It’s 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 30, in Westover Hall, and Haleigh Casey ’25 is ready to excommunicate some heretics.
Wearing a bishop’s costume — a white-and-gold robe and a pointy mitre, the traditional hat — the Westover Honors Fellow from Haymarket, Virginia, is anxiously waiting for the heretics to reveal themselves.
And when they do, she’ll happily banish them.
The roleplay was part of Plagues in World History, a Westover Honors colloquium taught by Dr. Nikki Sanders, a history professor at the University Lynchburg.
The class included an active-learning simulation, “1329: Plague Comes to Norwich,” in which students were assigned roles in five categories: church, wool merchants, tradespeople, medical, and bailiffs.
Some also were incognito flagellants — religious heretics who flog or beat themselves — and subject to excommunication should they be found out.
Over the weekslong exercise, the student-villagers held meetings about the Black Plague, which struck real-life Norwich, England, in the 1300s.
In their respective roles, they gave speeches about what they believed caused the plague and what should be done about it. The church faction, for example, thought it was caused by sinfulness, and to combat the plague there should be extra masses and more prayers.
Votes were held to decide what measures should be taken, and how many votes an individual had depended on their number of personal importance points, or PIPs.
Occasionally, Sanders would ring a bell — think “Bring out your dead!” from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — and each villager would draw a cube from a sack.
The cube’s color determined their fate: blue for good health, yellow for minor illness, green for major illness and quarantine, and black for death. The sick lost PIPs, and those in quarantine were banished from the simulation for a short time and denied their vote.
If a townsperson “died,” they were assigned another role, which is what happened to Casey earlier in the simulation. After her demise, the double major in business administration and financial economics officially became a prioress, or head of a convent.
Lorraine Upton ’25, an environmental science and sustainability major from Windsor, Virginia, then became the bishop, but things didn’t go as planned.
“[Haleigh] died and Lorraine became the bishop, but she refuses to give up the costume,” Sanders said. “Haleigh … told me she was going to dress up as a nun, but she didn’t do it. She really wants to excommunicate someone and Lorraine is letting her do it.”
Four speeches were given on April 30. In the first, Rita Mitchell ’26, as a blacksmith’s apprentice, said efforts to save the town from the plague had failed thus far. The biology-biomedical science major from Firestone, Colorado, also questioned why, if the plague was God’s wrath on sinners as the Church believed, would the good bishop have died.
Then, outing herself as a heretic, Mitchell asked that the flagellants be allowed to parade through the town. As she said this, she dramatically tore off her white overshirt, revealing the red shirt of a flagellant.
Casey, the bishop, bolted up from her chair, ready to pronounce judgment; the townspeople cheered in support of the heretic.
“I’m not done yet!” Mitchell shouted over the din. “You will not banish me from this! The Church will not silence me on this! To silence the voices … and use it as a tool of oppression! We are here to save this town! … I accept my consequences!”
“Excommunicated!” Casey said.
“I take it with pride!” Mitchell countered.
After a few more impassioned speeches, three flagellants were officially excommunicated and banished to a far corner of the classroom. As she was ostracized, the ever-defiant Mitchell said she may be excommunicated but “will not be silenced! My words still ring true!”
Sanders was delighted by the spectacle.
“It was so rewarding to see how seriously the students took the simulation,” she said later. “When we debriefed, they all reported that they had learned a lot, not only about disease but medieval society as well. It warmed my historian’s heart!”
A few days later, on Monday, May 5, a mock trial was held in Westover Hall: Ministry of Magic vs. Draco Malfoy. It was the culmination of Harry Potter and the Magic of Stories, an honors colloquium taught by Dr. Rachel Willis ’15 MA.
Wearing a black robe and clutching a gavel, Natalee Coates ’25, stood at a podium. Stacked in front of her was the entire Harry Potter book series.
Malfoy, portrayed by Kohlby Wilson ’28, a computer science major from Gloucester, Virginia, sat at the defense table with his attorney, played by Kaitlyn Bain ’26. Also sitting with the defense was Malfoy’s mother, played with Real-Housewives-meets-Harry-Potter gusto by Olivia Upton ’25.
Upton was wearing a white T-shirt, on which “Justice 4 Draco” was written in black tape. Throughout the trial, she was prone to outbursts in defense of her “son.”
Wilson’s Malfoy pleaded not guilty to a plethora of charges relating to his mistreatment of Potter and others and his involvement in the death of Hogwarts Professor Albus Dumbledore: conspiracy to commit murder, engagement in dark arts activities, assault and battery, attempted murder, and second-degree murder.
He pleaded guilty to hate speech and discrimination for calling Potter’s friend, Hermione Granger, a “Mudblood,” a slur used by pure-blood wizards like Malfoy to insult Muggles, those with “non-magical” parents.
One by one, after swearing on the stack of Harry Potter novels, the witnesses — book characters Potter, Granger, Dumbledore, Professor Severus Snape, and others — were questioned by Andrew Miller ’25 as the prosecutor.
Bain made her case for the defense, arguing that Malfoy had been under the influence of Potter’s primary nemesis, Lord Voldemort, and that Malfoy had learned hate speech and the dark arts from his family.
Malfoy’s parents were “clearly bad influences,” Bain said, adding that her client was “under duress” and “didn’t understand what he was doing.”
In the end, the jury of six didn’t buy it. After deliberating for three minutes, they found Malfoy guilty on all counts. His wand was confiscated and he was sentenced to 20 years in Azkaban prison — with the stipulation that he could be paroled if he rebuilt Hogwarts “without using magic.”
Upton — albeit gently — then flipped over the defense table in outrage, after which Coates ordered the bailiff to remove her from the courtroom.
“I thought the trial was excellent,” Willis, a Harry Potter fan, said later. “The students really came prepared, and they brought up thorny questions of legacy, family values, and personal responsibility. I also enjoyed an earlier day, where the students read ‘Odes to Harry Potter,’ where they personally reflected on what they had learned from the books and the readings.
“I definitely cried a few times that day!”
While the students were immersed in their roles and obviously had fun, the class was about more than Harry Potter fandom. In addition to reading the Potter series, students studied work by well-known critical theorists and peer-reviewed sources on sports, politics, culture, slave narratives, authoritarianism, and other topics.
“We discussed … how fiction teaches us how to be human but also reveals key details about how the world works, even in fiction that is considered to be children’s literature,” Willis said.
“So, I hope they learn to keep reading and engaging critically with popular culture and the stories they are surrounded by, to ask questions, and to consider how love and integrity and leadership are necessary antidotes to some of the difficulties we will face in the world.”
Lily Rowe ’26, a jury member and accounting major from Cary, North Carolina, said the class gave her “the opportunity to view a popular series from a more analytical/critical thinking perspective,” and she was “able to gain more insights into what makes the series so great, as well as an understanding of some of the relationships and themes within the series.”
Rowe added, “This class experience, as well as being in Westover, has given me the skills to find community and build rapport within such communities. I have also been given the opportunities to discover how to communicate clearly and effectively in writing and in speech.”
Emma Nicol ’25, a mathematics and statistics/data science major from Charleston, West Virginia, agreed, saying the class was “truly one of my favorites I have taken at Lynchburg.”
In the fall, Nicol will take what she learned as a Westover to Virginia Episcopal School, where she’ll teach math. She said the Westover experience “instilled in me a love for pushing the boundaries of a generic education, which I hope to instill in my future students.
“[It] really made my college experience at the University of Lynchburg. I definitely would not be the same person I am today if I was not given the opportunity to be a part of its unique community that really valued academic excellence!”
