v Board of Education, Arkansas State Superintendent proposed starting integration at Little Rock Central high. But the government failed to recognize the right of the students. Indeed, Governor Faubus of Arkansas, pressured and influenced by the racist sentiments of his political base, deployed the National Guard to prevent the Little Rock Nine from entering Central High School. It’s in this crowd, with a weaponized government, that Elizabeth Eckford marched on. But for 20 days after the start of Central High, the Little Rock Nine were barred from entering by policemen and the national guard. The very form of government had become destructive to the ends of equal protection.
The beauty of the declaration lay in natural rights theory, which posits that the government doesn’t provide us rights; it is there to protect our rights, and when it fails to do so, we are called to alter it. On September 20th, President Eisenhower seemed to have remembered the words of the declaration. He federalized the entire Arkansas National Guard to enforce the integration of Central High School. And on September 25th, 1957, the Little Rock Nine attended a full day of school at Central high. It was far from smooth sailing, however. When in school, many of the African American students faced constant discrimination and racism from teachers and students; and even today, the CDC notes that 1 in 3 students report facing racism in school.
Yet the story of the Little Rock Nine is far from a failure. When the founding fathers declared independence from Great Britain, they had to go to years of war to secure it; yet there was something special in the declaration itself that each person is entitled to unalienable rights. By displaying their fearlessness in continuing to fight for this immortal declaration, the Little Rock Nine -- high school students -- led our highest elected leaders to recognize their duties to protect our rights, for a government that infringes upon our rights is no government at all. But most importantly, the story of the little rock 9 should not just be their story. When Benjamin Franklin was being carried out of the Philadelphia Courthouse where the Constitution was ratified, one lady, Elizabeth Powell, asked, what do we have, a monarch, or a republic? Franklin replied: we have a republic, but only if you can keep it. The story of the declaration was continued and exemplified in the Little Rock nine; the question we must ask ourselves today is what can we do to continue their story?
Madeline Livingston
Speech Transcript:
As I stand here before you, a proud Oregonian, it would be remiss of me not to share one of my homeland's greatest chronicles: that of the Exploding Whale Incident of 1970. For those who are not familiar, let me begin this evening with a tale.
On the 9th of November, 1970, an 8-ton, 45-foot-long sperm whale washed ashore on the beaches of the coastal town of Florence, Oregon. After the smell of the deceased whale began to source numerous complaints from the local townspeople, it was deemed that the carcass would need to be eradicated. In consultation with the United States Navy, Oregon’s Highway Division proceeded to utilize 450 kilograms, or roughly 1000 pounds, of dynamite to effectively detonate the whale, in hopes that only small pieces would be left to be consumed by local scavenger animals. Now, mind you, 1000 pounds of dynamite is quite hefty, and a local military veteran with experience in explosives training warned that a mere 4 kilograms would be sufficient - less than 1 percent of their proposed ammunition - but his cautions were left unconsidered.
At 3:45 pm on the 12th of November, the whale was exploded into numerous substantially large pieces of blubber, which damaged cars and nearby buildings, even crushing a vehicle a quarter of a mile away from the blast scene.
The Declaration of Independence states, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Though the alterations made after the incident were not as dramatic as the abolishing of government, changes to policy ensued. Paul Linnman, a reporter out of Portland, Oregon, closed his story of the event by stating, “It might be concluded that, should a whale ever be washed ashore in Lane County again, those in charge will not only remember what to do, they’ll certainly remember what not to do.” The incident led to a shift in the state’s policy on handling beached whales. Almost a decade later, 41 sperm whales were beached nearby, where their remains were burned and buried, as opposed to detonated.
In our country, where the people are free and beached whales may at times be exploded, it is imperative that we exercise our right to government reform when our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are threatened. Oregon’s procedure now includes a consultation with numerous experts, including the West Coast Marine Mammal Stranding Network to handle and oversee the ever-delicate situation of whales washed ashore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to conduct autopsies to determine the next best course of action, and Oregon State Parks to manage the site and erect barriers around the scene for public safety. These organizations are made up of scientists, wildlife agencies, specialists, and volunteer networks, who possess intimate knowledge of how best to deal with a problem such as this safely and efficiently. When policies are shown to be defective and need to be replaced, it is critical that experts, who impart abundant knowledge and learned skills, are consulted, heeded, and included in the discussions regarding changes made to the way in which our government operates. Through education, we learn about our history and how best not to repeat it, when those past actions yielded undesirable results. Just as we were once governed by a king, our Declaration of Independence outlines how a country such as ours strives to remain free of rule by our British brethren, or any tyrant, for that matter. As a nation, we are made up of incredibly diverse worlds, and our Declaration serves to benefit all those who make our country truly free: the thinkers, the creators, the adventurers, the seekers, the lovers, the dreamers, and the whales. Thank you.
Nolan Hite
Speech Transcript:
In July of 1776, a group of men gathered in Philadelphia to declare that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, among them Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Seventy-two years later, another July gathering, this time in a small Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, asked the nation to finish what it had begun. There, Elizabeth Cady Stanton rose before a crowd of women and men to declare something audacious: that those same self evident truths must apply not only to men, but to women, too.
Her words, the Declaration of Sentiments, echoed Jefferson’s, but with a new moral force. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” she proclaimed, “that all men and women are created equal.”
Seneca Falls was not just a convention. It was a conversation across time, a moment when America looked again at its founding promise and asked, “Do we mean it?”
The principle at the heart of the Declaration, equality, was never a finished achievement. It was, instead, a direction, a compass by which the republic might continually correct its course.
In 1848, women could not vote, own property in many states, or even claim custody of their own children. Yet, in Seneca Falls, they summoned the courage to hold the nation accountable to its own words. When Frederick Douglass, the only African American present, rose to speak, he reminded the crowd that rights once withheld from him as a slave had been won only through struggle. He insisted that the cause of women’s equality was part of that same American struggle, the struggle to make the Declaration’s promise real.
Douglass’s presence that day was not symbolic. It was prophetic. Because the founding principle of equality is expansive, once spoken, it demands application beyond every boundary of race, gender, and creed.
Seneca Falls reminds us that the Declaration of Independence is not merely a historical document; it is a moral covenant. Its words are not relics, they are responsibilities. Each generation inherits not only the rights the founders claimed, but also the work they left unfinished.
Jefferson and Stanton, though separated by nearly a century, were bound by the same radical idea: that legitimate government depends on the consent of the governed, all the governed. The women and men at Seneca Falls did not reject the founding; they reclaimed it. They showed that fidelity to our founding principles sometimes requires dissent; that patriotism is not the quiet acceptance of what is, but the courageous insistence on what ought to be.
Today, in classrooms and courtrooms, in marches and movements, we continue to debate what equality demands of us. And each time we do, we return, consciously or not, to that original promise written in Philadelphia and renewed at Seneca Falls: that America’s greatness lies not in perfection, but in its capacity for progress.
Our founders wrote ideals that they themselves did not yet live. The women at Seneca Falls demanded that those ideals be lived. And we, their inheritors, must ensure they are kept.
In the Rotunda above us, the Declaration of Independence is etched into our national story — not as a monument to the past, but as a challenge to the future.
Each generation must decide whether “all are created equal” will remain an aspiration or become a truth.
So let us speak, as Stanton spoke, not to break with our founding, but to bring it closer to fulfillment. Let us remember that America’s truest revolution is not one of muskets and militias, but of conscience and courage — the quiet, relentless insistence that every human being is entitled to liberty and dignity.
That is what Seneca Falls teaches us. That is what the Declaration demands of us. And that is the promise we must keep.