Slideshows: Senior-Tutor Softball Game and Thesis Draft-Burning, 2019

Each spring, in the final weeks of the semester, members of the Senior Class team up against the faculty in a highly anticipated softball game. In this year’s contest, which took place on the afternoon of Friday, April 27, the seniors won for the third year in a row, besting the faculty by a score of 9-6.

The athletic contest, however, is merely a warm-up for the night’s main event — the Senior Thesis draft-burning party:

The Senior Thesis marks the culmination of four years’ academic efforts. Based on a subject of each student’s own choosing, and drawing from the College’s classical curriculum, the thesis represents its author’s effort to apply his or her education to a matter of scholarly and personal importance. Seniors choose their topics in the fall, conduct research and write drafts throughout most of the year, and ultimately defend their thesis before a three-member panel of the teaching faculty in the spring.

When the process is at last complete, the soon-to-be graduates celebrate by burning drafts of their papers at a public, informal ceremony. Last Friday afternoon, the Class of 2019 took its turn in this yearly ritual, consigning much of the last year’s hard work — although certainly not its fruits! — into the flames.