Rice salutes Houston-area Latin students at annual certamen competition

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Dozens of Houston-area student gladiators will gather at Rice University this weekend for the third annual Owl Certamen — a competition for Latin proficiency that happily will end with scholastic accolades rather than public death in the forum.

This year’s certamen will feature competitions in academic testing, dramatic interpretation, Latin oratory, Latin sight-reading, English oratory and colloquia.

Rice students are in the lead, said Donald Morrison, professor of philosophy and classical studies and the faculty sponsor of the event. They “write the questions for the competitions and man the event on Jan. 21,” he said.

“Rice has a group of advanced Latin students who were top certamen competitors in high school,” Morrison said. “They love the language and the culture and the competition so much that they organize and run this tournament for nearly 150 Houston-area secondary-school Latin students.”

The student whose idea launched Owl Certamen is Baker College senior Ruchi Srivastava. She first became interested in certamen when she was in seventh grade. Her future high school Latin teacher was recruiting students for the school’s certamen team. “Under his tutelage, we won our state competition and went on to successfully compete at nationals,” Srivastava said. “That first rush of winning was incredible motivation for me to continue on with certamen and organize a competition like Owl Certamen when I finally became too old to compete myself.”

The public is invited to the final rounds of certamen, a quiz-bowl competition about all things Roman and Latin. “It’s like the final championship round in a high school debate tournament,” Morrison said. “No other events are scheduled at that time, and all the participants gather in the auditorium to watch the best teams play.” The public final rounds will be held in Herring Hall, Room 100.

There will be three levels of competitive certamen — novice, intermediate and advanced. Each team will have the opportunity to play three times, before the three highest-scoring teams advance to the finals.

The competition has expanded over its years at Rice. For students with an interest in classical studies, there will be colloquia (mini-seminars on subjects such as history and mythology), creative arts competitions, such as a dramatic recitation of Latin prose and poetry, an orator-like performance of speeches of famous politicians and more.

“It’s pretty exciting to see the shift from the single event two years ago — Certamen — to a whole day with multiple activities for classical studies students with a variety of interests,” Srivastava said. “The competition still has room to grow, though, and I’m looking forward to seeing what my peers decide to add on next year.”

Morrison sees Owl Certamen’s growth as evidence of a grass-roots demand. “Interest in Latin and ancient civilization is holding its own in contemporary culture, thanks to the hard work and enthusiasm of high school Latin teachers in Houston and across the country,” he said. “Owl Certamen is a way that Rice classical studies faculty and students can support their efforts.”

Srivastava directed her encomia to her Rice colleagues. “Besides showing the Houston community that Rice has an extremely supportive Classical Studies Department in terms of faculty, staff and students (without which Owl Certamen would never have happened), I think it speaks really positively about the culture of the school,” she said. “I don’t know too many other places where I could have simply approached a professor with an idea and had his complete backing and support through the idea’s execution.”

In addition, she noted that the material used at Owl Certamen is written by Rice students and that the event itself is run by them — “a testament to the fact that here, students learn for learning’s sake and consistently want to reach out and better connect with the surrounding community.”

General information about the competition, including the schedule of events, is available at http://classics.rice.edu/certamen/.