Congratulations to Charles Cho, Gene Yang, and Susie Yang: National Latin Honor Society Inductees 2024-25

The Enduring Relevance of Classical Excellence

In an age when the humanities are perpetually under siege from the utilitarian mob, it is particularly gratifying to witness the triumph of three exceptional students who have chosen to master the most uncompromising of academic disciplines. Charles Cho, a 9th-grade prodigy; Gene Yang, a 12th-grade scholar; and Susie Yang, a Columbia University freshman, have each earned induction into the National Latin Honor Society for the 2024-25 academic year—a distinction that speaks not merely to their intellectual capacity, but to their uncommon moral courage.

The criteria for this honor are deliciously rigorous, as they ought to be. These students have not simply scraped by with mediocre grades in a fashionable subject, but have sustained A- averages or better in Latin—a language that flourished when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, declined with the fall of empires, and yet continues to illuminate the architecture of human thought. They have maintained exemplary attendance, demonstrated integrity in their scholarly pursuits, and claimed gold medals or top honors in no fewer than two international competitions in Latin and classical humanities. Such achievements require the kind of sustained intellectual discipline that our contemporary culture seems almost allergic to fostering.

What makes this recognition particularly significant is not merely the academic rigor involved—though that is considerable—but what it represents as a cultural statement. In choosing to excel in Latin, these students have elected to engage with the foundational texts of Western civilization rather than retreat into the comfortable banalities of our current moment. They have chosen Cicero over social media, Virgil over virtual reality, and the demanding beauty of classical rhetoric over the lazy imprecision of contemporary discourse.

The National Latin Honor Society understands what many educational institutions have forgotten: that colleges and employers worth their salt recognize students who have demonstrated the intellectual fortitude to master difficult material simply because it is worth mastering. This is not careerism masquerading as education, but education in its purest form—the cultivation of mind and character through encounter with excellence.

Congratulations to these three remarkable students. In a world increasingly hostile to the life of the mind, they have chosen the more difficult path, and they have walked it with distinction.