As citizens in McPherson County, Kansas, engaged in strategic planning to position themselves economically for the future, they also worked to build community. Data were collected during seven months of strategic planning. Two visions of community emerged during the strategic planning sessions. One group of citizens articulated community as the entire county while another group constructed community as individual towns and population groups within the county. Ultimately, the county-wide view of community dominated the strategic planning discussions. Conclusions are offered to explain this outcome and implications are provided for community development.

The purpose of this study is to examine Interstate Oratorical speeches and deter- mine if these speeches demonstrate common characteristics that can be traced from the earliest championship speech given in 1875 to the championship speech in 2000. Twenty-seven 1OA speeches were analyzed using a coding system based around the categories of topic, organizational pattern/structure, evidence usage, stylistic features and documentation. Although significant differences were found in the areas of organizational patterns, logical evidence usage and documenta- tion, commonalities were found in the areas of topic choice, use of evocative evi- dence and stylistic features. The authors conclude that the use of highly stylized language in IOA speeches is the most notable consistent characteristic through- out the history of the competition. The Interstate Oratorical Association is the oldest and arguably most well known intercollegiate oratorical competition in the country. The association's roots stretch back over one hundred twenty-eight years, beginning with represen- tatives from Adelphi Society of Knox College sending and receiving correspon- dence from colleges in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. The official association was formed after the first contest was held in Galesburg, Illinois on February 27, 1884. This oratorical contest was presumably the first held by an intercollegiate association in the United States (Interstate, 2000; Anderson, 1930). Persons representing the public at large have historically adjudicated the contest. The first adjudicators were chosen by the Governors of the participating states and represented a president of one university, a professor of another, and a legal judge. The first contestants from the three states were evaluated on, "excel- lence of thought, style of composition, and delivery, marking each on a scale of ten." (Prather, 1908). Accordingly, the contestants currently representing roughly every state are judged on similar qualities as the first orators. Today, the asso- ciation is alive and thriving and will continue to prosper as long as young orators have a hunger for truth and believe in the competitive spirit. Over the past twenty years, much scholarly attention has been given to the study of competitive persuasive speaking. Some forensic scholars have tried to trace the development of the event as competitive norms have changed perform- ance expectations (Smith, 1996; Sellnow & Ziegelmueller, 1988; Reynolds, 1983), others have looked at the role coaches and judges have played in shaping the nature of the event (Dean, 1992; Friedley, 1992; Benson & Friedley, 1982) and some have made recommendations about how to enhance the educational aspects of the event (Klumpp, 1992; Reynolds, 1992; Sellnow, 1992; Ballinger