Here at Brookfield Academy, Latin students from all levels participated in our annual week-long celebration of the birth of Rome. The week started with Toga Tuesday, a fun way for Latin students to spread awareness of Latin club to the rest of the student body through purple cloth and clothespins. By the way, I have to plug the normal tradition of Tropical Tuesday started by our very own WJCL president Mark Bechthold and myself. Trust me when I say that once you start wearing your Hawaiian shirt, you’ll never go back. I digress. Following Toga Tuesday came Where's Pegasus Wednesday, a school-wide hunt for a small stuffed pegasus that manages to “escape” our Latin teacher Mrs. Osier’s room every single year. Whoever finds him and returns him gets a small prize courtesy of the Latin club. This year the little guy managed to run away not once, but three times! Next came a bake sale to raise funds for convention. Finally, we celebrated Rome’s birthday by bringing cakes into Latin class on friday. Many even baked their own cakes. This year, the AP Latin class piped a cake themselves with the words Felix Natalis Romam written in green icing. Every year this week brings a lot of awareness to the school about the Latin department and Latin club. We even managed to eat WJCL editor Margot Armbruster’s sketchy birthday cake… hopefully no one got too sick the next day. (EDITOR'S NOTE: I received nothing but compliments about my somewhat aesthetically challenged but definitely delicious cake.)
by ben palatnik, ba latin club co-consul
Brookfield Academy
at right: The BA Advanced Certamen team poses with their second-place plaque from the Harvard Certamen tournament.
Besides National Classics Week, BA also participated in several other activities in the past few months. We sent several teams to the Harvard Certamen tournament in March, where our novice teams earned second and third place and our advanced team finished
second. One of our novices even won the MVP award! Additionally, several students received awards from the NJCL online exams and the CAMWS translation contest, and seniors received honor cords at graduation for their membership in the National Latin Honor Society.
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