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.
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