Usually quite an unfortunate month for students, August marks the slow end of summer and the transition into the beginning of the school year. Luckily, it’s always a fortuitous month for Latin students due to the surplus of activities that characterizes another great upcoming year! August was quite busy for the club, with the introduction of new Flex activities, field trips, and the general hopeful atmosphere associated with new beginnings.
New year means new leadership! We have an all-new council in charge of running social media accounts, working on fundraisers and meeting ideas, and overall management of Latin Club and Latin Honor Society. Before the first day, Latin Officers came early to get the room ready and plan out all of the exciting activities for the first few months of the school year. Quentin Veliz Saavedra, one of the new consuls for this year, says, “The importance of all the Latin events we are having is to build our Edison Latin Community! Each of the events we’re planning for this year is an opportunity for us to bond with our Latin Buddies.”
Latin Buddies has been a running tradition among the Edison Latin Community, similar to the Big and Little system common to sororities. The upperclassmen pick freshmen ‘buddies’ after viewing their answers to a questionnaire. The upperclassmen then give their buddies gifts and advice. This system has resulted in the blossoming of meaningful relationships, often extending outside of Latin class and club events.
Veliz Saavedra continues, “It’s a really special thing to form connections with one another.”
On the second day back, Latin Club took a field trip to Politics and Prose at Union Market to sit in on a lecture. The presentation: a reading of the new translation of The Aeneid by Scott McGill and Susannah Wright. A collaborative translation provided in iambic pentameter, the same meter of famous English epics such as Paradise Lost, the rhythmic choice creates a thrilling and familiar association with heroic stories already familiar to English-speaking audiences.
Wright and McGill discussed their translation with Nandini Pandey, an associate professor of classics at JHU, much to the thrill of the audience. Amelia Mason, Historian of Latin Club, discusses attending the presentation.
“My favorite part of the presentation was listening to the authors describe their incredibly long journey translating the Aeneid and all of the thought that went into rewriting each line of the poem in a way that could become accessible to modern English readers, but also still preserve the heart of what is arguably the most important surviving Roman text,” Mason notes the passion and detail Wright and McGill put into their descriptions of Aeneas as something that stood out to her. She elaborates on the relevance of the Aeneid, a two-thousand-year-old text, to contemporary readers and Latin students.
“As a Latin student and someone interested in studying classics, I believe that learning about and actually reading the Aeneid is important for Latin students to understand and also contextualize a great deal of Roman history and belief. I genuinely believe [The Aeneid] to be deeply compelling and a very emotional text.”
Beyond field trips, the new year brings new school-wide policies. One such policy unique to the 2025-2026 school year is the ‘Flex System,’ which introduces Flex every alternating day, where students can choose to go to activities and meet with teachers.
This provides more exciting opportunities for people to participate in Latin Club events. Our first Flex involved students practicing Certamen questions, with even more exciting activities planned for future Flex periods.
Ultimately, August was a thrilling month for the club, filled with learning and laughter. The best part? We're just getting started. On goals for this year, Veliz Saavedra states,
“I hope we can accomplish gaining more JCL members and more attendees of events in general. I hope we can hold many events that will appeal to their interests and better integrate Edison Latin students into our fun little community!”
Stay tuned for our September monthly recap, where especially events will take place! We can’t wait to share with you all we have planned for the future.
