Have George W. Bush and John Kerry been able to deliver on their campaign speeches to the people?

Uh, not reallysay a group of 12 West Virginia University honors students who have spent the semester in a speech-writing seminar offered by the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.

TheSeminar on Speech Writingclass taught by Eberly Associate Dean Dr. Joan Gorham has given the students from all walks of academic life a prime (time) opportunity: theyve been able to watch as Bush and Kerry have tried to put into the practice the principles theyre learning in the seminar.

Courtesy of 24-hour cable news, Gorhams students have been able to stake out stump speeches and batten down the rhetoric for soundbite after soundbite. And the class consensus is this: Dont look for any flat-out votes of confidence for either candidate, they said.

At least based on their orating skills.

Neither uses inflection and tone to the best of their abilities, which makes them sound monotonous and dull,said Jimmie Hopkins, an English major from Morgantown.Of the two, Kerry is more skilled. I know that Bush uses little words and gestures to prove his connection with the average Joe, but this lets me down as a constituent.

In the true spirit of presidential politics, classmate Lindsay Darling disagreedand agreedall at the same time.

Bush has a more informal delivery, so he may appeal to many,the biology major from West Middlesex, Pa., said,but I dont believe that either candidate had great success in delivering their messages.

And thatDworddeliveryalways gets the last word in any speech, Gorham said. She turned to the gold standard of debate performance, John F. Kennedy versus Richard Nixon in 1960, to prove her point.

If you read the transcripts of the debate, you would have expected that Nixon won,she said, simply.If you saw the debates on television, you thought that Kennedy won.

The class has also spent the semester analyzing speeches by Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and other icons whose words are now carved in the granite of our collective consciousness.

One of WVU s more visible public speakers, President David C. Hardesty Jr., even sat in once for a critique of his recentState of the Campusaddress.

If the students have been able to agree on anything, Gorham said, its that speech writing is both art and science, and poetry and performance.

And when it works, she saidfromI have a dreamtoAsk not what your country can do for youthe results can be thrilling.

A When a speech catches the mind and penetrates the heart, it is unforgettable,”Gorham said. A It is part left brain and part right brain, a merger of Stanislavsky and Brecht, that holds our attention and gets under our skin.