The first time University of Arizona student Yvonne Davis spoke in front of an audience, she was training recruits with the sheriff’s department. Now, more than a decade later, she's rehearsing lines about failure, resilience and civic duty for a very different audience: judges at the Regents' Cup.

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Hosted by the Arizona Board of Regents, the Regents' Cup is a public speaking competition that encourages civil and respectful discourse among students from Arizona's three state universities, who compete in both storytelling and Oxford-style debates to win scholarships.

This year's competition will be held April 12 at Northern Arizona University, where students will discuss and debate "The Government and the People: The Social Contract." This year, the U of A team includes 11 debaters and four storytellers.

"The social contract means how we as a community give up certain freedoms for government protection," said Davis, who will compete in storytelling. "I will discuss having to succeed in a society where you feel like the contract between you and your government may be broken. I have experience working with government agencies and understand the bureaucracy and red tape that surrounds benefits in our society."

Davis began her Wildcat journey in 2000 but left to pursue a career – spending a decade in law enforcement and more than a decade in banking. A member of the Tohono O'odham Nation, she returned to the U of A in 2023 through an Arizona Native Scholars Grant and studies communication and public relations in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences,

Though Davis has never participated in a public speaking or debate event before, she is excited to apply her real-world experiences to the Regents' Cup. Davis said the competition will also help her explore a future career as a motivational speaker.

"Participating in the Regents' Cup, having that platform and impacting people with my story – this is the perfect test to see if I can keep people's attention and influence others," Davis said.

Voices in action

Diana Leonard, the storytelling coach for the U of A students competing in the Regents' Cup, often recruits Regents' Cup participants like Davis through her advanced public speaking course. 

Leonard, director of public speaking and senior lecturer in the Department of Communication,  guides her team through finding stories that not only connect with the year's theme but also carry personal, cultural and social significance.

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"I hope that a Regents' Cup story connects with the audience at the level of the human condition," Leonard said. "The audience doesn't need to have the same experience, but the story should tap into what it means to be human. You want to share a message that people can feel, understand and empathize with – be it funny, sad or horrific. You want to share a piece of yourself so that as an audience member, I can feel the piece of you that is being shared. I want to be with the storyteller, not just observing the story."

While Leonard prepares the U of A students competing in the storytelling category, Ted McLoof, director of the UA Discourse Series and a principal lecturer in the Department of English, coaches those who compete in debate.

The Regents' Cup is a special event, McLoof said, because it focuses on Oxford-style debate rather than more commonly practiced formats. Oxford-style debate allows for broad, flexible approaches that often involve humor and quick thinking to sway an audience.

Scoring the debate involves polling an audience before and after the debate in order to determine which side gained the most support. 

Regents' Cup judges for both debate and storytelling include Arizona state legislators and other elected officials, attorneys, civic leaders, business executives and higher education professionals.

McLoof said discussing a topic like the social contract is especially timely for college students, many of whom are about to graduate and begin their professional journeys.

"Part of our job as custodians of their education is to train them to not only be experts in their field of study but to be engaged citizens who are aware of how they can actually contribute something to the world," he said. "The social contract discusses all of that: It reminds you that as a citizen of the world, you are meant to give back. When receiving a good education, you pay it forward and use it to help other people."