95 Attend Classics Day 2025

The Department of Classics and General Humanities and the Institute for the Humanities held its first Classics Day in 1990 and has held one every year since — for the last thirty-five years! From the beginning, the intention was to provide high school students who are studying Latin with an opportunity to see the language in the context of the wider discipline of Classics that embraces it — as well as to provide them with an opportunity for an informal glimpse of it as taught in a college setting.  And that has not changed.

Last Friday’s (11/21) Classics Day, the thirty-sixth, welcomed  95 students and teachers from six local high schools (Edison, Franklin, Innovation, Middletown North and South, Montclair Kimberley Academy, and St. Joseph’s). They gathered for a morning of presentations from Montclair faculty on topics ranging from classical mythology to Roman aqueducts, and afterwards took part, via groups representing their schools, in an academic contest involving answering 99 questions on Latin grammar, Roman Civilization, and Classical Mythology in half an hour!  First place was won by Montclair Kimberley Academy, and this year, for the first time ever, three schools tied for second place — Edison, Franklin, and St. Joseph’s!