Beyond the Classroom: STERNBERG (con't.)

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The Department of Classical Studies at Wooster has a long-standing routine of co-curricular activities for students. Fortunately, that routine only rarely gets us into trouble. To start with, professors and students eat lunch together weekly at the Classics Table. Then, once or twice each semester we convene the Classics Forum, an evening for conviviality and research presentations. We make field trips to museums and sponsor public performances, such as our radio-play version of The Braggart Soldier or a staged reading of the Bacchae. Some majors and minors live in the Classics Suite; many also belong to Eta Sigma Phi and organize the occasional guest lecture, Vergil reading, or picnic. All such activities mesh with the courses we teach. Taken as a whole, they create synergy and a strong sense of community.

From the faculty’s point of view, the most demanding co-curricular activity is Classics Table, which takes place every Friday at noon in one of the dining halls. First-year students gravitate to the table; interest among majors and minors waxes and wanes because conversation can be fun; but it can also be awkward. The format, as we have discovered, needs to remain flexible. For a couple of years we ran a mini-program, a sort of Classics Lite, that featured specific discussion topics from week to week. Then some students said they would prefer simply to eat and talk informally. Now the tide has turned again and, upon student request, we are returning to the Classics Lite concept.

Classics Forum, an evening affair, is almost always gratifying because the professors and students who present their work typically get excellent feedback. We do offer refreshments, but since the event is serious in tone, it never feels quite like a party.

Our greatest claim to fame is the Classics Suite, a housing option aimed at majors and minors but open to anyone taking at least one classics course. The students themselves came up with the idea five or six years ago and petitioned Housing for the privilege of having a suite analogous to the French suite or Russian suite. Residents work on Greek and Latin together, talk about classical subjects, or simply commiserate. The living arrangement invites certain complications—if not brawls, then long brooding silences whenever friends and lovers fall out. Yet the suite, now situated in our most luxurious dormitory, attracts plenty of applicants. Faculty input is required each spring term when applications come in, but other than that, it runs itself.

In all of these venues, some students join us eagerly and others remain aloof. The choice is theirs. We place no pressure on them, but simply invite them via our Classics listserv. All in all, the co-curricular agenda represents a considerable investment of time and effort on the part of professors, but our students do benefit, and the department continues to flourish.