The Clark Prize

Eligibility

The Clark Prize is open to all senior students regardless of concentration.

Requirements

The Clark prize will be awarded to the senior who, through both content and delivery, most effectively addresses the assigned topic. 2025's topic is: How should Hamilton prepare future graduates to engage in civil discourse?

Preliminary Round

To participate in the 2025 Preliminary Round, you must record your speech at the OCC during one of our dedicated recording times. Times will be available between Thursday, February 13 and Monday, February 17, and can be reserved in TracCloud.

You will only have one opportunity to record your speech. You may restart once if you make a major mistake less than one minute in, but you may not come back to re-record.

Scoring

The judges will assign scores on two broad areas: content/organization and delivery. Judges will also score each entry on overall engagement and persuasiveness.

Final round scores are separate from preliminary round scores, but are scored on the same criteria.

Content and Organization

• Speaker made a clear case for why a Hamilton community member should listen to this speech.
• Language use was accessible to the listener.
• A listener could easily follow the organization of the content.
• Speaker used evidence that supported the main point of the speech.

Delivery

• Speaker’s use of vocal delivery (volume, pitch, emphasis) enhanced the message.
• Nonverbal delivery (gestures and eye contact) enhanced the message.
• Delivery was conversational rather than rotely memorized or read.

Overall Impression

• The speech addressed the assigned topic in a persuasive manner.
• The speaker was engaging to watch throughout the presentation.

Scoring Notes

In the event of a tie, overall engagement and persuasiveness will be used to determine the winner.

For the final round, speakers will be shown a countdown of their remaining time. The minimum time is 6 minutes and maximum time is 8 minutes. If speeches run shorter than the minimum or longer than the maximum, they will incur a 5% point penalty after a ten second grace period.

Recent winners

2025

Deanna Durben '25, "Conviction and Communication: Productive Discourse in Times of Discord" | video

2024

Lily Hirai '24, "Hello my name is" | video

2023

Samuel Lieberman ’23, “Do Androids Dream of Public Speaking?” | video

2022

2021

Lily Delle-Levine ’21, “Time for Change: Social Media as Social Action” | video