The Great Books Student Society Reflect On 2024-25 Success

By: Arielle Canchola

A common misconception about the Great Books Student Society is that they read difficult, hard to understand books and this often scares students away from the club. In actuality, the club does not read books at all, besides the one a year they read for the Faculty Symposium.

GBSS President Graci Komperda said, “That’s what I really like about the club, is that it’s so nonchalant and I feel like overall this past year, we’ve done a really good job of making it more open and having it be more expressive.”

This year, GBSS celebrated its 30 year anniversary and hosted four events throughout each week of April to promote the theme of this year: metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is all about change, the book GBSS read was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Every year, the club will read one book that reflects the designated theme. 

On April 8, the club hosted a common reading discussion to challenge their own individual thinking by sharing the beliefs and ideas perceived in Station Eleven.

GBSS then hosted one of their annual Great Ideas events on April 17 where Biology professor Alicia J. Anzaldo reflected on metamorphosis by focusing on how evolution and metamorphosis shape life.

(Professor Alicia J. Anzaldo speaking on April 17 at the GBSS Great Ideas Event: Nature’s Blueprint. Photo Credit: Jenin Hattab)

The club’s 30-year annual Great Books Faculty Symposium took place on April 21 and featured Wright College’s English professors, Brendon Zatirka, Lance Carroll, and Michael Petersen, as guest speakers. Komperda considered the event an overall success.

GBSS’s final event of the spring semester was on April 29 where they hosted an end of the semester pizza party. Additionally, to celebrate National Poetry Month with poems that members selected to discuss.

According to GBSS faculty adviser Michael Petersen, the Symposium Journal is the only peer reviewed scholarly publication at a two-year college in the country.

It publishes every spring – except this year due to a lack of essays – and was picked back up when Petersen received a grant in 2010 after the journal lay dormant for years prior. After the grant ran out, Wright College began funding it.

In 1995, former Wright College professor Bruce Gans founded the Great Books curriculum as well as the GBSS club. When Gans planned to retire, he asked Petersen to take over as program coordinator in 2010 to which Petersen has occupied this position ever since.

When GBSS isn’t getting straight down to business with all of their event planning, they often spend their weekly meetings going over excerpts and pieces of literature that get decided by members on the day of the meeting.

Wright offers many engineering and nursing clubs, but GBSS is a community that offers that same kind of importance. The literature, comprehending and close analysis taught through GBSS are drifting away from students due to the presence of AI writing and ChatGBT.

“Often the things that are the most challenging are the things that are the most rewarding,” Petersen said about taking the time to read these books that many students struggle in comprehending.

Petersen and Komperda are confident that in the fall when the club picks up for its upcoming continuance of 31 years, it is going to change regardless of who is in the club. 

While the club is permanent, the people within the club all have different personalities and interpretations and will bring change regardless of the discussions of GBSS.