Torch: U.S. LXXI Winter 2021 | Page 27

ILLINOIS

by Riona Duncan

Since national convention, school has started, our local chapters have been hard at work, and the Illinois Certamen League has started up for the year. We've also had our annual Fall Festivus meetup. This year it was at Whitney Young High School in Chicago, and had about 50 attendees, which isn't bad for the first in-person JCL event for years! We ate pizza, played board games and Certamen, had Kahoot! and art, and took a million photos. We also made up 60 goodie bags full of candy to donate to Treats for Troops. We're very excited as we start to look forward to our state convention in February!

INDIANA

by Abby Godsen

In August, the IJCL Executive Board met for our overnight Board Meeting at Indiana University, Bloomington. Here we discussed plans for the state convention, finalized plans for Leadership Development Academy, worked on activities for Fall Latin Day, and reviewed changes to policies, amendments, programs, and scholarships offered by the IJCL. We also received a tour of the Student Union and brainstormed ideas about how we can promote membership for the IJCL and ISCL.

September was quite the busy month for us as we held our first in-person Leadership Development Academy since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While there, students were able to learn techniques to harness their skills as local officers and improve their clubs in this year of rebuilding. Additionally, Canterbury School hosted a local Certamen invitational to introduce beginners to Certamen and kick off the Certamen season.

For the month of October, IJCL held our second Board Meeting of the year and started working towards the state convention in the spring. As the world begins to settle after almost two years of quarantines and mandates, we seek to breathe life back into our chapters and get more students excited about getting involved in their local IJCL chapter. We can’t wait to see what the future holds and are super excited to host our first regular convention since the start of the pandemic!

STATE UPDATES · Winter 2021· Torch: U.S.

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