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7
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The Gadfly, Vol. XL, Issue 07
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Volume XL, Issue 07 of The Gadfly. Published April 21, 2019.
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Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief)
Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief)
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St. John's College
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student publication, Gadfly
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The Gadfly, Vol. XL, Issue 9
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Gadfly Vol XL Issue 09 Badfly
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GADFLY
Rose's Rager 4 • 02
A Fundamental Question? • 04
Joker Reveiw • 06
St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • October 16, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 03
Photo by Rose Pelham
�The Gadfly
02
Rose's Rager 4:
The student newspaper
of St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, Maryland 21401
sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student
newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis
campus.
Opinions expressed within are the sole
responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and
edit submissions in any way necessary to
publish a professional, informative, and
thought-provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format.
The deadline for submissions is the Friday
prior to publication.
The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7
PM in the BBC. We always need editors,
layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
for more information.
Staff
Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-inChief
Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Chief
Mira Kobylski • Staff
Rediet Worku • Staff
Alayna Raymond • Staff
Contributors
Lynn Christian
Jean Hogan
Dimple Kaul
Mira Kobylski
Marielle Morley
Kyla Murphy
Rose Pelham
Alayna Raymond
Hope Taglich
Tatum
From the Editors:
The Gadfly is banning all
pretentious writings from publication. All
submissions must henceforth be mortified
least any lofty airs escape notice of the
editors and enter publication! Authors guilty
of submitting pretensious works will be
required to self-flagillate and repent! This
decision is final.
- The Gadfly
The Last Rager
Rose Pelham
A '20
It has been a long time since I began
this series, the first of which marked my
entrance into this college, and the last of which
now marks my senior year. I have been through
a great deal to keep it going this long. It seems
uncanny in hindsight, but it was only two years
ago when the second addition of this satire was
met with public outrage for its reversal of trans/
homophobic logic. I mention this because I
hope, with the intervening time, we may have
grown enough as a polity to cringe with some
embarrassment at the recollection. There was
no need, after all, to be outraged by a satire
mocking homophobia.
Satire, at least as I have used it, is the
great litmus test for prejudice. The transphobe
and homophobe may pass me in the street
every day without revealing themselves, but
when I act out the absurdity of their arguments,
I know the prejudiced by their reactions. There
is no need to be outraged by the fact that transphobia and homophobia are absurd, but then,
the question whether or not one is outraged has
always been the litmus test.
Now, I will administer it one last
time…
-1
The loss of the Patroclus Pre-Party
was announced by email, much to everyone’s consternation, leaving me with no other
recourse than to spend more quality time with
my future wife––which was, as a general rule,
very pleasant. That the pre-party should be
called off for “budget cuts” at a moment when
the D.C. runs an unprecedented budget surplus,
however, bodes ill for clubs. Clearly, the D.C.
has decided to subject us all to severe austerity
in anticipation of the coming recession––or,
perhaps, to do its part in bringing it about all
the sooner. Either way, it seems we can look
forward to one of those periods in which capitalism seemingly ceases functioning for all but
the rich––its more or less usual condition––and
more rapidly redistributes the wealth to those
who already possess far more of it than they
need, depriving those in need of what little they
have. I wonder if this time we’ll realize it’s a
pyramid scheme…
The economy notwithstanding, the
D.C. seems uninclined to part with students’
money, even when holding onto it jeopardizes
its possession. Alas, the great surplus nourishes
mold at the back of the refrigerator, having
been left utterly untouched while it was ripe for
consumption. But what other outcome were we
expecting from the ad nauseum fetishization of
fiscal conservatism? For all the schemes imagining how we might use this money “saved”
from past years of students, it seems it will
bear no orchards and no fruit––and no metal
workshops either.
But, if I had $30,000 in my pocket
that I could actually use, and as much means of
hiding it from public attention, I would not buy
myself with scheming about it. Instead, I would
make campaign contributions to members of
Congress! After all, the Supreme Court says
money is protected free speech, and it certainly
�The Gadfly
03
speaks louder than the emails of constituents,
since money, unlike constituents’ emails, tends
to deposit the listener into the speaker’s pocket.
So it is that a few very deep pockets hold a
considerable amount of government, which has
become increasingly cozy inside of them, and
has vowed never to go outside again. (Woe be
to the politician who has no pocket in which
to make their home, for they shall be exposed
to the wrath of their rivals in selling-out.) So
it is that I would take up my civic duty and
make my pocket a home to a politician, who I
anticipate shall be grateful and willing to return
me many favors––if not proper responses to
my emails. But alas, this has become irrelevant
to the Rager.
-2
Rest assured, there came a point
in the night at which I did, in fact, attend the
Rager, so that I might convincingly write something about it, despite my tendency to become
sidetracked. That point came sometime around
ten in the evening, when I reluctantly departed
from my partner’s side, and marched off to
meet the inevitable head on. Walking up from
back campus, I thought I was slightly late, but
the freshmen––seemingly all men––remained
by the observatory, giving the impression
that they too had missed the moment of their
departure and were waiting without end. I
wondered for a moment if they would become
sensible of their error. They never did, but if
all events occurred in synchronized lateness, or
if I were just earlier than I thought, it made no
difference. The party proceeded according to
its own time, which was sufficiently congruent
with itself, if not the rotation of the Earth, the
arbitrary contrivance of hours, or the desire
to wake up early the next morning without a
hangover.
I was curious to know the freshmen’s
thoughts about the Rager, but like any woman
who generally prefers the companionship of the
nominally same gender, not nearly so curious
as to stay and hear them. The quad presented
itself to me as a territory possessing a lower
population of exposed male nipples, as if it
knew that this were a persuasive enticement
to emigrate. I did so, counting it lucky not to
spot armed fascists in red hats at the border,
and found myself in gayer environs, where I
was informed––for the first time this year––that
I am a middle-aged mom who drinks wine.
About a week later I would be informed of this
fact for a second time, and in about a week
from now I anticipate I will be informed for
a third. Perhaps then I shall adopt a child and
age twenty years in one day. It would be, after
all, consistent with the zeitgeist of a moment in
which “alternative facts” exist and are treated
as if they became truer the more they are
repeated.
The quad was, both in theory and
practice, the place to be to observe events
without the risk of taking part in them, and
this brought a great many people there, since
certain rumors had not yet proven themselves
false. Tentatively, the original population of
the quad approached the Rager behind the
main force of freshmen, who were ambushed
with balloons and speeches. The latter I cannot
recall, not because how long it has taken me to
write this, but because I forgot them as I heard
them.
In many ways, the balloons proved
themselves one of the most fascinating elements of the party without ever possessing the
requisite permission to be so. They popped
off, frequently in large number and quick
succession, emitting a machine gun rattle that
reverberated out from the great hall and across
the quad, echoing off nearby dorms. It was in
this way that they projected their presence in
Leibnizianly minute units of hyper-bombastic
oration the summation of which would require
counting to some indefinite number. They never quite became true white noise, being much
too loud and infrequent, like ill-concealed sex
in the middle of the day, which is private only
to its participants. These intermittent bursts of
explosive noise did not, however, anticipate
the context they were broadcast into, in which
guns possess more protections than people.
This peculiar imbalance of priorities that grants
murder weapons greater protections than their
victims is frequently termed “freedom,” which
its most vehement supporters say they would
die to defend, though usually they are on the
side of the killing, if not by direct involvement,
then by complicity.
-3
Sometime not long after the freshmen’s’ entrance, the balloon drop, and the subsequent speechifying, I remembered that I am
21, proceeded to the bar, and procured slightly
less than a glass of wine. This I did for no other
reason than to prove to myself that I could,
and to experience the novelty of it. Around the
same time, I encountered Mr. Doherty, spoke
with him for a moment, and to my horror may
have been mistaken for a heterosexual by
an unknown passerby, who I had to forcibly
restrain myself from correcting. I then left the
building and was informed by Mr. Harrington
that I had missed the senior class meeting, for
which reason I discovered I was in imminent
mortal peril, as I was in ignorance as to the
truth of being a senior. Ms. Evans was at no
point present in either of these conversations,
but asked that I include her around this point,
since she would not be in attendance at the
Rager. After I did not have the chance to speak
to Ms. Evans, I spent my time having conversations with other people––because I have resolved never to dance at parties, and to always
do whatever loud music makes the hardest.
This may appear to be a strange principle, but
it is no less strange than any number of those
upon which modern society is founded, as I
have demonstrated already in propositions 1
and 2.
This was, in truth, how virtually all
the substance of my night passed. There were,
however, other things that happened for which
I was not present. For instance, I have heard
a rumor, hopefully untrue, that one freshman
decided to take a trip down the rabbit hole into
wonderland, only to discover that his particular
method of entering it led not to Alice but an
ambulance. If this did occur, it was sometime
after I left, and that night I slept all the better
for my ignorance. As it is, the overly masochistic culture of last year’s freshmen, who seemed
uniquely obsessed with cultivating cases of
alcohol poisoning and accidental arson, has
given me cause to be more anxious every time
I hear sirens. (I will mention here in passing,
though, that I do possess a surefire way of preventing the latter type of incident. It involves
the threat of a trebuchet and has, I have been
told, become infamous amongst this year's
freshmen.)
-4
I lingered on the quad, between
clouds of those toxic fumes that are still so
popular to consume here, waiting for one of
those transcendentally strange moments that
is the lifeblood of this series. None presented
themselves, the novelty of my own experience having worn thin. I was left with an echo
three times removed from the source, with all
its rough edges smoothed by the loss of the
distinct initial impressions. The great trial was
two years over, and was now assimilated into
my narrative, but for that reason could not be
rediscovered, for to travel backwards is only to
measure how far you have come. I left for my
dorm room, to return to the comfort of home
and homosexuality, where the warm embrace
of Lynn’s arms awaited me.
On the way back, I remembered the
essence of my old “doom prophesy” and the
not wholly untruthful quality of its hyperbole:
“Repent: the end of gender (as we know it) is
nigh! The great heterosexual phase of history
has ended! There shall no more be cisgender
man and woman! The spell is to be cast that
shall make us all become trans! The straight
agenda shall be rebuked! The gay agenda shall
come to fruition! No more heterosexuality, no
more opposite-sex marriage, no more gender
reveal parties! It shall be glorious, wonderful, liberating––and all shall come to pass by
2050!” This time, if you take me too literally,
or not literally enough, I have op-ed in the
Georgia Voice waiting for you.u
�The Gadfly
04
What is a Fundamental Question?
Alayna Raymond A’23
There has been a consistent predicament in my life where I didn’t know quite how
to tackle deep issues with relevance to myself.
In simpler terms, I didn’t know how to perceive
the world around me without being told what I
should see because of who I am.
I’ve decided to start a series that I
hope will aid in parsing through my personal
conundrums with the world and how our inherent human conditions plays into that. The Great
Books Curriculum already does much of this
for me, but I want to extend it beyond the classroom and not only develop a deeper internal
thought process’, but also discuss topics with
my peers that go beyond ourselves.
I believe the Gadfly is intended for increasing volume in the student voice. I want to
understand others thoughts with the selfish
ambition of my own personal growth. I am also
extremely curious, but aren’t we all?
Moreover, I'd like to make this initial
publication in my series entitled “Conundrums
of the Human Condition” by first introducing
the kinds of questions I want to ask. A tutor of
mine referred to this particular type of inquiry
as a ‘fundamental question’. His definition was
not necessarily concerned with what it was,
but what effect it has when you answer it. In
slightly paraphrased form, a fundamental question is a question such that when you answer
it “you will change the way you think or live”.
How does thinking about something differ
from it influencing the way you live? I propose
that they’re not very different at all, since
maintaining a particular mindset in effect tends
to extend itself into the decisions one makes
and thus the way we live.
Though if answering such a question
can change the way we think or live, what is
the journey we must take in order to reach that
point? Are there credentials, or is that too confining? Does the effect of reading through what
I call the ‘fundamental answer’ bring about a
universal epiphany for anyone whoever graces
their eyes over the words? How do we know
the question has been fully answered?
That’s the funny thing about this: I don’t think
we’ll ever know when we’ve answered the
question. If you attend St John’s you probably
knew this would happen. Socrates is in no position to tell us what virtue is so I am certainly
unable to answer any sort of fundamental question to its greatest extent.
The wonderful thing about work-
ing toward answering a question is that it only
induces growth within those who dare to take
a chance. Settling on a finite answer may be
the greatest injustice you can commit, because
these questions have so much potential! You
can allow the question to creep into daily life
and enable you to change the way you live. Exploring options and changing habits is integral
to going through life’s turbulence, so why not
add another tool to your personal cache about
working through difficult questions?
This column is a communal effort to
understand some of the many issues we endure
with the human condition. Relieve the mind of
some of these burdens by opening up to new
paths of thought. It would bring me great joy if
you contacted me about having a conversation
about a fundamental question you have. u
Reasons to Visit the Mitchell Gallery this month:
Jean Hogan
A’20
• The second quietest place on campus (Right after any given seminar room at 9:59)
• Impressionism is a tremendous way to view of the majesty of nature while pondering
Lucretius
• Great place to hang in that awkward pre-lecture period (6:45-7:45!)
• SJC can be a small school – you’ll get tired of the back campus landscapes
• St John’s is a place to explore various patina’s, try a different vintage.
• Patrons hot takes on the art are informative and scalding
• Remember how gorgeous spring can be before snow descends on our little town
• It’s much easier to look smart at a gallery than in class - the occasional “hm” will take
you far
The Gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12-5 pm, in addition it is open from
6:45 to 7:45 on Friday night.u
�05
Music as a Spiritual Journey
The following is a short
piece I wrote for Mr. Townsend’s
Sophomore Music class two years
ago, and is to date the most memorable assignment I have had at St.
John’s. It is an example of a musical
experience we cannot anticipate but
is novel in how we are affected. In
this case it was a gauntlet to which
I was initially subjected, but from
which I emerged more whole and
free.
I hope that by sharing it,
others will be encouraged to discuss their own profound musical
moments. Specifically, not simply
the way a song makes you feel, but
how a distinct musical event caused
a movement within you demarcating a before and after in your life. I
hope you enjoy.
Brahms Piano Quartet No. 2 in A
Major, August 6, 2017, St. Francis
Auditorium, Santa Fe, NM:
As the soft melody of the
third movement began, I was struck
by a wave of melancholy. I was
reminded of my recent shortcomings in personal discipline and
compassion towards others. While I
felt satisfaction in the quality of the
performance, I couldn’t help scowling as a knot tightened in my chest.
My mind wandered from the music
as the prickly feelings stewed. The
musicians continued to strain at
their work, but I was removed from
the setting, deaf to their notes. I
reminisced on the times people
had dismissed my approaches for
friendship. I felt unwanted, unloved.
Without realizing that the
The Gadfly
Morgan Ballard-Wheeler
third had ended, the fourth movement began. The melody quick
and light, the instruments played
in unison, driving forward with a
powerful momentum. I was immediately drawn from my shell of
despair, listening intently to each
note. I took a sudden, involuntary inhale and felt empowered to
detach myself from unwarranted
negative emotions. For despite
intellectually telling myself to
release these emotions every day
for the past few months, somehow
this music — and this performance
in particular — finally gave me
emotional permission to do so. My
applause to the musicians was out
of gratitude for their healing work,
and to Brahms, wherever he may
be.t
The Blue Light Dies First
Marielle Morley
she dies to find life again
but only manages to make faces at
the indigestible licorice soul
each piece as repulsively aged
as a crunchy chewed up cigarette
blowing clouds of shadows and smoke,
crushing herself with weight on her shoulders, following her
breath
how did she expect to feel
after all the travels through muck and soot, never to be clean
again
attempting to bathe
but she will never be clean again
the wet sunrise she tastes with the bitterness of an overripe
melon, pungent and fermented
to dry herself she finds a blanket
but it only soaked each sadness as it highlighted the dirty
and after hours of attack
it turns in on itself
retreating back into the floor and wall
touching burned incense sticks
lit to cover the smell of gooey sadness
black and reeking like melted tar
falling greedily into the crustacean pit
the well that’s been digging since the first ever
primordial rhyme
holding out for each thing lost and forgotten
as ancient as her thirst,
drinking
with lips pressed the white and pink meet
each memory, a parasite
the well water wells
as she unravels her grievances
it doesn’t matter what she’s seen in the sage of her
oblivion
there is a resurgence
and the ringing doesn’t stop t
�06
The Gadfly
Musings of a Senior
It is quite funny,
and appropriate, perhaps,
that through some four
years of association
with Mx. Johnnie at
the college,
I have watched them become more beautiful
(handsome, perhaps) in proportion that I have
become less so.
Beauty befits them, I think,
and I mean no belittling in this.
Their comments are so oft well composed,
and indeed come so seldom that they
may well have been composed,
that with the flowering of their handsomeness,
the image of a wizening, maturing human,
comes one of a mind doing the same.
It is funny, then, for what
wilting I see in myself
comes too with a great and
continuous shaking of my
confidence that I, of all people,
have the authority to speak beautifully of the
program books, so often things so beautiful.
Tatum
It is as though beauty comes to
those who claim it, that in this to strive is
to succeed, and perhaps, to not strive
is to be rejected.
spirit in me that insists
Although Mx. Johnnie’s example is eminent,
four years have been an exercise in repetition,
to watch the same follow suit for my peers
about me.
the last of a lineage
with no equal in
itself,
As they are (or seem to be)
subsumed to their own degree
in thought and style,
the dregs I brought with me
have seemingly multiplied! making
a coat of my past, and my
reconsiderations of the same.
A’20
I am the only ambassador
of my past,
a sole survivor
of a world not quite
another.
If then I am lesser
in my own heart’s evaluation,
I think that I might yet
be fortunate,
On gloomy Sunday nights, I
sometimes find myself daydreaming of other
selves,
as though from the image of beauty I
could find for myself the secret of a soul
saddled with it;
to rise to the greatest
height of my station—
but it is a
belligerent and persistent
as my sister, my brother. t
and if lacking in feeling
the heart of another
to count on myself
A Beloaned Student’s Guide to Dining in Annapolis
Maybe you’re off the meal
plan. Maybe it’s 7 o’clock, and you
don’t like eating dinner at the hyperbolic asscrack of dawn. Maybe you’ve
grown tired of hotdog pizza. Whatever the circumstances that led to your
predicament, you now find yourself
standing on Main Street with $5 in
your pocket and a need for an unreasonably priced meal. Without further
ado, I present to you A Beloaned Student’s Guide to Dining in Annapolis.
To save you the trouble and
embarrassment, I have shamelessly
slithered into many local restaurants
and composed a list of the meals that
can be purchased for less than $5
(keep in mind this does NOT include
a tip. Tip your servers, Goddammit!)
Let’s start with a timeless
classic: Chick & Ruth’s. I will note that
many items can be purchased at this
establishment for under our meager
allotment of $5, so for the sake of ef-
ficiency, I will list my top five.
1. Colossal Fries - $4.99 (They offer
a non-colossal version for $2.99)
2. Mac & Cheese - $3.29 (Found in
the Side category)
3. Deli Potatoes w/ Chili & Cheese
- 4.99 (Found on the All Day
Breakfast menu)
4. Eggel Deluxe - $4.79 (bagel with
egg and your choice of meat)
5. One Egg Platter - $4.79
Looking for something a little
less eggy? Look no further than Vida
Taco Bar. The following tacos are
available for $5 or under.
1. Chorizo - $3.50
2. Pacifica - $4.25
3. Buffalo Cauliflower - $4.50
4. Jerk Tempeh - $5
5. Sweet Potato and Black Beans $3.5
6. The Gringo - $3.75
7. Tinga Chicken - $4.75
Maybe you want a restaurant
Kyla Murphy
A’22_
with more of an aggressive “chain”
feel. Allow me to point you to Chipotle. Useful Hack: This restaurant does
not ID for the kid’s menu!
1. Cheese Quesadilla - $3.95 (Found
on the Kid’s Menu)
2. Build Your Own - $4.95 (Found
on the Kid’s Menu)
Another restaurant that does
not ID for the Kid’s Menu (and it’s
Maine themed! Dirigo!): Mason’s
Famous Lobster rolls!
1. Kid’s Meal Hot Dog - $3.95
2. Kid’s Meal Grilled Cheese $3.95
3. New England Clam Chowder $4.50
4. Lobster Bisque - $4.50
Finally, take advantage of the
many sushi restaurants around town.
Sakura, Joss, and Nano all offer rolls
for $5! Best of luck to you, hungry,
beloaned students. t
�07
The new Joker movie is terrible.
It is not endearingly terrible.
It is regular terrible. It is terrible
because it tries so desperately hard to
be great, to be a Serious Issue Drama
About Mental Illness and Class Warfare and the Decline of Polite Society,
but it fails because it is utterly hollow
in every way. It aspires to be something without trying to say anything.
It is the kind of film that people say will win Oscars. It is, indeed, a
terrible film that might win an Oscar,
transcending the honors normally
afforded to comic book movies. As
much of a film snob as I am, I do not
find that possibility inherently objectionable; one of the last big-budget
films I loved was Black Panther, which
wholly deserved its Best Picture nomination. Moreover, I no longer have
any faith in or respect for the Motion
Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences
after Green Book-gate, so now that I
think about it, it really makes no difference to me whether Joker wins an
Oscar. I loathe Joker so much, though,
because to me, it is a shallow amalgamation of every Oscar-bait movie that
has been made in recent years.
Directed by Todd Phillips of
The Hangover (who also co-wrote the
screenplay with Scott Silver), the film
is a portrait of a man on the verge
of a nervous breakdown, that man
being Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix, whose performance affords the
character the humanity and dignity
that the writing deprives him of). In
the Batman comics and in the previous films in the franchise, the Joker is
a criminal mastermind. He is an agent
of chaos, but an undeniably witty one;
his defining feature is his intelligence.
Phillips, however, seems intent on
making this A Serious Issue Drama
About Mental Illness. That is all well
and good, except for the fact that Phillips and Silver sacrifice the character’s
signature intelligence to reinforce the
Joker Review
idea that he is mentally ill. To them,
a mentally ill person is simply incapable of being intelligent. And so they
make Arthur a man-child of sorts; he
is an aspiring standup comedian with
no sense of humor whatsoever, who
carries around a notebook filled with
bad puns and who does research by
taking notes at standup shows (these
notes include “SEX JOKES FUNNY”).
He lives at home with his mother and
almost robotically repeats her assertion that he was “put on this Earth to
spread laughter and joy.” His eventual
transformation into the Joker therefore seems inauthentic. The character
does not seem developed enough to
undergo an organic transformation
in the first place; he is written to be
a Stock Crazy Person In a Movie, the
kind of Stock Crazy Person actors love
playing because it will win them an
Oscar. (Or an Emmy; Claire Danes’s
bipolar character on Homeland
twitches, for some reason. Bipolar
people do not twitch).
Arthur is the only mentally
ill character in the movie besides his
mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), who
is eventually revealed to have been
diagnosed with delusional psychosis
and narcissistic personality disorder.
During Arthur’s childhood, Penny
also enabled her boyfriend’s abuse of
him; furthermore, she may or may not
be lying as to the precise nature of her
relationship with her former employer, billionaire Thomas Wayne. As Joker
fancies itself a Serious Issue Drama
About Mental Illness, it is therefore
obligated to portray mental illness
responsibly. The fact that the only two
mentally ill characters in the movie
are destructive to others exemplifies
the persistence of fear-mongering stereotypes about the mentally ill. In the
Department of Psychiatry and National Drug Dependence Treatment Center’s 2015 essay “Violence and Mental
Illness: What is the True Story?” for
the All India Institute of Medical
The Gadfly
Hope Taglich
A’21
Sciences, the authors state, “In public
perception, mental illness and violence remain inextricably interwined,
and much of the stigma associated
with mental illness may be due to a
tendency to conflate mental illness
with the concept of dangerousness.
This perception is further augmented
by the media which sensationalises
violent crimes committed by persons
with mental illness….and focuses on
mental illness in such reports, ignoring the fact that most of the violence
in society is caused by people without
mental illness. This societal bias contributes to the stigma faced by those
with a psychiatric diagnosis, which
in turn contributes to non-disclosure
of the mental illness and decreased
treatment-seeking, and also leads to
discrimination against them.”
Through focusing on Arthur’s
mental illness and the mistreatment
he receives from society because of it
(his undisclosed mental illness causes
him to laugh at inopportune times,
which often leads to him being beaten
up), the film effectively justifies his
eventual murderous rampage. After
all, he was a Nice Guy, but then he
snapped, because We Live in a Society
that turns mass murderers out of nice
mentally ill people. If only we were
nicer to mentally ill people, we would
have fewer mass murderers.
This is an implicitly problematic assumption, because:
1. It reinforces a tired deflection
tactic beloved of NRA apologists.
(“We need to talk about mental
health!”)
2. In the aforementioned study,
authors Mohit Varshney, Ananya
Mahapatra, Vijay Krishnan,
Rishab Gupta and Koushnik Sinha
Deb noted that the mentally ill
are more likely to be victims of
�The Gadfly
07
violent crime than perpetrators.
3. Moreover, according to a 2018
study by the University of New
South Wales, mentally ill men
are 76 percent more likely to be
victims of violent crime than
men without mental illness, while
mentally ill women were nearly
three times more likely to be
victimized than women without
mental illness.
The egregiousness of Joker
stems from the fact that the film tries
to position itself as sympathetic to the
mentally ill. It is not sympathetic. It is,
at best, patronizing. It is just as ignorant of mental illness as the society it
condemns.
Its attempts at tackling class
conflict are similarly shallow. After
Arthur, in clown makeup (he has
recently been fired from his job as a
party clown for attempting to bring a
gun to the children’s hospital, because that’s just something mentally
ill people do, apparently), kills three
bankers harrassing him on a subway
at night, the clown becomes a symbol
of the disenfranchised, disgruntled
working-class. There are mass demonstrations in the street where protestors wear clown makeup. Arthur is a
proletariat hero. This $55-64 million
film attempts to be sympathetic to
the working-class, but insults them
by painting them as celebratory of a
violent crime. The working-class in
the film seem even more irrational
because of the lack of dimension the
class struggle is given; the audience
is never told what the crux of the
conflict between the rich and the poor
is, we are only told that it exists. In the
opening scene, Arthur—while working as a party clown—is randomly
assaulted by a group of teenagers of
color after they steal a sign he is carrying. The working-class are portrayed
as impulsive and thoughtlessly destructive; Phillips and Silver feed into
classist stereotypes as much as they
feed into ableist ones. Most of the
black characters Arthur encounters
are either cruel or dismissive; aside
from the teenagers who assaulted him,
his social worker doesn’t listen to him,
a clerk at Arkham Asylum isn’t even
aware Social Services have been cut
in Gotham City, his pretty neighbor
doesn’t notice him, and a woman on
the train snaps at him after he playfully makes faces at her baby. It is The
Fault Of Society that he is this way, we
are told; the film particularly frames
its black characters’ lack of empathy
as almost blasphemous. Not only are
they unsympathetic—they have the
audacity to be unsympathetic!
Aside from its deeply flawed
messaging, Joker is also highly derivative. It attempts to pay homage to
better movies, like Taxi Driver and
King of Comedy, with some flashes
of The Machinist. King of Comedy in
particular is continuously referenced;
Robert de Niro plays a talk show host
whom Arthur idolizes, and the host
ultimately meets his deranged fan, to
disastrous consequences. Too much
of its plot, however, hinges on that
interaction, making Joker more of a
remake of King of Comedy than an
homage to it. And if it is a remake, it is
a spectacularly disappointing one.
Much has been made of the
danger the film may cause. Across
the country, there have been reports
of armed guards at screenings. Incels
have called it “our movie.” As socially
irresponsible as its message is, however, I do not feel as though the film is
actively provocative because I feel it is
too stupid to be provocative. It is provocative because a disgruntled group
of predominantly white men online
have anointed it as their crowning glory, and because this same disgruntled
group of predominantly white men
have emerged as a growingly fearsome
presence, willing to hurt themselves
and others. Independent of that context, it is a film that tries desperately
to be provocative, but fails because of
that very desperation. It wants to be
provocative because it wants to be a
film that is called provocative. It wants
to be provocative because it wants to
be Not Another Superhero Movie.
The story is told with no particular
care or affection; it seems curiously
formulaic. It is a film that is made to
be provocative for the sake of provocation, for the sake of winning awards.
It is a failure, yes, but it does not even
have the decency to be an interesting
failure. t
Initial Reflections
Dimple Kaul
From science and management
She’s steered me to savour
On the literary firmament
The brilliance of Chaucer
Her scintillating discussions
Invoke Metaphysics and God
My tutor for Literature
Erudite Ms. Axelrod
Widening my horizon
Is what they’ve been at
That’s how this Homer virgin
Birthed an Odyssey Sonnet
With a summery smile
Beaming like a bright omen
Our seminars in style
Conducts Ms. Paalman
Honour, grief and rage
Served with a dash of fun
Keeping us all engaged
Is the Socratic Mr. Tipton
As I study, not just read
And further explore
I am, with ease, freed
To, my evolution, soar t
�
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<em>The Gadfly</em>
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Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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thegadfly
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 03
Description
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Volume XLI, Issue 03 of The Gadfly. Published October 16, 2019.
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Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief)
Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief)
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2019-10-16
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College students--United States--Conduct of life
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Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 03
Gadfly
Student publication
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e2fe3ad97bb1d47441bd1e121c7fbc6f
PDF Text
Text
GADFLY
Intramurals• 02
Does music make a Sound? • 03
First Weeks as Freshmen • 04
St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • October 4, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 03
Photo By Rose S. Pelham
photo by Rose Pelham
�The Gadfly
02
The student newspaper
of St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, Maryland 21401
sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student
newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis
campus.
Opinions expressed within are the sole
responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and
edit submissions in any way necessary to
publish a professional, informative, and
thought-provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format.
The deadline for submissions is the Friday
prior to publication.
The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7
PM in the BBC. We always need editors,
layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
for more information.
Staff
Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-in-Cheif
Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Cheif
Lynn Christian • Staff Cartoonist
Alayna Raymond • Staff
Contributors
Lynn Christian
Daniel Harrell
Alayna Raymond
Mia Kobylski
From the Editors:
To the tutors I saw dancing at the rock
party at 10pm on Saturday night over
Homecoming:
Rock the f*#k on! It’s really nice to be
reminded that our tutors are people who
like to have a good time and don’t just
think about silly things like Plato and
Homer all the time. Plato sucks!
Reinstate Grace Villmow 2k19!
- The Gadfly
A Freshman’s Inquiry into the
World of Intramural Sports
One often equates St. John’s
with high academic rigor, a beautiful, historic campus, and old-fashioned croquet matches. However,
one doesn’t tell new students about
the way time passes strangely, axolotls living happily in tanks, or the
possibility of a visit from a number
of rumored ghosts. But perhaps the
strangest aspect of the college is the
unwavering participation in intramural sports.
Similar to the fictional school
of Hogwarts, the polity is split into
five teams: Druids, Greenwaves,
Guardians, Hustlers, and Spartans
who compete on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays in a variety of
games. While standing on the sidelines refereeing Reasonball and soccer, the purpose of intramural sports
became clear to me. The sense of
community at St. John’s stems beyond
the Seminar table.
Athletic background or not,
each student is given equal playing
time to make their mark on the game.
Those who are apprehensive are
encouraged by the captains on the
sidelines shouting plays and praises.
Mia Kobylski
A’23
The sports culture at St. Johns is not
one of competition and intimidation.
The goal is to have fun while being
physically active. Johnnies, such as
myself, have fallen into the trap of
sitting inside reading for the entirety
of the day, but getting outside for an
hour or two is proven to be beneficial.
Just this past weekend, I
had the opportunity to play Reasonball and soccer as a member of the
Guardians. Win or lose, I made new
friends and became better acquainted
with people who are in my classes.
Johnnies unfairly get the reputation
of being less than athletic. Who says
you can’t be well versed in Plato and
also be a beast at soccer? Even on
the field, Johnnies have the nature
to think critically, drawing diagrams
and questioning the integrity of plays.
As someone who had never touched
a soccer ball in my life and definitely
passed to the wrong team, I felt welcomed. Perhaps the most refreshing
aspect of the experience was that we
called each other by first names, a
rare occurrence on campus.
�05
Does music make a sound?
The Gadfly
Daniel Harrell Tutor
One must make music to the point of identifying the melody
obtain silence. with its movement—when none of
—Vladimir Jankélévitch the notes in it strictly moves. What
we hear, we might conclude, is a
Does music make a sound?
movement that happens not by the
The obvious answer is that it does.
notes but through the notes, in what
After all, if it didn’t make a sound
again means a relation between notes,
then what do we hear when listening
making what would otherwise be a
to music?
mere succession of sounds into the
movement we hear.
Still, I want to suggest that
music makes no sound, and that what
Or rather “hear”: since again
we hear when listening to music is a
it is the notes we strictly hear, making
kind of silence. One reason for the
the movement through them somesuggestion is that it is not what we
thing it seems we feel more than hear.
hear in notes that makes for music but Related to this is the rhythm we sense
rather between notes. In this sense,
in music, and sometimes use our
for example, we could say that the
bodies to imitate, as if it were indeed
notes of a melody, just on their own,
more felt than heard, in another sign
would not form a melody but rather
that music’s sense has more to do with
be a mere succession of sounds. To
silence than with sound.
form a melody is to be a succession,
instead, of relations between sounds,
There is finally the matter of
whether we conceive these relations
harmony in music, where we “hear”
as intervals or as dynamic quantities.
consonance and dissonance. But
again this is a consonance or disso
Or to reach the same connance not in notes but between notes;
clusion about a melody through a
and it is only the notes we strictly
different route: we might ask why we
hear. So the consonance or dissohear movement in a melody—even to nance between them seems another
example of feeling rather than hearing.
But suppose from this we
grant that music is not a matter of its
sounds but of the relations between
its sounds, and that these relations are
not heard but felt. Still, why call these
relations between sounds a form of silence rather than simply a derived or
second-order form of sound? Sound
that is felt rather than heard?
I leave my answer in the form
of another suggestion. To think of
these relations as another form of
sound is perhaps to think of music
more generally as a mode of creation.
But it is worth considering a second
possibility: that music is actually a
mode of revelation. In this second
way of thinking, the notes are selected
rather than created, and the relations
between them abide, in a realm that
cannot be built but only bid into
being. And what we feel in these
relations would therefore have the
significance, in silence, of a world past
saying.
�06
First Weeks as Freshmen
I conducted a survey among freshmen to find out some of their current
favorite things at St John’s as well as how they’re doing in their first few
weeks. These answers do not fully encompass how freshman as a cohort
reflect on these subjects, but do provide some unique insights.
The Gadfly
Alayna Raymond
A’23
Favorite Class?
Favorite Tutors?
Favorite Activities?
38.5% - Seminar
23.1% - Language
23.1% - Laboratory
7.7% - Mathematics
7.7% - Laboratory
1) Mr. Haflidson
2) Mr. Kalkavage
3) Ms. Sitzmann
4) Ms. Lee
5) Ms. Paalman
1) St John’s Chorus
2) Intramurals
3) Board Game Club
4) Sailing
5) Crew
What books are you looking forward to this
year?
1) Plato’s Republic
2) Any Aristotle
3) The Odyssey
4) Herodotus’s Histories
What do you wish you knew before arriving on
campus?
“How many clubs and activities are unique to SJC.”
“Just how prevalent smoking is.”
“What fast food places do and don’t deliver.”
“To bring more t-shirts.”
“I would’ve liked to have known what my dorm
room looked like space-wise before arriving.”
What’s your favorite facet of the St John’s
community?
“The memes that are created from only things Johnnies would understand.”
“Tutor accessibility.”
“The amount of academic discussions taking place
outside of class. Also, the tightness of the entire community. I feel like I’ll know everyone by the end of the
semester.”
“Everyone panics the same amount. Also the memes.”
“How conversational and interesting each individual
is... It’s hard to go a day at St. John’s without saying
you had a good conversation with someone.”
How have you been doing in these first few weeks?
“I’ve figured out how to manage my time in order to
meet the course load. It’s been easy to make friends in
class, as we’re basically forced to talk to each other.”
“The first few weeks have been a bit rough. Acclimating with a whole new group of people is tough, but the
Johnnie community is very welcoming.”
“I’m pretty happy. I’ve got friendly roommates, the food
is good, and the classes are fun. Not much else to ask
for.”
“Horrendously.”
“It’s been difficult, and I’m very tired, but I’m glad I’m
here.”
“I’m more busy than I’ve ever been and feeling pretty
burned out, but I’m having SO much fun.”
What surprised you about St John’s or just college
life in general?
“How open people are to talk about almost any topic
and how genuinely nice they are.”
“How fun and social mealtimes still are. I assumed
people drifting in and out would make it hard to regularly sit with friends, but nope!”
“The amount of partying. It intrigues me how dedicated some people are both to partying and their coursework.”
“How people completely disregard personal hygiene”
“Lots of smokers.”
“Campus life is much more fast paced.”
It is my hope that by reading what others are also thinking it will help you feel closer to your peers in
knowing that you’re not alone in your experiences. So long as we maintain the support of each others personal and academic journey, this community will continue to thrive. - Alayna Raymond, Freshman.
�
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Title
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<em>The Gadfly</em>
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Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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thegadfly
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pdf
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4 pages
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 02
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XLI, Issue 02 of The Gadfly. Published October 4, 2019. Cover is misnumbered as Issue 3.
Creator
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Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief)
Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief)
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2019-10-04
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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text
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pdf
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College students--United States--Conduct of life
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English
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Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 02
Gadfly
Student publication
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/42ce7d76810f82172d8d68bd6fb06228.pdf
d65692350d6db25dc9b8f8ebc98eeef7
PDF Text
Text
GADFLY
Law in Matthew • 02
Reproductive Rights • 03
When the Teacher's not There • 04
St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • November 6, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 04
Photo by Rose Pelham
�The Gadfly
02
The student newspaper
of St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, Maryland 21401
sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student
newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis
campus.
Opinions expressed within are the sole
responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and
edit submissions in any way necessary to
publish a professional, informative, and
thought-provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format.
The deadline for submissions is the Friday
prior to publication.
The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7
PM in the BBC. We always need editors,
layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
for more information.
Staff
Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-inChief
Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Chief
Mira Kobylski • Staff
Contributors
William Braithwaite
Mira Kobylski
Rose Pelham
Abigaile Petrich
Hope Taglich
From the Editors:
The Gadfly hopes you have
had a sober and academically responsible
parents’ weekend. We understand the
extent to which the presence of one’s
parents encourages wild partying and binge
drinking. We hope that by drawing attention
to the issue, we may support more wholsome
behavior. To that end, the current leadership
promises to host sober events for the next
parents' weekend.
- The Gadfly
Law in the Gospel of Matthew
William Braithwate
Tutor
In a passage that Sophomore Seminar
conversations often touch, or dwell upon, Jesus
says, "Think not that I am come to destroy the
law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy,
but to fulfill" (Mt. 5.17). What does Jesus
mean by "law"? And why does he link "the
law" with "the prophets" as a source of authority for those he is speaking to ("the multitudes,"
5.1)?
If by "law" Jesus means authoritative command, we could say that the first law in the
Bible is, "Let there be light" (Gen. 1.3). God's
power of command extends over the primeval
chaos out of which He creates the world as an
ordered whole (Gen. 1.1-2.3). This power is
akin to Jesus being able to walk on water (Mt.
14.25), to calm the stormy sea (8.23-27), even
to restore the dead to life (9. 18-19, 23-25). "I
am not come to destroy [the law]" seems, at the
very least, to mean that Jesus is not speaking
about the laws that govern the physical order of
the world.
The Biblical account of the world puts
God's power, and Jesus' power as His Son,
above the power of what we call nature (phusis). As Creator, or maker, or author of the
natural order, God is superior to it, as the potter
is superior to the clay he molds to form a winejar. It is He who so arranges the material of the
world that the heavy tends toward center, fluid
unconstrained forms a sphere, and E=m times
c-squared. We call gravity, Archimedes' postulate, and Einstein's equation "laws" of nature.
But the idea of Nature seems to belong not
to the Biblical world, but to the Greek world.
Whatever Jesus means by "law" in 5.17, it is
not "law of nature" as we understand that idea.
Descending from the created whole to man,
and his place in it, we could say that the first
human law, the first law for human beings--as
distinguished from those living beings we call
"plants" and "animals"--is the prohibition,
"Don't eat that fruit" (Gen. 3.3). This law
belongs to the Bible's account of proto-man,
mankind in the most distant past, known only
through those orally transmitted stories some
call myths. In Jesus' understanding, is prohibition the essence of law? Does the story of The
Fall suggest that man is the animal that most of
all needs restraint?
So far, "law" in the Bible appears as coming from the Sovereign (what rules all), in the
form, first, of a command ("Let there be light",
addressed to the non-living things), then, later,
in the form of a prohibition ("Don't eat that
fruit"), addressed to one particular species of
living beings, the human kind. This prohibi-
tion is about what man eats, what helps sustain
his body. Is the prohibitory character of the
first human law, and its being a prohibition
apparently about food, consistent with "Not
that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man;
but that which cometh out of the mouth, this
defileth a man" (15.11)?
Jesus' claim that he comes not to destroy
but to fulfill the law is made in his first public
speech, called "The Sermon on the Mount,"
Matthew, Chapters 5 through 7. In the course
of Chapter 5, he refers five times to what we
may for convenience call the "old" law. "Ye
have heard that it was said by them of old time,
Thou shalt not kill ..." (5.21). "Ye have heard
that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt
not commit adultery ..." (5.27). "Again, ye
have heard that it hath been said by them of
old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself ..."
(5.33)."Ye have heard that it hath been said, An
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ... (5.38).
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy
..." (5.43).
The first three of these examples refer,
respectively, to the Sixth, Seventh, and Third
Commandmants found in Exodus, Chapter
20, the prohibitions against murder, adultery,
and the use, or mis-use, of oaths. The last two
examples refer to the law of retaliation (Ex.
20.24 et seq.), and to Lev. 19.18: "Thou shalt
not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the
children of thy people, but shalt love thy neighbor as thyself ...."
In the next installment of this inquiry, each
of these examples will be examined in detail,
along with the "new" law interpretations Jesus
gives.
William Braithwaite,
Tutor u
�03
On Reproductive Rights
Lately, I’ve been thinking about
my eighth grade health class a lot.
My eighth grade health class
was taught by a man we called Coach
Ryan. He was also the gym teacher. He
would eventually be fired by our school
after our principal, Sister Cathy, discovered that he did not have a valid teacher’s license, but this was before then,
when he was just your average Long
Island Catholic school gym-cum-health
class teacher.
I remember we discussed
pregnancy and the intricacies of the
reproductive process in class, once. Our
health textbooks reviewed the stages
of pregnancy and fetal development;
they were godless textbooks, having
been issued by the district instead of the
diocese, and so they made no mention
of the immortality of the soul or of the
sanctity of life or any other concepts
that we were taught were of the utmost
importance. I remember Coach Ryan
reviewing the concept of a zygote, or a
recently fertilized egg, and then growling: “Now the book doesn’t say this, but
when does life begin?”
Everyone was silent.
“Conception,” he said. “You’ll
get a lot of people, when you grow
up, telling you that it doesn’t begin at
conception, but you can’t listen to them,
because life begins at conception.”
This was something I repeated
to myself throughout my early teenage
years; I had doubts on its veracity, but
I managed to convince myself that my
doubts were due to the Devil’s temptation. I lay awake at night, profoundly
distrustful of my own thoughts. I had
not known any women who had had
abortions, and—having heard indictments of them in church and at school
on a regular basis—I was convinced
that they were, at best, horribly misled,
and at worst, evil. Moreover, they were
determined to mislead me, too. I had
this unshakeable fear that the part of me
that doubted that they were evil, that
doubted that life began at conception,
would eventually take over and my descent into the abyss would be complete.
I would become a monstrous latter-day
Medea, who watched Girls and wore
pink sneakers in solidarity with Wendy
Davis. I feared that I would accept sin
due to a lack of resolve and succumb to
the wiles of Satan.
I have. Well, I don’t own a pair
of pink sneakers, and I have no desire
to watch Girls. But I am pro-choice, and
proudly so, and I would like to preface this article with an address to my
younger self: Thirteen-year-old Hope,
even if Coach Ryan had a proper teacher’s license, he still would not be a viable
authority on what you can do with your
uterus. Your uterus is a tabula rasa. You
are entitled to complete dominion over
your own body.
When I write these words,
however, I feel increasingly discouraged.
They should be empowering; however,
they ring hollow in light of a reality
wherein women are deprived of their
bodily autonomy more and more each
day. They should be true, but they aren’t.
Earlier this year, Georgia passed a law
prohibiting abortions after six weeks,
around the time most women realize
that they are pregnant; shortly afterwards, Alabama banned abortion altogether. The 2018 appointment of Brett
Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court entails the possible repeal of Roe vs. Wade,
which—according to Planned Parenthood—would cause nearly 25 million
women to lose access to abortion. The
most heavily impacted by the repeal
would be black and Hispanic women.
Texas law requires that women seeking
abortions be first told that abortions
cause breast cancer, a scientifically baseless and intentionally misleading claim.
Finally, the Title X Family Planning
Program—which provides reproductive
health and family planning services for
low-income individuals, particularly
women—is at risk. The Trump-Pence
administration has proposed a prohibition of abortion referrals; a removal
of objective and nonpartisan counseling regarding pregnancy options (thus
depriving a woman considering abortion of her right to informed consent);
The Gadfly
Hope Taglich
A’21
and defunding of agencies that provide
abortion services, among other comprehensive changes.
Yes, one has the right to believe
that life begins at conception; however,
it is crucial to recall that “life begins at
conception” is a belief. Its justification
is strictly theological; therefore, it has
no place in politics. There is no solidly
factual basis for it. The argument against
legalized abortion is rooted in theocracy, and is thus profoundly un-American. The separation between church
and state outlined in the Establishment
Clause and the Free Exercise clause of
the First Amendment is a response to
the insidiousness of such theocracy; its
originator, Thomas Jefferson, identified
largely as a secular Deist. (Moreover, if
one wants to argue theology, the Bible
explicitly permits abortion; Numbers 5:
11-31 states that if a woman has become
pregnant due to an extramarital affair,
she must drink a potion to induce a
miscarriage).
Banning abortion is also inherently abusive. According to the National
Domestic Violence Hotline, “Reproductive coercion is a form of power and
control where one partner strips the
other of the ability to control their own
reproductive system.” On a macrocosmic level, federal and state governments
are abusing women. The right to choose
is a human right, one that is violated
more and more with each passing day;
legally infringing on it is a form of
reproductive terrorism that is heralded
as moral by the likes of the National
Right to Life, Kay Ivey, Kanye West and
Donald Trump. In the face of abuse, it is
crucial that Americans write to legislators. It is crucial that Americans donate
to Planned Parenthood. It is crucial that,
as a collective, we accept that a woman
has a right to choose; pro-life individuals must acknowledge that their beliefs
cannot be legally imposed on others.
Personally, we can agree to disagree;
legally, it is imperative to realize we cannot. t
�04
When the Teacher is Not There
Biology
October 23, 2019, 9:10 am
I walked into the classroom
and immediately I could sense something was off. I didn’t know what it
was at first, but something felt strange,
a kind of lingering anticipation in the
air. Then I noticed that the lights were
off and an unusual amount of glee was
present in room 340. It came to me in
a flash-- Mrs. Hannahs, our teacher,
wasn’t there yet. The thing lingering
in the air was hope--that neither Mrs.
Hannahs, nor a substitute, would come.
If you remember your high
school years, then you can imagine how
elated we felt as it became evident that
by some mistake or other in the offices,
no teacher was coming that morning. We were like a bunch of balloons
someone had blown up and let go to the
skies. But of course, balloons ran out of
air pretty quickly, especially when there
are snitches in the room.
“We’re not allowed to be in
a room without a teacher,” said the
sophomore who hates us because we are
freshman.
“Yea, we should go get a teacher. I can go. I’m like a teacher magnet,”
said Natalie.
“No! why would we do that?”
everyone exclaimed. Nobody liked
Natalie or the sophomore. You probably know why already, but I’ll elaborate.
Natalie always found the biggest words
to express the simplest ideas, I guess to
feel proud of herself, but her answers
made her sound ridiculous rather than
intelligent. Most of us freshman were
known for being rowdy and stupid--or
fun--depending on who you asked. For
that reason alone the sophomore hated
us.
Anyway, as we were dancing
in circles and singing merry tunes,
Natalie picked up the classroom telephone and prepared to call the office.
I stood still, mouth gaping, shocked
and afraid. But then, out of the corner
of my eye, I spotted a football player, a
Abigail Petrich Prospie
hero. He jumped over chairs, slid under
tables, and sprinted to the teacher’s
desk, where Natalie and the evil phone
conspired. When he reached the desk
he furiously and repeatedly tapped
the button that ends a call. The class
cheered, and Natalie went into shock.
Yeh!--the gods are just after all!
But our celebration was short, because
the sophomore and Natalie decided to
walk to the office and alert the administrators of our freedom and delights.
Like traitors, they were. Eventually, a
teacher arrived to restore boredom in
the room until a substitute could be
summoned. He seemed just as unhappy about it as we were, though he
did make us do our work. He even
frowned at Natalie and the sophomore
while the class booed its displeasure.
I began to think about things . . .like
what makes a person do that? The
sophomore I understand--he did it
out of hate. But Natalie? What did
she gain? The satisfaction of pride?
Did she do it because it seemed like
the right thing to do? How can something be right, if it pleases no one and
blackens everyone, including the doer’s
reputation? And if it is the right thing
to do, while making everyone miserable, should you do it?
We warned Natalie that “snitches are
witches who end up in ditches” (we
may not have exactly said ‘witches,’).
But she snitched anyway. We have been
told all our lives that we shouldn’t care
about what other people think of us.
But why shouldn’t we care? Aren’t our
consciences formed by other people’s
opinions? So if public opinion doesn’t
matter, what will prevent someone from
doing much worse things than snitching? My dad said none of this would
have happened if we had wanted to be
there learning biology, with or without
a teacher. I don’t think he understands
high school.
--Abigail Petrich,
Freshman, Severna Park High School
and prospective Johnnie t
The Gadfly
Hustlers v. Spartans
Reasonball
Mia Kobylski A’23
It’s Oktoberfest weekend – kegs
and pumpkins are plentiful; a cool autumn breeze blows up from college creek
and the campus trees are turning shades
of orange. However, despite the pit beef
and the fall flavored desserts, a group
of Johnnies gathers on back campus for
Reasonball. The Spartans and Hustlers
warm up, tie their flag belts, and talk
strategy. 80’s jams, specifically a Queen
medley, radiates through the air from
Oktoberfest, adding to the overall vibe.
The game begins with Chris’
signature, “Let’s play!” Nine Hustlers and
nine Spartans take the field. Within the
first two plays, Hustlers make a touchdown, as the Spartans’ butterfingers
cannot quite grasp the flags. During
the middle and end of the first half, the
teams struggle to find their groove and
play is littered incomplete passes and
rule debates. A young family passes by
the field, and the children exhibit a great
deal of confusion while watching the
game, reducing Reasonball to some sort
of odd flag football where players can
seemingly pass to themselves.
The second half starts strong for
the Spartans. The team is able to catch
longer passes and move closer to the
endzone each play, resulting in a touchdown. The Hustlers also have a new
energy coming into the new half, twice
running the ball down the majority of
the field. Each of these strategies seems
to work for the respective teams. By the
10th play in the second half, each team
is tired due to a lack of subs, but the
fighting spirit still remains. The Hustlers
score a touchdown after Spartan possession is intercepted to score yet another
long run to the endzone. The Hustlers
take the game, and the Spartans are
defeated, a rare occurrence for the team.
The start of the Reasonball tournament
commences the following week with the
Hustlers seeded first, followed by the
Spartans, Druids, Guardians, and lastly,
Greenwaves. Who will be crowned victor of this quintessentially autumn and
uniquely Johnnie pastime? t
�
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 04
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Volume XLI, Issue 04 of The Gadfly. Published November 6, 2019.
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Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief)
Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief)
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Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 04
Gadfly
Student publication
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PDF Text
Text
THE
GADFLY
Radio Address • 04
Law in Matthew Part 2 • 06
The Life and Art of Mary Petty • 07
St. John’s College • 60 College Ave, Annapolis, MD 21401 • December 2, 2019 • Vol. XLI • Issue 05
Photo by Rose Pelham
�The Gadfly
02
The student newspaper
of St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, Maryland 21401
sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student
newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis
campus.
Opinions expressed within are the sole
responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and
edit submissions in any way necessary to
publish a professional, informative, and
thought-provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in Micrsoft Word or JPEG format.
The deadline for submissions is the Friday
prior to publication.
The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7
PM in the BBC. We always need editors,
layout designers, illustrators, and organizers. Contact us at sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
for more information.
Staff
Athena Berreles-Luna • Co-Editor-inChief
Rose Pelham • Co-Editor-in-Chief
Contributors
William Braithwaite
Lucinda Edinberg
Chris Krueger
Yunju Park
Rose Pelham
From the Editors:
The Gadfly hopes you have had a
restless holiday full of unfulfilled yearning
and ennui in the face of the desire to be
productive. We wish this as a curse upon
the protestants and their work ethic, who
arrived at Plymouth Rock, started a series
of wars with their neighbors, and plastered
over their violence with this past Holiday.
- The Gadfly
On writing an Open Letter
to my Senators
Just before the week of Thanksgiving, I
wrote my Senators an open letter urging
them to remove Trump from office
through impeachment. At the time of
writing––several days later––I still have
limited knowledge of whether or not
this letter will be published, and as to
what effect, if any, it may have. Nonetheless, it represents a rather extreme
effort to communicate with my Senators
as to what actions represent me as their
constituent.
My open letter would be the
fourth letter I have sent to both my
senators on the same subject since the
beginning of the impeachment inquiry.
Each of these letters, or rather, emails,
I have written individually and with
great care to make them as persuasive as
possible. I could have sent pre-written
emails instead, but to do so would go
against my sense of individuality and
pride––not to mention hubris––as a
writer.
For this effort, I have received
a handful of responses, all pre-written,
and for the most part, all perfectly identical to each other. Only one reply––
which was no less a stock response––
had any tangential relevancy to my
words insofar as it was a generic statement on impeachment. None of this has
amounted to anything approximating
a conversation, and it would be absurd
to expect that there was ever a chance
it would. We generally take for granted
that our representatives have no time
for our communications with them, and
there is no lack of truth in this. How
could one be expected to maintain a
thousand individual correspondences
across email with any degree of real attention? Even the assistants and interns
tasked with the work only engage in it
part time.
A friend of mine, who has
interned in the offices of politicians,
tells me that all communications from
constituents, regardless of medium,
Rose Pelham
A‘20
are taken by the politician’s staff, and
converted into numerical data. This is
common knowledge, or not far from it,
but the substitution of data for words
is worth considering as if it were more
novel than it has become. Data is a
great homogenizer, which can convert
any quantity of distinct instances, each
different in innumerable ways, into a
number of repetitions of the same event.
A flood of emails in this way becomes
a representation of the relative balance
of constituents for or against a position
on a given issue. The words on paper,
regardless of their meaning or truthfulness, are irrelevant except insofar as
they can be converted into a number.
This homogenization really does strip
away the individuality of one’s communications in such a way as to make them
one amongst an indistinguishable mass,
and consequently, eliminates their effect
as words. This was why I turned to writing an open letter.
Public communications with
representatives, in contrast with “private,” demand specific attention. This is
in no way on account of any difference
in the writing, but only because of their
appearing in public, where they present
themselves for all to see and, at least
potentially, be persuaded. The only
problem is that the opportunity to speak
in public, or rather, have one’s writing
appear there, is uncommon. This is not
the same as writing on social media,
which may be visible to a large number
of people, but is never exactly public
or private, but virtually always social.
Rather, the primary way to appear in
public, in a society as large as ours and
where in-person community meetings
are generally impractical, is through the
news.
The news, regardless of the medium by which it is broadcast, is truly
the most public space we have, even,
�The Gadfly
03
perplexingly, more so than the internet.
Specifically, the news is our space of
public appearances, since it relates directly with whatever is the most immediately relevant to its audience, which
is all of society. For this very reason,
it is where our political debates take
place and opinion pieces disseminated,
and not just the location where current
events are written down for posterity.
It operates as the center of a polis that
is too large to have a physical gathering
place at the heart of it.
Getting into the news, even for
one who already has a partial presence
there, is difficult, if one aims to write it,
as opposed to being its subject. Newspapers and websites tend to prefer those
who are already known to their pages,
since strangers are always somewhat
risky: you never know when they might
say something embarrassing. At the
same time, smaller newspapers are
becoming less common as more and
more of them are destroyed for the
profit of their apathetic owners. For
this reason, it seems we live in a society
where speaking in the public realm,
as opposed to being seen in it, really
is inaccessible to the vast majority––a
rather peculiar feature for a democracy,
if a commonplace one.
In all likelihood, my letter will
not be published, since one newspaper
has rejected it already, and the other has
not replied. In a few days, I will probably try again with a new letter updated
to reflect the changes in the political situation and, hopefully, be more appealing to newspapers where I hope it might
appear in print.
The fact that I have a chance at
publishing an open letter, and therefore subjecting my representatives to
my public speech, is itself an immense
privilege. It means that I may be able
to engage them as an individual whose
words matter more than mere data,
in distinction to being one amongst a
mass of indistinct constituents, as I have
been. I wonder: what does it mean to
live in a society where one must commit
to painstaking effort in order to ascend
to a political individuality in this way?t
Yunju in Places - McDowell Great Hall
Now, take a moment and think
about it: what is the first image that
pops into your head when you think
about St. John’s College?
My first party at St. John’s
College was The Achilles Rager, which
occurred in McDowell Great Hall.
At first, I was not sure if some of my
dance moves would be appropriate for
Great Hall since there were these great
men looking at me from their portraits. Only after I found that the reality already took care of it and covered
their eyes with fire shaped post-it, I felt
more comfortable being myself there.
Last September, I went to my
last Achilles Rage, finally, as a senior.
There was a change in the wall of
McDowell Great Hall: we got one more
portrait, another beautiful, thoughtful, and intellectual person who just
happened to be a white male. Whoever
met our past president, Mr. Nelson,
knows that he is so much more than
a mere white male. I truly appreciated
his work and his care for the community. Without him or other past
presidents, I would not have been able
to get the education that I am getting
today. However, when he is next to all
the other great men in the hall, it is
hard not to notice the pattern in how
these great men looked like; I am not
the only one who is noticing it.
One of my favorite parts of
working at Admissions is giving tours.
It is always pleasant to share what we
are doing here and meet people who
are as excited as I am about the program. For my tour, the last stop is often
McDowell Great Hall. For me, the hall
is somewhat physically, but also emotionally, the center of our college. It is
where we lined up for the first time as
fellow johnnies on our convocation
day. It is where we painfully endured
each other’s singing every Thursday
morning, not to mention the beautiful
moment of singing Sicut Cervus all
together at the end of the collegium.
I try not to forget mentioning each of
Yunju Park
A‘20
these moments to prospective students. Then they (usually not the kids
but their parents for some reason) say
‘Huh! Lots of white men!’
They never say it in an accusatory fashion. It is simply what they notice. I tell them how they looked like
is not the point here. The important
thing is what they did and the community they built. Indeed, despite some
prospective students’ concern on our
program being too limited in a sense it
covers only the development of “western” thought and there are very few
non-male authors, St. John’s College is
where I learned how to articulate why
“the thing you just did was sexist and
why I am not allowing that is happening in my life”. We learn and grow up
by questioning building our own ideas
with the help of texts. At the end of
four years, what we are gaining is more
the mere sum of books we read.
Still, what they see does not
change, neither what we see. It is
something to think about. Merely
looking at the picture of French Fries
made me go to a coffee shop and get
some between my 1 pm class and 2:20
class (I am not proud of that incident).
Image matters; what we see shapes our
thoughts. Now, what kind of thoughts
does our current image of McDowell
Great Hall bring us?
What do we want to see at the
heart of our college? What is the core
of our community and what is the
value that gathered us together? What
do we want our college to look like in
10 years? Does the current image of
McDowell Great Hall go with your answers? Whichever answers we have for
these questions, we must be mindful
that those images we put in the great
hall have the power of shaping our
today and our future. t
�04
In recent weeks, substantial changes have arisen in
the structure of intercollegiate
NCAA sports. What might this
have to do with our small but
mighty college? Read on!
The principal NCAA
change is that participants in
NCAA sports will in the near
future be eligible for financial
compensation for use of their
likenesses etc. Previously, this
had been forbidden, and there
was much controversy about the
restriction. Some considered it
inherently exploitative for colleges to make millions off sports
programs without formally
compensating the athletes. The
counter-argument was often
made that the reason for the
compensation restriction was to
preserve the amateur essence of
college sports, and that this essence was important, in part, for
preserving eligibility for participation in the Olympics.
This amateurism argument has, for quite a while,
been clearly absurd, and anyone paying attention could see
significant professionalization
in collegiate athletics. In fact,
around this time of year in 1938,
St. John’s College President
Barr delivered the radio address
transcribed below which cited
the professionalization of collegiate athletics as one reason why
the college would be withdrawing from intercollegiate sports,
despite significant accomplishment—including undefeated
Radio Address
seasons—in both intercollegiate
football and lacrosse. I submit
the text below in part for its
relevance to the current events
described above, but also because
of the context it provides regarding the early days of our present
athletic program.
The Gadfly
Chris Krueger
liberal education in a democracy.
The system of intercollegiate athletics which has developed during the past twenty
years will no longer support the
prime purpose of a liberal college. I suppose I ought to have
foreseen this, but I didn’t. CerIntercollegiate Athletics
tainly, there have been enough
Stringfellow Barr, President St.
Carnegie reports, enough magJohn’s College
azine articles by candid writers
Radio Address, Nov. 20, 1938
like John Tunis to convince men
of my generation that we are
I propose to discuss an
sheer sentimentalists and ignoraimportant step which St. John’s
muses if we suppose that interCollege has taken within the past
collegiate athletics are the same
ten days. Many of those who are
thing we remember from twenty
listening to me, including alumni
years back. They do things better
members of the College, will by
now, with Rose Bowls, Cotton
now almost certainly have been
Bowls, and Sugar Bowls; with
told by somebody that the Colcostly equipment, transcontilege administration has abolished
nental journeys, and big money;
athletics. Those who believed
with costly coaches and costly
this statement should, it seems
quarterbacks. I knew all this.
to me, be gravely disturbed. I
The first thing I learned about
think I ought promptly to disathletics on arrival at St. John’s
abuse them. To keep the record
was that we were booked to play
straight, I shall therefore first
our unnatural rivals—Army and
state the facts. Athletics have not
NYU—in an effort to keep down
been abolished, but the College
the high cost of modern athletics
has decided that after the close
by earning a good “gate.” But still
of the present academic session,
I thought it might be possible to
athletic facilities will be inadapt intercollegiate athletics to
creased and at the same time will
educational ends, to pare down
be placed on a strictly intramural
schedules, to decline with thanks
basis.
such games as Army and NYU,
I am explaining tonight
and to protect the coaches from
why significant changes have
criticism if they lost games by
been announced in the athletic
refusing to hire athletes. I was
system at St. John’s, to take effect
mistaken.
next September; but in explain
The thing that taught
ing these changes I am discussing
me I was mistaken was what
�The Gadfly
05
happened when intercollegiate
athletics collided with a curriculum that really required work.
Yet I should have known this by
analogy. I had known countless
students who withdrew from
intercollegiate athletics when
they entered medical or other
professional work. They withdrew because they knew, along
with everybody else, that you
have to study to earn an M.D.
while ordinarily you don’t have
to study to earn a B.A. The undergraduate fills in his idle time
with athletics, which at its most
professionalized is a lot better
thing to fill idle time with than
some other things I know. But
suppose there isn’t any idle time?
Suppose there is just enough
leisure time for healthful outdoor
games? Then every athletic trip
becomes a crisis and not what
is known as an “athletic excuse.”
For students who are really doing
serious work know without being
told that you can’t “make up”
for something you should have
learned but didn’t, by using the
magic word “excuse.” An excuse
may square you with the Dean.
It won’t convert ignorance into
knowledge. There is no reason
on this round earth why securing
a liberal education in an undergraduate college should be a less
serious business than acquiring
a medical education in a medical
school. But if it is a serious business, then it had better steer clear
of another very serious business,
indeed a highly organized “big”
business: intercollegiate athletics.
For this big business has its own
exigencies: those who won’t meet
them had better keep out.
That big business substitutes spectator psychosis for
actual participation, cheering
sections for playing teams, an
orgy of sports-goods equipment
for costumes fit to have fun in,
large business staffs with longterm schedules for the old-time
impromptu challenge of natural
antagonists, monotonous physical drill for learning to play
by playing, pressure from fellow-students for zest to play, the
exhibitionism of star performers
for the satisfaction of playing
well because it is more fun to
play a game well than badly. The
sum total of these things is hysteria, lost motion, the death of the
amateur spirit, and an athletic
system that competes with study
instead of supplementing and
strengthening it.
We have all known these
things for years, unless we have
been ostriches or Rip Van Winkles. But I repeat, they don’t
prove fatal so long as undergraduate education is run in low gear.
In fact, I should insist again that,
so long as education is run in low
gear, these things are better than
idleness. But there is something
better still, and that something is
amateur athletics—amateur athletics of a quality no college can
achieve so long as it is meshed
in with the new kind of athletics,
the big-business kind.
The educational program
now going on at St. John’s must
have the support of amateur
athletics. It must have it, because
amateur athletics is rich in terms
of health, recreation, skill, and
co-ordination. To get that support, it will expand its intramural athletics. More varieties of
sport will be offered and more
facilities. Our colleges are often
abusively called country clubs.
I want to see St. John’s offer the
sort of athletic facilities a good
country club offers. Every game
we now play we shall continue
to play, except that the six-man
football we started this year will
replace the standard game. In addition we want to expand water
sports, with particular emphasis on sailing. The alumni have
already given us one sailboat; we
shall acquire five more.
A tutor with wide athletic experience will be placed in
charge, but he will need a number of student assistants. To secure good assistants, we propose
to offer athletic scholarships. In
my own limited experience, this
will be the first legitimate use to
which athletic scholarships have
been put by an American college.
I think you may rest assured
there will be plenty of excellent
candidates. I hope you will help
me find the best candidates.
Sooner or later, I hope
sooner, the present system of
semi-professionalized intercollegiate athletics will hang itself.
When it does, the problems that
caused us to take our present
stand will disappear. When it
does, we shall doubtless play
games with other colleges as naturally as such games were once
played. Meanwhile athletics at St.
John’s will be for the student, not
the student for athletics. t
�06
LAW IN MATTHEW’S GOSPEL, Part 2
The first part of this commentary (Gadfly XLI, No. 4, Nov. 6, 2019)
began with Jesus’ claim that he comes
not to destroy but to “fulfill” the law, and
put as a first question what He means
by “law.” In this part, I begin to inquire
what he means by “fulfill.” I consider
here the first two of the six pairings Jesus
makes in Mt. 5.21-48, comparing the
new law and the old (“what was said by
them of old time,” v. 21, or simply “what
has been said,” vv. 31, 43).
The topics addressed are murder, adultery, marriage, telling the truth,
retaliation, and love of enemies. What is
the principle of order of this sequence?
A preliminary observation: the last
injunction, love your enemies, may be
the most demanding. Cain did not
love Abel, nor Jacob, Esau; so, too, with
Joseph and his brethren.
How can Jesus suppose it possible to love our enemies when we feel
murderous hatred even for those from
the same womb? (Cf. Augustine, Confessions, I.6-7, on the sins of his infancy).
This list begins with the harsh truth that
of all God’s creatures (Gen. 1.20-28),
man alone kills his own kind not for food
but out of hatred. It ends with the implausible proposal to turn human nature
upside down:
“Love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” We may
note in passing that this last item (love of
enemies) has the same number of verses
of explication and examples, six, as the
first (murder). As to the third, fourth,
and fifth items, two verses address marriage (31-32), and five are given to each
of truth-telling (33-37) and retaliation
(38-42).
Jesus approaches the last injunction, that
we demand of ourselves what seems impossible to achieve, through the five pairs
of oppositions that precede. The first is
murder vs. anger without cause. Old law:
“Thou shalt not kill; whosoever shall kill
shall be in danger of the judgment” (v.
21). New law: “whosoever is angry with
his brother without a cause shall be in
danger of the judgment” (v. 22).
Is it in anger that murder begins? Is it simply happenstance that the
first human crime in the Bible is Cain’s
murder of Abel, and our oldest Greek
poem begins with the rage of Achilles? Is
thumos, in all its forms and varieties, the
primeval driving force of our lives?
Dante proposes that those who lack it
are not even worth punishing (Inferno
3.31-51). Aristotle suggests the spirited
part of the soul has to be ruled as a father
rules a son, by “chastisement and encouragement” (Ethics I.13.1102 b 29 et seq.,
Sachs tr.). Augustine, as a grown man,
has a love-hate relation with the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic
he was, as a boy, beaten into learning—
an experience as hateful to him as learning Greek (Confessions I.13).
But “those first lessons were
surer…. [For with them] I acquired the
power to read what I find written and to
write what I want to express ….”
Anger; spiritedness; thumos;
the irrational part of the soul: whatever
name we give it belongs to something we
have without wanting or seeking, which
we cannot live fruitfully without, but
which is the source of our greatest crimes
and may be the source of what we need
for our greatest tasks.
The second pairing is adultery
vs. lust in the heart. Old law: “Thou
shalt not commit adultery” (v. 27). New
law: “whosoever looketh on a woman to
lust after her hath committed adultery
with her already in his heart” (v.28).
Cf. Job: “I made a covenant
with mine eyes; Why then should I think
upon a maid?” (31.1). See, also, Inferno
5.124-38, where Francesca, after it is too
late for repentance, learns that the “first
root” of her and Paolo’s illicit desire for
one another was their reading together a
story about the illicit love of Lancelot and
Guinevere.
The commandmant forbids
the action. Jesus teaches that the action
begins with a seeing, with an itching of
the eyes: “and from the roof [David]
saw a woman washing herself; and the
woman was very beautiful to look upon”
The Gadfly
William Braithwaite Tutor
(II Sam. 11.2).
In Aristotelian terms, Jesus puts
thumos as the first problem, eros as the
second. For Paul, though, the primary
problem seems to be the body’s carnal
desires rather than the hatreds that fester
in our souls. Indeed his words can strike
some readers as coming from a man who
hates his body. “For that which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not;
but what I hate, that do I…. For I know
that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth
no good thing ….” (Rom. 7.14-15, 18).
James, on the other hand, suggests that
restraining our speech, that is, our angry
words (see, e.g., Iliad, Book I), may be
as hard, or harder even, than restraining
our bodily appetites:
“If any man among you seem to
be religious, and bridleth not his tongue,
but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s
religion is vain…. Behold, we put bits in
the horses’ mouths, that they may obey
us; and we turn about their whole body.
Behold also the ships, which though
they be so great, and are driven of fierce
winds, yet are they turned about with
a very small helm, whithersoever the
governor listeth. Even so, the tongue is a
little member, and boasteth great things.
Behold, how great a matter a little fire
kindleth! And the tongue is a fire ….”
(Letter of James, 1.26; 2.3-6).
Both the old law and the new
law address a permanent dilemma of
our lives as human beings: two powerful
forces contend within us, and their war
with one another gives us no rest. The
only escape, according to Dante, is to
live “without infamy and without praise”
(Inf. 3.34-36). This is the life of cowards, those who deserve nothing, neither
blame nor reward, because they never
risked anything, in either love or hate.
Christ the Judge says to Laodicea: “because thou are lukewarm, and
neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit
thee out of my mouth” (Apocrypha 3.1516).
(To be continued). t
�The Gadfly
07
This Petty Place: The Life and Art of Mary Petty
The fall exhibition in the
Mitchell Gallery features New Yorker
cartoonist Mary Petty (1899-1976) and
her husband Alan Dunn (1900-1971).
Through the watercolor magazine covers, and crayon and ink cartoons, one
can see how their work exemplifies the
creative and pithy humor upon which
the magazine’s reputation stands.
Mary Petty began cartooning
for The New Yorker in 1927, shortly
after her marriage to fellow artist Alan
Dunn. Dunn received training at the
National Academy of Design and other
venerable institutions, while Petty had
no formal art training. It was Dunn’s
encouragement that led Petty to submit
her cartoons to the magazine. Petty was
extremely shy, and it was reported that
Petty was not personally seen in the New
Yorker offices for several years upon first
hiring.
As Petty became more and more
preoccupied with the upper class society
who inhabited the brownstones and
mansions that dotted New York’s Upper
East Side, the lifestyle and attitudes of
wealthy, ‘old money,’ and Victorian style
society provided the grist for Petty’s
keen observations. The life and quirks of
Petty’s fictional “Peabody” family in this
exhibition brings plenty to smile about.
The dowager Mrs. Peabody and her obedient and spirited maid, Fay, appear in
various rooms and activities in the city
brownstone mansion and the country
estate. Fay is seen sneaking off to try her
skills at archery, dancing undetected in
another room (while Mrs. Peabody plays
the French Rococo harpsichord), distorting her reflection in polished silver, and
other escapades of an era gone by.
A sampling of Dunn’s cartoons
is included in the exhibition to provide
insight and context of his influence on
Petty’s illustrations. While Dunn’s work
focused on architectural lampoons and
political/social satire, Petty’s humor
was more attuned to women’s domestic
and social issues. She created about 275
cartoons and 38 covers, of which two
cartoons and 30 covers are included in
the exhibition.
Dunn was a prolific cartoonist
whose creativity focused more on cartoons—2,000 of them--with nine covers
for The New Yorker. Dunn’s skillfully
executed works give witness to how
little the gauge in civilized behavior has
moved over history. Just like the drawings created over 75 years ago, we still
worry about nuclear energy, too much
“screen” time, money, and unreturned
love. These works give us opportunity
and permission to laugh about ourselves.
The Mitchell Gallery was
pleased to welcome former New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff as the
guest lecturer for the Petty exhibition.
His inside knowledge of the cartooning
process provided an interesting backstory on Petty and Dunn and how they
continue to be much revered in the
cartooning world. Mankoff quoted Lord
Chesterfield, “The vulgar only laugh, but
never smile; whereas well-bred people
Lucinda Edinberg
often smile, but seldom laugh.” I hope
you will see the exhibition, enjoy the
beautiful artistry, laugh with a full heart,
and change the world.
An after Seminar reception
will be held on Thursday, December 5
at 10 p.m. The gallery will be open and
refreshments served through the generosity of Mitchell Gallery members Peter
Bungay and Deborah Coons. The exhibition, which is on loan from the Syracuse
University Art Collection, remains on
view through December 15.
Lucinda Dukes Edinberg
Art Educator, The Mitchell Gallery
Postscript: For those of you who knew
the late SJC tutor, Mr. Elliott Zuckerman,
a 1945 volume on Mary’s Petty’s work
was donated to the Greenfield Library
from his personal library.” t
Mary Petty, Fay Trying Archery, “The New Yorker,” cover illustration, July 15, 1950. Watercolor and ink on paper. Courtesy of the Syracuse University Art Collection.
�08
The Gadfly
ACROSS PTOLEMY ON HORSEBACK
With his hypothesis of uniform circular motion, Ptolemy can
account for all the apparent changes
of speed we observe in the heavenly
bodies.
According to this hypothesis, the unequal length of days and
nights during the course of a year,
and the unequal length of the four
seasons, are geometrically explainable by supposing that the sun’s
daily path is parallel to the celestial
equator, but that during the course
of a year, these 365 movements
cumulate to describe a path—the
ecliptic—that is not parallel to the
equator, but tilted 24 degrees to it.
This tilt explains the unequal length
of the seasons (III.3).
Ptolemy proves that the
sun’s appearances (daily and seasonal changes of speed) can be
explained by one circle or by two.
One has a center that is not earth; it
is “ek-centric” because its center is
out of, away from, the center of the
celestial sphere, which is earth. The
other circle is an epicycle on which
the sun moves, while the epicycle
itself is carried on a circle, the deferent, concentric with the celestial
sphere.
As for the planets, they
appear to change speeds in two
ways, latitude (north and south)
and longitude (east and west). This
fact obliges Ptolemy to combine
the two models by putting the
planets’ epicycles on deferents that
are eccentric. The combination
is found to fall short, however, of
explaining where the planets, at
particular times, actually are, that
is, in the zodiac (taken, here, to be
un-moving). Venus, for example, is
several degrees away from the place
Ptolemy’s epicycle on an eccentric
deferent would put it.
The hypothesis (uniform
circular) motion thus requires a further adaptation to what appear to
be “the facts.” Ptolemy proposes a
third center, the equant, or equalizing, point, as the center of uniform
speed. The equant center is different from the center of the eccentric
deferent that carries the epicycle.
Ptolemy’s application of
geometry to astronomy, his effort to
find a nomos, a law, for the heavenly bodies, requires us to imagine
four circles (or maybe five) and
their centers. First, the center of the
celestial sphere; for Ptolemy, this is
the earth. Second, the center of the
eccentric deferent that is the center
of motion; then the equant center,
the center of uniform speed; and
also the moving center of the epicycle that carries the planet.
His hypothesis, to fit all of
what we observe, requires supposing that the planets stay always the
same distance from two centers
(that of the eccentric deferent and
that of the epicycle), but that the
epicycle’s uniformity of speed on
the eccentric deferent is attributable
to a different eccentric deferent, the
equant circle.
If the center of uniform
distance (i.e., radii) is different from
the center of uniform speed (the
equant point), what is the relation
between the distances and the
speeds?
If the movements of the
heavenly bodies are indeed uniform, or “regular” (according to
a rule), should not their apparent
speeds be proportional to their
distances from us? But without
some unit of measurement, we can
number those distances only rati-
William Braithwaite Tutor
ometrically (diameter, 120 parts;
circumference, 360).
Central to Ptolemy’s astronomy, his nomos of the stars, is his
correlation of speeds (greatest, least,
mean) with places on the circles of
revolution (apogee, perigee, opposition). This correlation, of the
phenomena of speeds and places,
with circles representing the spheres
that carry the bodies, presents the
heavens as the place of an order
that is both intelligible and mathematically beautiful. Are its beauty
and its mathematical intelligibility
somehow one and the same?
Copernicus will call what
Ptolemy has presented us a “monster” (Preface). He will show us
that speeds “falsify” the order of the
planets (I.10). But his re-arrangement, the heliocentric hypothesis,
keeps Ptolemy’s circles, almost
(V.4). Then Kepler will show us that
the orbits are really not circles at
all, but ellipses, and that in consequence, what matters is areas, not
lines (i.e., distances).
Today we take for granted
the truth of what Copernicus and
Kepler (and Galileo and Newton)
have shown about the motions of
the heavenly bodies. We might
ask these questions: why did these
discoveries require the work of 1700
years? And does Ptolemy’s demonstration that the heavenly motions
are mathematically intelligible stand
on the same level with his successors who worked out the mathematics more precisely? Why do we
believe precision matters so much?
Does number rule all? t
�
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<em>The Gadfly</em>
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Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 05
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Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief)
Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief)
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St. John's College
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College students--United States--Conduct of life
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Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 05
Gadfly
Student publication
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PDF Text
Text
T H E G A D F LY
St. John’s College
Volume XLI, Issue 06
Annapolis, Maryland
January 27th, 2020
Letter from the Editor Looking Back on 40 Years of the Gadfly
Page 2
News New Decade, New Delegate Council
Page 4
Opinion On Campus Housing
Page 8
Features TEDx premiers at St. John’s
Page 16
Celebrating 40 Years of Publications
�Looking Back on 40 Years
Of The Gadfly
O
Written by Rose Pelham
n January 1st 2020 The Gadfly turned 40, making it
comfortably more than twice the age of its average
member. Though 40 is yet a half decade shy of officially middle-aged, within the perspective of a student––confined more or less to four academic years––the origins of the
paper are as lost to time as the name of the editor before last.
(Though I do not believe this bothers Sebastian Barajas too
much.)
Even five years ago has nearly slipped into time immemorial, leaving behind a partial archeological record of old issues
that may nonetheless be one of the richest accounts of student
life through the last four decades. (The Gadfly issue dated September 11th, 2001 is blissfully unaware of the events of that
day––an instant relic.)
As our luck would have it, the original issue of The Gadfly––dated January 1st, 1980––survives, perhaps not in corporeal form, but scanned and uploaded to a digital afterlife
on internet advice. In it, the founding Editor-in-Chief, Rick
Campbell, wrote the original letter from the editor about why
he decided to found the new publication. Forty years on, I
believe The Gadfly very much lives up to its founding goals,
which you may read in its entirety quoted below:
2
�Raison D’Être
By Rick Campbell
“Why do you want to put out another paper?” I’ve been asked that question
many times in the past week. I believe
there is a need for a newspaper at St.
John’s. A newspaper whose concern is
serving the entire community, not only a
part of it. Serving the community means
providing it with the information it needs
on a timely basis. It means addressing the
problems of the community in a responsible and critical manner.
There are problems within our community. Sometimes they are brought out,
often they are hidden. In the spirit of the
free and critical mind our program is
to develop, this newspaper will practice
those skills we are taught on the best subject possible––ourselves.
Mr. DeMartini, the polity president,
has spoken of the problems within the student body, but that is only one problem.
There is also a problem with communication between students and faculty. Some
students get along fine with some tutors,
but for the majority of us there is something lacking in the relationship. What
that is and how it can be remedied, I don’t
know. I hope that this newspaper will contribute something towards identifying the
problem.
The community is primarily the students and faculty. It is also our alumni.
THE GADFLY is being sent to local area
alumni in hopes of bringing them into a
more active participation in the community. They have experience in the ‘real
world’ which THE GADFLY hopes to tap
to help our undergraduates with the period after graduation.
I also have personal reasons for starting THE GADFLY. It is where I can practice writing, editing and organizing. I am
an active person, not metaphysical. THE
GADFLY is where I can act and see immediate results. This newspaper is also_ for
anyone who is interested in journalism,
satire, parody, etc. If you have an idea for
an article but don’t want to write it, or if
you want to write but have no ideas, let’s
get together.
For those who asked ‘’why,” this is it.
3
�News
New Decade, New Delegate
Council
Written by Sophia Heimbrock and Javier Romero
A
Recently inaugurated president Andrew Hill and other officers
at a meeting of the Delegate Council. Photo by Rose Zheng.
s the new semester and new decade
begin, the polity welcomes several
new officers to the Delegate Council
(DC), including your president, Andrew Hill
(A21). The Delegate Council is an elected body
of student representatives whose primary responsibilities include “the representation of
undergraduate student interests to the Dean”
and “the management of funds available to
the Student Polity.”
4
A primary issue raised in the election
was whether the representation of student
interests to the administration should be
the chief concern of the DC. Hill’s campaign
centerpiece was to create an organization independent of the Delegate Council, whose
proposed function would be to coordinate
communication between students and the
Dean, while leaving budgetary responsibilities to the DC.
�H
istorically, the DC has relegated
the task of representing student
interests to subcommittees within
the Council. The Committee for Student Life
(CSL), now defunct, dissolved and “quietly
abandoned,” according to Polity Herald Sam
Berrattini, was one such subcommittee of the
DC that attempted to engage students in the
political process, and to represent their concerns to school administrators.
Hill suggests creating a
system in which the student
body would be able to
directly participate
“Bringing the CSL back as it [was] does
not do enough. [...] What we really need is a
body in which students can organize,” Hill
said. To prevent a fate similar to the CSL, Hill
suggests creating a system in which the student body would be able to directly participate. “Where the CSL was appointed by the
DC, the student union […] would be voted on
by the [student] body at large.” In short, the
DC would not directly oversee the student
union; rather, the union would be an autonomous organization.
However, confidence among officers in
Hill’s ability to fulfill his campaign promises is inconsistent. “I have some reservations
about Mr. Hill not attending a lot of the meetings and not seeming to me as dedicated to
the Delegate Council as Sera [Johnson] was,”
DC secretary Lexi Morrill (A21) said. “And I
think that goes to the fact that he was in a political position [in the Maryland General As-
News
sembly], which I believe he still holds.”
Berrattini (A21) expressed a more favorable view of Hill’s tenure. “He’s always been
more involved than the average delegate,
and I respect that,” Berratini said. However,
Berrattini expressed hesitance regarding Mr.
Hill’s platform, saying, “His ideas seemed to
me not to resonate with the general ideas of
the Delegate Council.”
His first step will be to
create a committee to
write a charter for the
student union
R
egardless, Hill remains confident
that the proposed student union will
receive a stamp of approval from the
Delegate Council. His first step will be to create a committee to write a charter for the student union.
“I’m hoping that the people who will
turn out are going to be the people who can
really truly engage in the system with the best
interest of creating a student union,” Hill
said. “Next week I’m going to try to devote
the agenda to the creation of this committee.”
St. John’s College Delegate Council
meetings are on Wednesdays at 11:45
A.M. in the Higgins private dining hall
and are open to the polity.
5
�Features
Room Inspections Planned
for Over Long Weekend
O
ver the upcoming long weekend, St.
John’s administrators will conduct
room inspections. This decision is
due to administration’s increased concerns
about fire safety, due to the fire at Paca-Carroll House last May, and was prompted by
Danielle Lico, Director of Student Wellness.
“[The Room Inspections are] primarily about
the fire we had last year,” Taylor Waters, Director of Student Services, said.
“[Fire Safety] is the emphasis,” Robert
Mueck, Director of Public Safety, echoed.
Room inspections taking place over the
long weekend is an attempt to limit disruption to students. “We will do a couple minute
scan of the room, and make sure the power strips aren’t overloaded,” said Waters.
Room inspections will maintain the current
policy on looking through a student’s space.
“We are going to be completely respectful to
your space,” Waters said, and affirmed that
students’ desks and drawers would not be
searched.
“It’s not about disciplining, it’s about
educating,” Waters said. Waters intends to
send an email communicating to students
what administration will be looking for during
inspection, describing the goal as to “give students the opportunity to check themselves.”
“When I used to do [room inspections],
I would hesitate to even enter the room. This
is someone’s living space,” said Waters, laying out administration’s hesitation.
6
Written by Miles Johnstone
“This is an administrative search. This
is not us going in as public safety officers, as
police…the goal is not for this be some invasion of privacy.” Mueck said.
“This is an administrative
search... the goal is not for
this to be some invasion of
privacy.”
Room inspection of this nature would
not be unique to St. John’s. “When I [worked]
at George Washington University [and] the
University of Maryland, that was done,”
Murek said.
Administration’s stated leniency does
not extend to covering fire alarms.“That is really putting another student’s life at risk. That
is one of the things that really gets a bee in my
bonnet,” Waters said.
“Thank god that sprinkler system
worked,” Murek said, reflecting on the Paca-Caroll fire.
Waters emphasised that students who
covered fire alarms would receive fines. “It
takes a lot of action to climb up there and cover (it) up,” Waters said.
�R
oom inspections will not be limited
in scope to fire safety concerns.“The
other thing we will be looking for is
maintenance things,” Waters said. “Buildings
“We will do it three times a
year, two of them will be announced. One of them will
be unannounced.”
and Grounds [says to me], ‘If we had known
[about maintenance issues in rooms], we
could have started repairing two weeks ago.”
Waters said.
Features
Another goal of the room searches is to
take an inventory of furniture, Waters said,
expressing concern that College property,
like furniture, sometimes don’t remain in
buildings.
It is not only rooms that will be inspected. “I will be looking at hall things, like if people are storing bicycles in halls. So, I will be
looking generally, in addition to individually,” Waters said.
“We will do it three times a year, two of
them will be announced. One of them will be
unannounced, and that will probably be in
the fall of next [academic] year.” said Waters
on future plans for room inspections.
Students will be subject to room searches over long weekend, but not to worry —
drawers and desks will not be rifled through.
7
�Opinion
On-Campus Housing
T
Written by Joe Cunningham
he class of 23’ has begun reading
Ethics, much is hoped for as to their
moral improvement. One of the first
things Aristotle let them know is to expect
only as much precision as his subject matter
permits. I would like to make the same appeal for the subject of on campus housing.
The first big reveal is that the identity
of the person with complete control of the
housing situation is one Mr Noman. Power
alley contains many decision makers who influence housing, but no one is all powerful.
However, if it were possible for one person to
be in charge of it all, it would be Taylor Waters, Director of Student Services.
Here as well,
St. John’s claims its metric
is conversation.
Ms. Waters wants the polity to know she
is always listening. Based on what she hears
from parents, RAs and students, she forms an
overall idea of how each class is doing, and
each year, the feedback informs a review of
housing policy. Here as well, St. John’s claims
its metric is conversation.
Ms. Waters calls the backdrop to this
ongoing process the “master plan,” which
dictates that all students should live on campus, baring special accommodations. This
plan has been realized in Santa Fe, but here
the supply of housing has never been sufficient to implement it.
8
There is a ghost of a dorm that exists
somewhere outside the tennis courts, which
has been a part of the plan for decades. Scattered around the college, there are remnants
of the historic housing capacity from the days
when it was fully residential. The college used
to own lovely housing donated for the use of
tutors, which it sold. It used to provide student storage facilities, where now it provides
a photon lab. Our small college has a big premium on space.
On the maintenance of existing buildings Nathan Dugan, Assistant-Dean, refuses to paint a rosy picture of all needs being
�Opinion
addressed in two years, but Buildings and
Grounds is performing walkthroughs to assess those needs. The concrete plan is for
Randall to be refitted, and further developments have been mooted for the non-historic
side of Paca-Carroll.
pus housing is disproportionately expensive.
There is also a note of caution to add to the
argument that a community reinforces behaviours. Sometimes those behaviours aren’t
positive.
ow I think we’ve all heard rumors
they do more hard stuff in Santa Fe.
But in search of how housing policy might change the academic culture, talk
to Mr. Dugan. He says that if students make
it through the first two years of the Program,
they are far more likely to finish it. The change
in housing policy is to benefit these students.
Mr. Dugan described how Junior Lab
classmates have had time to figure out that
they are all strugglingly horribly, but in Sophomore Language, however, students might
not realize that they share a burden, if they
live off-campus. Being present together supports behaviors like attendance, so there’s
more immersion in the program, and the
The financial reality is that
most college students
have to work, and
on-campus housing is
disproportionately expensive.
N
The admin … strongly believe
the support of on-campus
housing is necessary
to lower attrition in the
first years of college
bonds between students grow. They get a
more rounded idea of each other’s characters
by spending time together outside of class.
This vision of a deeper sense of campus community doesn’t feel accessible for all
Johnnies. The financial reality is that most
college students have to work, and on-cam-
U
nfortunately, there are limited possibilities for bringing the benefits of
off-campus housing onto campus.
Adding flexibility to the meal plan has been
considered a number of times, and rejected
as unfeasible, because for colleges this small
food is a package deal. Ms. Waters’ conviction
that the meal plan provides, in her words, “a
good variety of delicious food” has been key
to the housing decision.
On the cheapness of off-plan food Mr.
Dugan had this to say: “I don’t want to be paternalistic, but if we’re going to have people
living off ramen, I’d rather it wasn’t the sophomores.” Ms. Waters added she was working
to pass on the savings of triples to students,
but as of now, they cost the same as doubles.
The administration is aware of these
challenges, but they strongly believe the support of on-campus housing is necessary to
lower attrition in the first years of college,
something which has its own set of financial
consequences for students. Their assessment
is that the supply of campus resources like
9
�Opinion
work study, emergency housing and community mental health won’t be affected by the
change, as the absolute numbers of students
won’t change, just the proportion of upperclassmen on campus.
Students are encouraged
to come to student services
for everything short of legal
advice
U
pperclassmen who wish to stay on
campus face a much tighter housing
lottery. There is resistance to the
idea of creating principles for selection that
would influence the lottery. People are encouraged to come talk to the administration
if they have problems with that. Those with
disabilities are assured that they will continue to be accommodated .
For those of you who do get the boot,
Danielle Lico, Director of Student Wellness,
has written a pamphlet about off-campus
housing. Ms. Waters also points to resources
such as a senior notice board, planned mixers and forums for rising sophomores, ranging from how to cook to how to file a tax return. For students who have problems with
their landlords, there is another pamphlet on
renters’ rights. Students are encouraged to
come to student services for everything short
of legal advice, as Ms. Waters has experience
talking to tricky landlords on behalf of students.
10
I asked Ms. Waters and Mr. Dugan if
they expected the sense of community they
were trying to incubate to express itself in a
more organised student voice, through the
Delegate Council (DC) for example. Both expressed interest in the DC taking a larger role
in the area of student life. They want students
to take the initiative in leading the community they are trying to build on campus, but at
the same time they are committed to letting
this housing policy run its course.
This last question was prompted by the
Ethics. For if students are faced with a complex and fluid set of problems, Aristotle seems
to expect them to turn toward the political
science and think about the interests of their
whole polity. Even if the latter can only be
captured in outline. The Gadfly will be there
to tell those stories.
�Community Voices
She Loves You,
You Piece of Shit.
Written by Hope Taglich
She loves you, you piece of shit.
She has pushed out your kids,
And remained a size 6,
And she has paid your bills and in darker days sustained your will to live
And now we lay, having slept the night away,
At 11 a.m. on a sunny day,
Awaiting eternal damnation.
You will go home, inevitably,
In an hour or two or three
And she will kiss you as you walk in through
The door, and ignore that your breath bears the stench of manicotti
And kush and strange pussy.
She loves you as I do.
They say I can do better, and that may be true;
yet if I could do better, I don’t want to.
I met her once. She looked at me, wordlessly,
Dark eyes filled with defeat, and for a second I savored
Her sense of inadequacy. I am twenty-three, and I revel in
My visibility; I tell myself that one day I’ll be
As invisible as she. She loves you enough to cede
Piece by piece of you to me, and I love you enough to be
At ease with a piece.
11
�Student Life
Finally an Event That’s
Not Sorta Bullshit
F
Written by Tamblyn Mitchell, and Elli Rees
ull of eager energy, the Mellon dance
studio was transformed on Friday as
a mass of Johnnies came together to
celebrate the student musicians assembled
for the (semi) weekly untitled techno show.
With the smell of cigarettes wafting in from
the loading dock outside, the disorienting
and mystifying light display, and a massive
wall of sound provided by each performer,
the individual attendees formed a sort of collective body, united in appreciation of music.
The first act of the night was Last
chance, lovingly referred to as “the Fe boys”
by junior musician Rigel Turner, presented
their “sad cowboy music” with all the passion
and charm one could ask for. Their ability to
move a crowd leaves no question as to why
they have become regular players in the musical world of St. Johns.
They were followed by the acoustic stylings of Zach Leveroni (A 20), who performed
with commanding power despite his set consisting only of himself and a guitar. Ellie Gott
(A 22) appeared next, playing a series of mellow original songs which managed to capture
the attending polity’s attention more fully
than any Friday Night Lecture. They swayed
softly, seated or standing with many people
in various stages of embrace.
12
Gott was followed by S.I.D.S. (Sudden Idiot Death Syndrome), the sole freshman-only act of the night. The band brought
everyone back to their feet, the music radiating into the crowd, providing a hard-hitting,
foot-stomping bridge to the more avant garde
acts of the night.
With Preswerve, Elaina Bowman (A 22)
unveiled a multimedia “fever dream,” in the
words of freshman Liz Dowdy, a thoughtful
and impressive development from her projects’ debut and the Energeia launch party.
Presiding over the whole evening were
the techno party’s founders and final performers, Rigel Turner(A 21) and Noah Negri (A 23), with their own project known as
“Spark.” The pair’s relationship has been entirely founded on music. They met as many
Johnnies do – smoking cigarettes in the
quad – and bonded over the experimentalist
psych-rock group King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
Turner described the live techno shows
as emerging from “a certain musical quest, if
you will,” but also as a natural progression of
their growth as producers. In fact, their first
partnership with the Fe Boys developed from
their appreciation of the musicianship which
Will and Kai (A 21) brought out into the quad
while the weather was warm.
�Student Life
N
“For as long as I have been at the college, all of the student-led
events have been kind of by and for the purpose of continuing one
certain faction of the student body,” — Rigel Turner
egri and Turner have assembled an
eclectic and diverse group of sounds
to fill out their event, while incidentally developing a microcosm of artists who
represent the mess of a polity at St. John’s.
The techno shows have become some of the
most well attended events in our community,
perhaps because they represent, in the words
of Turner, “the opportunity to get out and do
a student-led event that’s not uhhh… I don’t
know… sorta bullshit.”
Negri “did assume it [the techno show]
would take off,” after seeing the success of
past musical events such as Laundry-Fest.
What they couldn’t have known, however,
was that they were creating an inclusive
community drawing from all parts of the
polity.
“For as long as I have been at the
college, all of the student led events have
been kind of by and for the purpose of
continuing one certain faction of the student body,” Turner said. “The techno show
seems to have opened a space which provides for every type of Johnnie. There are
no prerequisites – you only have to bring
yourself.”
13
�Student Life
Connecting, Fighting
I
Written by Silas Pillsbury, Staff Reporter
didn’t feel like I had an understanding of
things like courage or thumos, so I wanted to try it,” John Paul Asijah (GI) said.
Asijah is an Archon of Experimental Philosophy, a club devoted to classical Greek culture
in all its forms, but particularly relating to the
warrior’s life.
with stress.
“Sometimes you know, you just get a little angry, and you can come out and you can
take your anger out in a healthy way at Experimental Philosophy,” Kelly said.
But beyond this, Kelly has a pitch for
Every Johnnie has a different way of
why you may consider joining. “When [you]
grappling with the great books. Some have
were younger, [you] wanted to, I don’t know,
long discussions, some reread religiously,
go be a knight or something, and [you] wantand others profess select
ed to play with swords
Sometimes you know, you and stuff. And there’s no
program books as handbooks on how to live.
just get a little angry, and reason why that should
Whatever your method,
you can come out and you have disappeared, somethe boldest of them all
times you gotta learn to
can
take
your
anger
out
in
a
is to join Experimental
play again, channel your
healthy
way
at
Experimental
Philosophy.
inner child,” Kelly said.
Philosophy
“Experimental philosophy was born of reading about classical
virtues — specifically for me, it was the Nicomachean Ethics and reading about bravery,”
Asijah said. A talkative, twinkly-eyed Graduate Institute student at St. John’s, Asijah was
dissatisfied with just reading about martial
virtue. So he “gathered some rudimentary
equipment, and I gathered some people, and
we started trying it! And people started showing up and asking ‘can we try too?’ ” Asijah
said.
Jack Kelly (A23), another archon of
club, consistently attends. Kelly takes advantage of the physical nature of the club to deal
14
Experimental Philosophy meets weekly on Saturdays, rain or
shine. They dress in historical garb, and practice historical fighting techniques. Equipped
with foam swords and shields, they duke
it out on the St. John’s green. Many of the
members are just looking to have fun swinging foam swords at people, but according to
Asijah, there are many lessons to be gleaned
from the experience.
“We have learned things about martial
virtue I think one of the big things is — we’ve
really drilled fighting as part of a phalanx;
we’ve formed shield walls, we march as a
unit,” Asijah said.
�To an outsider, the aesthetics may seem
ridiculous. Gallivanting on the lawn, they
make quite a spectacle. Beneath the surface,
however, there is something unavoidably serious about this activity.
“We’ve learned that if you try to be a
hero, if you try to charge ahead of the rest of
the group, you’re going to lose — quickly. You
have to work together. You have to sublimate
your desire for glory into the group,” Asijah
said.
Asijah connects this lesson to his experience in class.
“I feel like that’s also part of what happens in seminar. In my first seminar, I wanted to be like ‘everybody is going to think I’m
a genius’. But that’s not really the purpose of
seminar. It’s to arrive at new learning together. And what we do in experimental philosophy is just a physical manifestation of that,”
said Asijah.
But sparring isn’t everything they do.
Experimental Philosophy has an interest in
historical recreation as well.
“Fighting is 51% of what we do. But a lot
of what we do is we try to recreate historical
clothing, we recreate historical food — you
know bread and oil, I’m a big fan,” Asijah said.
Asijah is so committed to historical recreation that he is attempting to grow an ancient form of wheat.
Student Life
“We’ve started to research historical
grains — we wanted to see if you we can grow
a little bit to make a more historical bread,”
Asijah said.
On the side, Asijah has spirits brewing.
To complete the historical experience, he
wants to taste the ancient wine so often mentioned in antiquity.
“I’m a winemaker, I started making wine
a few years back. I’ve actually started digging
through and finding ancient greek wine recipes, and I’m getting grapes shipped to me
from across the world, and I press them. I
make it in the ancient style.”
When asked as to the purpose of all this
historical recreation, Asijah had a Johnnie
style thesis.
“I’m way more connected to [history].
It’s not just like ‘I know evolution happens,
and bread is different now.’ It’s ‘this is what
tastes different about the bread.’ Once you
can do that, you can say, ‘Well what do I like
better? Has modernity been worth it?’ And I
look forward to finding out.”
E
xperimental Philosophy is rooted in
an effort to connect with the past, to
understand the trajectory of the human experience. Beneath the spectator sport
lies a dialogue about the books we read, from
where and whence they come, and how we
combat the ideas inside.
15
�Features
Lights, Camera, Λογος:
TEDx premiers at St. John’s
Written by Lysithia Page
The first TEDx event in the history of St. John’s premiered on January eighteenth, 2020.
Photo by Jordan West-Guzman.
L
ights dim. Cameras start rolling. Eyes
stare at the stage in wonder – months
of preparation had lead up to this moment. Hosts Avi Kumar, Head of Marketing
(A21), and Ece Tuglu, Operations Manager
(A21), began to speak. The first TEDx event
in the history of St. John’s premiered on January eighteenth, 2020. Speakers were comprised of six students, three alumni and an IT
manager. The endeavor was student-led and
culturally diverse.
16
“Our organizing team [was] made up
of six people, and [we were] representing six
different countries. Somehow all of us knew
about TED,” said Tuglu, who also held the title of operations manager. Andrew Hill (A21)
and Rei Osmani (A22) were co-curators,
Shweta Aggarwal (A23) was student speaker
director and Yunju Park (A20) was the head
of design.
�TED is an American media organization which posts videos of speeches, or
“TEDtalks,” online. The organization’s catchphrase is “Ideas worth spreading.”
“The purpose of a TEDx talk isn’t to explain an idea, but to inspire using that idea,”
Chris Liu (A22) said. As they were trying to
decide upon a theme, the organizers emailed
alumni and asked them to sum up their experiences at St. John’s. A majority cited their
intellectual growth. As Tuglu put it, “The only
constant is change.” In the end, the organizers chose the theme ‘On Second Thought.’
We had to make [our
speeches] stop sounding like
a paper, and start sounding
like a conversation
“Everyone in their lives at St. John’s at
some point goes, ‘On second thought, I’m not
sure what I said holds true,’ ” Tuglu said.
In the words of Panayiotis Kanelos,
president of the Annapolis campus, the event
was about sharing “[a] culture of thoughtfulness and reflection with the world.” In his
opening speech, Kanelos touched upon λογος,
a Greek word with many translations, including “speech,” “account,” “reason” and “ratio.” Indeed, the sentiment of conversation as
a means to speak about big ideas lay at the
heart of the event.
Features
like a conversation,” Sylvie McKnight-Miles
(A23) said. In her TEDtalk, McKnight-Miles
spoke about the physics of time.
P
reparations for the event began in
March of last year. Student organizers approached the administration
to request usage of Francis Scott Key (FSK)
auditorium. Additionally, student organizers had to make contact with TED in order
to procure a license to hold the event. Tuglu noted that in previous years, students had
discussed staging a TEDx event at St. John’s,
but this was the first time they had been able
to get the license.
Next, the organizers pitched the event
to the Board of Visitors and Governors (BVG)
in order to fundraise, and received $13,000.
In September, an email was sent out to the
St. John’s polity advertising the opportunity
to speak at the event. The organizers made
sure to involve the Graduate Institute in this
process, and also sent emails to alumni.
Once they chose the speakers, each were
assigned a “point person,” as Tuglu called
them, to collaborate on the drafts of their
speeches. While the organizers planned the
timeline well in advance, everyone experienced the intensity of preparing for the big
day.
In the words of McKnight-Miles, “It
taught me time management.”
“We had to make [our speeches] stop
sounding like a paper, and start sounding
17
�Features
Before Winter Break, the speakers and
organizers began meeting together to practice in anticipation of the day of the event.
Speaker Justin Horm, who is the senior network manager at the college, would bring a
loaf of home-made sourdough bread to each
of these meetings.
Finally, the day came. Volunteers arrived at 9:00 A.M, and audience members
started trickling in around 11:00 A.M. In the
lobby, Daryl Locke (A23) was commissioned
to write poetry for guests on a vintage typewriter belonging to Javier Romero (A23).
Reflecting on the event, Tuglu emphasized that because it was the first of its kind,
Johnnies don’t just sit in their
rooms and think. They go
out into the world and make
things happen
it was bound to be a situation of trial-and-error. “No matter what you do, you’re going to
fail so much. But that’s the fun of it. You learn
how to fix things,” Tuglu said.
Although there were mishaps with the
lighting and clickers, student volunteer Aidan
Durias (A23) asserted that these were all part
of the process. Durias recalled how he had
signed up to be a regular volunteer, but then
started helping out with the projector. “I was
being just as flexible and proactive backstage
as I was in the lobby,” Durias said.
18
L
ooking forward, the BVG has expressed interest in holding TEDxStJohnsCollege events in subsequent
years. Tuglu was grateful for the amount of
underclassmen who volunteered, and hopes
they will continue to be involved. Liu remarked that by inviting members of the
greater community of Annapolis to attend,
what resulted was a celebration of how Johnnies interact with their surroundings.
“Johnnies don’t just sit in their rooms
and think. They go out into the world and
make things happen,” Liu said.
After the closing remarks, Tuglu and the
four other organizers hugged each other. Audience members spilled out into the FSK atrium, and congratulated the student speakers
and organizers. According to Tuglu, it was a
surreal experience to meet people whom she
had emailed months earlier to fundraise for
the event.
“It just [clicked] in my head, ‘yeah, this
person gave us $2,000 out of nowhere,’” Tuglu said. The crowd soon evaporated, and the
organizers, volunteers and speakers began to
clean up. Elizabeth Dowdy (A23), who volunteered at the event, reckons they had been at
work for eight hours.
When there was nothing left to do, Tuglu took her shoes off and walked back to her
dormitory in the rain.
�Play At St. John’s
Dear Polity,
I imagine some of the Buildings and
Grounds crew might have different opinions, but one of the things I love most about
the winter and spring semester at St. John’s
is how refreshing snow can be on campus.
There’s a novel and delightful physicality to
it—the soft orange glow of a snowy night, the
quieting of all sounds, the satisfying shape of
the first steps through freshly fallen powder.
Snow smooths the world’s rough edges.
These refreshing delights are not insignificant, but I don’t think they’re what makes
the snow so special for me. What’s so special
is what the snow does to us. Winter can seem
long and dark. The buildings (and our bones)
creak and groan in the cold wind. And spring
semester, with its essays and plans for the future, can be an awful lot to manage. But when
it snows, we slip and slide around. We become
like children again, building forts and deviously crafting snowballs. We sled. We make
fires and hot cocoa. We see the world like new
again. When it snows, the whole world invites
us to play.
Psychiatrist Stuart Brown—founder of
the lovely-sounding National Institute for
Play—compares play to oxygen. He writes, “…
it’s all around us, yet goes mostly unnoticed
or unappreciated until it is missing.” One of
Dr. Brown’s colleagues, Scott G. Eberle, says
“play is a process, not a thing…it begins in anticipation and hopefully ends in poise, and in
between you find surprise, pleasure, understanding—as skill and empathy—and strength
Community Voices
Written by Chris Krueger
of mind, body, and spirit.”
I believe that one of the finest aspects of
our shared endeavors at this college is how the
opportunity to play is almost always all around
us. Most significantly, our academic program
is quite in line with how Scott Eberle describes
play: it’s a process that involves much anticipation wherein we’re often surprised, must empathize, and through which our full humanity
is strengthened. Moreover, our distinctive location—the relatively spacious, open, semi-urban campus; our waterfront; our general location in tiny, strange Annapolis, with its gaggles
of ghost-tour takers—these aspects of where
we are invite play. And it’s the same with our
lives outside of the classroom, with our wide
variety of student activities and clubs, as well
as in our sports programs. Here, opportunities
for play abound, and what’s true in our sports
programs is true in most other activities, too:
you are invited and welcome to start to play
whenever the spirit moves.
If, this winter and spring semester, you
find difficulty and heavy breath amidst the
weight of the cold, the dark, or the thin air that
can surround decisions about the future, remember what Dr. Brown said comparing play
to oxygen, and this semester, don’t forget to get
involved with something playful. Play board
games. Invent your own game. Fill your lungs
with a walk in the snow. Draw. Write. Come
try a new sport. Just be certain to never forget how special our propensity for playfulness
is, and always remember that, here, you’re always welcome to play.
19
�Student Life
Working in the House where
History and Charity Collide
A
Written by Lysithia Page
day at work for Hannah Glick (A23)
includes leading tours on floorboards older than the Declaration of
Independence and making bean soup. Glick
works at the Chase-Lloyd House, a national
historical landmark and independent living
facility for elderly women.
Through her work at the Chase-Lloyd
House, Glick has had multiple opportunities
to engage hands-on with historical artifacts.
Recently, for example, Glick was tasked with
transporting an antique silver tea set belonging to previous resident Hester Chase Rideout.
The house’s construction was completed in 1774, and not much has changed since.
Chase-Lloyd house is an authentic example
of American Federalist architecture and decor – complete with a grandfather clock and
sword once owned by Horatio Sharpe, a colonial governor of Maryland.
When asked why a mirror
in the house was cracked,
Glick replied: “It’s older than
America”
When asked why a mirror in the house
was cracked, Glick replied “It’s older than
America.” The history of the house even intertwines with that of St. John’s – one resident,
by the name of Mary Tayloe Lloyd, became
romantically involved with Francis Scott Key
(A1769).
“[Key] would write her poems, and she
was like, ‘these are so cheesy, I’m going to
make hair curlers out of them,’ ” Glick said.
“And then they got married.” To this day,
Lloyd’s portrait hangs in the dining room.
(On the topic of any spectral residents, Glick
responded, “If you believe in ghosts, most
definitely.”)
20
“I had to move it the other day because
the Women’s Auxiliary was like, ‘I don’t want
this here,’” Glick said.
G
lick expressed gratitude for the variety of work she undertakes at ChaseLloyd, and additionally emphasized
that the house management team is still hiring. Jobs are currently available in gardening,
elderly care and historical restoration. As for
Glick, she loves her work at the Chase-Lloyd
house.
“I get to feed my love for history, as
well as serve the community and give back to
women in need,” Glick said.
�Student Life
Hannah Glick (A23) points at a marble mantlepiece imported from England.
Mary Tayloe Lloyd, wife of Francis Scott Key, lived in the Chase-Lloyd House.
21
�Student Life
Featured Photos from the
Energeia Launch Party
Written by Lysithia Page
Energeia, the St. John’s arts publication, held a party in the
fishbowl on January tenth, 2020. “We wanted to give the polity
the feeling that the art community is something that we can all
work on. There’s no exclusivity, no prerequisites. We just want
people to express themselves,” Adam Schulman (A21) said.
Photos by Lysithia Page
22
�Student Life
Sofe Cote (A21) designed stickers featuring mathematical propositions for the party.
Daryl Locke (A23) emceed the event and published several poems in this issue.
23
�Co-Editors in Chief
Athena Berreles-Luna
Rose Pellham
Managing Editor
Lysithia Page
Layout Board
Cooper Ussery
Shen Zhou Hong
Staff Reporters
Joe Cunningham
Sophia Heimbrock
Miles Johnstone
Tamblyn Mitchell
Silas Pillsbury
Alayna Raymond
Elli Rees
Javier Romero
Tessa Wild
Rose Zhang
Contributors
Chris Krueger
Jakob Stief
The Student Newspaper of
St. John’s College
60 College Avenue
Annapolis, Maryland 21401
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and
staff of the Annapolis campus.
Opinions expressed within are the responsibility of
the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept,
reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to
publish a professional, informative, and thought provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly should either be in
Micrsoft Word or JPEG format. The deadline for submissions is the Friday prior to publication.
The Gadfly meets every other Sunday at 7 PM in the
BBC. For more information, contact us via email at:
sjca.gadfly@gmail.com
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The Gadfly</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
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thegadfly
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
pdf
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
24 pages
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Gadfly, Vol. XLI, Issue 06
Description
An account of the resource
Volume XLI, Issue 06 of The Gadfly. Published January 27, 2020.
Creator
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Berreles-Luna, Athena (Editor-in-Chief)
Pelham, Rose (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-01-27
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Type
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text
Format
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pdf
Subject
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College students--United States--Conduct of life
Language
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English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Gadfly Vol XLI Issue 06
Gadfly
Student publication
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