An Honors Senior Common Room for These Uncommon Times

Whit Pruitt

Praetor Lynda Coon with her honor guard, from left, Sergeant at Arms John Treat, Marshal Tom Paradise, and Cupbearer Mark Killenbeck. This year, graduating seniors will participate online, and appropriate social distancing and mask protocols will be strictly observed by Coon and company.

This week, the Honors College is hosting a top-secret ceremony for its graduating seniors, which, thanks to the current digital campus format, is, in fact, not so top secret this year. The curious can tune in live on Tuesday, May 5, at 5 p.m., on the Honors College Facebook page, to witness socially-distanced history.

The Senior Common Room was established last year as a way for the Honors College to celebrate its graduating seniors, all of whom must maintain at least a 3.5 grade point average throughout their college career, participate in rigorous honors coursework and complete an honors thesis project to graduate with Latin honors. All honors graduates will receive a cloisonné pin embossed with the motto "Audax at Sapiens" — "Bold but Wise" — a fitting phrase for these bright and imperturbable young scholars. Traditionally, seniors participating in the Common Room induction ceremony receive this pin in person, but this year, the Honors College is doing things a little bit differently.

Pins have been mailed out to the students, who will have the option to participate in a virtual induction ceremony presided over by Honors College Dean Lynda Coon and her Honor Guard, before whom seniors must recite an oath, in Latin, to uphold the ideals of the Senior Common Room, lest their souls be condemned to a uniquely Razorback-styled form of torture (tune in on Tuesday to get all the outrageous details).

The event is sure to awe and surprise and could induce an eye-roll here and there. But that's how Dean Coon, who has frequently been described by students as "extra," likes it: "We're taking all the necessary social distancing precautions to keep the induction ceremony safe for those involved," she said, "But that doesn't mean we can't still have a bit of solemn fun. It sounds like a paradox - I assure you, it is not."

"You want campy?" Dean Coon added, muttering something about goblets and plague masks. "We'll give you campy."