OJCL Torch Fall 2017 | Page 18

What It’s Like in a Small State Joshua Ocampo, NVJCL Co-President When Taylor first asked me to write an article, I wasn’t sure what I would write it on. But then I realized that the Ohio JCL is my audience. Your state is one of the delegations that I so incredibly admire, with such amazing people on the board and the most lit™ events that I could only pretend I’d be able to help organize. Then, I looked back at where I was coming from: Nevada. Nevada (pronounced Nev-a-duh not Nev-ahhh-duh) is one of the smaller states in the JCL. We have, in total, three active JCLs. Our state conventions could never rival an OJCL Fall Forum. Nevertheless, we’ve produced three national officers (including one this year) in the past five years, and I believe that shows how deep our JCL spirit runs. “But Nevada’s huge! Are there really that few schools that do Latin there?” As I write this on a bus from a soccer tournament in Ely, Nevada (4 hours from my hometown), I can confirm that the state is mainly vacant land. We have two major metropolitan areas, Reno and Las Vegas, on opposite sides of the state. Unlike other small states like Maryland or Alabama, which are relatively small in area, we don’t have to drive a few hours to state convention. We drive EIGHT hours. 84.9% of our state being federal land makes for 2 decently-sized cities on opposite ends of the state, 7 total schools that teach Latin, 4 official local JCL chapters, and 3 that are active. One big thing that I have noticed about small JCL states is that they are largely unstable and go through a lot of changes. For example, we usually don’t have a fall forum – the last was in 2013 – but this year we are having one. Our officer positions also changed this year, from the traditional President, 1VP, 2VP, etc., to three officer positions called Triumviri that split all the duties and basically act as co-presidents. I had to fight for us to even have a state convention last year – even the most integral event of JCL was in jeopardy. Thank Ohio for how well-run they have been; these are problems they’ll never have to face. 17