Is there a factory near your home or school that's polluting your air or water? How would you find out? What can you do about it? In this class, we'll dig into a couple of the major federal environmental statutes (especially the Clean Water Act). We'll learn how to look up companies and check to see if they are following the law, and we'll discuss the kinds of things lawyers can do when they find illegal pollution. Best of all, we'll talk about things you can do right now (even without a law degree) to make a difference in your community.

You're the Supreme Court! Have you ever wondered how legal precedents are made? Now you get to participate. We'll divide the class into "judges" and "attorneys," with half of the students presenting mock oral arguments, while the other half asks tough questions and decides the case. This is your opportunity to decide what the law should be, to figure out how to weigh the perspectives of different sides, and to practice arguing persuasively for one viewpoint while being forced to grapple with the other side's arguments. Law students practice oral arguments as a way to improve their analytic skills and understanding of the law -- now you can too!

Thanks to recent developments in biotechnology, scientists have produced tomatoes that don’t rot, corn resistant to drought and herbicides, and extra-nutritious high-yield rice. These technologies hold tremendous promise for feeding the world in an era of climate change and growing populations–yet public acceptance is a long ways away. Come dissect the debate, and learn a little anthropology on the way.

I'll bring Deluxe Scrabble, Bananagrams, Boggle, (and of course the Official Scrabble Dictionary)...you bring your wits (and if you want, your favorite word game).

Does the structure of the language you speak influence the way in which you see your world? Do the words in your vocabulary limit the scope of your thoughts? Linguists have been puzzling over these questions for decades, and the answers are still somewhat fuzzy. We will attempt to answer these questions for ourselves, taking our examples from current research into Yucatec Maya and Piraha as well as older work done on Hopi and Hawaiian Creole English. Along the way, we will explore the principles of languages and the tools linguists use to analyse them.

Latin was a beautiful, complex language that was used to write some of the most exquisite literature in the canon of Western literature and was spoken by some of the most powerful and influential figures in history. Latin also has wonderful and complicated grammar that can teach us a lot about the structures of languages in general. In this class, we will discuss the significance of Latin, learn some basic vocab and grammar, and at the end, translate a few famous lines of poetry.