A weekly inside look at the unique faces and personalities that make up The College of Wooster community.
Sally Kershner
Features Editor
For you, is there a connection between neuroscience and Moot Court?
Inherently no, there isn’t necessarily any link. But for me, I love Moot Court because it’s different and because it’s a break from neuroscience; that lack of a link is why I do it. I can leave my S.T.E.M. work at the end of the day and work on something that allows me to think critically in an applied way.
This year, in the case problem, there actually was a link to neuroscience because of the fact that the functional brain mapping exam was an electroencephalography (EEG) that looked into the suspect’s mind, supposedly, and the memories that someone had. So that was kind of a coincidental link. There’s actually something called Neuro Law — I don’t trust it, but, it seems cool.
What kind of work goes into Moot Court behind the scenes that people don’t know about?
[Laughs] All, all the work. People see the glitz and glamour of being dressed up in suits, but there’s months of work going into every competition! It’s a lot of reading; it’s a lot of writing; but at the same time, it’s really as much as you put into it. A lot of people go into it because they want to go to law school, but people also go into it because they want to improve their speaking, because they want to improve their critical thinking. So, for whatever reason you go into it, it can be really beneficial, in your professional development or otherwise.
What kind of impact do you want to have on Wooster before you leave?
I think a lot of it is just being able to have a positive impact in any small way with everything I become involved in. If I can brighten someone’s day in any interaction, I think that has an impact over time.
Another place I’d like to have an impact is Greek Life. It’s just a huge body of individuals on campus, and we should be able to be a positive force instead of just a self-interested type of mentality. Sure, at its core, it’s a social organization, but we could be using those bodies and those numbers and those ideas to do something great with it. I mean, it would be so easy to have everyone pay just a few dollars to go to Lip Sync and put that money towards an organization that the winning Greek group chooses. That could make a big impact.
Also, Greek Life has so many different people in it that it also has the ability to set a standard for how we should treat others on campus and how we should diversify campus, in a way. For instance, things like groups having a diversity chair and promoting that cultural awareness, especially for organizations that encompass so many different people, is so important. When you start to do things like that, the effect just ripples.
Describe one of the most formative experiences you’ve had at Wooster.
Well, one would be my first year, when I met a lot of my friends in the Compton lounge. I lived in Wagner, but it was just a place where everybody went after class, and lots of new people would always walk through, and I met a lot of different people that way. I didn’t really go out much, but we would stay up until two, three in the morning having these great discussions about things like cubism, or existentialism, or religion or different political ideologies — it was the first time I had been in an environment of diverse thought like that, and I haven’t experienced it as much since. I think as you go through college, a lot of people start to separate out into groups who are more like themselves. Although there are a lot of people here from diverse backgrounds, we aren’t necessarily always having those diverse conversations. So that was a really formative time for me.
Thoughts on the snow?
Oh, god. It was pretty three months ago. It’s called spring semester, so, yeah, I need it to be spring!