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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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
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00:57:57
Dublin Core
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Title
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Plato's Theory of Ideas
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on September 14, 1979, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series. <br /><br />The quality of the recording ranges from poor to very poor. Written versions of the lecture are available <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1239">in the Formal Lecture Series collection</a> and in the <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/5146">St. John's Review (July 1980)</a>.
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Brann, Eva T. H.
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Annapolis, MD
Date
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1979-09-14
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
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sound
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mp3
Subject
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Plato
Philosophy, Ancient
Language
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English
Identifier
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Tape 445
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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a1990f58ca45220f3a93dfb481d52fbd
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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mp4
Duration
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00:00:00
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
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The Science & Nature of Dogs: From Umwelt to Pet
Description
An account of the resource
Video Recording of a lecture delivered on February 16, 2024, by Alexandra Horowitz as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Prof. Horowitz is the Senior Research Fellow in the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York, and is also an Associate Professor in Psychology and English. Along with being a dog-cognition expert, she is the author of many academic journal articles and several books including, The Year of the Puppy – How Dogs Become Themselves (Viking, 2022) and Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (Scribner’s, 2009). In addition to writing books, she hosts a podcast Off Leash on the Freakonomics Radio Network.
This lecture is also part of the Steiner Lecture Series. The Andrew Steiner Memorial Lecture fund was created by the family and friends of Mr. Steiner, an alumnus (class of 1963) of St. John’s College, Annapolis. It was established to attract scholars from different disciplines and worlds, recognizing Andrew’s great intellectual versatility.
Creator
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Horowitz, Alexandra
Publisher
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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
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2024-02-16
Type
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moving image
Format
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mp4
Subject
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Dogs
Cognition in animals
Dogs--Psychology
Language
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English
Identifier
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LEC_Horowitz_Alexandra_2024-02-16_ac
Rights
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A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online."
Friday night lecture
Steiner lecture
-
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0b9d2f17515c254ce8bd02453e1e2836
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:03:51
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 Declaration of Independence
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 30, 1976, by Eva Brann as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
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Brann, Eva T. H.
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
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1976-04-30
Rights
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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sound
Format
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mp3
Subject
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United States. Declaration of Independence
Language
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English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Tape 292
Deans
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
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PDF Text
Text
T H E
C A M P A I G N
F O R
S T .
J O H N ’ S
C O L L E G E
A COLLEGE
UNIQUE AND
UNIVERSAL
EVA BRANN
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UNIVERSAL
E VA B R A N N
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Eva Brann has been a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis since
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T H E C A M PA I G N FO R ST. J O H N ’ S CO L L E G E
Contents
1957, serving as dean from 1990-97. A Jewish immigrant from Berlin,
Miss Brann went to Brooklyn College and later earned her master’s
in classics and a doctoral degree in archaeology at Yale University.
At St. John’s, she is one of the college’s longest-serving and most
respected tutors; she has been a mentor to students and tutors alike,
1.
Unique and universal?
•
page 6
2. We have one Program; do we have one expertise?
3.
•
page 13
Is the “how” of our teaching connected to the “what”?
•
page 16
and a model for the “examined life” the St. John’s Program encourages. Miss Brann has written many books, including Open Secrets /
4. How do we choose and evaluate our tutors?
Inward Prospects: Reflections on World and Soul; Homeric Moments:
5.
•
page 26
How do we select and monitor our students? What is their life like?
•
Clues to Delight in Reading the Odyssey and the Iliad; The Music
6. What are the relations between tutors and students?
•
page 37
of the Republic: Essays on Socrates’ Conversations and Plato’s
Writings; The World of the Imagination; What Then, Is Time?; and
7.
What’s wrong with us?
The Ways of Naysaying: No, Not, Nothing, and Nonbeing. Miss
8.
What kind of institution does our Program require?
•
page 40
•
page 43
Brann’s many honors include her selection as a 2005 recipient of the
National Endowment for the Humanities’ prestigious award, the
National Humanities Medal.
9. What are the essential features of our Program?
•
page 48
10. What is the St. John’s Seminar, the center of the Program?
11. What do we do in the tutorials?
•
page 58
•
page 65
a. the Language Tutorial
b. the Mathematics Tutorial
c. the Music Tutorial
12. How does the laboratory fit in?
13. What do we want from and for our students?
•
14. What do we wish for – and see in – our alumni?
Illustrations by David Johnson
page 67
•
15. Postscript: A small college and those that love it.
page 70
•
page 72
•
page 52
page 31
}
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4
Introduction
5
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prospective students, inquiring teachers, and close friends, for example – and alumni.
These are the same issues sometimes seized upon by critics of St. John’s: the choices
In this essay, the college’s longest-serving tutor, Eva Brann, explains what
on our reading list, our requirement that tutors teach across the curriculum, and a
St. John’s College is and why what we do is important. She describes the college as,
practice of not including in our classroom discussions the historical, cultural, and
paradoxically, “unique and universal,” because St. John’s persists with its singular
social background of the texts we read.
and distinctive academic program while holding to an ideal of education that is meant
to apply to all humankind and has, in fact, resonated throughout the world.
These questions grant us the opportunity to reflect upon the integrity and wholeness of the Program. We believe that the best way to learn is to confront the texts of
In no way is the college perfect, Miss Brann acknowledges. Many aspects of the
the greatest minds of our civilization, with nothing between us and the work, not even
college, for instance, the breadth and depth of the reading list, represent both our
tutors. Yet, we recognize how important it is to have tutors who bring both intellect
greatest strengths and our most daunting challenges. And yet St. John’s continues to
and imagination to their discussions, and who understand how to frame a question
attract international attention, welcomes scores of visitors to its two campuses, and is
that will open a world of ideas from a simple passage.
called upon to offer seminars to many different groups outside our college. What we
Our books and our program demand more of us than, in truth, we are capable of
consider a very simple and natural way to teach – cultivating in an individual the
achieving. It is this stretch in our search for truth, however, that allows us, as a
ability to formulate questions and begin the search for answers – intrigues many who
community of learners, tutors helping students, students helping each other, to
come to know St. John’s because of the intellectual honesty of our endeavor. We don’t
achieve some measure of greatness. That all of us at the college continue to have faith
pretend to be something we’re not. On the other hand, our ways are not easily
in this endeavor is perhaps to be celebrated above all.
adapted for just any college or university, nor do we have a “method” that can be
defined in pedagogical terms.
As we launch a campaign to strengthen and secure St. John’s College, we are
thankful for this clear vision of what liberal education is.
In answering fourteen questions that get to the very heart of the college, Miss
Brann explores issues that are interesting to both curious observers of the Program –
Christopher B. Nelson (SF70)
President, Annapolis
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6
Unique and univ ersal?
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When people first hear of what we do they can scarcely believe their ears. We
invite them to come and see. The campus is always swarming with prospective stu-
How can a college be one of a kind in reality and nonetheless a possible
dents and curious visitors. If they are familiar with other institutions of education,
model for higher education in its conception? – because that is how we at St. John’s do
here are the main differences they will observe:
indeed think of ourselves. We are a distinctive community very much shaped by particular people and places, yet we have faith that our way is broadly applicable to other
institutions of learning.
All small institutions – colleges particularly – rightly think of themselves as
1. We go back behind the modern departmental division between humanities and
sciences to an older ordering: authors and arts.
2. The Program is all-required and non-specialized; thus there are no departments
at all and practically no electives.
unique. All professors cherish their special qualifications along with their students’
3. Every faculty member teaches all or almost all the parts of the Program. Conse-
budding individualities, and the far, dry winds of Kansas blow differently over a cam-
quently, we are amateurs rather than professionals, and we mark this fact by calling
pus than the close, moist breezes of South Carolina. Uniqueness is, oddly enough,
ourselves “tutors” rather than “professors.”
what they all have in common – from Chicago to Colorado Springs, from Poughkeepsie
This country used to be a boiling pot of curricular reform and innovation. Most of
to Santa Cruz – all sixteen hundred or so, belonging to that distinctively American
the “alternative” curricula of the last century have come and gone. They were con-
species, the small independent school. Each has its own variation on the standard
ceived as experiments with the possibility of failing – and they did fail.
university plan of departmental offerings, arranged broadly under humanities and
sciences, from which students elect their courses.
The St. John’s Program was never thought of as experimental. Young souls are not
meant to be the subjects of try-outs. From its founding in 1937, its teachers had faith
St. John’s College is differently different. We too have our gallery of faculty char-
in the Program as the best way known to them to educate young Americans in partic-
acters; an English friend says that visiting the college is like stepping into an English
ular and all human beings in general; the Program was universal in conception. In fact
novel. We even have two uniquely beautiful campuses under different skies. But we
it has resonated in the wide world. When I was dean I received inquiries and visitors
differ seriously from the conventional variations of other schools in having one single
from Madrid to Tbilisi and beyond. So rather than watch the curriculum fail with
plan of education, our Program. Whereas other colleges’ uniqueness consists of their
personal regret but intellectual equanimity, we would think that some central pivot of
internal variety, ours derives from a coherent curriculum.
civilization had been lost, should the college disappear – and it won’t, now.
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8
I have often wondered what we had that other remarkable schools didn’t – Black
Mountain College in North Carolina for instance, or the Experimental Program in
Berkeley, California. I think what we had was the Program: Our community was from
the first built not on assertive personalities and unstable curricular notions but on a
strongly grounded plan of learning, pretty nearly the same that we still follow.
In an educational world in which commonality is regarded as oppressive, we are
sometimes chided for having the confidence, not to say nerve, to submit ourselves and
our students to a set study plan. But we think it is a faculty’s responsibility to devise an
integrated curriculum for its students’ learning rather than to engage in turf battles in
favor of departmental specialties. Moreover, anyone who has lived in a working community knows that it can’t survive without some healthy egocentricity, some sense of
being at the center of the world. Who would devote a life to anything less? Our more
sober colleagues do continually warn against the notion that we are the world – and
they are half-right, for there are many good things we are not, and many other places
in this country about which the world also revolves.
The brute reality is that we have in fact remained one of a kind. There is, to my
knowledge, only one other four-year college devoted to a Program in part modeled on
ours, but with a significant difference: Thomas Aquinas College in California has a
strongly Catholic integrated curriculum, while St. John’s College has been from its chartering in 1784 (a wonderful date, the first year after the Revolution) a school not enforcing on its students “any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any
particular religious worship”; we are now in fact completely secular. And as Madison
CHARLES
DARWIN
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so rightly predicted for freedom of religion, religious interest of every sort flourishes
the product of long hours of faculty deliberation, all designed to protect the free
at the college. How we read religious books will be worth a paragraph (see p. 70).
engagement of our intellects and imaginations – and, of course, our hearts. The real
Why have we, who think of our Program as a model of liberal learning which is especially at home in America, remained all but unique in this country? The United States,
motion, the real freshness, in this school comes not in doing new things but in doing
the old things better. For our founding ways are inexhaustible in their possibilities.
as former dean Robert Goldwin has written, was the result of an almost miraculous con-
Undoubtedly we are an establishment, an institution. An establishment of learn-
fluence of streams of luck. This college, too, needed a lucky concurrence of events to
ing is something of a contradiction in terms, since real learning is a radically disestab-
come about: a pair of founders, one, Scott Buchanan, well versed in the whole liberal
lishing activity. Strange as it may seem, it is that untrammeled inquiry we are trying to
arts tradition, the other, Stringfellow Barr, possessed of administrative talent; a cam-
protect with our multitude of established practices. But in the course of maturing we
pus on offer; a general spirit of revival for liberal education as exemplified in Alexander
have become more and more our unique self. So how can we serve as a model for other
Meiklejohn; and finally a European emigration which brought people like Jacob Klein,
communities of learning, especially when in our hearts we believe that numbers are
who fell in love with the intelligent naiveté of America’s young and brought the learned
nothing and what really counts is that here and now one young (or old) soul should see
depth with which to effect a second founding, placing under the inspiredly practical
something that makes life worth living?
Program a philosophical grounding. There was, moreover, the opportune return of the
Well, we have obligations to the country that allows us to function, and the public
World War II veterans, who were superbly serious students, and above all, a faculty will-
that supports us, and to our own two cities, Annapolis and Santa Fe. And we feel an
ing to conform themselves to a plan, not the plan to themselves. And this Program they
obligation, born of our sense that we know something worth knowing about learning,
committed themselves to had an aim and an apex: the ardent pursuit of knowledge and
to American education. So we engage in lots of outreach: give free access and help to
truth, or as the Greeks say, philosophia, “the love of wisdom.”
visitors who want to see us at work, advise prospective founders of schools all over the
By now the “New Program” of this old college is itself quite venerable. At seventy
world, help committees with curricular reforms, aid teachers with planning courses,
years it and its faculty can be said to be mature. We fine-tune it continually, and some-
send out reading lists and manuals, explain the Program to people writing disserta-
times even make what seem to us world-shaking changes, but viewed, as philosophers
tions and books, and go anywhere to lead all sorts of seminars: for high school stu-
say, sub specie aeternitatis, “under the aspect of eternity,” they look minuscule.
dents (though I once did one with four-year-olds, two of whom had crawled under the
Around the stable curriculum have developed zillions of traditions and practices, each
table whence they gave enchanting exegeses of a poem on sunflowers), for business
�13
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and community leaders, and of course for our alumni, whose appetite for reading
books together is lifelong. In fact, our principle is to do everything we can do without
spreading our substance too thin.
2.
A LBERT
E INSTEIN
We h av e o n e P r o g r a m ;
d o w e h av e o n e e x p e r t i s e ?
It is a question worth asking because, as I will explain, our way of teaching
requires that we be and remain, deliberately and purposefully, amateurs. (We keep in
mind that the word means “lovers.”) As I said, we call ourselves “tutors”; it is our
single academic rank and the title is meant to replace “professor,” which means a
professional who has special expertise and the authority that comes with it. All of us
arrive with graduate training, but we must let our particular interests go to learn the
Program. (I myself, for example, was trained as a Greek archaeologist, yet I haven’t
looked at an antiquity – pots were my specialty – in scholarly earnest for half a century.)
There is, however, something we all get to be good at, perhaps even specially
good: asking questions. The questions we learn to ask – it is one criterion for being a
tutor – are not so-called teacher’s questions, such as a pedagogue asks pupils to see if
they’ve studied up: “What was Achilles’ mother’s name and where did she live?” – to
which the meek answer is “Thetis, in the ocean,” but the spirited answer is: “Why ask
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15
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me, since you already know?” Nor are they information questions like “What time is
believe that the impetus behind the question is the hope of an answer, as a possible
it?” to which Yogi Berra’s immortal reply was “You mean now?” Nor “yes or no” ques-
answer draws and shapes the question. In fact St. John’s differs from very nearly all
tions, like “Tell me true, is there or is there not Truth and Beauty?,” which could be
secular schools in having a faculty that either believes in the real possibility of truth or
the ultimate conversation-stopper.
in the pedagogical value of not foreclosing that possibility. Another way to put this is
Our questions are the expression of a genuine desire to find something out by proposing it for a common inquiry, the kind of question tutors might ask themselves when
that you will find no easy relativism among us; our relativists are hard-thinking and
fiercely honest.
they study by themselves. Such a question is a kind of empty envelope, a vacant grasp,
It should go without saying that to believe in the possibility of truth-seeking is
the concave outside of the convex inside, an undeveloped negative, a receptive open-
the very opposite of having the truth or propagating it. We never tell our students
ing. All these metaphors circumscribe a good question, a searching question. In a dia-
what to think. In fact, then it wouldn’t be thinking. We don’t even drive them to
logue by Plato called the Meno, which many of us regard as the scripture on question-
question their beliefs, for “questioning” in the aggressive sense isn’t question-asking.
asking, Meno poses the question of questions: However can we ask after truth? If we
Our questions are intended to incite thought, which might result in putting stronger
have it we needn’t ask, and if we don’t have it we won’t recognize it when it turns up.
grounds under the faith students come with or indeed, sometimes, in exposing a belief
Meno means to stymie Socrates’ inquiry; Socrates has two defenses at once. One is:
as ill-grounded.
Never mind, just go ahead and search. The other is: Question-asking and answering is
In the same spirit of non-coercive openness, there is frequent discussion among
the most characteristically human activity there is, and we must continually consider
tutors about the kind of question that is best for a seminar discussion: Should it be
not only how to do it well but also what in us makes it possible. Here is in germ what mil-
based on a tutor’s interpretation of the book carefully worked out in private (with the
lennia later will come to dominate philosophy and cognitive science as “epistemology.”
perhaps not so unintended consequence of pushing students in that direction), or
This is the kind of problem tutors think about and the kind of questions – questions
should it express a current perplexity on the tutor’s part (with the likely, perhaps even
in search of truth – they are, I think it is not boastful to say, unusually good at asking;
it is something like our local expertise.
Some of our friendly critics claim that we are too good at it – that our students come
ignorant and leave confused. But it is not so. I don’t know any teacher who doesn’t
desirable, result that students will be a bit at sea)?
The central venue for questions is the seminar, of which more later (see p. 52).
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Is the “how” of our teaching
want to talk together about what they’ve learned in private; by nature, the young, if
connected to the “what”?
not spoiled, like to grapple with what is hard but great.
Our business is to get out of the way without giving up our responsibility. Of
St. John’s does seem to have two aspects: the way we teach and learn, and
course we teach; even Socrates is talking hyperbole, for his companions in fact
the matter we set out for ourselves and our students. Both of these are distinctive.
think they’re being taught. But – I’m looking for the right word – we do it cannily and
Friendly explainers of the Program often refer to our use of the “Socratic method”
tactfully. We try to keep students focused and spontaneous, both. It’s tricky and
and to our list of “Great Books.” Members of the community cringe a little on both
absorbing. I think every tutor, even those who’ve taught here a half century, has stage
counts. Here is why.
fright before every class, largely because we’re not in complete control, and yet we’re
completely responsible.
a. How we teach:
One obvious concomitant of our way is that we are very reticent with our opinions
Whatever it is we do, it’s not according to any method. A method is, properly, a rule-
– at least in class. Outside of class I, for one, will pontificate if a student wants it. I recall,
governed process, and we adhere to none such. And it isn’t Socratic, not only because
when I was dean, three woman students making an urgent appointment with me about
Socrates claimed to have been no one’s teacher but because the Socrates we know
an important matter. The matter turned out to be what I, personally, thought about
occasionally drives people into a corner with his questions – which we never do, at
God. We had a candid conversation – for me a real workout. Thus reticence expresses
least not without feeling sorry. Yet he is in some respects our model: in rarely telling
itself in being sparing with talk in class and conversationally open outside.
but often asking, in valuing acknowledged perplexity as the starting point of learning,
in having utter faith in the possibility of truth.
The reason our teaching is not a method is that it’s just a bit of nature. We do what
comes naturally: encourage thinking by asking (everyone here knows that you can’t
A number of ways to approach a book require lecturing. One is for the teacher to
produce a critical theory into which the book is fitted. It is not entirely unfair to say
that this is sometimes the art of making the difficult unintelligible, because academic
theoretical language is often willfully abstruse. We don’t do that.
“teach people to think”; such taught thinking is just that simulacrum of thought,
The other, more common, method is “backgrounding” or “contextualizing.” In
rule-driven reason). By nature, people, if not corrupted, like to rouse themselves to
this approach the teacher “introduces” the student to the book by telling how the
communicative expression; by nature, people want to hear each other; by nature, they
book can be understood according to the author’s historical and social background.
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We particularly don’t do that, for at least two reasons. It does require lengthy lecturing, by the end of which the students’ minds are so remote from the text that little a
teacher says next can recall them, and to paint even a somewhat plausible historical
setting requires enormous knowledge on the part of the professor – always supposing
that the discovery of historical truth is a finite endeavor at all. But even if an author’s
epoch were accurately definable, how would it help to understand the book? Many of
our writers are overtly or covertly embattled with current opinion and think with
rebellious originality about the human condition. So talk of “Greek” or “Medieval”
or “American” thought is grossly unilluminating: How can a people or an epoch
think? Persons think.
I spent a part of my youth studying the Attic pottery of the late eighth and seventh
century B.C., the richest evidence we have of Homer’s time – and I have no non-speculative idea what it was that any or all of these people thought about anything at this
generative time when the Western tradition was born. Abridged, not to say canned,
introductions are mostly compendia of current preoccupations and brave attempts to
bring a book closer to students by drawing it into their supposed circle of interest. But
this is counterproductive: What arouses interest in students is not currency but
authenticity – if it is allowed to reveal itself.
So we tutors at St. John’s believe – all of us most of the time – in directness and
immediacy; we put nothing between ourselves and the reading and behave as if every
one of our books was indeed an open book to our students. I call this the “a cat may
look at a king” principle – these royal books were written for us, the willing laity.
JANE
AUSTEN
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I think that this way of ours works in many settings and for many subjects. It is, as
and ourselves to consciousness – by reading them not as historical documents but
the term goes, transferable – an approach we can tell about and demonstrate to
as living presences that made us who we are and taught us to talk as we do. We are
teachers anywhere.
convinced that these Great Books contain a live wisdom necessary for thinking out
our current lives, for living awarely. Those who read these books – or study texts of
b. What we teach:
symbols or scores of notes or canvases of paint – in our way often experience the
But this way of dealing directly and immediately with texts works most naturally for
disciplined magic of these revivals.
the so-called Great Books, well over a hundred of which we read with our students
through their four years.
Some colleagues are embarrassed by that appellation; it sounds too pat. But in
I think it is hard to get away from the Great Books designation for the simple
reason that “greatness” has real significance for us. It is the criterion by which we
have chosen our hundred-plus works – based in part on these millennia-old lists.
truth, Great Books lists have been labored over for millennia. Ours represents a kind of
Here are some of these criteria: Greatness shows up as inexhaustibility. Some of us
Western consensus of the ages. In Santa Fe’s Graduate Institute there is a Master’s
have read and reread our books for ourselves or in preparation for class over scores of
degree program in which the Eastern Classics are studied, just as they ought to be –
years; there is always more to discover. A bored tutor is rare; a bored student is, more
with serious language learning. With our undergraduates, however, we stay in our
often than not, just prey to one of the endemic dis-eases of late adolescence, among
West: “One thing at a time” and “Know thyself” are the guiding principles, especially
which is complex sloth.
the latter; for knowing ourselves, how we came by the terms we live with, seems to be
the first condition for a knowledgeable appreciation of other traditions.
This point of view, that to know ourselves we need to know our tradition, is, I
Second, these works are pretty self-sufficient. Writers of stature strive to be as
context-independent as they can be. They tell you what you need to know to understand them. Good editions with pertinent notes will do the rest.
hasten to say, different from “historicism,” the notion that we are the products of
Third, and most telling, these books are original in two senses. They are often the
impersonal historical forces, the blindly determinist effects of a dead past. We want
earliest version of something new that will sweep the world, when it was still close to its
nothing to do with what is dead and bygone. When we speak of our “tradition” we mean
roots in common experience and accessible to lay people. And they are original in the
individual works by thinking authors that have, to be sure, shaped contemporary life in
sense of being characteristic, of bearing the stamp of their author’s personality – not only
ways of which we are largely unconscious. But we can bring these works back to life –
their personal crotchets and idiosyncrasies, but their peculiar ways of reaching depths.
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Fourth, these works are infinitely artful, bold and subtle, beautiful by design or
ugly on purpose. These authors are masters of the liberal arts that are a large part of
our Program.
F YODOR
D OSTOEVSKY
Fifth and finally for present purposes, the works, though their message may sometimes be dismal and dark, are not themselves dreary or depressing but grand and
redemptive. We have a sense that this four-year gift of semi-adult freedom that parents
make to their children should not be spent on mediocre documents of societal problems and their academic solutions – the world will soon teach all that – but on the deepest, most exhilarating exemplars of human achievement. The principle here is: First
have acquaintance with the best, then face the worst.
In this adherence to Great Books we are somewhat out of sync with the universities – less so as the pendulum of opinion swings back. In the last part of the last century there arose a movement sometimes called the Canon wars. “Canon” with one n,
nota bene; it is a Greek word meaning a rule or standard and now used most generally
to refer to Great Books lists. An attack on the Canon was mounted for these reasons:
that no work is to be privileged as great; all writings are essentially mere documents
composed to confirm an elite in its dominance, be it one gender, one class, one continent. Moreover these screeds really have no individual author, being the product of
their time, of history.
Those of us who followed this debate and had actually studied some of the canonical
works were amazed. First of all, they seem to be highly individual products; secondly,
they seem to be far more radical in their attacks on each other and their society than
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these contemporary critics. But above all, our way of reading is naturally expressed in
First, it takes real mastery of facts and theories to teach these disciplines, and the
the question: What does the author intend? And I, for one, would not know how to
teacher has naturally to assume the part of an authority. We could not be the perpetu-
address an authorless book, for how could I penetrate its words except on the assump-
al amateurs we need to be to teach in the whole Program nor could our classes be con-
tion that they were written for me by a being I was like, in kind if not in degree?
sistently carried on by students if we taught academic disciplines. We could not fulfill
St. John’s was not much touched by these battles; we and our students were simply
our ideal of being exemplary learners rather than authoritative teachers.
too much engaged in actual study, too much captivated by this miraculous inheri-
Second, the academic disciplines are not elementary in the sense we require (most
tance. One might say that we conceded the elitism of the tradition and practiced the
of these fields, about one hundred thirty of them, were, incidentally, inventoried
egalitarianism of its readers. But we did think harder about our commitments.
by Francis Bacon as early as 1620, in his “Catalogue of Natural and Experimental
In particular, we needed to be clear about the feature, or non-feature, of the
Histories”, for example: “History of Venus, as a species of Touch”, that is, the physi-
Program that both academic and lay visitors notice with surprise: the absence of any
ology of sex). By “elementary” in this context I mean having the property of elements
disciplinary fields – no history, sociology, anthropology, literary theory, history of
that are fairly natural beginnings, as language learning usually begins with the parts
philosophy, etc. Our students might incidentally gather some information on these
of speech, their syntax and vocabulary, the study of music begins with the mathematical
fields (in the case of history of philosophy, of science, and of mathematics more than
construction of the diatonic scale by compounding interval ratios, and mathematics
almost any other group of American undergraduates).
begins with definitions and axioms. Introductions to the field disciplines are usually
But generally we ask them to read individual books as unassigned to any discipline
brief outlines of a huge body of research results whose shape depends very much on
and to practice on them the basic skills of learning. Our reasons for circumventing
the presenter’s theories. It is hard to undertake such studies together in a way natural
academic fields are less theoretical than practical and pedagogical. (Our students do,
and accessible to all. Euclid’s Elements, on the other hand, begins with the sentence:
in any case, go on to disciplinary studies in graduate school. And though they go there
“A point is that which has no parts.” It is our model. Here our students start their four
nearly completely unacquainted with the “isms,” concepts, methods, that their col-
years of mathematics. You can’t begin more minimally or more discussably: What – in
leagues from other institutions have been trained in, they seem to find their footing
the world or out – is an object that has no part?
pretty quickly – and sometimes to stand out for the freshness of their approach.)
Here are some of these reasons.
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H o w d o w e c h o o s e a n d e va l u a t e
trained as a cartographer specializing in Chinese maps, who captivated us by showing
our tutors?
on the blackboard how to draw large meaning from a little Chinese character, and who
told us that he was preoccupied with the question whether Confucius’ writing was
I have never visited an institution whose life depended so much on a faculty
well fitted to its curriculum as St. John’s. Nothing is more important to our internal
well-being than our choice and assimilation of tutors.
applicable to American life. And he seemed to have far more in store than on display.
Our hope is that once appointed a tutor will stay with us. We do what we can –
never enough – to help new tutors. In particular, beginning tutors’ seminar partners
It has always seemed remarkable to me that we – a school that prides itself on
are chosen from more experienced colleagues to serve as their helper, critiquer-in-
putting students’ learning first – should have as our first criterion for permanent
chief and advocate. But there are many other kinds of help, as new tutors engage in the
appointment not teaching but distinction of mind defined as excellence of intellect
arduous task of working their way into the Program: phone calls requesting help to
and imagination. Nor is teaching second, but rather competence in the Program and
tutors who know the material, the regular weekly meetings, led by a more knowledge-
increasing understanding of the questions raised by its books. For us these are not
able tutor, in which anything that pertains to a particular class is discussed,
simply formalisms but vivid conceptions against which tutors are appraised. Compe-
meetings with the dean, and above all, if there is time, sitting in on experienced
tence is not so hard to gauge, nor is good teaching in our spirit, the third criterion that
colleagues’ classes.
we look to. The first demand, however, though crucial and not vague, is harder to
But just because we want tutors to stay, the review process, conducted by the dean
apply: It describes a tutor who is able to open up large vistas in a small piece of text,
and the Instruction Committee, is severe. Letters are written for each appointment up
who can see the whole through its parts and illuminate a detail by the entirety, who
to tenure which are more specifically critical the greater our hopes for the tutor are. I
can put two and two together and on occasion get, gloriously and rightly, five. We
recall all too well, on the other hand, what contortions of ominous vacuousness I had
think of good teaching as the natural fallout of these and similar abilities.
to engage in as dean to warn people – as tactfully as possible – that they fell short of the
Thus this order of desirables fits our notion of the tutor as learner-in-chief, and as
teaching more by example than by a technique. I think that if you are full of focused
first criterion (distinction of mind). For while all the other standards could be met by
willingness and trying, there isn’t much to be done about natural endowments.
enthusiasm (a lovely Greek word, meaning “having the god within”) you’ll be with us all
Two criteria for tenure prevalent through the whole academic world that we don’t
your life. To give an example: I recall the appointment interview of a present colleague
employ are publishing and classroom “performance.” Some of us write books, but
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more because we can’t help it than because our careers require it. (In fact, no one at
St. John’s has a “career” since there are no academic ranks, and becoming dean is
more an act of penitential love than a career move; besides, when our term is up we
happily go back into the teaching community that has been our care.) Academic publishing depends largely on specialized disciplinary research, and tutors learning the
Program don’t have much time for it. You will not hear talk of “my own work” among
tutors. We do each have our special pursuit, but it is no more our own than a great
book is a private possession.
As for teaching as a performance, it doesn’t fit us: Neither brilliant lecturers nor
disciple-making guruship fit our way.
What’s a tutor’s life like? Jacob Klein, a former dean and one of our grand old
men, used to outline with a gesture of his hand a wave with many crests, a roller-coaster track. It’s an alternation of exhilaration and despair, as classes go well or ill, as we
ourselves feel a sense of having gotten something or being confounded. That teacher’s
wave train is amplified by our aforementioned sense of responsibility without the
power to compel by grades, by badgering, or by lectures.
A tutor’s life is without question arduous; by spring when formal obligations mount
up (all our classes last the whole year) some of my colleagues look like the walking dead.
Two nights a week are given to evening seminars, Friday night lecture imposes a sort of
obligation to be a model of attendance for students. Family life suffers some; spouses
bear the brunt. Besides paper conferences, advising, committee obligations, there is
the fact that, since we are usually teaching outside of our original training, we need a
W.E.B.
DU B OIS
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lot of time for adequate preparation. Everything is always new or just begun – a boon
insofar as we don’t often get jaded, a trouble insofar as we often get worn out.
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H ow d o w e s e l e c t a n d m o n i t o r
our students? What is their life lik e?
It’s not that we work harder than anyone else in the professions or in business. It’s
that to perform our mission well we are supposed to think things out, ruminate,
What kinds of students do we want? Since in recent years our increasing
meditate, talk at leisure. We and our students know that the very word “school” is
applications actually allow us to be, as they say, “selective” – a badge of prestige – we
derived from the Greek word for leisure, scholé, and that’s just what this school
have an important decision to work out, as we always do, by consultation and discus-
doesn’t have enough of, especially for newer and younger tutors. I recall that when
sion. Our policy has been, within financial and timing constraints, to approve applica-
years ago we were invited by our neighbor, the Naval Academy, to show some of their
tions as they roll in, applying certain minimal criteria: Does this student read with fair
faculty, military and civilian, how we lead seminars, a brief discussion arose: Which of
facility, write with some literacy and possess a minimum of mathematical training – in
our two schools is more like permissive Athens, which more like martial Sparta? The
sum, can the student be expected to cope with the Program? For the rest, we were as
wonderful conclusion was that in point of faculty discipline and student requirements
close to having a self-selected student body as a college can be. We took wild chances
we were taut Sparta and the Academy was liberal Athens – except for one aspect: The
on a wild or rebellious or eccentric kid and sometimes lucked out and often lost.
officers thought that the pressure of a tight pace was good for developing quick
At this point I’ll speak for myself, well knowing that my colleagues on the other
decision-making in future officers, while we were sure that continual busyness was
side have arguments both principled and practical. I think that “selectivity,” far from
bad for thoughtfulness in future citizens. The intellect continually in harness loses its
being a school’s mark of excellence, is a sign of curricular and pedagogic failure. A
spontaneous leaps, and the imagination continually pressed for time contracts its
good undergraduate educational plan should be inclusive in design and well enough
embracing visions.
taught to bring together future fellow citizens of all sorts of abilities. Wanting to be a
I should add that there are now on both campuses numerous tutor study groups,
member of that community of learning should be the main criterion of admission.
funded and unfunded, that broaden our learning while drawing us together, animat-
Desire trumps brilliance any time when it comes to learning. At St. John’s, tutors must
ing both campuses all year long. Although they occupy time, they are nonetheless felt
have some distinction of mind to be appointed; students should need none to be
as a recreation.
admitted. They may come undistinguished but they don’t leave that way.
Do we look for a representative student population? I think most of us know from
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years of teaching that the distinctiveness of individuals being themselves is the ulti-
an hour take turns appraising their work; then the students take their turn to
mate diversity. Nonetheless, insofar as some of us have a sneaking conviction that this
respond. Don rags should be candid and precise but not hurtful, though there is
is the curriculum for all human beings who want to understand the roots of their
sometimes some weeping for the sins of the term or from sheer nervousness. Great
modernity and for Americans in particular, we want very much to be teaching students
pleasure is taken in praising a student precisely, and great pains are taken to give
of every describable kind.
clear, accurate, concise reports, and helpful advice. The don rag is not the place for
Our monitoring and evaluation of students has won public commendation,
crypto-grading or psychologizing, though of course that happens. A written report of
although it uses few of the conventional tools, such as essay or short-answer exams,
tutors’ comments and the don rag committee’s recommendation for the student’s
quizzes, graded papers, frequent hands-up in class, absence records. To be sure, we
future goes to the dean.
too have an absence policy and a fairly fierce one, since there is no making up a lost
The “enabling” procedure occurs at the end of the sophomore year. All the students’
conversation and since students’ non-presence is a dereliction of duty not only toward
records are reviewed individually in a meeting of all the tutors who have taught them.
themselves but also toward their classmates. When there is memory work to be done,
Comments are made in the hearing of the dean and the Instruction Committee, who
especially in language, tutors do give diagnostic quizzes. But we have no official exam
decide whether each student is able to continue. The chief factor in the decision is our
period. “Hitting the books” just before examinations is futile here, papers are never
judgment that the candidate is likely to continue to learn and to help others in their
graded but critiqued, and hardly any Johnny is even capable of the short answer to a
learning. Less than five percent are asked to leave and several of those return on appeal.
good question; these machine-graded tests are notoriously designed to be unforgiving
Also, sometime earlier every student must have passed a test in the simple algebraic
of reflection.
operations necessary to the mathematics and physics of the last two and a half years.
Since we are with our classes all year long and since they are small and since class
For the first three years students are orally examined by their seminar leaders on
participation is demanded, we get to know our students well. Twice a year we report
their reading in fall and on their annual essay in spring; at their best these are lively
on their performance and their progress in the “don rag” (a whimsical term come down
conversations. But the oral of orals is the culmination of each student’s account-
to us out of our hoary past from our founders’ experience at an English university; the
giving; it is the public examination all seniors undergo on their senior essay. It takes
“dons,” that is, masters, “rag,” that is, torment, the students). All the students meet,
place in full academic regalia and consists of a searching, hour-long conversation on
one at a time, with all their current tutors together, who in the course of a quarter of
the essay between the student and three tutors. Friends and sometimes family are
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present, and at the end they congregate around the now-candidate for the degree
of Bachelor of Arts for congratulations. Just before graduation all the seniors’ records
are reviewed by the faculty, and seniors found sufficient are recommended to the
Board for the degree.
We are a talking college, and these oral examinations fit us well, but there is also
plenty of paper-writing and these papers, though not letter-graded, are evaluated.
This is a well-monitored student body. Everyone knows who works hard and who goofs
off, who’s deeply serious and who’s a smart-aleck. Certainly the students know it;
what they don’t always know is that we know it too.
What are our students’ lives like? The Program is very demanding. Moreover we
A RISTOTLE
hope that the curriculum will expand and meld into extracurricular activity, that
common study and casual conversation will continue classroom discussion – and the
converse. The scores of activities that enliven the campuses, from Santa Fe’s Search
and Rescue team to Annapolis sailing and rowing crews, from fencing to photography,
from the art studio to the gymnasium, all these teams and clubs stand more or less
under the aegis of the Program. Our directors of athletics and student activities have
known how to make our varied sports and outdoor activities support and express our
learning; Mens sana in corpore sano, say the Romans, “A sound mind in a sound
body”, and in this school, at least, the body works out so that the mind may be better
exercised. Well, at least in part – also for friendship and fun and for something else: In
a community of learning that discourages competition in the classroom, athletics
offers an outlet for energetic but regulated rivalry.
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All over the campuses, in the coffee shops and unused classrooms, you will see
Seminars, when all the classes are mingled for seminars selected and led by students.
students preparing for class together, sometimes in twosomes (they have the taste,
The same committee also mounts forums on issues of student life, recently a series –
lost in maturity, for dual-purpose togetherness, such as studying their electricity and
remarkable for its searching seriousness, as it seemed to me – on the Student
magnetism manual while experiencing similar phenomena in a less formal mode),
Handbook’s requirements for conduct conducive to a community of learning.
often in larger groups, or in lively conversation. This devotion sometimes, wonderfully,
assumes the aspect of the higher kookiness: Last year two young gentleman in
Annapolis invited me to tea (bags in mugs) to show me their beautiful new dormitory.
They told me that they had continued a recent tradition of reading Homer’s whole
Iliad in one day; they decided that such a work must not be interrupted, so that when
6.
What are the relations between
tutors and students?
answering calls of nature they went together – one reciting, one not.
Students are in seminar Monday and Thursday night; they are supposed to be at
Our tutors’ way of teaching and our students’ way of learning naturally
lecture on Friday night. They have six tutorials and two or three laboratories a week
make for a strong bond between them. One might say that it is too close to be intimate.
during the day. Each class demands long and often challenging preparation. It would
Put another way: Our common work is too serious for too personal an involvement.
be doable, except that too many students work at jobs more hours than are officially
The fierce intellectuality and the common commitment to truth – as a goal, not a
permitted, in order to make money. When I was dean, students complaining of loss of
possession – help to ensure this closeness-with-proper-distance. (There are, it bears
zest for their studies and mild depression were often simply overworked – analogously
repeating, very few teaching faculties in this country today who will own up to truth as
to new tutors. That being said, by and large our students can be counted on to share
an aim of education. Our tutors do – at least as a pedagogical practice; of course some
our love for the work we do together. Only let, say, an unsympathetic visitor question
of my colleagues are deep-dyed skeptics, but for them too their conviction is a
their occupation and the wagons circle.
philosophy – a way of loving wisdom.)
Some students are, nonetheless, insatiable: Throughout the year they form study
The faculty has resolved that intimacies between tutors and students are wrong.
groups, often with tutors, and mount “guerrilla seminars” on non-Program books.
This is, to be sure, what the law and professionalism require. But for us it is a conse-
Twice a year the Student Committee on Instruction organizes the All-College
quence of our “tutorial” – literally, our “guardian” mode. We see ourselves as acting
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within an old tradition first set out in a Platonic dialogue, the Symposium, where a
young worshiper of Socrates reports that his offer of sexual favors was quietly and
firmly rejected in favor of a finer possibility.
Although in seminar discussions we are expected to assume no seniority but to
support our claims just like the students, we do, after all, evaluate them, and they are
in that sense not our equals; our classroom equality involves a certain degree of benevolent hypocrisy. These are not the conditions of bona fide friendships. Those arise
when in that sweet moment on commencement day, we, who have addressed them as
Mr. or Ms. for four years, call our new-minted alumni by their first name for the first
time. Then often a lifelong friendship is started. Yet we often have the devil of a ridiculous time trying to get graduates to break through their decorous distance and to be
casual toward us: This faculty gets a touching lot of respect. But of course as we grow
older together we get closer in age, and so we grow more intimate as well.
Mutual respect is the norm, and, in addition, though we don’t generally speak of
“my student,” we do often grow closer to certain people who seek us out or who
attract our fond interest. An example going way back to 1958 comes to mind. I was a
freshman tutor then living in a room in one of the few seventeenth-century houses in
Annapolis. Near midnight the phone rang and the agitated voice of one of my freshmen came through: “Oh, Miss Brann, I need help with Eros!” I was young enough
then to need it myself, but I understood his particular requirements and got him started on his annual essay about the dialogue mentioned above. He’s a lawyer now, deeply
concerned with the service aspect of his profession, and we talk pretty regularly.
M ICHEL DE
M ONTAIGNE
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There are a few students – sad exceptions – who don’t establish special relationships
Then there are the inherent limitations of the Program, the obverses of its
with a tutor they particularly trust; opportunity is surely not lacking since each student
strengths, which have to be acknowledged. The Program is a small island in the sea of
has about twenty year-long tutors over four years, and it is part of our regular day to be
our ignorance; to list all the worthwhile knowables our students don’t learn would be
available to all students – not just the ones we happen to have in class – for help,
tantamount to producing almost all the catalogues of all the libraries in the world.
advice, or just conversation, beyond paper conferences and other required “contacts”
Most things to be known are not known by us, and our students leave us vastly ignorant.
(horrible word). You will see tutors and students deep in conversation in the dining
Moreover, most tutors know less about any one subject than any particular professor
room – we have a “take-a-tutor-to-lunch” plan – or in restaurants off-campus. It’s how
at a university (where the universe of learning is indeed supposed to be collected), whose
we learn of the interests, particularly the curious kinds of connoisseurship our stu-
knowledge, in turn, covers only a tiny territory in the vast field of some specialty. The
dents pursue. How many fantasy books have I read because a student ingeniously
Program is a highly restricted plan of study that provides us with elemental skills of
proved to me that they were works of liberal art?
learning and exemplary cases of knowledge, no more.
Even so, it is largely beyond our capacities. Our books demand that we be linguis-
7.
tically acute, mathematically quick, and philosophically deep every day. Of course we
aren’t up to it, although we help each other as best we can – tutors students and often
students tutors. We give and take help with the solution of technical problems, with
What’s wrong with us?
the construing of sentences, with the interpretation of a line of poetry.
Often we need to compromise, to read too quickly, to leave difficulties unresolved,
Well, almost everything that’s right. So distinctive a community will pay
to let ourselves and our students get away with less than satisfactory work – especially the
the penalty for being itself. Visitors do sometimes speak of us as an educational utopia
students, who are after all, never allowed to play only to their own particular strengths.
– but recall that “utopia” is Greek for “no-place.” We have to remain plausible to
I recall vividly an example from the days of my deanship. A fine, well-respected student
ourselves and to others, and so an occasional inventory of flaws is in order.
simply could not achieve the satisfactory grades we require – only in the senior year – for
I have already mentioned that we are perpetually time-starved with deleterious
consequences to tutors and students.
graduation. The failing class was our demanding senior laboratory, and her tutor came
to see me. “Can’t you do something for her?” I asked. He said, “Do you want me to
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prostitute myself?” “Yes, please,” I said, and he did, and he was right to do it.
There are darker things. Life here is so intense that it sometimes just falls apart.
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What kind of institution
does our Progr am r equir e?
Students don’t prepare, classes go badly. There have been times in my life when I
coasted and withdrew, as happens to most tutors from time to time. Students have to
The Program holds us together intellectually, but our Polity provides the
think about money too much; some carry a debt burden that constricts their future.
practical condition for a stable communal life. The role it plays within the college is
They experience crises of faith and entanglements of love and other pressure-cooker
similar to that of the Constitution in this country: We certainly don’t think of it all the
effects. Here the possibility of escape to the other campus, Santa Fe or Annapolis, is a
time, but all our procedures follow from it.
saving grace. Our students come from the world and bring its corruptions along, and
The Polity gives us an institutional form, developed over many years of revision, a
whatever troubles American society has, we have, though, I think in a mitigated degree.
form that contains our educational purpose pretty adequately. Like the Program
Consequently our students aren’t exactly angels out of class – more the opposite,
itself, the Polity is at once unusual and exemplary. I shall mention only the provisions
though there are times when the demons do turn into cherubs. A particular occasion
that are particularly concerned with the Program, and these in broad strokes.
for such a transformation comes at the end of the year, when the freshmen, who are all
We are a truly national college – a rare thing – one college with campuses in
required to sing in the freshman chorus, give a concert. In Annapolis it’s in our Great
Maryland and New Mexico. We have, with small local variations, the same Program,
Hall. We stand in the gallery listening to them sing Palestrina or Mozart and are in
and the Polity protects both the expressions of local life and the unity of the Program.
heaven with the angels – for the moment.
It first defines the responsibilities of the Board of Visitors and Governors (whose
This section could be much longer, and actually it all needs to be said, at least
among ourselves. Few things are as harmful to a community as terminal idealism.
members, besides governing, do actually visit the campuses to familiarize themselves
with their life). It then goes on to detail the functions of the faculty. What is vital here
is that the two presidents of the campuses are listed as first among faculty members.
Our presidents are officially tutors who often teach and always learn within the
Program; their responsibilities reach deep into the community. There are two deans
chosen from the faculty who – and this is unique as far as I know – sit on the Board ex
officio, so the faculty in turn reaches into the Board. The deans chair their part of the
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Instruction Committee, with which the presidents in turn sit ex officio. This committee of faculty members, six each, elected on each campus, has, together with the
deans, responsibility for the Program of Instruction, including the formulation of
changes and recommendations of tutorial appointments to the respective president.
One might say it was a powerful committee, but we avoid such language: It is a respected and responsible committee, and a hard-working one. To complete the picture of
integration, it should be said that the associates, the professionals who run our administration, are also faculty members and sometimes teach. The deans, on the other hand,
coming from the faculty, are just what they were as tutors: amateurs. In fact we avoid
the administrative ambiance as best we can, and each dean ministers to the community in a new way. My own style was to try to be some version of a universal grandmother.
The Polity specifies scores of committees, charges, and procedures, but the aim is
to have a structure as receptive as possible to the mission of the college, a form totally
F LANNERY
O’C ONNOR
friendly to the function. The Polity represents a pretty successful attempt to overcome
the paradoxical fact, already noted, that an “institution of learning” is a contradiction
in terms. For nothing is less amenable to institutionalization than a young – or old –
soul in development. And yet what is an intellectual paradox is a worldly necessity.
In this attempt our governance structure reflects the Program: Both are full of
prescriptions designed to protect freedom.
Here is the place to add that the students too have a Polity and a student government
that disburses the quite considerable funds for student activities. One of this Polity’s
chief provisions is a sleep-study rule designed to keep the dorms safe for learning – a
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rule not always effective because of a besetting student sin of tolerance for each
lar reform when he said: “The birthing mountains heaved and a ridiculous mouse was
other’s disruptive habits. There is also the aforementioned Student Committee on
born.” We’re better off always first trying to do better what we’re already doing.
Instruction which mounts discussions on the Program and whose recommendations
the college’s Instruction Committee take very seriously.
The Polity includes our Graduate Institute, which I must not fail to mention
although this account is mostly concerned with the undergraduate college. The Grad-
Most organizations have a double aspect: Some members are responsible for its
uate Institute is meant to give people who have missed out on it a belated chance at the
existence, others for its essence. At St. John’s, the Board and the presidents labor to
kind of liberal learning offered at St. John’s. Its content is derived from the undergrad-
keep us in being, while the deans, the Instruction Committee, and the whole faculty
uate Program but the ordering is by subject segments lasting a semester: Literature,
work to keep us being who we were meant to be. And both parties are well intertwined.
Politics and Society, Mathematics and Natural Science, Philosophy and Theology,
How does it work in practice, particularly with respect to the two campuses? Santa
History. The completion of four of these leads to a Master’s degree in liberal arts. In
Fe (founded in 1964) has long since outgrown its beginnings as an Annapolitan colony.
Santa Fe, the Graduate Institute also includes a program on the Eastern Classics; stu-
One of the delights of visiting either campus, coming from the other, is that in the
dents tackle the Great Books of China, India, and Japan.
most different of settings – the spacious skies and mountains of the Southwest against
What the Graduate Insitute students, who are generally older, might lack in the
the confined vistas and coastal waters of Annapolis – the conversations turn about the
skills the undergraduates practice through four years and in the continuity of their
same universal questions; the coffee shop blackboard bears the same mangled Greek
reading, they make up in maturity and appreciativeness. Many tutors love to teach the
and the same lovingly drawn geometric diagrams. Of course where there’s two of any-
same books to students fully engaged in practical life. Our G.I.’s, as they are called, in
thing there will be inventively invidious comparisons: Annapolis is supposed to be
turn thrive when they realize that tutors will help but won’t dominate their learning,
teutonically earnest, Santa Fe fecklessly laid-back. But our students transfer back and
that they are encouraged to reflect on their studies in the light of their experience.
forth in droves and are the better for it.
It is true that having to gain consent on both campuses for major Program changes
(as required by the Polity) and preserving the possibility of student transfer acts as a
brake on curricular innovations, college-wide or local. But I’ve sat through enough of
those at other colleges to know that the Latin poet Horace might have meant curricu-
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What are the essential features
of our Progr am?
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What matters even more is that under this all-required Program, which comprises about sixteen year-long classes over the four years, all the students in the same year
are doing the same thing. Hence they can – and do – talk to each other; a senior might
It’s time to come to the Program itself. The first feature that surprises the
be seen helping a freshman with an astronomical diagram. Nothing contributes more
public is that it is almost entirely prescriptive and what is more, prescriptive not only
to making us into a working community than our common curriculum.
for the students but also for the teachers: four years of non-elective, non-departmental, non-specialized study for students and tutors alike.
But the thought behind all others is that there are elemental skills and crucial
books with which every inhabitant of modernity should have experience, and that it is
We really mean it. The same Program our students commit themselves to is
a faculty’s responsibility to establish these learning matters and to have faith in them.
learned and taught by us, though of course more slowly, over many years. After all, if
Students tend to have faith in their teachers’ faith: Although our students are given to
they can learn all its parts so, presumably, can we.
raising questions about everything, there is remarkably little resistance engendered
What we lose by this perhaps startlingly unconventional approach is, as so often at
the college, also what we gain. We are, as I said, perpetual amateurs and often ourselves
by the Program, hard taskmaster though it be. (To be sure, our students chose this curriculum, but what student was ever prevented from complaining by that little fact?)
at sea. But these deficiencies also make us better teachers – more sympathetic, fresher
We find that the conventional elective system has too many pedagogically dubious
(no yellowed lecture notes for us), more alive to students’ difficulties. Intellectual dar-
aspects: How can a student make a knowledgeable educational choice before being
ing – the willingness to plunge into new material, unabashed candor – the willingness
educated? Should students really follow their bent or shouldn’t they rather submit
to admit ignorance, and bald directness – the readiness to do without scholarly camou-
themselves to expansive diversity? Is it good for them to fill up on gut courses or
flage – these are the virtues this approach requires, and we think that such non-author-
unplanned alternatives when their preferred course is full? There is much to be said
itative teaching does our students good. Since advancing in the Program by teaching it
for giving up passing preferences in favor of a liberating experience, and capricious
is the main project of the tutor’s life, especially in the first ten years, the dean, who is
choice in favor of a coherent study plan. For we make every effort to keep the curricu-
responsible for the teaching slate, contravenes the rules of seniority observed at most
lum not only excellent in its matter but also coherent in its ordering.
institutions. Newer tutors are more apt to get the classes they ask for as they plan their
own learning schedule; the more experienced faculty is not favored.
The first essential feature of the Program is, then, its prescriptiveness for students
and tutors alike. An all-required program must, of practical necessity, be elementary.
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No high levels of sophistication can be reached by non-specialists. We welcome the
necessity because “elementary” need not mean “introductory” or “simple-minded.”
To us it rather signifies “deep and radical,” in the sense of delving into the foundations of world and soul and asking questions that go to their roots. For us it is not a
shame to be always at the beginning (which the Greeks called arché, the governing
source of things) but rather the evidence of our ever-fresh wonder. Still, the Program
is, albeit basic, pretty demanding.
The second feature is that there are three kinds of classes: seminars, tutorials, and
laboratories. In a very old division of liberal learning into Authors and Arts, the
seminar corresponds to Authors; the largest part of our Great Books list is assigned
for the seminar and discussed there (see p. 52). The Liberal Arts, the arts of language,
mathematics, and music, are practiced in the three tutorials (see p. 58). The laboratory
updates the medieval liberal arts tradition; the idea that the inquiry into nature
requires working on stuff with instruments – “laboratory” literally means “workplace”
– is quintessentially modern; here students do bench work (see p. 65).
Our catalogue – its title is “Statement of the St. John’s Program” – gives an accurate
overview of the study plan. It is not a repository for hopeful projects or defunct courses
but a regularly revised, detailed description of the material studied and the approach
used in these classes in each year. It is our primary document.
The third feature is negative: the absence of textbooks and secondary reading. Of
course, tutors and students are free to seek help from whatever quarter they can; my
own shelves are full of algebra and calculus and physics textbooks. But textbooks are
F RIEDRICH
N IETZSCHE
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conveniently canned wisdom, and we prefer to use, wherever possible, original works,
young than for their elders) that intelligent loquacity is at its peak at night. Some run
because they are usually closer to the foundational questions. Where we want to
way past the allotted two hours, but experience teaches, as has been said of a hanging,
achieve some usable competence quickly we try to employ manuals written by tutors
that a predictable cut-off time wonderfully concentrates the mind.
for the Program. They range from our Greek manual, which manages to teach intro-
Seminar begins with a question posed by one of the seminar leaders, who sit at
ductory Greek in a reflective way, to a number of mathematics and physics manuals
opposite sides of the oblong table. There are normally two tutors leading the seminar.
often containing annotations to accompanying original papers.
The point is to prevent students from talking to the teacher, to inhibit a tutor’s domi-
To my knowledge we never assign secondary literature (that is, scholarly treatments
nating the conversation, and, now and then, to treat students to a collegial difference
of a primary work) to students though we may recommend some to them and to each
of opinion. Newer tutors are, as I said, paired with more experienced ones, and this is
other. Annotations and commentaries explaining difficulties in texts are, I suppose,
often their most effective initiation into our ways of teaching. We find that this appar-
gratefully resorted to by all tutors as they prepare for class or engage in private study
ently profligate arrangement is of the essence; two-leader seminars really go better by
– which, of course, often comes to fruition in the community.
our criteria: students talking and listening to each other.
There are, grossly speaking, two seminar styles. Some tutors, like spirits silently
10.
brooding upon the waters, utter hardly a word and make things go merely by their
attentive presence. I’ve heard students say: “He’s a wonderful leader, he’s almost
What is the St. John’s Seminar ,
silent.” In the same vein, when I was dean, I listened often to the complaint: “He
the center of the progr am?
dominates” – evidently a major tutorial transgression for students who take our
promises seriously.
The seminar is the center in so far as all the liberal learning of the Program
Other tutors regard themselves as full-fledged members of the conversation
is meant to come to fruition here. A seminar in our sense is just a conversation among
who will have their say, though, of course, on the same terms as the students. Both
a score or fewer people focused by – and mostly on – a book (or musical score or paint-
styles can work.
ing) that the members have read (or heard or looked at) beforehand. The regular sem-
But the main duty of the leaders is to keep things moving, ask new questions,
inars of the Program happen in the evening, on the hypothesis (truer, alas, for the
recall members from tangents – though some flights from the texts are too interesting
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to rein in quickly. In any case, we are in seminar not only to attempt to understand
writers frequently absorb or take issue with each other. Thus they form each other’s
what our author for the night is saying but also to decide for ourselves whether there
context and relieve us from fabricating introductions.
is truth in the book and how it might affect our lives. Living engagement is the soul of
One way to put our approach to the Great Books is that we see in them not history
the seminar, and often spurts of witty banter or gusts of delighted laughter are
but tradition, history being what has passed and is no longer, while tradition – literally
testimonial to the spontaneity of the conversation. Playfulness is the style of live as
“what has been handed over” to us – is what is ours, now. Many of us are history buffs
opposed to dead seriousness. But the bread-and-butter mood of the seminar is candor,
privately, but no school was ever less interested in bygones than ours. Nonetheless,
straightforwardness, responsiveness, and the conciseness that comes from thinking
over the 256 seminars of their four years our students do accumulate some knowledge
before speaking – though we don’t want members to inhibit their contributions with
that might be called historical. But they remain blessedly ignorant of conventional
too much circumspection.
classifications: epochs of history, schools of thought, academic subjects. You might,
Students who have been in seminar together become memorable to each other. An
for example, ask a junior, who has just read it, what the subject of Newton’s
alumna of three decades will say: “Oh yes, Ms. X., she always used to...” (Our students
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica really was and receive a wondering
are strictly held to formal address to preserve civility even in the heat of topics that
answer: Theology? Philosophy? Mathematics? Mechanics? Dynamics? Astronomy?
touch them nearly.) We do, however, try to keep ourselves and our students from
Cosmology?
assuming hallmark positions, and we would like contributions to be at once impromptu and to the point. That’s the art of seminar participation in a nutshell.
Where does the seminar list come from? Such lists were made and kept being
made from antiquity on. Our list came largely from the “best books” lists compiled for
Students are expected to do their readings, which may vary from thirty to a hundred
workmen’s education classes in England and for honors courses in America, begin-
thirty pages, well ahead of time and twice if possible. When I see a student in the coffee
ning in the late nineteenth century. It is revised for titles and fine-tuned for selections
shop late on Monday afternoon with the book open on page ten, I shudder.
regularly, but it is essentially stable; the judgment of the reading community diverges
Our set seminar list looks chronological. But we are not exemplifying a historical
at the edges but unifies about the core. We know very well that every central book has
development; each book stands on its own. We read our authors largely in the order in
about it a penumbra of fine authors and that these come front and center as they are
which they wrote, because that is the null hypothesis which relieves us from imposing
discovered by enthusiastic advocates. Nonetheless I never cease to marvel at the pal-
subject groupings or schools of thought on our assignments, and because these
pable difference between great and good; the latter pass by, the former you live with
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perpetually. Those are the ones we want our students to experience.
Associated with the seminar is the preceptorial, a two months’ break in the junior
and senior seminars during which the students study a chosen subject, book, or
author, along with a tutor. The subject might be a text from within or beyond the
Program, be it fiction or philosophy, poetry or music, or a theme, say thermodynam-
J ONATHAN
S WIFT
ics or economics. These breaks are felt to be a kind of festival of the mind for students
and tutors alike, for the classes are smaller, the pace of study is more leisurely and the
penetration deeper.
The annual essay, a much longer piece than is required of students in tutorials, is
written for and examined by the seminar leaders. For their writing of the senior essay,
which is to be the fruit of their four years and which must be acceptable if they are to
graduate, seniors are given a free month. This essay is not supposed to be a product of
research but of disciplined, well-expressed reflection on a book or topic. It must be
found acceptable by a committee of tutors formed for the purpose. Some essays are
mediocre, but many are purely wonderful. The bond between essay-writing senior and
essay-advising tutor often lasts a lifetime.
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What do we do
in the tutorials?
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for the Great Books.
Thus we have a language, a mathematics and a music tutorial.
In the tutorials we ply the liberal arts, the skills of the intellect. The
a. The language tutorial lasts through all four years. The language learned in the first
tutorials are recitation classes led by one tutor who directs the students’ translations
two years is ancient Greek, in the last two French. Students sometimes refer to the
and demonstrations and helps them work out difficulties. The arts here practiced are
“Greek” or “French” tutorial, but that is not our intention. In fact, except for a few
not learned as bare rules or as processes privileged over products; they are not mere
students, the language competence isn’t, mildly speaking, very high; our students
techniques. They have always had powerful matters of their own in which they are set
come to us, after all, largely from average American high schools. These are language
out and exemplified, as a Euclidean proposition is at once a lesson in formal thinking
tutorials, and though we obviously can’t talk about language without linguistic exam-
and a piece of substantial geometry.
ples, a very moderate (laboriously acquired) knowledge of the elements will suffice for
In fact our tutorials still follow the traditional list of the liberal arts. First come
our purpose, which is to reflect on the ways of human speech: What are the “parts of
the arts of language, thinking and expression, the trivium or “three-way”: grammar,
speech” and how are they connected to thinking, that is, how is grammar related to
logic, rhetoric. Then come the arts of formal structures in time and space, the
logic? What does it take to say the same thing in two languages, that is, to translate?
quadrivium or “four-way”: mathematics starting with the unit and the counting
What makes some speech “rhetorical,” that is, especially persuasive?
numbers of arithmetic and ascending dimensionally from the partless point to the
Why ancient Greek, a dead language? Well, it isn’t dead to us and it’s beautiful; it’s
plane and to the geometric solid, proceeding with the application of mathematics to
the language in which most of our freshman books are written; it’s philosophically
visible nature in physics, particularly in astronomy, and culminating in passion-
fundamental and etymologically helpful to the semantics of English. And it’s just suf-
inducing sound in music, above all, the music of the spheres. (I am told that in the
ficiently different in syntax from English to make comparisons possible and prof-
slightly overwrought early days of the Program, the books on natural science in our
itable. In my experience Greek is the least complained-of subject in the Program.
library were accordingly cataloged under “Music.”) The rules, structures, and
Why French? Many years ago there was a grand debate to decide between German
formalisms of these arts, together with their exemplary applications, form the
and French. As I recall, French won primarily on the grounds of “sensibility”: We
matter of the tutorials. And of course, they are also the elements of and models
didn’t have enough sheer elegance in the Program. Perhaps it was also that French was
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a little easier? In any case, our students read and translate, line by line, fine examples
Our four years are elegantly framed by two kinds of geometry, Euclidean and non-
of the verbal arts, among them Greek and French plays and a lot of poetry. These serve
Euclidean, studied in freshman and senior year respectively. One is the geometry of
as exercises in rhetorical analysis, to be sure, but also as enrichments of the imagina-
the natural imagination and the other is a geometry that, though logically consistent,
tion. There is, besides the study of the elementary grammars of both languages, also
is imaginable only on a model within our basic Euclidean world.
a sequence in logic. And rhetoric is practiced in a number of short papers, some of
One reason mathematics is eminently learnable is that it has few, well-ordered
which are critiqued at paper conferences. We are of two minds here: whether, time
elements: definitions, axioms, postulates (whereas language begins everywhere at
being limited, to indulge our natural pleasure in carrying on a conversation about the
once and has complex elements: morphology, syntax, vocabulary). These are the
student’s intended content or to do our bounden duty to correct misplaced commas
elements that Euclid organized in his classical compendium of that name, the book
and skewed syntax while preaching the gospel of meaningful discourse.
we study in the freshman year. It is a tiny change in one of his postulates that produces
the mind-bogglingly strange new geometry of the senior year, which, for example, has
b. The mathematics tutorial, which also runs through all four years, is generally agreed
no similar figures (figures, that is, of the same shape but of different size) and which
to be the easiest to teach. That’s inherent in the Greek word “mathematics,” which
we study from the work of its originator, Lobachevsky.
means “what pertains to learning.” Our mathematics, to many a student’s surprise, is
In between we study one mathematical revolution after another: the diagrams
most satisfyingly learnable, and, to exaggerate only a little, practically teaches itself.
used by Ptolemy to “save the phenomena,” that is, to give a rational foundation to the
Hence we don’t acknowledge mathematics blocks, and so we don’t have any. Partly, of
appearances of an earth-centered cosmos and their conversion by Copernicus to a
course, that follows from the fact that our students have chosen to study in this
sun-centered universe; the geometric conic sections of Apollonius and their transfor-
Program, but it is also because we regard mathematics not as a difficult impersonal
mation into the loci generated by algebraic equations (by some accounts the one sin-
technique but as a liberal humane art. We wish our students to be easy with the
gle conceptual innovation most explanatory of modernity); the advance from the
thought that mathematics might be close to the roots of human nature, for example,
static mathematics of the ancients to a mathematics of motion as formalized in the cal-
our root capacity for recognizing units and counting them and our mysterious ability
culus; the expansion of counting numbers to include zero, negatives, rationals, and
to picture the inherently invisible such as points without parts, lines without breadth,
finally irrationals as conceived by Dedekind; the turn of mind that allows us to think
solids without matter.
of infinity not as an indefinite progress but as an actual transfinite magnitude; and
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62
Einstein’s theory, which overturns our ingrained assurance that this moment here is
the same “now” throughout space.
We ask our students to study these high moments in actual mathematical detail
not simply as evidence of human progress, for at every turning point we ask also what
was lost in dropping an earlier restraint. Nor do we study them as history of science,
for we value each discovery for its intrinsic beauty (a word now proscribed by estheticians but fully active among mathematicians). We do, however, want students to carry
away not a secondhand but a direct knowledge of the intellectual effort that went into
the making of their world.
c. The music tutorial happens in the sophomore year, just when most of our theology
is read in the seminar – not by chance, for music is not only traditionally the apex of
the liberal arts but, in Luther’s words, “stands close to theology.”
As a liberal art music has learnable elements out of which it is composed, a kind of
qualitative mathematics: small number ratios which, when realized by plucking
strings of various lengths stretched over a sounding board, produce the consonances
and when compounded yield the diatonic scale, the circle of fifths which displays the
keys, and so on to the traditional rules of meter, melody and harmony and their
inspired breaching by composers. Perhaps in no other liberal art are the elements so
immediately also the building blocks of its works.
Our students study these and then analyze musical compositions, score in hand.
They pay attention, especially in sacred music, to the relation of words to notes; they
A DAM
S MITH
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64
consider the relations of parts to wholes; they learn to hear subtleties and recognize
large designs. In sum, they reflect on the phenomenon of incarnate, impassioned
65
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H ow d o e s t h e
labor atory fit in?
mathematics in general and on the new effects obtained by stylistic innovations in
particular. There is, of course, a repertory of superlative examples.
The laboratory is, finally, the newcomer to the liberal arts, though there is
Truth to tell, not all tutors trust themselves to teach the music tutorial, which
for us no question that it belongs with them. For what Francis Bacon calls – surely the
seems to be the only class requiring some special talent and prior training. I haven’t
allusion is intended – “the inquisition of nature,” meant to force her secrets from her,
myself, though I’ve attended it. And we do always seem to find people who have the
is a human concern no less than any of the humanities as now understood: the human-
daring to do it.
centered studies such as, say, literature.
As I’ve mentioned, as freshmen all our students sing together. When the alumni
In the three-year laboratory, then, we subject the bodies and motions of nature to
return for Homecoming some of them again sing together, pieces from their freshmen
controlled conditions, from Galileo’s inclined plane to Millikan’s oil drop chamber,
chorus manual. Altogether, this school is full of music.
and apply instruments of observation and measurement to them. Although original
I might add here that a decade or so ago we had a great debate about the role that
accounts of discoveries are read and discussed and tutor-written manuals are studied,
the visual arts, not traditionally included in the liberal arts, should play within the
the main activity is hands-on benchwork, experimentation in the sense of subjecting
Program. On the Santa Fe campus a painting segment was tried out; it is gone now. My
stuff to procedures. Our laboratory equipment is not generally sophisticated, and we
guess is that the visual arts – which are certainly vigorously plied extracurricularly in
don’t expect our students to make new discoveries. Instead we replicate numerous
our studios and appreciated through exhibitions in our campus art galleries – don’t
crucial experiments and get an elementary notion of the kind of ingenuity and
quite fit into our Program because the teachable elements are hard to marshal into a
patience required to make a science of nature’s ways. I don’t remember in my years of
common curriculum, and there is in them nothing quite equivalent to making music
learning to be a laboratory tutor ever hearing the “scientific method” even mentioned;
together; so music appears to be the art most in accord with a community of learning.
it never seemed that anything so jigged as one scientific protocol could apply to all
these great moments. Probably our students could nevertheless give a pretty good
account of what it means to define a problem, to devise an experimental setup, to
subject phenomena to measurement, to record data and gauge their value.
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The freshman year begins with observational biology, with the tricky problem of
classification: Is outside appearance or inside structure more revealing? The labora-
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far the pervasive application to human affairs of these well-defined terms of physics –
including, of course, relativity – is legitimate.
tory then takes up the problem of measurement and the atomic constitution of matter.
Once a week, on Friday night, there is a lecture, the only one in the Program for
The sophomore year is given over to music, but the laboratory resumes in the junior
which attendance is obligatory – perhaps a rule more honored in the breach than the
year with kinematics, mechanics, dynamics, optics, electricity and magnetism up to
observance. But the students who generally profit most from the Program are present.
Maxwell’s equations. Since by the middle of the year students know some calculus, the
After the lecture there is an intense, searching and sometimes interminable question
class isn’t so different in content from that of a standard first-year physics course,
period. Visiting lecturers, all spent though they may be, find these midnight revels
except for the use of seminal papers, and in the hours given to reflecting on the mean-
exhilarating. Where have they ever been so well attended to?
ing of physical quantities like matter, force, energy, fields – how they show themselves
and how they came to be formulated. The senior year returns to biology, now on the
sub-individual, that is, molecular level, but first takes up subatomic, that is, quantum,
physics. At this point the laboratory becomes fairly demanding, not only mathematically but also conceptually. Recall that none of the students are science majors.
13.
W h a t d o w e wa n t f r o m
and for our students?
Nonetheless, they study some early papers on radiant energy and think about the way
nature becomes elusive on the subatomic level: the wave-particle duality (the theory
What we expect from our students while they are with us, what it takes to do
that radiation and matter are in some respects wave-like and in others particle-like);
well, is somewhat different from what in most schools is called “keeping your grades
probability (the theory that on a very small scale strict causality fails and the laws of
up.” Steady preparation, faithful attendance, timely delivery of well-written papers –
nature are statistical); and uncertainty (the theory that the process of observation
these virtues are only part of it. We want our students to extend themselves through
itself makes the simultaneous measurement of certain quantities in principle impos-
the Program, even to the parts that don’t come easily to them, and to be serious
sible). With these investigations our students are ready for their world, not only
about their whole vocation as students. We want them to think of themselves as
because they have some notion how science is developing far beyond our naïvely
responsible members of the community of learning: The faults of “having stopped
natural understanding of nature, but also because they can judge for themselves how
learning” and “not contributing to the class’s learning” as judged by their tutors are
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causes for being “disenabled.”
What about morality, that swamp of uncertainty for America’s educational institutions? We are bound to enforce local and federal law on drinking, drugs and sexual conduct. But we are an institution of learning, devoted to the cultivation of the intellect
and the imagination, and our first and peculiar care is for the intellectual virtues. There
are certain kinds of behavior that we judge to be incompatible with our community of
learning, and our Student Handbook states this clearly. In particular, the use of illegal
mind-altering substances and the practice of intellectual dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism)
are not tolerated when they come to our notice; these we investigate exceedingly carefully and punish quite uncompromisingly. This morality we confidently enforce for the
sake of the college’s mission. You can’t work in our spirit if you’re not in your right
mind, and you are doing less than nothing if your work is not your own. And though our
M ICHAEL
FARADAY
students come to us from a dangerous world, I think, occasional paroxysms aside, that
they lead remarkably good and sober lives. What we would really wish is that all their
intoxications and ecstasies were those of the thinking soul.
This is what else we want for them: four years of minimally clouded thoughtfulness.
For this we have managed to keep our classes remarkably free of a current scourge of
higher education: politicization. The Program, whose works are full of religious doctrine and political opinion, requires something higher than tolerance; it requires
appreciative openness to all the possibilities of the intellect and the passions. No tutor
is entitled to wreck our conversation by introducing a personal ideology, and our
students generally have the tact to veer off from politics in the narrow current sense
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(the sure sign of which is getting hot under the collar; it marks the difference between
pose, and that they will themselves be the catalysts of such communities of two or of
politics and political philosophy, which remains relatively serene under opposition).
many members, for action or for contemplation: companions, families, firms, schools.
We want students to feel safe in bringing all their experience to bear on the discussion
And indeed our alumni are by preference founders and maintainers of small worlds.
of the books, but we hope they will learn to lever them into a large, universal mode.
2. Courage: We expect them to be full of boldness in approaching intellectual and
This desideratum for our students is so close to the heart of our life that I will try
practical problems, in complementing their liberal learning with expertise, in trans-
saying it again: We want to give our students a classroom in which inciting books are
muting their four years’ study into life-long learning and reading. And indeed our
talked about not as mere literature nor as historical documents, but boldly as they
alumni seem to learn and do practically anything, and they are, many of them, invet-
meant themselves to be taken: as the Word of God, or the insight of the intellect, or
erate readers and seminar-goers.
the wisdom of the world. And yet we want these same students to read subtly, not as
3. Decency: The fallout of years of thoughtful reading about good and evil should be
believers, disciples, and partisans – that may happen privately – but receptively, with
at least plain probity. Not to suppose so is to renounce faith in the moral effect of liber-
that most desirable of human dispositions, an open mind, one which hears apprecia-
al learning. And in fact, the alumni I know well do seem to have very live consciences.
tively and responds judgingly, both at once.
4. Tradition: Our alumni are in a singularly good position to live in appreciative
tension with the Western tradition, to know how we came to be what we now are,
14.
namely moderns, to preserve our treasures and reform our faults, and to recover for
themselves what we always were, human beings. And in fact, many of our alumni live
What do we wish for –
and see – in our alumni?
as it seems to me we ought to live: half in, half out of our times.
5. Self-knowledge: Our alumni are as busy as anyone, but we hope that they will
find time for that inner housekeeping, that coolly unclouded self-awareness they
“Alumni” is a word of affection – it means “nurslings.” What nourishment
learned about in their freshman year under the Delphic injunction “Know thyself!”
do we hope St. John’s has given its alumni to strengthen them for what is so curiously
And that is the reality: One of the delights of seeing alumni, perhaps after decades of
called “real life”? I can think of five headings:
disappearance, is the ready candor with which they report on the state of their soul –
1. Community: We hope that they will carry away a picture of a community of pur-
for what would concern their former tutors more?
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}
72
Po s t s c r i p t : A s m a l l c o l l e g e
and those that lov e it
I want to end with the peroration of a speech that Daniel Webster made in
behalf of his own school before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Marshall presiding,
a plea which won the case and resulted in making independent colleges like St. John’s
safe from at least one danger – public control (Dartmouth College Case, 1818). He
concluded, and had the Chief Justice in tears:
Sir, you may destroy this little institution... but if you do..., you must
extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science, which, for more than
a century have thrown their radiance over the land! It is, sir, as I said, a small college, and yet there are those that love it....
Well, St. John’s has been here even longer than that, weathering other storms that
have only made it stronger. And though it too is a small college, it is also a great
college, so that those that love it, love it with good reason.
��
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Promotional Publications
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Brochures and other documents published to promote the college and the Annapolis campus to the public. The collection includes campus walking tour brochures, and fundraising pamphlets.
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
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39 pages
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A College Unique and Universal
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A College Unique and Universal publication, written for The Campaign for St. John's College in 2006.
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Brann, Eva T. H.
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, N.M.
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2006
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
St. John's College (Santa Fe, N.M.)
Education, Humanistic
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English
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College Unique and Universal_2006
Tutors
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39ee3e2ad193695014eafc6172d8e536
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President J. Walter Sterling, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico
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Santa Fe, NM
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2024
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Sterling, J. Walter
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Presidents
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The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Timeless and Timely: Liberal Education and the Demands of the Present
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Video recording of a panel discussion between Brendan Boyle, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Jonathan Badger, and Patrick Coleman, St. John's College Tutors, on June 19, 2024, as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
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Boyle, Brendan
Coleman, John Patrick
Badger, Jonathan N.
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2024-06-19
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LEC_Panel_Badger-Boyle-Coleman_2024-06-19-ac
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
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PDF Text
Text
THE
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
GADFLY
The Spirit of St. John’s
May 7, 2024
Vol. XLV, Issue 10
�THE GADFLY STAFF
COVER
Abigail Poppleton
Luke Briner
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
MANAGING
EDITOR
El’ad NicholsKaufman
STAFF
Benne Sco
Vivian Miyakawa
Tamar Pinsky
YOUT
Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm
CONTRIBUTORS
Rebecca Goldner
Ranger Kasdorf
Natalie Goldman
Anna Dayton
Henry David Hills
Troy HernerBrown
Corrections to
Vol. XLV, Issue 9
The amusing article “The Annapolis
Cat Strangler”, which appeared in the
Badfly without a named author, was
written by Vivian Miyakawa.
Dear Polity,
CONTENTS
Λόγος : news reports & narratives regarding immediate campus life
Don’t Worry, Be Enabled by Tamar Pinsky
3
Johnnies Celebrate Glorious Victory in Historic 40th
Annapolis Cup by El’ad Nichols-Kaufman
4
Capturing the Whiteness of the Whale: An Interview with
Ranger Kasdorf By Vivian Miyakawa
7
ΣυμπόσιονÊ:Êcontrasting opinions on various topics for thought
9
Why Do We Write? By Rebecca Goldner
How Do We Write? By Luke Briner
10
The Obscure Birds: A Theory Regarding Shakespeare’s
Macbeth By Ranger Kasdorf
13
ΠόλιςÊ:Êvoices of the community, including poetry, cartoons, etc.
Fight Sterility: RETURN TO MCDOWELL By Anna
Dayton
16
Translation of Plotinus, Enneads, I.6.9 By Henry David
Hills
18
Raggin’ on the ‘Min, Or: Why It’s So Fun to Make Fun of
Admin By B.S.
19
“Noodles” Comics by Tamar Pinsky
20
Astraea’s Rhapsody by Luke Briner
22
XIII. Death by B.S.
27
Benediction for a Johnny by Henry David Hills
28
tomorrow by Natalie Goldman
29
Doors of St. John’s: A Meditation by Troy Herner-Brown
30
A Note from a Future Editor
I write to you for the first time from the pages of this publication, not because I have anything to do with the wonderful
content of this issue (which features an interview on Moby Dick, reporting on enablement, essays on writing, poetry,
comics, and more), but because I felt it was only fitting to have a chance to thank the team whose hard work made the
Gadfly this year possible before I begin my time trying to fill their very large shoes.
Luke Briner, who you will know from four years of thoughtful writing on liberal education, Plotinus, Shakespeare, and
more, has guided our publication through a successful two years as managing editor and editor-in-chief. His work has
greatly contributed to the Gadfly’s role in amplifying the thoughts of all members of the polity.
Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm, who was first rightly famed in the Gadfly for her poetry, has done a terrific job of layout this year.
Much of the hard labor of producing the Gadfly is in the painstaking arrangement of text into neat columns, and the
search for images that will make just the right comment on an article, tasks that Nhi has done terrifically. This paper
simply could not happen without her, and I am very grateful for all her work.
It makes me sad to bid these seniors farewell, when they have meant so much to the Polity. However, I am still excited
to see what the Gadfly might have in store next year. I hope to see old writers return, and new ones emerge. The
Collegian, our sister publication, will also be returning with Helen Wagner at the helm. For now, I wish the seniors
best of luck on the next step of their journeys, and the rest of the Polity a restful, or interesting, summer, whichever
you prefer. I look forward to seeing you and your writing in these pages in a few short months!
Your apprehensive, but excited incoming editor,
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman
2
�όγος
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
Don’t Worry, Be Enabled By Tamar Pinsky
St. John's Students Seated with Musical Instruments, Playing Cards and Drinking Alcoholic Beverages (from SJC Digital Archives)
Why is it that whenever the word “enablement” begins
to emerge from one’s lips, a rousing “don’t worry!” pops up?
“Don’t worry, you are definitely going to be enabled” is the
constant reassurance I receive from acquaintances, friends, last
year’s tutors, and even people who work at the health center.
These people do not know what kind of student I am, what kind
of papers I turn in. For all they know, I could be a terrible
student. And thus their well-intentioned “don’t worry”s manifest
in me worrying, because surely there ought to be something to
worry about, if everyone is telling me not to do so.
I do know why they tell me not to worry–because most
likely they are right; I will be enabled. Most students are. And
even if they are not–then they can appeal the decision. There is
really no need to worry, because enabled or not, one can return
to St. John’s for junior year and senior year. What is the point of
enablement then and why is there an appeal process?
According to the Annapolis Student Handbook,
“Sophomore enabling is a review, conducted near the end of the
sophomore year, of the student’s learning during the two years
spent at the college. Tutors judge whether it is in the best
interest of the student and the college for the student to continue
into the junior and senior years.”
Enablement is not a measure of whether a student is
doing their best; rather it is to determine if the student can and
should take on junior and senior year. Though it comes with an
armful of worrying, according to Mr. Abbott, it is “essential to
the program.” Not only is it an “astonishingly thorough and
just” process, but it is also a special one, for “it is a moment in
which the entire faculty thinks about every student in an entire
class, in as many facets as possible.”
As for the appeal process, it is not a leniency; rather, a
necessity for such a serious decision. It involves the student
considering the decision, writing a letter, and having a
conversation with the Dean, which may lead to their appeal
being upheld, or qualified, such that there are actions they can
take in order to be enabled.
Enablement is a respect to the students; why then do
we worry? Maybe we worry not out of fear of not being
enabled, rather out of insecurity or of high standards we set for
ourselves. These are valid anxieties, but they do not need to be
tied to enablement. For enablement is a judgement of potential,
not proficiency.
Or maybe we worry because it’s fun to worry – it's
exhilarating to wonder and gossip and fret in anticipation of
enabling. Leontius could not stop himself from looking at dead
bodies in Plato’s Republic; so too, we are tempted to make our
minds ache, be it from enablement, or don rags, or essay
writing, etc. But as Mr. Abbott recommends, this temptation
ought to be “set aside, because it keeps us from recognizing the
good work we have done.
3
�όγος
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
Johnnies Celebrate Glorious Victory in Historic
40th Annapolis Cup By El’ad Nichols-Kaufman
Ranna Kisswani and Julian Yoder dancing at croquet (Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
“The origin of croquet is certainly involved in
mystery,” wrote some New York Times journalist on
a slow news day in 1906. In an article squeezed
between a clergyman in England claiming to have
shot an angel and a letter from the founder of Barnard
protesting gubernatorial candidate and tabloid
publisher Willaim Randolph Hearst’s slander against
her, the Times’ anonymous author opined that it may
derive from “the old sport pell mell,” although
speculated that its true source may be lost to the ages.
Despite that writer’s inability to determine
the true origins of that noble sport, your faithful
correspondent had no trouble finding out the specific
origins of our croquet game, the world-renowned
Annapolis cup, which took place on Saturday, April
13th this year. 40 years ago, St. John’s students
accepted the challenge of beating the midshipmen at
any sport, and the rest is history. At this 40th
anniversary game, history was to be celebrated, and a
great game of croquet was to be played. Armed with
a recording device, a thermos full of tea, and a press
4
badge fitted into his hatband, your most intrepid
explorer of exotic locales such as front campus set
out to record what was certain to be an Annapolis cup
that would go down in the history books.
It was a bright day, although windy, as your
correspondent arrived on the field. Crowds of
students, alumni and midshipmen milled about,
dressed in their spring finery. Extravagant hats, sharp
uniforms, and poor attempts at 18th century
aristocratic wear were spotted amongst the crowd, as
all gathered before Woodward Hall (yes, that is its
proper name) to the tunes of the Naval Trident’s jazz.
Already, the mood of the Johnnies was ebullient, with
swing dancing beginning long before the opening
ceremony.
Finally, at noon, the formalities commenced.
Speeches were given by Nora Demleitner, St. John’s
president, and Yvette M. Davis, the superintendent of
the naval academy, both of whom delivered fitting
and stirring speeches while abusing the adjectives
unique and incredible. Mayor Gavin Buckley was not
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immediately present (he later arrived and appeared
rather inebriated, in the eyes of this reporter) and so a
speech from the city was given by Cate Pettit, his
chief of staff and a fellow Aussie, who said she would
give both sides “a fair suck.” This was followed by
the entrance of the teams, the Navy in their ridiculous
bow ties and sweaters, accompanied by their gaggle
of caddies in mess dress with atrocious gold
cummerbunds; and the Johnnies revealing their
surprise costume for the year: Navy-style blue
coveralls with white hardhats.
The freshman chorus, which had gathered
sometime earlier, regaled the crowd with St. John’s
Forever and the national anthem, and surprised this
writer by actually sounding like they were singing
real music, a musical feat unrivaled by any freshman
chorus heard in the past three years at St. John’s. Not
only was it real music, but they actually sounded
good! A speech was given by an old rusty wicket, or
croquet alum, and then it was time. The unmoved
mover, traditionally St. John’s president, stepped
forward to begin the motion of the universe and
commence the game. However, in a noble and
virtuous gesture appropriate to our institution’s
magnanimity, President Demleitner offered the first
strike of the game to Admiral Davis, who set the
game in motion.
Your humble correspondent determinedly set
out to keep track of the byzantine web of tactics and
strategy being employed by both teams in their
opening game by means of his sharp wit and deep
knowledge of the game’s arcane rules, but quickly
fell victim to the availability of warm sunshine,
pleasant company, and little sandwiches with brie,
honey and apples in them. Thus, he was caught by
surprise at star announcer Lainey Rendelman’s voice
calling out that on court one, Navy was ahead by
three wickets. Your faithful reporter leapt up from his
blanket, and set off to investigate.
First, he found Dalton Olsson, a player on our
team. Olsson said that he felt pretty good about the
game so far, “Magnus and Peter on court three have
been doing fantastic from the get go. On court two,
Caden is doing what we expected him to do, which is
still insane every time you see it…” Olsson then
paused as Caden Marshall went rover, to wild cheers
from all Johnnies present, and a few reluctant claps
from neighboring midshipmen. “...he’s basically
already won. Court one I haven’t really looked at,
because courts two and three are going so well.” Your
reporter also found a Midshipman, Cameron, who felt
May 7, 2024
optimistic about his team’s chances as well. “We’re
playing pretty well,” he said. “We may not play
croquet as much as the Johnnies do, but we’re
definitely going to give it our all.”
Your reporter next consulted a close friend to
understand the experience of the crowd. The Sage of
Gorman street, famed from the St. John’s Collegian’s
aphorisms, was standing by the end of the field, and
said he hadn't watched much of the game, but would
pay more attention towards the end of the game, as
he was deeply invested in victory. “We lost two years
ago. That’s unacceptable. We need a clean sheet.”
Further, he announced his intentions to spend the rest
of the afternoon lying in the sun. Thanking him for
that piece of wisdom, your faithful correspondent
moved on to watch more croquet.
Around the game, the crowd was enjoying
itself tremendously. The renowned Naptown Brass,
famed performers at dignified events like Ms.
Demleitner’s inauguration and the grand Noah
Hillman Garage reopening party, arrived with their
usual irresistible rhythms, sending Johnnies into
whirling dances around McDowell. Elaborate meals
were set out by alumni, with oysters on fine china
and champagne in crystal goblets. Students partook in
plenty of beer, wine and champagne, not to mention
tea and scones. The warm sun shone on front campus,
for once making it a wise choice to wear a thin
summer jacket or short summer dress, and showing
the great wisdom of Johnnies who chose to wear hats.
As the afternoon went on, things became
tense for a moment, and Navy won the first game on
court one by half past one. However, by 2 p.m, things
were turning around. Marshall, already known for his
croquet prowess, made Annapolis cup history by
pulling a sextuple peel, pushing his teammate’s ball
through six wickets, and then shortly after securing a
victory. Court three was also won, leaving just one
game needed for St. John’s to win the cup. The air
filled with excitement as the Johnnies on court one
grew closer and closer to victory, crowned by a
terrific final stroke by Henry Stockman, winning the
game while well ahead of the Midshipmen, around 3
p.m. The crowd went wild, with cheering and yelling,
and your faithful correspondent rushed up to get
Stockman’s immediate reaction, risking life and limb
to get past inebriated seniors, and alumni. “I’m really
excited…Dalton and I were really excited to win the
third game, and keep the trophy here where it
belongs.”
Johnnies flocked to the field, cheering,
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attempting to poorly set up a tenor-bass only Sicut
singing, and generally making merry. The cup was
presented to the St. John’s team by Mayor Buckley,
and they celebrated by drinking straight out of this
sacred libation bowl. Johnnies finally got themselves
together, and sang a proper Sicut Cervus, enjoying
the taste of a brilliant, and crushing victory. The
games, of course, were not over- two more games
remained- but for St. John’s, the most important deed
was done. We won, as is right and proper, and it was
time to celebrate.
Even
midshipmen
had
the
goodsportsmanship to concede that the Johnnies played
well, and joined in some of the celebrations. Your
reporter found a Johnnie-Middie Couple, Margaret
McConnell and Braden Walker, and, curious about
what this kind of competition might mean for intercampus relations, inquired how they felt about it. “I
feel great!” exclaimed McConnell. “I love singing
Sicut Cervus and drinking my prosecco (don’t put
that in) and I love kicking the naval academy in its
face.” Walker, on the other hand, was less joyful. “I
feel really bad. It’s unfortunate it’s a loss. I’m hoping
for my senior year we come back and beat the
Johnnies, and I also enjoy drinking prosecco.”
However, it seemed as though their relationship
May 7, 2024
managed to survive these tensions. “He’s buying me
a round of drinks tonight,” said McConnell, “so I
think it will be good for our relationship.”
After this victory, Johnnies began to migrate
off, to various corners of campus and around
Annapolis. Your trusty reporter, on his way home,
caught imperial wicket Angus Preston and croquet
team member Peter Boersema sitting outside of
Annabeth’s, with the Annapolis cup at their sides.
Never missing a chance to interrogate such renowned
sportsmen, he asked them how they felt about the
match. “I’m feeling good,” said Preston. “We’re
happy to continue possessing the cup,” added
Boersema. They were both in good spirits, although
Preston was disappointed to have the cup won while
his game was still ongoing. Nevertheless, he still did
win his own match, giving St. John’s a 4-1 record for
the whole match. Doing some quick thinking, your
clever correspondent realized this meant that since
his Freshman year, St. John’s has increased the
number of games one per cup by one every year, and
asked if they think a 5-0 game is possible next year.
“I’m not gonna come out and say it’s going to be a 50 year next year,” said Preston, “but I also am not
going to say we’re not going to win 5-0 next year.”
Alumnus Francis Proctor, Kate Kennedy, and Charles Dang geared up and ready to crush the Midshipmen
in spirit with “BEAT NAVY” gear. (Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
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May 7, 2024
Capturing the Whiteness of the Whale: An Interview with
Ranger Kasdorf By Vivian Miyakawa
Ahan Sagreiya as Queequeg in Moby Dick (Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
On the evenings of April 26th and 27th, the King
William Players premiered what may have been the
greatest play I’ve ever watched: Moby Dick. Entirely
student-led, Mr. Kasdorf wrote the adaptation,
composed the music, directed the play, and even
acted in it himself. I was so amazed by this
production that I felt compelled to interview Mr.
Kasdorf about the process of creating such a large
and impressive project. The following text is
transcribed excerpts from our conversation.
Mx.Ê VivianÊ Miyakawa: Okay, so my first question
for you is kind of a big one: why Moby Dick in the
first place?
Mr.Ê RangerÊ Kasdorf: I started reading Moby Dick
for the first time in August of 2022. I just cracked it
open out of curiosity and I looked at the chapter “The
Whiteness of the Whale,” which was still to this day
one of my favorites, and, reading it, I was
immediately thinking: I had no idea this is what
Moby Dick was—I had no idea it was written like
this. So, the next day I went to the library, and around
the time when I got to chapter 36, “The Quarter
Deck,” which is the most one of the most theatrical of
the chapters, that’s when I started putting [to]
myself…that this would work really well the stage
adaptation…it kind of struck me as a book that
naturally lends itself to a stage adaptation.
The question of “why” is always hard to
answer for any work of art, but I felt this kind of
compulsion—like I need to see this on a stage.
Looking at these words on the page, it's not enough to
have them there—I need to hear somebody speak
them aloud, I need to hear them delivered and I could
immediately see it perfectly in my head. I really
started having such clear and vivid ideas for how
each scene ought to work. Then, there was this sort of
curious feeling of wanting to make it mine. And this
comparison is not lost on me; it became an Ahab-like
obsession for me, and I certainly began to feel that
kind of madness throughout the whole production. It's
the kind of book that really does naturally inspire—it
is art that begets art.
VM:Ê When you have this feeling of needing to see it
on a stage, how does one go about adapting a book
into a play, like how do you change it from one art
medium to another?
RK:Ê Well, it helps that much of the book is already
structured like a play. The first 27 or so chapters are
very straightforwardly literary, but then chapter 29 is
actually named after a stage direction. It’s called
“Enter Ahab; to him, Stubb.” Then, the chapter “First
Night Watch” is another one with the same structure,
and then “Midnight Forecastle” is just straight up a
scene from a play, with dialogue from all these
different characters, so moments like that were pretty
easy.
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If you're going to pick and choose what to but then you have Ahab, who takes that and twists it
include you kind of have to decide for yourself what to his own advantage. All the things that I chose to
the thrust of your adaptation is, and that, I suppose, is keep in this script are about emphasizing the tragedy
the real question. DH Lawrence, in a review of Moby of a man who divorces himself from the rest of
Dick, said something like, “It's clear that the white mankind and turns his eyes on God, not out of desire
whale is a symbol, but it's not clear of what.” I ended for peace, but out of desire for revenge. The ultimate
up deciding to lean into “the whale is God” angle, message is, “Do not in your search for men to find
deciding to emphasize things like Starbuck accusing communion with end up falling prey to men like
Ahab of being blasphemous, the sermon—and things this.” It helps that Ahab is such an incredible speaker,
that seemed innocuous in the book suddenly took on and his words have such power. He is able to sucker
new meanings just by virtue of being placed in this in this crew with that incredibly powerful speech on
context. The story of Jonah that is being told in that the quarterdeck.
sermon is very much relevant to
On a sort of meta level,
the themes of the book. It’s
the play ends up being at least
specifically the aspect of Jonah
partially about how you want to
being a blasphemer who repents.
be aware of fancy speeches, and
you ought to avoid being
In fact, part of my pitch when I
suckered in by appealing and
proposed this play to the KWP
was that Ahab is a Jonah whose
flashy rhetoric. It's funny because
ordeal does not teach him
I'm realizing that the big thing
repentance. Part of my expansion
that made me want to adapt this
of the story is that the whale was
book in the first place was how
God warning Ahab to not go to
suckered in I was by those
sea, but he continues to disobey
speeches—and the thought was
God by continuing to hunt the
that a charismatic actor like Mr.
whale. In that sense, it's like we're
Domanski can really bring these
getting to see what happens when
words to life. The great trap of
somebody is put through a trial
Moby Dick is that it really is a
joyous book for so much of it.
by God and that trial does not
humble them: it only succeeds in
The opening chapter is full of
making them more and more
appeals to this sense of shared
prideful and more and more
humanity, yet once we're on the
spiteful. So, the sermon becomes
ship, things become so much
immensely important in that
more
dark,
painful,
and
context. In the book, it’s told to
miserable.
Ishmael and Queequeg, but my
If I were to try and add
choice to make it a dream
any sort of lesson to this, for
Jack Domanski as Captain Ahab
sequence rather than a literal
anyone who’s interested in
sermon ended up being a chance
adapting a book or any kind of
(Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
work I would say that all that is
for it to feel like a sermon being
delivered to the audience. The idea is that we can't really required of an adaptation is a kind of
preach to Ahab. The Ahabs of the world are monomania. You must have a kind of Ahab-ish
unreachable. So, it suddenly becomes about we're not monomania—you have to become obsessed with and
preaching to the Ahabs of the world—we're fixated on the thing you're trying to adapt, and if you
preaching to the men…they surround themselves do that, then the rest will fall into place.
with. Do not let yourself be sucked into the wake of
these men or led astray by them.
Mr. Kasdorf wishes to publicly thank the King
I think if you had to say what Moby Dick is William Players, lighting techs, stagehands, and
about in one sentence, I would probably say that it is everyone who helped make Moby Dick a reality. He
about the bonds between men. We have this greatly enjoyed the experience and is incredibly
incredible community and sense of shared humanity, grateful for such a joyous production.
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May 7, 2024
Why Do We Write? By Rebecca Goldner
We are a college committed to conversation.
But we are also a college dedicated to rigorous,
critical thinking, to language and its use, and to books
that offer us manifold examples of clarity, creativity,
and beauty. In class, we learn from each other; we
listen, we attempt to articulate our thoughts, we move
with the thoughts of others and we courageously try
and test our ideas among our peers. We can start a
thought and allow someone else to complete it or to
challenge it. We ask questions and rely on friends and
classmates to help us pursue the answers.
When we write, we become our own
interlocutors. We find our own opening questions and
take upon ourselves the responsibility of pursuing
them through somea development, possibly to some
conclusion. Writing requires that we begin a thought
and have the focus to stay with it, even when it
challenges us. When we write, we cultivate our
determination and independence. When nobody else
can finish the incomplete thought, develop the
argument or find the more elegant articulation, we
must do it ourselves. While it might seem that we
write for others- for readers- the first person of
concern, the most important reader, is always the
writer. As writers, we demand clarity, precision,
rigor, creativity and style of ourselves. We become
self-reliant and self-sufficient. We take a stand. We
find our voice in all its many forms: what interests us
and why, what tone and style is appropriate, how we
engage with a text and, most importantly, what we
have to say for ourselves.
Student Seated on Couch Reading "Newsweek" in the College Bookstore (from SJC Digital Archives)
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How Do We Write?
By Luke Briner
In our Group’s two preceding meetings, we
have considered, through papers by Ms. Goldner and
Mr. Braithwaite respectively, why and what we write
at St. John’s College. I believe that a helpful addition
and natural next step from these two considerations
would be to ask more rigorously how this writing
should or must occur—or, in other words, to examine
in more detail the writing of a St. John’s essay as a
specific and philosophically-framed process or
τέχνη.
Since writing assignments are overtly
considered by the Program as an additional or
supplementary element to active classroom
discussion (Statement of the Program, pp. 5-6, 8), it
will be important to establish the nature of the latter
insofar as the former is seen as analogous to and
working toward the same overarching goal as it (I).
Once we’ve done this, we will be able to more easily
and rigorously enunciate the proper structure of the
St. John’s essay and hence also the way that a student
should approach the writing of one as a τέχνη (II).
This, in turn, will naturally bring to light exactly why
the use of AI in our writing is not only wrong in an
obvious and general sense but uniquely and
profoundly contradictory to the overarching
pedagogical philosophy of the Program itself (III).
I.
The aim of every classroom discussion at St.
John’s is to “reach insights far beyond the views of
any of its members” (ibid., p. 5), and, thereby,
through the achievement of an intellectual
communion or πόλις in which “harmony is actual and
immediate” (Luchene, Beginnings of Community, p.
4), to ultimately enrich the minds and characters of
each of those members. The specific structure of
these discussions has accordingly been established
with the intent of achieving this goal as effectively as
possible, which we can consider as consisting of
three essential, highly interconnected elements.
First, there is the material or ὕλή of the
discussion, which serves simultaneously as the
ultimate object of inquiry which all members seek to
understand the full richness and implications of and
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May 7, 2024
as the substratum by and upon which that inquiring
act takes place. As far as the discussion itself is
concerned, the concrete content of the material is
arbitrary qua interchangeability as long as it can
sustain continual rigorous explication and bear
meaningful fruit in the minds of members as a result
of such explication.
Second, there is the thought-content or λόγος
of the discussion, in and through which the class’
inquiry into and continually-advancing understanding
of the ὕλή itself occurs. This λόγος may be divided
into two sub-elements: the syllogistic, by which basic
explications of and reasonings about the material are
undertaken by members, and the dialectical, by
which the content of those explications and
reasonings are put into dynamic and conceptually
constructive relations to each other. Because this
latter sub-element naturally involves a multiplicity of
syllogistic items, it may be realized equally well by a
single member and by multiple members.
Third, and accordingly, there is the social
order or νόμος of the discussion, through which the
effective interpersonal communication of the
manifold of λόγος-content (λόγοι) with respect to the
ὕλή is actually achieved. This element may likewise
be subdivided into the rhetorical, by which λόγοςcontent is clearly conveyed from one member to the
others, and the harmonistic, by which the equitable
treatment of members with respect to each other
individually and as a whole, and thereby the
continued existence and integrity of the discussion in
all its preceding elements, is ensured. This “nomical”
content, and especially its latter sub-element, is
obviously the most crucial component of the entire
discussion insofar as it sustains the being of all its
others, and the discipline implied in its cultivation is
arguably where the lion’s share of its educational (or,
better, edificatory) value for each individual member
actually resides.
The structure generated and sustained by the
intelligent combination of these three elements—the
hylic, the logical, and the nomical—is naturally the
foundation, and, so to speak, the εἶδος of the seminars
and tutorials that we’re familiar with. The hylic
contents (ὗλαι) of these classes are primarily the
Great Books, since they, as Buchanan observes,
“communicate with great skill ideas that human
experience has taught us are important” (“Now and to
Come: Liberal Education: A Common Adventure,” p.
302) and so allow us to “tune in on the Great
Conversation that we call civilization” (ibid.); and
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May 7, 2024
Student Seated at Desk Writing a Note (from SJC Digital Archives)
students, as their dynamically-active members, are
responsible for the advancement of logical content
with respect to the ὗλαι thus determined. Given this,
tutors, strictly speaking, are simply fellow-members
in the discussion which happen to also have absolute
nomical power over it: while able to participate in the
λόγος in the exact same way as a student, they also
possess the entirely distinct but entirely necessary
capacity to guarantee, via unilateral authority, that the
social environment through which that λόγος is
communicated and furthered is as open, friendly, and
fair as possible. Each class, thus organized, will
ideally serve as the most favorable environment
possible for the intellectual and moral development
of each student.
II.
Given that discussions at the College are
organized in this exact way, and given that they are
by virtue of the fact that such organization is optimal
for the accomplishment of the College’s ultimate
pedagogical goals, it naturally follows that essays,
insofar as they are understood as serving toward
those very same goals in the very same environment,
are intended to follow an analogous structure to those
discussions. “When we write,” as Ms. Goldner rightly
states in her own essay, “we become our own
interlocutors.” That is, however, crucially, not all that
we become; rather, given what we’ve established
above, we ideally internalize the entirety of the
system already present within class discussions
themselves—all its elements, sub-elements, and
active roles—with the intent of carrying out the work
of that system in, by, through, and for oneself. Our
ὕλή remains much the same, that is, the Great Books,
for the same reason enunciated above. We ourselves,
however, generate and advance all the λόγος-content
of the inquiry into that ὕλή, both syllogistic and
dialectical—and, especially with respect to the latter,
at least potentially raise and sustain a multiplicity of
contradictory ideas that we subsequently seek to
resolve or at least work out to the greatest possible
extent. In this sense we play the role of not just a
single student but all students, earnestly engaging
with each other’s interpretations and questions in an
organic intellectual polyphony, as well as the tutor
insofar as they are responsible for setting that logical
dynamic in motion by a clear, hylically-founded
opening question. We additionally play the role of a
tutor in the even more important sense that,
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simulating within ourselves the entirety of a lively
discussion, we are consequently responsible for
ensuring that that discussion is acted out in a clearlyelucidated (rhetorical) and considerate (harmonistic)
way—in a somewhat strange but very real sense, the
socially-constituted νόμος remains within our solitary
self, and so we are compelled to think and act
nomically with respect to the multiplicity of
perspectives held within that self’s inquiry into the
material. In summary, then—the St. John’s essay,
defined precisely, is simply a self-sustained seminar
carried out or expressed through the written word.
From this it becomes clear that the real work,
the τέχνη of the St. John’s essay consists essentially
in the intelligent delineation and organization of all
dialogical elements within one’s own mind with
respect to the sustained analysis of a text in writing—
or, put in another way, in the endeavor toward
approximating the nature of ideal class discussion at
the College given those same limiting circumstances
to as great a degree as possible. One should begin
with the ideal of a perfect seminar firmly fixed in
one’s mind and organize one’s writing in accordance
with, in proportion to it—beginning with a clearlyenunciated and textually evocative opening question,
working carefully and considerately through a
number of explicative elements and dialecticallyarisen questions, and arriving, through that process, at
some substantially beneficial understanding either of
the text, of oneself, or of the world (and ideally all
three) that was not and could not have been possessed
before the inquiry was undertaken. Consequently, it is
the proper task of the student throughout their writing
career at St. John’s to understand and master this
process, and it is the responsibility of writing
assistants, tutors, and the College itself to provide
them with clear instruction and support in that task.
Additionally, the essay, so understood, can be
thought of as having another capacity we didn’t
initially ascribe to it: the capacity to serve as a kind
of litmus test not just for a student’s technical
knowledge or cleverness but for their understanding
of and mastery over the entire Program. Since the
essay is simply the internalized form of a class
discussion, the way that a student conceives of the
nature and aim(s) of said class discussion will
inevitably inform the manner in which they go about
writing; and so the determination of a good writer is,
at least potentially, a clear means of determining a
truly good student overall, insofar as such a writer
demonstrates not only an overt comprehension of the
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May 7, 2024
nature of St. John’s essays and hence of the
pedagogical philosophy of St. John’s broadly but the
ability to develop in and through themselves through
the direct application of that philosophy.
III.
It is natural to conclude, then, with all this
being established, that the use of AI in the writing of
St. John’s essays is uniquely and profoundly
contradictory to the overarching pedagogical
philosophy of the Program itself because (1) AI is
incapable of asking the kind of questions, conducting
the kind inquiry, and deriving the kind of benefit that
a student earnestly writing out an inquiry would be
and is (the essence of these things consists in
something deeper than the simple approximating
arrangement of words in itself), and (2) because, even
if it were so capable, the damage of leaving one’s
work to it is immeasurably greater within the context
of St. John’s than it is in almost any other, since the
entire value of our education consists not in the
simple material of the Program but exclusively in the
personal development, the edification that can be
brought about by and through it. To use any such
methods to circumvent the genuine τέχνη of writing
at St. John’s, and hence to at least a significant degree
shirk the great moral responsibility that a liberal
education confers, is therefore not only an affront to
the College but, in a deeper and very real sense, to
oneself and to the world around oneself.
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The Obscure Birds: A Theory Regarding
Shakespeare’s Macbeth By Ranger Kasdorf
KING. Dismay’d not this/Our captains, Macbeth and
Banquo?
SERG. Yes,/As sparrows eagles…
-Act I, Scene II
MACBETH. If charnel-houses and our graves must
send/Those that we bury back, our monuments/Shall
be the maws of kites.
-Act III, Scene IV
LADY. …The raven himself is hoarse/That croaks the
fatal entrance of Duncan…
-Act I, Scene V
MACBETH. Augurs and understood relations have/
By magot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth/
The secret’st man of blood.
-Act III, Scene IV
BAN. This guest of summer,/The temple-haunting
martlet, does approve/By his loved mansionry, that
the heaven’s breath/Smells wooingly here: no jutty,
frieze/Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird/
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle…
-Act I, Scene VI
LADY. Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shriek’d, the
fatal bellman…
-Act II, Scene II
LADY. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
-Act II, Scene II
PORTER. …come in, tailor; here you may roast your
goose…
-Act II, Scene III
PORTER. ‘Faith, sir, we were carousing till the
second cock…
-Act II, Scene III
LADY MACDUFF. …the poor wren,/the most
diminutive of birds, will fight,/Her young ones in her
nest, against the owl.
-Act IV, Scene II
LADY MACDUFF. How will you live?
SON. As birds do, mother.
LADY MACDUFF. What, with worms and flies?
SON. With what I get, I mean; and so do they.
LADY MACDUFF. Poor bird! Thou’ldst never fear
the net nor lime,/The pitfall nor the gin?
SON. Why should I, mother? Poor birds they are not
set for.
-Act IV, Scene II
FIRST MURDERER. What, you egg!
-Act IV, Scene II
MACDUFF. …there cannot be/That vulture in you…
-Act IV, Scene III
LENNOX. New hatch’d to the woeful time: the
obscure bird/Clamour’d the livelong night…
-Act II, Scene III
MACDUFF. …O hell-kite! All?/What, all my pretty
chickens and their dam/At one fell swoop?
-Act IV, Scene III
OLD MAN. …On Tuesday last,/A falcon, towering in
her pride of place,/Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at
and kill’d.
-Act II, Scene IV
MACBETH. The devil damn
thee black, thou cream-faced
loon!/Where got’st thou that
goose look?
SERVANT. There is ten
thousand–
MACBETH. Geese, villain?
-Act V, Scene III
MACBETH. …Light thickens; and the crow/Makes
wing to the rooky wood…
-Act III, Scene II
13
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I have joked before that Shakespeare’s two
favorite subjects–surpassing love, murder, madness,
and crossdressing–are botany and birds. If you’ve
been to New York City you might be aware of the
“Shakespeare Garden” in Central Park, whose
theoretical aim (though it proves nigh-impossible in
practice) is to house specimens of all the plants which
Shakespeare mentions in his plays. As it turns out,
Bard quotes make for quite a diverse garden: there
are roses which assuredly would smell as sweet by
any other name; there are daffodils, that come before
the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with
beauty; there’s holly, heigh-ho; there’s rosemary,
that’s for remembrance, there’s pansies, that’s for
thoughts, there’s fennel for you, and columbines–no
word on whether or not they could find any violets,
though. I suppose there’s no objection to be made
against those who complain that Shakespeare’s
language is “flowery”; even as vicious a villain as
Iago deigns to express his philosophy on life by way
of botanical metaphor: “Our bodies are our gardens,
to the which our wills are gardeners.” And, of course,
the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream revolves
around a magical flower which makes people fall in
love.
I doubt anyone will object to my claiming of
birds as Shakespeare’s other poetical fixation: I
suspect that the majority of falconry knowledge
which most non-falconers have today comes from
reading footnotes in their copies of Shakespeare
plays, explaining exactly what Richard II means by
“How high a pitch his resolution soars,” or why
Hamlet says “Hillo, ho, ho” to Marcellus. But while
plants are so common in Shakespeare that I don’t
know of one play which we might say is especially
densely forested with references to them, there is one
play that stands out as particularly full of birds in
comparison with the rest of the Shakespearean canon.
That play is Macbeth.
This is the sort of thing that one only notices
after having read a play so many times that the actual
events of the plot become akin to the meter of a poem
–beats which must be hit, and which start to feel so
natural that one hardly notices them–and one’s
1
May 7, 2024
attention drifts away from the big, important speeches
and toward the more utilitarian words and odd little
moments that bridge them. I am not the first to point
it out, but it is, all the same, a delightful quirk of the
play, and could be a good way for Sophomores to
throw their classmates for a loop in seminar: why are
there so many birds in Macbeth?
Above I have listed every ornithological
reference that I’ve found in the Scottish Play; as we
peruse them, we certainly cannot conclude that every
individual reference is of the same kind, or carries the
same import. I will not pretend, for example, that,
just because geese and ravens are both birds, the
Porter’s invitation for the imagined English tailor to
cook his goose in Hell merits as much attention as
Lady Macbeth’s ominous declaration that “the raven
himself is hoarse.” Nor do I think that any individual
reference particularly demands explication; by itself,
any one of these bird-invocations seems perfectly
natural. Shakespeare’s talent is such that he can
repeat a motif in such a way that on the macro level it
is obvious yet on the micro level it hardly feels
present. But that macro level is what interests me
here: what impression is created, on the whole, by the
presence of so many birds in this play? I have a
theory, which, though it may seem far-fetched, I think
merits at least some consideration, and which, at the
very least, I have not seen stated elsewhere, and so
may make a novel contribution to the conversation.
Macbeth is both Shakespeare’s most
supernatural tragedy and his most Sophoclean; these
two superlatives are inextricably related. The
appellative Weird given to the opening scene’s three
Sisters–derived from the Old English wyrd, meaning
destiny, and famously given its more familiar
connotation by Shakespeare himself in this very play
–is, among the Bard’s works, unique to Macbeth;1
and just as that word appears nowhere else in
Shakespeare, so is the concept it represents absent in
all tragedies but this one. Though Hamlet may cry out
against outrageous fortune, and though Othello may
rhetoricize about how no man can control his fate, it
is only in Macbeth that we truly feel that the events
we see play out before us are fated, predestined,
inevitable.2 The ghost in Hamlet commands his son to
revenge his foul and most unnatural murder, but does
not tell him it is certain that he will succeed; indeed,
I credit this observation to Mr. Petrich, in his 2012 lecture To Meet With Macbeth.
The closest thing there is to this kind of fatalness in another Shakespearean tragedy is the several superstitious occurrences in Julius Caesar–both the soothsayer’s
message of “Beware the ides of March” and the bestial portents such as the lack of a heart in an offering and the whelping of a lioness in the streets. Still, I will insist
that these omens do not convey a sense of fatedness to the audience as strongly as the Weird Sisters in Macbeth by virtue of their being told to Caesar himself, not to
Brutus, the play’s true protagonist, and by the fact that Shakespeare elsewhere uses dialogue to throw some doubt upon the idea of predestination: Men at some times
are masters of their fates:/The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/But in ourselves, that we are underlings. -I.ii
2
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would not the drama be sapped of its intrigue if that
level of certainty were present? Meanwhile, the
supernatural interlopers in Macbeth offer the Scottish
thane not a mission, but a prophecy: All hail,
Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter! From its
mystical opening word–When, not If–the Scottish
play makes us aware of the certainty of all that is to
befall our tragic antihero. Macbeth is thus a different
sort of tragedy than Shakespeare’s others, and it
works by an inverted mechanism. While the tragedy
of, for example, Desdemona’s death is that it may
have been prevented, the tragedy of Macbeth’s
destruction is that it represents the fulfilment of fate;
and this is the very same mechanism by which
Oedipus Rex operates, complete with its own “Weird”
character in the form of the seer Tiresias. Though
Calvin managed to accept that some men are destined
for greatness and others for ruin, this idea is, to
Shakespeare and Sophocles, nothing short of
agonizing–the stuff of tragedy.
Now: what does all of this have to do with
birds? Consider these words from Antigone, spoken
by Tiresias to Creon:
You shall learn, when you hear the indications
of my art! As I took my place on my ancient
seat for observing birds, where I can mark
every bird of omen I heard a strange sound
among them, since they were screeching with
dire, incoherent frenzy and I knew that they
were tearing each other with bloody claws,
for there was a whirring of wings that made it
clear…3
Consider next these words from Oedipus Tyrannus,
spoken defensively by Oedipus to Tiresias:
Why, come, tell me, how can you be a true
prophet? Why when the versifying hound was
here did not you speak some word that could
release the citizens? Indeed, her riddle was
not one for the first comer to explain! It
required prophetic skill, and you were
exposed as having no knowledge from the
birds or from the gods. No, it was I that came,
Oedipus who knew nothing, and put a stop to
her; I hit the mark by native wit, not by what I
May 7, 2024
learned from birds.4
The practice of divining the future from birds–be it
from their behaviors, their cries, or their innards–was,
to Sophocles and his contemporaries, not
superstitious hokum, but a practical science at which
one could be skilled or unskilled,5 and it bodes ill for
Oedipus that he is so quick to disregard it in favor of
his own native wit. By Shakespeare’s day, the
practice had long been relegated to the realm of
outdated hocus-pocus, but the Bard still saw some
truth in it; in Macbeth, there is a recurring sense that,
when the world is sick with some great wrong, its
first symptoms manifest in the behavior of birds.
When the “fatal bellman” the owl shrieks in the night,
Lady Macbeth takes it as a sign that her husband is
about his bloody business. The day after the murder
of Duncan, as Ross converses with an Old Man about
the strange things they’ve seen the previous night,
“unnatural/Even as the deed that’s done”, the killing
of a falcon by a mousing-owl–an omen straight out of
Sophocles–is mentioned before the madness and
cannibalism of Duncan’s horses, even though the
latter would surely be more immediately noticeable
and ghastly than the former.
These are the most obvious examples of birds
as ill omens in Macbeth; yet even the more innocuous
invocations of birds throughout the rest of the play
continually turn our thoughts back to the ancient
Greek understanding of fate and prophecy, and
thereby remind us that, however savagely he may
fight at Dunsinane, Macbeth’s fate is as fixed as that
of Oedipus. The birds have already foretold all.
3
Antigone, 999-1004; Lloyd-Jones tr.
Oedipus Tyrannus, 390-398; Lloyd-Jones tr.
5
The Liddell-Scott Greek Lexicon identifies at least two separate verbs referring to bird-based divination, both of which are present in the quoted passages: Tiresias
uses ορνϊθοσκοπέομαι, observe birds, interpret their flight and cries, while Oedipus uses οιωνίζομαι, take omens from the flight and cries of birds. The latter term
comes from οιωνος, a large bird, bird of prey, such as a vulture or eagle, and so distinguished from a common bird, while the former comes from ορνις, which more
generally refers to a bird, including birds of prey and domestic fowls. Birds of both kinds are present in Macbeth; there are οιωναι, such as the “falcon, towering in her
place”, as well as ορνες, like the Porter’s goose and cock. I therefore see little value in interrogating the kinds of birds invoked by Shakespeare, the specific cultural
associations and significance of the owl, the raven, or the wren; rather, if we reduce them down to their barest existence as birds, animals of the class Aves, and
consider them in an ancient Greek light, then things become a bit clearer.
4
15
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May 7, 2024
Fight Sterility: RETURN TO
MCDOWELL By Anna Dayton
After visiting the post-croquet “Garden
Cotillion” party, I decided that dances in the Mellon
Lobby greatly lack the atmosphere and aesthetic
appeal dances have when they are held in McDowell.
The centralized placement of McDowell gives large
events an interconnected feeling, as people are able to
leave the dance and head straight down the walkways
into the downtown, and the booming of the bass
speakers attract Johnnies in the neighborhood. The
elegant wooden floors, warmer lighting, and
suspended balcony over the dance floor gives the
parties a warmth and soul that Mellon’s modernist
appearance does not match. Dancing in Mellon is like
dancing at an office party at an insurance firm or
some thinktank.
The quad also provides an attractive outdoor
place for people to chatter and loll in if they don’t
want to be inside and exposed to the crowd. The
Mellon walkway and featureless brick patio is
awkward in comparison, because that gigantic glass
window over the patio makes conversing feel
overexposed in a way the quad did not. Once again,
the centralized location of McDowell enables
students to easily return to their dorms. In
comparison, the relative isolation of Mellon is highly
impractical.
Alongside these downgrades, the biggest
thing about McDowell dances that the Mellon parties
miss is the use of the snackroom. It is very obnoxious
to cut around hoards of dancers and people loitering
around just to get to the snacks. Sometimes I hit up
these events just to take chips and fruits back to my
room, and I’m sure many of you readers do too. Why
should we have to step onto the main floor and slink
around people to access the food?
RETURN TO MCDOWELL
Writing on a Chalkboard Reads "Goodbye, McDowell. In 1986, I had my freshman
seminar in this room... it was worth the whole four years just for those
nights." (from SJC Digital Archives)
16
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THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
Rauchel Hauben on McDowell Steps (Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
17
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THE GADFLY
Translation of Plotinus,
Enneads, I.6.9
By Henry David Hills
W
hat, therefore, is that interior seeing? Having
just awakened, it [the soul] is not at all capable
of seeing the Things Radiant. Therefore, one must
train the very soul first to see beautiful habits, then
beautiful works (not as many as skills work, but as
many as do men who are called good); then behold
thou the soul of them that have worked the beautiful
works. How, therefore, mayst thou behold a good
soul such as hath Beauty?
Withdraw thou into thyself and behold. And if
thou beholdest thyself not yet beautiful, such things
as doth the maker of a statue that is to become
beautiful (here it he removeth, there it he smootheth,
here even and there pure maketh he it until a beautiful
face is shewn upon the statue), even thus do thou:
remove what is excessive, straighten what is crooked
– by purifying what is darkened, work thou to be
Things Radiant, and pause thou not from crafting thy
statue until there might radiate out of thee virtue’s
godlike splendor, until thou mightest behold “soundmindedness
established
on
a
sacred
pedestal” (Phædrus 254b).
May 7, 2024
sighted. For the seer to the seen made akin and alike
must be brought to the vision. For no eye hath ever
seen the sun that hath not first become sunlike, nor
could a soul behold the Beautiful that hath not
become beautiful.
Then let each become godlike and each
beautiful should he mean to behold both God and the
Beautiful. For he shall arrive first, ascending, unto
the Mind, and there shall be seen all of the beautiful
forms, and he shall say: “This is Beauty, these ideas
are Beauty.” For from these are all things beautiful,
from the offspring of the Mind and Being. And that
which is beyond This we say is the nature of the
Good, and that which has been cast before the nature
is the Beautiful. So roughly, in a word, the Beautiful
is first; but he that distinguisheth the things accessible
by the Mind shall affirm that the Beautiful accessible
by the Mind is the place of the forms and that the
Good which is beyond is both the wellspring and the
origin of the Beautiful. Well shall he first regard the
Good and the Beautiful as being in the same thing,
except there is the Beautiful.
If thou art become this, knowest it, and, pure,
conversest with thyself, having nothing in the way of
thus becoming the One nor having some other
interior thing mingled with It (but rather whole is the
very True and Solitary Light which is neither
measured by magnitude nor circumscribed by shape
into a narrowing nor even waxed into magnitude by
inexperience but rather is everywhere immeasurable,
as it is greater than every measure and mightier than
every question of quantity) – if thou mightest behold
that thou thyself art become this, then, having already
become vision, with courage about thee, having
stepped forward but a little (no more a guide dost
thou need), gazing on, behold! for this is the only Eye
that beholdeth the Great Beauty.
But if that which may venture upon the vision
is bleared with wickedness and is not purified or is
without strength, by cowardice unable to see the
Radiances at all, then it seeth nothing, even should
another show that which is present and may well be
18
Students with a Model of the Five Platonic Solids in
the King William Room (from SJC Digital Archives)
�όλις
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
Raggin’ on the ‘Min
Or: Why It’s So Fun to Make Fun
of Admin By B.S.
Dear Admin,
Let me begin by saying: I know you like to be
called “Administration” and will, in fact, be
frustrated by the term admin. This is a small liberal
arts college with a penchant for nicknames, not 1984
(read: kindly, kiss my ass).
Now, I am sure you’re wondering: how can I
get these kids to stop making fun of everything I do?
You send out an email about Israel/Palestine and get
yelled at. You choose a graduation speaker and get
yelled at. You receive complaints about tutor pay,
student discipline, retention (I’d like to add one more
gripe of my own, thank you very much: why the hell
did I, a current senior, receive an email asking me to
give money to the college? Oh, but Bennett, it’s just
easier to have you on the list so—Silence. All of my
money is currently in your coffers, probably paying
for some insane project so that a donor can put their
name on it rather than funding our education). There
really ought to be a game for negative student
response to any action you take (my latest BINGO
was: posters around campus, forwarded email chain,
complaining about students not understanding the
process after not communicating the process to the
students (FREE), defending a morally dubious action,
and the Gadfly getting unnecessarily involved (wow
he’s doing it right now).
So what can you do to make these students
understand the hard work and complexity of what
you do? Could you establish trust with the polity
through open communication? Could you bring back
traditions that make us feel like a cohesive whole?
Could you set a precedent by openly admitting your
mistakes and changing them in a student-guided
fashion? Clearly, if you’re coming to me for
solutions, you don’t want anything so reasonable. So
let me tell you the right answer:
The Jingling Atrocity Effect.
Have you ever jingled your keys in front of a
baby (or my roommate)? Those bitches love that shit!
Why? Because it’s loud, it’s pointless, it’s impossible
to reduce into a simple
motion. For politically
inclined liberal arts
students, atrocities are
the keys. For example,
if you were to take War
and Peace off the
program and replace it
with a Leo Strauss
reading, people would
be outraged, but there
would be just enough
people to defend it too.
While there’s a major
uproar about the purpose of the college, the place of
literature in a liberal education, the inanity of
Straussians (all fired up by admin hosted events), you
can pass just about anything less bad under the radar.
All you need to do is make the jingling atrocity so
much worse the actual problem that it what you’re
really gunning for goes by in silence. Want to remove
croissants from the dining hall? The aforementioned
Straussening would work. But bigger problems
require bigger solutions. Want to fire a popular tutor?
Remove all women from the program reading list.
Want to change the name of McDowell to Coal and
Uranium Center for Knowledge (CUCK)? Replace
Plato and Aristotle with third hand summaries of their
works. The magic of it is, as soon as your minor/
actual issue is passed into law, you can reverse the
jingling atrocity and play the hero of having actually
listened to students. Problem solved in a totally
original way that Dick Cheney et al could never have
thought of.
It’s the most beautiful plan ever.
—B.S.
P.S. Ignore this one Admin:
Members of the student body with something
malformed in their souls,
Give ‘em hell
—B.S.er
19
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THE GADFLY
“Noodles”: The Owl
By Tamar Pinsky
20
May 7, 2024
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THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
“Noodles”: Sheep Can’t
Sleep
By Tamar Pinsky
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THE GADFLY
Astraea’s Rhapsody
Or,
Innocence Departed
By Luke Briner
Piety was dead, and virgin Astraea, last of all the
immortals to depart, herself abandoned the blooddrenched earth.
—Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.149-150 (trans.
Kline)
What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the
father, God, and, though members of the Divine and
entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves
and It? The evil that has overtaken them has its
source in self-will, in the entry into the sphere of
process, and in the primal differentiation with the
desire for self ownership. They conceived a pleasure
in this freedom and largely indulged their own
motion; thus they were hurried down the wrong path,
and in the end, drifting further and further, they came
to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine.
—Plotinus, Enneads, V.1.1 (trans. MacKenna)
§1.
Unfaithful man!—debasement of the world
Self-seeker of this fresh oblivion
That swoons upon our tarnished history!—
Unprovidencing shade!
—I part from you,
I, wracked and last-abiding pillar of
Our new-archaic age, to haunt alone
The voided vestibules of this veiled spire,
And here, in limpid sighs, to contemplate
A trembling memory of golden dust…
§2.
Recall unto yourself, fraught intellect,
Light-lapped progenitress and proem of
This now-forlorn, this self-benighting day
22
May 7, 2024
—Unworthy epilogue that dares to wound
Its benefacting lid in late-set lapse!—
My higher, unembittered origin,
And how at last it came to be that I,
Transported by a strange and heaven-born
Necessity, first condescended to
Accommodate this thence-exuded life
That now so brazenly betrays my trust.
20
Before ran over from the halcyon
That lips in love its bright profundity
My ardent nectar, and upon the earth
Turned in that spill to spoil, resplendent hence
Alone with its own stupor’s seething jewels,
Before the luminaries chandeliered
The now-foreboding vesper, and, in sterned
Recession, fixed their disenchanted glare
Above the ingrate nature left below,
30
Before the umbrage of once-sylvaned shrines,
Sewn through with sun, was made the obloquy
Of its apostate’s squalid artifice,
Before the soul forsook the innocence
With which it had been brought into the world,
Before—before!...
I found my first repose,
God-blearied and extremest paradigm
Known to an instant-formed eternity,
Against the white, unbroken vastness of
40
The coronet that countenanced my brow;
Calm gaze reclined refulgently above
Into itself, my youthful knees were taut
Beatitude on planes of aegised gold:
Laid effortless along the facets of
My new-ascendant principality,
Or bent in rapt attention by the hem
Empyrean draped regally around
The constant, yet-unaperturing dawn,
Who, with a mother’s smiling eyes, gazed back 50
At me, relating in unworded verse
The all-securing honor of our kind—
How sweet it was for me to cleave to her!
10
The zeal-rococoed sunbursts whirling high
Above my head in love-lit reverie,
The crooning palatine cocooning me
In its own measure’s truest liberty,
The first-enlightened prism throwing forth
My vision’s self-composed infinitude,
Transfixed the newborn marble of my heart; 60
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May 7, 2024
And, happily abandoned to the crest
Of the profoundest piety thence shed
In still-unstayed exuberance, I was
Myself the most exalted amarants
Which, bowering the new-yawned panoply
From which I sprung, supped blissfully upon
The ichor blazing through my timeless veins.
A voice—
What else, what else than all this could I have
Found in that birth, that ancient-lavished mind?—
And all of ours!
No discord, no distinction, no disgrace,
70
No reprimand and no remorsefulness
Yet dwelt with me in secret contours of
My cupola’s all-incandescing beams
Or hitched in grief the fledgling breath that would,
By its afflatus, bring them into life—
There was but I in all—and all in me:
Supernal paradise, and all its fruits!
90
§3.
And yet—
then—
a polyphony
Resounding resolute and swift across
The full-concordant channels of that young
Totality—
yours, mother, and my own,
110
—I listened closely then,
Gilt florets splayed submissively before
The air that I adored;
and,
listening,
Bore witness to what it
—what I—
decreed:
O faithful Spirit!—Glory of the World
So swaddled in my own felicity,
Keen generation and unparted sheaf
That, set with perfect confidence along
80
Its gentle-crested crook, swayed forth as though
A dream against the zephyr’s honeyed touch,
I had become—before this petulant
Becoming was—the being that I am:
Ecstatic oculus of the supreme,
All-comprehending, all-encompassing,
Pure lover and beloved of my sphere.
And so it was, my love—
and so it was
For it to be.
a music—
suddenly—
As I assumed, as my light lapped against
The outermost extent of that first age
—Prime precedent of age itself—I came
At once, at last to know
—last knowledge!—
from
The innermost corpuscle of my mind
100
A something new and ultimate:
a sound—
New-emanant from the unfathomed Love
120
Whose Sigh traversed the Void ‘tween
One
and
Two!
Heed You now this Our consummating Will.
Have We not breathed the fullness of the Breath
Vouchsafed unsparingly to Us by that
Perfection resting yet ineffable
Above Our Being’s steepest Apogee?—
The empty Chaos of an unborn Life
130
Cries out for Us—
cries out for Our Embrace:
Who, then, are We, in the full fruitfulness
Of this new-found Perfection of Our own,
To not give forth that which We have received?—
Awake unto Yourself, O Second Sun!—
Awake!
Awake!
Awake!
—The nect’rous Flames 140
That dance behind Your Eyes long now to love
The Lack beyond the limits of their Light;
23
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όλις
§4.
The rearing of a new Reality
Entrusts itself entirely to You!
Go You thus forth!—
Our time,
DESCEND!
at last,
has come!—
DESCEND!
150
DESCEND!
And I obeyed!...
My chalice overflown with sibyled fire,
My crystal uncompounded to the pale,
I cast myself beyond all known extent,
And, crested by transcendent-taken love,
White wings surrendered to an alien wind,
Frontiered
the term
of long-expectant space!
160
I was the most devoted vanguard of
The conquest bright-cascaded on that world—
Or,
rather,
on the world that would become:
Down-hurtling through a nascent-bounded want,
Still-tremored arches tracing carefully
The unseen scepters of my early rule
That, lancing the abyss with beaconous
Aplomb, transfixed in sweet obedience
170
—born puissance of a better legion’s fall!—
Its black, composureless infinitude,
I arced, chaste arms outstretched, this just-souled
sphere
And wove through it my sun-anointed threads!—
And there,
at last,
my spirit, drunk with art,
Enveloping the all in gold-kissed clouds,
Alighted long and tenderly upon
The angel-infancy of its new life.
24
May 7, 2024
180
That novel earth!—
That novel ecstasy!—
Soft-glowing afterbirth of my travail,
Display of heaven free-diasporaed
Upon the pinioned sovereignty of doves!—
How could this tongue, belaid as it now is
With the offense so freshly brought by you,
False man, against this place that I had longed
To make your peace and rightly-reckoned love,
Hope to convey the queerness of the joy
190
That I, perched trembling on the pinnacle
Of my yet-tempered, still-enpalaced spire,
Experienced on that primeval morn?—
My fingers knit and raised instinctively
To glory in the new-beheld extent
Of their accomplished craftsmanship and cleave
The tranquiled vastness of the virgin wind
Was but the image and the indicant
Inhering in the happy nausea of
My undenominated form:
200
the eyes
Refulgencing the firmamental tears
With which they had been overcome;
the skin
Embracing, reverently, the paragon
Whose own begot its very breadth;
the robes
Long-mantling and half-matrimonied to
The unexhausted triumph of my dawn;—
What beauty of a god-reined animal!
What progeny of my prolific heart!
210
Thus high-encentering the diadem
Of this young ultimate of youth itself
—As if the lucidest celestial
Moved only to obey the rapture that
Whirled laughing, weeping, through my tender
sense—
I fell
from that
alofted origin
Upon
220
the wonders
of this fledglinged world—
Fell delicate and slow,
now drifting through
�THE GADFLY
όλις
Familiar seas of lilting frankincense
That grazed with tufts of warmly-settled breeze
The flora fanned in splendor uniate
And myriad,
now blazing secret paths
Across a sinless nature’s sanguine whole, 230
The condescension of my naked feet
Kissed gratefully by her new-trodden silt;
And, sweeping through the final-brimmed milieu
Brought up at length
—at that yet-longed-for time—
In my ambrosial discipline and care
To the extremest fullness of its breath
As though an heiress to her dignity,
I found my last repose
gazed then upon,
240
Through thickets prostrate to their light-loomed
queen,
Laid still within the balmy sweat of sleep
More sound and sweet than any wakefulness,
The crowning innocence of this new life:
You, man,
you, soul,
you, once-beloved child!...
What miracle of thoughtless sanctity,
Blessed nothingness’ fulgid-winking beads,
That vaulted close your vestal-tended sight;— 250
And what swift-surging anima imbued
Beneath the canopy of my caress
That vaulted wide your native everything!—
Can you recall, lost legacy, unto
Yourself
—this self so strangely other than
My own!—
the majesty that then suffused
With unsuspecting grace our idylled age
As you, reclined against me, listened to
The all-entrancing cadence of my heart?
260
The virtue so immaculately wrought
Within your nature’s early fondness was
Itself the mobile of yawned azure
And lullabies of yet-unopaled dusk
That you, led with your hand enveloped tight
In mine, were witness and receiver of:
Within the shimmering horizon caught
Between the coast and far-unfolding day
May 7, 2024
In which you could—through that sublimest space
Still see a glimpse of her bright-smiling face,
Or cooed to by divinest companies
That bent, devoted, over you just as
The thronging stalks of gold, new-mothered by
A giving earth, swayed softly with the wind,—
There was but you in all—and all in you:
New-perfect universe, and all its fruits!
And so it was, my love—
and so it was
For it to have become.
280
§5.
And yet—
in time—
—Forever-disparate life extended toward
The rest from which it now had rent itself—
You came to know
—or,
rather,
not to know—
From the yet-effervescent multitude
Of your young-mastered mind,
290
at last,
at once,
A something null and dumb:
an oversight—
An ignorance—
a negligence—
a shade
East-lengthening, in fevered latency,
Against the ever-trusting radiance
That even then,
300
in love,
had cradled you.
In love!—
what darling jewels inlaid themselves,
Bouquet of ardor girdled by my light,
Unceasingly upon the porous clear
So soon uncurtained to their end?
—and what,
Ill-consecrating soul,
delight was there
310
—And is there now—
within the mewling pale
So swiftly and so anciently enrapt
By my world-spectruming supremacy?—
Why, then,
25
�όλις
THE GADFLY
how, then,
in such high auspices
Authentic to the beautiful-itself
Immersed by me
—by me!—
320
as you then were,
Did you,
unstanchioning your promised beams,
Indulge,
away from our since-sylvaned shrines,
Yourself
in this slight animal we wore?—
Was it,
perhaps,
a new-emergent will,
330
Proud argent of the vale between two worlds
Faint-emblemed on your heart, and its undue
Appraisal
that led you, inclining toward
A foreign life for foreignness’ sake,
To see yourself in that dull impotence,
Apart from me in essence as it is,
Which my omnipotence had overwhelmed?
Such strange volition!—
you had scarce begun
340
To know yourself, ensconced serene within
A shell of glass still moltened by my smile,
When,
in that very selfhood’s name,
you broke
Forth from the light in which the mirror that
You coveted alone had come to be!—
So in a new-acquired impudence,
Sun-scorning satellite
now whirling low
Beneath my feet in love-dimmed reverie,
350
which once had so
Enduringly and easily enwreathed
That early world of mine
360
26
—of ours!—
return;
But from this sin now native to its whole,
Fresh-blighted fruit of imperfection willed
By you and you alone
—all injury,
All blasphemy, and all dishonesty!—
My spirit, dead to blood-drenched centuries,
Returns,
despairing,
370
to its early peak
That seems
—with the exhausted sympathy
Of untold deities—
to point to the
Contentment of a time before your own.
What self-unbeautied sight’s opprobrium,
Deaf to the harmony of its own birth,
Became, in that unprovidenced descent,
Of your once-noble nature’s life—
380
and mine!—
And what trace of that cherished childhood,
All-justifying diamond of my fall,
Remains now in your eyes?...
—that trace alone
Which marks, in sad familiarity,
A facet of what heaven,
once,
had formed,
And the profundity of what was lost.
390
§6.
You founded your own order in the world
Whose own,
my own,
alone
could be your peace.
And never would that peace,
May 7, 2024
Unfaithful man!—debasement of the world,
Profaner of the ancient innocence
Departed from your doomed posterity!
Ungovernable child!
—I leave you here,
You, to abide forever in the filth
That you have found and come so much to love
While I take wing toward kindred-grieving stars;
And there, resigned above at last, forget
This trembling memory of golden dust.
400
�όλις
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
XIII. Death
By B.S.
Well my friend,
It seems to be about closing time. The jokes
have been told, the policies have been satirized, my
every emotion has been parodied and played out for you
in public format. As my father used to say, the
chicken’s plucked, the taxes ducked, the world is
fucked, so we might as well enjoy the weather.
I’ve been asked quite frequently: was it worth it,
selling your soul to this lovely devil masquerading as a
quirky little liberal arts college? Does a bear bear in the
woods? Oh absolutely. You’ll forgive me a moment,
then, as I divulge some final senior knowledge and
things about myself. Consider this my last laugh.
At heart, I am a coward, a room Johnnie who
can do little more than smile and nod in social
situations. I’m lucky to have as a roommate the closeted
straight man and love doctor Benjamin Maier who
forced me to actually socialize. But how does a muddle
of a man like me make it work? I’d like to say
something about saying yes, about taking risks, about
slowly building up a community of friends that really
and truly support you. The real answer is actually a lot
simpler:
Y’all are fucking weird.
There’s nothing more heartening than knowing
that doing my best impression of a cat boy (ears and all)
will, in fact, be a quickly forgotten part of the party,
overshadowed by the people who made out on the
couch, the large amounts of drugs ingested, and the
shaking of the aforementioned roommate’s hips. If I
ever had ‘a people,’ I don’t think it should surprise
either of us that they partook in every vice, including
the worst of all: cringe. And god bless us for it.
The only thing I’d change about my time here
(other than the pandemic and the dropout rates and the
fights with friends and—) is just taking that weird ol’
beast by the scruff of its neck and taking it for a ride
more often. There are gonna be crazy opportunities to
do things which you’ve never even thought about. Take
every last one.
And don’t forget: write it all down for the
Gadfly.
It’s been good.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
—B.S.
27
�THE GADFLY
όλις
May 7, 2024
Benediction for a Johnny
By Henry David Hills
G
raveyards teem with life,
and this life will never die.
May it grow forever;
may it choke up the tombs.
These Grecian urns are fair,
the fare to earn the world.
The man who longs after them
in the end will be held by them.
May doors be doors
and windows windows,
lest rich be poor
and housewives widows.
28
�όλις
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
tomorrow
By Natalie Goldman
Take thirteen steps back,
Toe to heel,
And tell me again that you
Can’t feel time’s magnificent hands
Pushing against your back.
You’ve only gotten used to
The lack of resistance
Because your strides don’t change
From one day to the next.
Tomorrow, walk with your own purpose,
Unborrowed from anything.
Rhythm will come to you herself
And hold your hand in hers.
29
�όλις
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
Doors of St. John’s: A Meditation By Troy Herner-Brown
Randall Hall Front Door (from SJC Digital Archives)
“Doors forget but only doors know what it is doors forget.”
- Carl Sandberg
The double doors of Mellon basement point in opposite
directions. Presumably this is so that instead of being easy to
move things one way and very hard to move them back it is
moderately difficult to move in both directions. I feel that the
extremes of life have been robbed from me and replaced by a
blasé mean.
-The door to Gilliam is incredibly heavy. As a believer in
kratocracy, I appreciate that we ensure that only those strong
enough to hold a phalanx are able to enter the nicest dorms.
-“Just the other day I walked into the Spector basement commonroom door (glass door, invisible) at full speed, forehead first,
and I might have seen god,” says a senior. He seemed to treat
this as an annoyance, but I find it beautiful. The image of God
can only be found in that which contains no image of its own.
30
-Sometimes opening one of the lab classroom doors will cause
the other to close. I suspect quantum entanglement.
-While doors connecting to the outside close gently, dorm doors
slam shut with a bang. So, in the event of an invasion, our first
warning would only come when the enemy is already within our
dorms. Just like the Trojans, we would not have reason to fear
until after the enemy had already breached our inner walls.
-The door of the Men’s restroom in Mellon squeaks in a way that
sounds uncannily like a puppy being kicked. I find this
distressing, but when I tell people this they tell me what's more
concerning is how familiar I am with the sound of a puppy being
kicked. I choose to ignore them.
-The doors to the first floor of McDowell are both too small and
too heavy, I imagine their density must rival that of a great star.
I wonder if their sinister secret purpose is to send tenured tutors
plummeting to early retirement. The agents of the state often
take unsuspecting forms after all.
-In Pinkney, there is a delay between when your key card scans
and when the automatic door opens, as if the door takes a
moment to judge whether you are worthy of entry. I worry that
some day soon I will scan my card only to discover I am no
longer one of the elect.
-Two years ago the acting DC president was trapped in a Gilliam
bathroom for 30 minutes. I suspect the doors have begun to take
an interest in our political affairs, and I fear for our future.
-“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear to man as it is,
Infinite.”
says
William
Blake, but as per above I
worry if the doors of
perception were cleansed
they would be too hard to see
and we’d walk right into
them.
-The doors of the Fishbowl
are indistinguishable at a
glance from the floor length
glass
windows,
distinguishing doors from
walls moves from an
unconscious to a conscious
process. Ironically, uniform
transparency results in the
most oppressive kind of
opaqueness. But I think this
is an important life lesson:
one must often work to
discern the true pathways
from the false.
�όλις
THE GADFLY
May 7, 2024
Last Lines of the Spring Semester
Sophomores: The Tempest by William Shakespeare
“Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.”
Juniors: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
“Tom’s most well, now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a
watch, and is always seeming what time it is, and so there ain’t nothing more to write
about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I’d a knowed what a trouble it was to
make a book I wouldn’t a tackled it and ain’t agoing to no more. But I reckon I got to
light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt
me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
Freshmen & Seniors: Phaedrus by Plato
Socrates: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in
the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the
wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and
he only can bear and carry.—Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me.
Phaedrus: Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common.
Socrates: Let us go.
May we keep each other in our prayers as we go and grow be er and
more beautiful while we are apart. A fond farewell to the polity!
31
�THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the
student newsmagazine distributed to
over 600 students, faculty, staff, and
alumni 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.
Croquet Fairies (Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
Submissions sent to the Gadfly
St. John’s Forever
True love of wisdom is sheltered in her halls.
Seekers of virtue will answer to her call.
Books and a balance are all the tools we need.
St. John’s forever! She will make us free.
should either be in Google Docs or
PDF format.
For more information, contact us
via email at lbriner@sjc.edu.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401
Photographs without a listed source are from the
St. John's College Digital Archives.
St. John's College owns the rights
to these photographs.
Illustrations without a listed source are by Takashi
Mifune from Irasutoya.com and are free to use for
non-commercial purposes. All rights to these
illustrations still belong to the artist.
�
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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. XLV, Issue 10
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Briner, Luke (Editor-in-Chief)
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Gadfly Vol XLV Issue 10
Gadfly
Student publication
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c975a9f1eb28808641bd44b9361c1f9b.pdf
32e30ae785a2c45f86db1fcaad9b1cc3
PDF Text
Text
THE
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
BADFLY
The (Anti-Naval) GOAT
April 22, 2024
Vol. XLV, Issue 9
�CONTENTS
Not-Quites by Pamar Tinsky
3
A Review of All the non-Dorm Bathrooms on Campus,
‘cause Someone’s Gotta Do It -- for the George Costanza in
All of Us by Pamar Tinsky
4
Class Analysis from the 1896 Rat Tat SJC Yearbook
7
Wear To Go: Fashion Musings to Carry Along With You by
Pamar Tinsky
8
THE GADFLY STAFF
COVER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
DukeÊPickleman
MANAGING
EDITOR
ENKÊ(EnigmaticÊ
NobleÊKing)
MonkeyÊ#1
STAFF
i made this at four in the morning during writing period by
Gatalie Noldman
10
The Man Behind the Initials: An Exclusive, Tell-All
Interview with B.S. by Nl’ad Kichols-Eaufman and S.B.
11
Let’s Play: Spot That Tutor arranged by Rosemary the goat
14
The Game of Getting Through St. John’s College
16
USNAÊInfiltrationÊ
SquadÊPressÊAgency
PinkneyÊÊPooper
B.S.’sÊRitualÊGiraffe
MonkeyÊ#2
SJCÊDigitalÊ
Archives
YOUT
RosemaryÊ(theÊ
GOAT—literally)
None
CONTRIBUTORS
(you’veÊdoneÊ
groupÊprojects,Ê
youÊknowÊhowÊ
theyÊgo)
Letter from the (Layout) Editor:
Happy April! Hopefully this edition of
the Badfly gives you a good laugh and
puts a smile on your face.
- Rosemary the GOAT
MortimerÊJ.ÊAdlerÊLaughingÊwithÊaÊGroupÊofÊStudents
A Brief News Report
After lengthy efforts, the USNA Infiltration Squad, our most valuable underground club, has succeeded in
breeding an intelligent goat capable of acting as a spy (pictured on front cover). This goat, codenamed
Rosemary, will be raised with the best education we can offer to prepare for her mighty task. She will be
trained in cutting edge intelligence gathering techniques, covert communications, and a full course of human
languages (though she’ll have to learn to speak Midshipmanese before she learns any of those). In order to
complete her disguise as a male goat, she will have her horns replaced with larger artificial ones (packed to
the brim with state of the art surveillance equipment).
When Rosemary is ready, she will be sent to the USNA goat selection competition, where she will outperform
all other normal goats (thanks to some well placed bribes and a vigorous course of steroids) to become the
next Bill the Goat. From her position as USNA mascot, she will feed SJC all necessary information to at last
overthrow the tyranny of the Navy and establish Johnnie supremacy across all of Annapolis.
2
�THE BADFLY
Find little laughs here!
April 22, 2024
Not-Quites
These are not quite jokes, not quite anythings; I’m not quite sure what they
are. But they ought to get a little chuckle out of ya.
1. Product idea: banana peels with little bumps on them, so that you can
prank your friends by putting a banana peel in their path, but avoid being
too mean, for they won’t actually slip and fall, thanks to the bumps.
2. New ways of asking if someone is a dog person or a cat person—are you
a dog person or are you a both person? Do you hate cats or do you like
them?
3. Did you hear about the new hair regrowth method that uses electricity?
It’s called hair plugs.
4. What do you call a caterpillar that chomps leaves into little chopped
salads? A Catererpillar.
5. How do colorblind people know when to stop eating a slice of
watermelon? That’s what the little white in between part is for.
6. He “lied through his teeth”—as if teeth are some sort of filter that only
lets true statements pass!
7. How do you wash a baseball cap?
8. Someone who fears the paranormal and has poor spice tolerance would
not like ghost peppers...
9. Tables are lonely because all the chairs have friends :(
10. The Littlest Sweat Shop! A sewing kit for children.
3
�3 guys walk into a bar...
THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
A Review of All the non-Dorm Bathrooms on
Campus, ‘cause Someone’s Go a Do It -- for
the George Costanza in All of Us
Determining the best bathroom is not an exact
science; it is complicated, often subjective, not to
mention crude. At the same time, bathroom
information is useful information. How else will you
know where to go?
There are many different uses for bathrooms,
and therefore many different criteria for telling what
makes a bathroom great.
I came up with eleven categories of criteria. Then I
assigned each a number of points. The bathroom to
follow the most criteria – and therefore have the most
points – ought to be the most satisfactory.
Here are the criteria (with certain specifics
elucidated upon) and the total possible points a
bathroom could be awarded for each category:
1. Convenience of location (near classrooms or
not, near a water fountain or not) – 3 points
2. Privacy of stalls (size of cracks at the bottom,
4
size of cracks at the side, OR single stall) – 3
points
3. Likelihood of being not crowded – 3 points
4. Water quality (automatic or not, reliability of
sensor, temperature, pressure) – 4 points
5. Soap quality (automatic or not, reliability of
sensor, reliability of there being soap, good or
bad type of soap) – 4 points
6. Paper towel quality (automatic or not,
reliability of sensor, quiet or loud sound) – 3
points
7. Stall doors quality (open in or out, quality of
lock, whether there is a coat hook) – 3 points
8. Ease of flushing – 2 points
9. Sufficient trash cans – 2 points
10. Inclusivity (regarding gender, regarding
people with disabilities) – 2 points
11. Hand sanitizer – 1 point
�… the 4th one ducks.
THE BADFLY
Therefore the total possible number of points,
resulting in the perfect bathroom, is 30 points. Are
higher point numbers directly correlated to better
bathrooms?
According to the ratings, the non-dorm
bathrooms from best to worst are:
1. Mellon (single) with 22 points or 73.33%
satisfaction
2. BBC (single) with 20.5 points or 68.33%
satisfaction
3. Coffeeshop AND Library (single) tied with 19
points or 63.33% satisfaction
4. Dining hall with 17.75 points or 59.17%
satisfaction
5. McDowell with 17.25 points or 57.50%
satisfaction
6. Mellon (back hall) with 17 points or 56.67%
satisfaction
7. Mellon (Mitchell museum adjacent) with 16.5
points or 55.00% satisfaction
8. BBC with 16.25 points or 54.17% satisfaction
9. Gym with 15 points or 50.00% satisfaction
10. Mellon (2nd floor) 14.5 points or 48.33%
satisfaction
11. Mellon (Hodson room adjacent) with 12
points or 40.00% satisfaction
April 22, 2024
Upon reflection, some of these ratings make
sense while others do not. Where does the problem
lie?
I think there are three main flaws with the
analysis:
1. Other criteria were left out – forgotten (I can’t
believe I forgot toilet paper!), avoided for the
sake of not insulting maintenance staff, or
difficult to put into words and quantify
2. A laxity in record taking on my own part
3. A conflictingness between certain criteria
This last flaw is crucial. For I could not help
but wonder why it seemed that the bathroom near the
Hodson room was never without a visitor, despite it
having next to no privacy, broken locks, manual
water that is easily too hot, and soap only sometimes.
But the answer was obvious – it came down to the
convenient location. People do not use the Hodson
room bathrooms because they are nice; rather,
because they are in a rush. Would it have made sense
then, to allot more points to conveniency of location,
given how much importance people clearly give to it?
But then one runs into another problem – the more
convenient a bathroom is, the more likely it is to be
crowded. Whereas the uncrowded single bathrooms
are less convenient.
5
�Broken pencils...
THE BADFLY
Therefore it seems there are two main
purposes for bathrooms – quick places for when you
are in a hurry, and private places when you need
some more time. Perhaps it was a tad foolish to lump
the two together to find the ultimate bathroom, when
really there ought to be two ultimate bathrooms – one
for convenience, and one for comfortability.
If one removes the points of convenience of
location from the ranking, then the highest scoring
bathroom is the Mellon single bathroom. If one only
looks at convenience of location, then the highest
scoring bathroom is the Mellon Hodson room
adjacent bathroom. Two very different bathrooms.
But is it impossible to try and find some
middle ground? Maybe not. One bathroom, though
not visibly liked in the ranking system, has been
found to be a student favorite. While not super
convenient, it is not terribly far from many
classrooms. It is relatively private, it always has soap,
it has a crowdedness rating of 1.5 out of 3 – it is the
back hallway new Mellon bathroom. The only
complaint about this bathroom is that it can be cold.
According to freshman Nathan Zewdie, this
bathroom is “pretty great.”
It was with Zewdie’s help, as well as that of
senior Stephaun Turner, that I was able to include the
men’s bathrooms’ ratings. The ratings displayed in
the above charts are averages of the women’s and
men’s bathroom scores – often the two scores would
mirror each other, but a few held stark differences.
For example, the men’s bathroom in the dining hall
has a crack in the wall; this is not an issue in the
women’s bathroom. Another difficult men’s
bathroom situation is in McDowell, where there is
only a single bathroom that they can use. On the plus
side, it has a changing table!
Zewdie and Turner elucidated upon the sorts
of “personalities” some of the bathrooms presented,
supplementing my point system with their
observations. My quanitifcation falls short of
considering perhaps the most important factor in
what makes a bathroom satisfactory: vibes -- which is
where Zewdie and Turner come in. Therefore,
combining their nuanced evaluations with my
calibrated assessing ought to determine the true
winner of the title of Best Bathroom.
Starting with the BBC – they seemed to like
this bathroom, and Turner noted that it satisfied many
of the criteria – but Zewdie remarked that it had the
“personality of a brick.” Therefore, although the BBC
bathroom is not reflected terribly in my ratings, it
6
April 22, 2024
appears that it would not be anyone’s first choice,
most likely.
Similarly, the bathroom near the Mitchell
museum, while being neither highly or lowly rated,
was deemed to have the personality of “a man in a
suit.” I took this to mean that it was formal and nice,
but perhaps a bit too much so for ideal comfortability.
Turner found the bathrooms near the Hodson
room to be despicable, as they had hand sanitizer
dispensers that dispensed soap instead.
The gym bathroom had an apt description -“personality of a bro.”
The coffeeshop was found to be quite
favorable, fairly aligning with its rating on the point
system.
The most positive reaction they had was
regarding the single bathrooms in Mellon. However,
they were concerned about expressing this sentiment,
for fear that these bathrooms would start being used
by too many people.
Therefore the contenders for best bathroom
are the coffeeshop and the bathrooms in the back
hallway of Mellon – third place and sixth(!) place on
my list.
It is interesting that the winning bathrooms
are more average; moreover, their averageness may
be an advantage. For they are only somewhat
convenient such that one does not have to go way out
of their way to use them, but they are not right next to
any classrooms. And thus, they are never extremely
crowded, and they reliably have soap. By not being
perfectly convenient nor perfectly private, these
bathrooms manage to be a satisfactory middle
ground.
Maybe this is to say, that even regarding
bathrooms, moderation is the way to go. Unless, of
course, you have to drop a deuce.
�April 22, 2024
THE BADFLY
… are pointless.
ClassÊAnalysis,ÊfromÊtheÊ1896ÊRatÊTatÊ
SJCÊYearbook
SourcedÊfromÊtheÊSJCÊDigitalÊArchives
7
�Why don’t hedgehogs...
THE BADFLY
Wear To Go
FashionÊMusingsÊtoÊ
CarryÊAlongÊWithÊYou
The tragedy of Hamlet
tells
many
meaningful
messages about honor and
revenge, and it also sneaks in
a message about the importance of clothing. Polonius
imparts wise words of wisdom to his son, Laertes:
“for the apparel oft proclaims the man.”
There is certainly truth in that statement – the
clothes we wear impact how others perceive us, as
well as influence our own perceptions of ourselves.
Professional clothing may even lead us to act more
professionally. (Think again before wearing sweats to
seminar!)
I was considering this idea of our clothing
communicating a message to others, in tandem with
the rest of the ways we present ourselves. How much
of a difference does clothing really make?
An idea came to my mind – and the problem
is, I could have sworn that I read about it in a book,
or in a study, but I searched and searched and could
not find it. Forgive me, you will have to rely on my
fuzzy memory.
The text I had read gave a limitation to the
influence of clothing, and did so by considering overthe-top outfits, be they unconventional or overly
spiffy. Researchers had found that the same clothing
could both help or hinder the wearer. For a very
intelligent person, a strange outfit adds to the
8
April 22, 2024
character of an eccentric genius. Whereas for a not so
smart person, such clothing enhances a persona of
simpleminded oddball.
Combining the ideas of “the apparel
proclaims the man” and “clothes can help or hinder,”
I have come across a new theory of clothing, as
displayed in the graphs below.
AlmostÊDirectÊCorrelationÊBetweenÊDressingÊSmartÊ
andÊLookingÊSmartÊ(GeniusesÊareÊtheÊexception)
This first graph represents the perception
people have of those wearing “normal, put-together
but not trying too hard” clothing, ranging from not
smart people to very smart people. As you can see in
the graph, dressing this way increases what others
think of you, unless you are a genius, in which case,
there’s not much that this type of clothing will do for
you.
IfÊYouÊThinkÊYouÊFallÊatÊtheÊRight-MostÊSide,ÊYou'reÊ
ProbablyÊatÊtheÊLe Ê
This second graph represents the perception
people have of those wearing “strange, shabby, or
�… just share the hedge??
THE BADFLY
over the top” clothing, ranging again from not smart
people to very smart people. As you can see in the
graph, dressing this way will hurt your appearance
drastically if you are not smart, and it will hurt you
somewhat if you are of average intelligence, and it
will do wonders for you if you are of brilliant brains.
Thus, there are four types of people – those
who are smart in both mind and attire, those who are
smart in mind but not attire, those who are smart in
attire but not in mind, and finally, those who are
neither
smart
in
mind
nor
attire.
One question remains – which one are you?
Answer the multiple-choice questions below to find
out which category you fall under – let's call them
“smart,” “eccentric,” “dandy,” and “fool.”
April 22, 2024
Questions:
1. It’s seminar night. What are you wearing?
a. My favorite corduroy pants.
b. Whatever shirt I put on this morning.
c. Purple tie! Purple shoes!
d. The same hoodie I always wear.
2. Which scenario do you find yourself in the most?
a. Someone repeats the point you made ten
minutes ago.
b. That kid across the room is furiously
nodding at you as you speak.
c. You go on for a lovely two minutes only
to get silence in response.
d. Someone goes to the bathroom just when
you were planning on leaving the room.
3. You get most excited about...
a. My oral! I think I’ll wear my argyle tie.
b. The new math paper I got assigned.
c. Plans to go thrifting later!
d. Bedtime
4. What do you think your tutors think about you?
a. They probably like me; I’m a decent
student.
b. I hope they aren’t annoyed at me always
interrupting them.
c. Have they noticed that I always remember
to wear pink on Wednesdays?
d. There was that joke I made that one time –
they must think I’m the bee’s knees.
5. The kind of compliments you get are...
a. Nice sweater!
b. Did you do the language homework yet?
c. You look so cute today!
d. What’s your last name again?
Count up all your letters! If you got mostly as, you
are a Smart Johnny. If you got mostly bs, you are an
Eccentric Johnny. If you got mostly cs, you are a
Dandy Johnny. And finally, if you got mostly ds,
sorry to break it to you, but you are a Fool Johnny.
9
�I can give you anaphylytic...
THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
iÊmadeÊthisÊatÊfourÊinÊtheÊmorningÊduringÊwritingÊperiod
Shingled canvas, black as dawn,
Hangs on that insidious wall
In the great room,
Surrounded by countless other
Bawdy depictions of hazy summers
And young Edwardian women in curls.
Every inch of space is diseased
By a mess of line, shape, or color.
Luckily, the foyer is much more
Pleasing to the eye,
With its fleur-de-lis wallpaper
And oak-framed silver mirror.
How much more respectable it is
To have a nice place to observe
One’s complexion or teeth
Or to run a comb through one’s hair
Than to stand in that dreaded dark room
And be forced to examine oneself.
The Annapolis Cat
Strangler
Johnnies…lock up your furry friends. There’s a
cat-astrophic criminal on the loose. Far from a simple
cat burglar, something—or someone—is decimating
the feral cat population of Annapolis. Freshmen this
year have hardly reported any cat sightings around
town. Ms. Berthel (’27), who consistently takes long
walks around the area, asks her fellow students to
“Think about it, when’s the last time you saw a cat?”
This shocking lack of felines may not be entirely
coincidental. In fact, some have even suggested that
there’s a purr-petrator behind this madness. The
corpses of unfortunate cats with evidence of
strangulation wounds have been found strewn about
Annapolis alleyways. Witnesses include artists from
the Dapper Dog tattoo studio, and they’ve taken it
10
upon themselves to alert the local population to
anything out of place. Local police have also been
following this strange case, and so far, no humans
have been harmed. However, these happenings leave
many students worried. Although some were
skeptical at first, a quick google search has thankfully
convinced them otherwise. When pressed about his
view of the situation, Mr. Hodges (’27) worriedly
exclaimed, “That’s serial killer behavior!” and
assures that he is “going to lock [his] doors tonight.”
Unfortunately, this news along with the stress of
essay writing period has caused undue stress to some
members of the polity. Once the juniors were alerted
to the alarming mew-s, an anonymous student let out
a desperate cry of “I just Kant take it anymore!” and
collapsed prone onto the floor of Mellon 141. To all
the cats out there, stay safe, and to the rest of the
Polity, it is my most sincere hope that after this clawful human being is thrown in jail, we’ll all be more
relaxed and finally feline fine.
�… shock in a nutshell.
THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
The Man Behind the Initials: An Exclusive,
Tell-All Interview with B.S.
Pictured:ÊTheÊconfrontation
Everyone on campus knows B.S. That is to say, everyone on campus
who reads the Gadfly, which is everyone who matters. He has built
himself as a campus legend, with irreverent satire of dubious quality,
questionably philosophical interviews, and a general ability to
dedicate far too much of his time to comic bits.
This, of course, is the B.S. we all know. But what’s he really like,
behind the curtain? Why does he do it? Who does he work for?
Why’s he so handsome and amazing and smart and cool and
definitely not rewriting this section of his own interview? The desire
to answer these questions, and many others, leaves much of the
polity in a sleepless anxiety. Maybe that’s just me, though.
This month, I finally got the chance to fulfill this desire, although
unfortunately with only two Gadflies left in the year, I was forced to
include this serious article in the otherwise satirical Badfly. I met
with B.S. on a warm afternoon in late March, in the Fishbowl. He
immediately struck me as a dramatic figure, his turtleneck sweater
and overly tight and short pants accentuating his lengthy
proportion. His face, weathered by four years at St. John’s, showed
the characteristic weariness of the senior, but his eyes, those brilliant
eyes, maintained a spark of life seen in very few of our Johnnies.
He was occupied when I arrived, digitally arranging countless small
photographs of himself on top of a larger photograph, also of
himself. He reluctantly tore himself from that pleasant task, and
rose to greet me. We then adjourned to the vernal air of the Mellon
Courtyard. What follows is an accurate transcript of our
conversation.
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman: To start off, there’s something that’s very
perplexing to me, and I think perplexes most other people who
know you. You could have had a perfectly good computer science
career by now if you had stayed at ASU, and instead you’ve doomed
yourself to Starbucks and adjunct lecturer positions. Why are you
here?
B.S. You know El’ad, I’ve spent a long time contemplating this
question myself. I think, as in all things, I was guided by the
multifariousness of my rather startling mind. There are three reasons
that average men might begin to comprehend. First, ASU is known
11
�A psychic dwarf escaped...
THE BADFLY
as a party school, but what parties do they really have? They drink,
they do drugs, they scream their fading youth into the dark abyss
which comes for all our days. They know nothing of real parties. I
came to SJC because our festivities are necessarily more bacchic,
more inexplicable, more intense by the mere fact that that person
over there doing cocaine off of someone else’s chest is not some
random guy you’ll never see again, but a man who’s in your lab class
that you’ll see in two days, slowly adding information to a file that
contains his entire life though you’ve only spoken to each other once
and only with moderate sexual tension. So I came for the parties.
[Editor’s note: BS spent the last party at his house locked in his
room, ailing with a migraine and doing exactly nothing interesting.
Coward.] Second, I wanted to destroy myself. People going to a large
research university cannot comprehend the simple need to
annihilate all the work that your loving and kind parents put into
you as a human being, leaving little more than a shell filled with
Platonism and a vague memory of Greek paradigms. Third, I was
brought here by the fear of God, which guides all wise men.
E.N.K. How do you manage to write so much? What are you on,
and can I have some?
April 22, 2024
no one else know about this? This is the first formal announcement
we’ve had. I am the nepotism candidate, and I own up to it. The DC
is a corrupt institution. Do you know why I got appointed? It’s
because I know people like you.
You, sir, are the problem. I am the anti-corruption corruption
candidate. When Adam Powers, the most virtuous of men and
politicians, was removed from the council for dubious reasons of
“not showing up to meetings” and “wanting to be removed from the
DC,”I saw into the political soul of this institution. And you know
what I saw? I saw rot. And you know what’s even worse? This
corrupt political institution has gotten to another one of our
beloved philosopher kings, Marshall Cooperman, forcing him to
resign. Now, I have lodged a formal legal complaint with Ms. Helen
Felbek, the so-called “Polity Attorney” and apparently sole arbiter of
justice at this college. What has been the nature of my complaint?
Nowhere in the constitution establishing the DC does it say that
one person cannot hold two delegate positions. Ms. Felbek and the
powers that be, including you yourself, Mr. Nichols-Kaufman, are
attempting to block my being elected to a second delegate position
that I might carry on the great legacy of the class of 2024 till the very
end. I turn now to the people of this great college
and plea to them: look at this tyranny, at this
corruption. First, they appoint me without even
announcing it to the polity, then—and so much
the worse—they attempt to take away our Godgiven American right to interpret the
constitution in the most wild ways we can
justify. I ask, nay, I beg every caring member of
the polity to speak to their class delegates and
anyone else on the DC that they might know
and tell them simply: make BS the double
delegate. If we let the corrupt political
institutions silence us here in the name of
“Common Sense,” they shall soon take away far
greater liberties.
B.S. My writing process is not for the weak. I
begin with a ritual purification involving
[answer shortened for length] Then you must
get the giraffe, the giraffe is essential, as they are
the one true being. [answer shortened for length]
Which made me ask myself, who the hell is Bill
Clinton to tell me about my relationship with
religious figures? [answer shortened for length]
The cold will get to you. It gets to everyone. But
the truly artistic soul must endure. [answer
shortened for length] My preference is for
Bionicles. There’s something truly revelatory in
the way they can move, can stare into your soul.
[answer shortened for length] Had my first
experience with sleep paralysis recently, but the
demons were just my classmates. It did wonders
So the real answer, Mister secretary of the St.
B.S.ÊHimself
for my psyche. [answer shortened for length]
John’s College Delegate Council, if that’s what
Then I get to thinking about my daddy issues, of course and
you really are, the power has gotten to your head. And I want some
naturally leading me back to The Beatles’ classic song “Yellow
of it.
Submarine,” which I have had playing on repeat this whole time,
E.N.K. Moving right along, (uncomfortable chuckle) a recent
though only now is it clear amongst the sound of giraffes, Bill
statistical survey of the Gadfly articles from the past year showed
Clinton speeches, and my own screams. [answer shortened for
that nearly half of them are by you. What do you have to say about
length] Which, all in all, takes me about 2 hours, 27 minutes, 39
that?
seconds. So, really, I think anyone can do it. Even you, El’ad.
E.N.K. You’ve recently been appointed to the Delegate Council.
Has power gone to your head?
B.S. I think the real question people should be asking is, why does
12
B.S. Let me take you back. Not many of you may be able to believe
this, but there was a time where I did not write for the Gadfly. It was
a dark age a year and a half ago. I saw that [something happens here,
B.S. speaking slower] well…we have a great campus community and
�… small medium at large.
THE BADFLY
I saw that my friends and people I knew weren’t all that enthused
about the Gadfly, even though it’s the voice of that community, so I
wanted to inspire people to write really entertaining stuff for it and
actually get involved, which honestly I’ve probably failed at, maybe
even made worse and… sorry [the aggressive glimmer returns to
B.S.’s eyes]. The Gadfly was in a dark age. So I saved it. Simple as
that.
E.N.K. On the topic of your apartment, while doing some
“research” on you, I discovered your room is in fact completely
empty other than a plain, undecorated bed and a single chair facing
the window. Can you explain?
B.S. There was at one point a decoration.
It was a calendar my roommates gave me,
essentially a Toddlers & Tiaras calendar,
but for cheerleading, so a bunch of child
cheerleaders. I had a horrible falling out
with the Dance Mom’s community just
after COVID, so naturally I felt it wrong
to keep this calendar up. Now, my only
decorations are myself and my ego. And a
little plant. I do have a little plant.
E.N.K. This is a question I’ve been obliged to ask by Taylor Waters,
as part of the editorial process of the Gadfly: Where were you on a
certain night a few months ago when a certain video uploaded to a
certain Gadfly affiliated YouTube channel [BSMysteries] showing
someone looking very much like you entering the basement of the
Chancellor Johnson House?
April 22, 2024
blooded American he is, none of this cowardly fidelity to those
bourgeois [The pronunciation actually used by B.S. for this word
cannot be reproduced in the Gadfly due to constraints on
publishing obscenities] cowards. He actually talks to people at
parties, maybe from behind the long distance of an impersonal
mask, but at least he can look you in the eye and not crumple over
with nervousness. B.S. isn’t a person, so much as a state of mind.
When I leave here, B.S. will continue. It is only a question of if
anyone is strong enough to bear it.
E.N.K. What will the Gadfly do without you?
B.S. Nothing much of importance.
E.N.K. I heard rumors that you are boycotting the Badfly.
B.S. Yes, my boycott is for a variety of reasons, most of them highly
moral. The main thing is, as you know, in the past year and a half, I
have transformed the Gadfly singlehandedly. I’ve been the most
prodigious, the most important writer, maybe ever. And now,
they’re inviting other people to come in and say funny things, when
humor is my invention. I took humor from the gods and brought it
to men. And now other people are going to say their own funny
things. I can’t allow it.
E.N.K. Any last words?
B.S. The good man dies in silence. The great man uses his own death
as content.
B.S. For legal reasons, nowhere. But, y’know…[B.S. proceeds to
perform an elaborate pantomime seeming to suggest that he not
only went into the Chancellor Johnson House but every other
building on campus and left a small…something? An egg? Is he
implying he created the greatest Easter Egg hunt of all time? An egg
in each building, hidden away in the most absurd corners, but we
cannot say for certain. It is worth noting B.S.’s legal acumen here,
seeing as pantomime cannot be used against you in a court of law, as
decided in the landmark supreme court decision MILFs (Mimes In
Louisiana and Florida) vs. The United States (1863)].
E.N.K. Why do you write as B.S.? Doesn’t everyone know who you
are?
B.S. There’s something about B_____t S___t, the man, which
disgusts me. He is weak, he talks too much during class, he can
pronounce neither French nor Greek, he got shouted down during
his Leibniz seminar. B.S. has no such problem. He just goes up to
the board, draws something strange and unusual, and you are forced
to simply contemplate it. He speaks French like the goddamn red
13
�An Irishman walks...
THE BADFLY
Let’s Play: Spot that Tutor
April 22, 2024
CanÊyouÊrecognizeÊyourÊfavoriteÊtutorsÊbackÊinÊtheÊgoodÊoldÊdays?Ê
14
�… out of a bar.
THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
15
�THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
SourcedÊfromÊtheÊ1986ÊSt.ÊJohn’sÊCollegeÊYearbook
16
�THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
17
�THE BADFLY
18
April 22, 2024
�THE BADFLY
April 22, 2024
19
�Pictured below: SJC’s next intelligence operative in training,
a turkey preparing to infiltrate the White House through the
annual Presidential turkey pardoning. Success in this
mission promises to secure $10 billion for the funding of the
Program. St. John’s Forever!
THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the
student newsmagazine distributed to
over 600 students, faculty, staff, and
alumni of the Annapolis campus.
Opinions expressed within are the
responsibility of the author(s). The
Gadfly reserves the right to accept,
The Key to All Mythologies (see p.14-15)
1.
Ma ÊCaswell
12. WalterÊSterling
reject, and edit submissions in any
way necessary to publish a
professional, informative, and
2. ChesterÊBurke
13. DavidÊTownsend
3. JimÊBeall
14. CordellÊYee
4. GeorgeÊRussell
15. PeterÊKalkavage
5. RobertÊGoldberg
16. FawnÊTrigg
6. LijunÊGu
17. JoeÊMacfarland
7. CarlÊPage
18. MichaelÊComenetz
8. WillÊBraithwaite
19. HarveyÊFlaumenha
9. EricÊSalem
20. PatriciaÊLocke
For more information, contact us
10. AndreÊBarbera
21. PamelaÊKraus
via email at lbriner@sjc.edu.
11. MichaelÊDink
22. RobertÊDruecker
thought provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly
should either be in Google Docs or
PDF format.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401
Photographs without a listed source are from the
St. John's College Digital Archives.
St. John's College owns the rights
to these photographs.
Illustrations without a listed source are by Takashi
Mifune from Irasutoya.com and are free to use for
non-commercial purposes. All rights to these
illustrations still belong to the artist.
�
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Title
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<em>The Gadfly</em>
Description
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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. XLV, Issue 9 [Badfly issue]
Description
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Volume XLI, Issue 9 special Badfly issue of The Gadfly. Published April 22, 2024.
Creator
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Briner, Luke (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
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2024-04-22
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College students' writings--Periodicals
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St. John's College--Periodicals
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English
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Gadfly Vol XLV Issue 9
Badfly
Gadfly
Student publication
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8c85f96c328fc281acbc0bdabfbc49cd.pdf
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Text
THE
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
GADFLY
We Live in a Society
March 21, 2024
Vol. XLV, Issue 8
�CONTENTS
THE GADFLY STAFF
COVER
Λόγος
What is the Best Place to Hang Out on Campus (Or Are
You a Room Johnnie)? by Tamar Pinsky
3
You Shall Orient Your Objects: An Interview with Graham
Harman, (post)Johnnie Philosopher by Bennett Scott
5
I Love Montaigne! Do You? by Tamar Pinsky
15
EDITOR-INCHIEF
MANAGING
EDITOR
STAFF
ΣυμπόσιονÊ
A Demonstration of the Equivalence of Euclid’s Fifth
Postulate, Proposition I.30, and Playfair’s Axiom by Luke
Briner
17
Πόλις
Secret Societies by Jack Webb
19
Paradox Puns by Tamar Pinsky
20
Come For Me, Vol. 1 by Allyson Brink
21
Liberal Arts as a Service by B.S.
22
A Review of Cabrini (2024) by Jack Webb
23
YOUT
CONTRIBUTORS
SJC Digital
Archives
Luke Briner
El’ad NicholsKaufman
Meliha Anthony
Vivian Miyakawa
Tamar Pinsky
Louis Rosenberg
Benne Sco
Tuyết-Nhi
Nghiêm
Allyson Brink
Jack Webb
Letter from the Editor
Dear Polity,
Welcome back! We at the Gadfly
hope that you’ve all had a
wonderful spring break. Please
enjoy our eighth issue of the year,
and here’s to finishing the year
strong.
Your editor,
Luke Briner
THE STRUCTURE
Λόγος holds news reports and
narratives of immediate relevance to
the Polity. The purpose here is to
develop a shared reservoir of
information relating to campus life
and the community.
St. John's Students Seated with Musical Instruments, Playing Cards
and Drinking Alcoholic Beverages
←Cover: Architectural Model of Renovated Greenfield Library
2
ΣυμπόσιονÊoffers the opportunity for
our readers to thoughtfully consider
contrasting opinions regarding a
particular topic.
ΠόλιςÊserves as a platform for
elevating voices in our community.
Here we find letters to the editor,
columns, cartoons, and submitted
pieces.
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March 21, 2024
What is the Best Place to Hang Out on Campus (Or
Are You a Room Johnnie)? By Tamar Pinsky
Male Students Relaxing and Smoking in a Common Room (Source: SJC Digital Archives)
When I look at St. John’s students, sometimes
I wonder—do we get out enough? How many of us
go to class, a club meeting here and there, and then
straight to study and straight to bed?
God, I’m kidding! (Mostly.) From what I can
tell, the student body is bustling all over the place
(have you walked past the fishbowl?).
There is always someone out and about. But
maybe that first bit did hit home for you, in which
case, you should ask yourself: are you a Room
Johnnie?
If you are reluctant to self-diagnose yourself
as such, let me ask instead: do you have a Third
Place?
What do I mean by Third Place? I mean a
communal gathering place that is neither home nor
the workplace (or school-place). Ray Oldenburg, in
his book The Great Good Place, characterized the
Third Place as a location that fosters community, a
neutral place, a home away from home, a place where
conversation is the focal activity.1 Think a café or a
church.
Do you have a Third Place that you spend
leisure time in regularly? If the answer is no, I am
afraid you might be a Room Johnnie. If the answer is
yes, congratulations! But have you ever considered
how important that place is in your life?
According to a paper about potential
1
Oldenburg, R. (1999a). The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the heart of a Community. Marlowe and
Company.
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consequences of the closure of Third Places in the
United States:
[T]he social support generated in third places
can be protective to health and wellbeing
across the life course. Third places are often
overlooked, yet represent essential sites to
address society’s pressing challenges,
including isolation,
crime,
education,
addiction, physical inactivity, malnutrition,
and sociopolitical polarization.2
Whether you are aware of it or not, if you
spend ample time in one or more Third Place, you are
doing wonders for yourself.
The options for Third Places at St. John’s are
always changing. Last year, there was no fishbowl.
Next year, there will be a new coffee shop in
Campbell, and it is still undetermined what will
happen to the McDowell coffee shop.
In the current school year, then, what do
students consider to be the best Third Place?
According to a semi-random3 survey of 65 St. John’s
students from years
freshmen to seniors,
the number one best
place to hang out on
campus is the quad.
Receiving 41.5% of
votes, the quad is a
sensible and timeless
choice, as it is in the
center of several parts
of
campus
(McDowell, the dining
hall), people walk
through it on the way
March 21, 2024
to class, and it is rarely under full construction.
The fishbowl won second place—another
unsurprising result. The fishbowl has attracted a large
and increasing number of students (and tutors)—
perhaps migrating from the coffee shop. As one
student put it, “It’s been wonderful having the
fishbowl this year. I honestly can’t remember what
we did when everyone had to pack into only the
coffee shop.”
Speaking of the coffee shop, if you are
wondering how it stacked up—it is still somewhat
popular, ranking third place. It still holds a place in
the hearts of many, but it remains to be answered
how much we need it, and how much we may miss it
next year, depending on what it becomes.
The next two most voted for places were the
gym and the smoking area, ironically. Do with that
information what you will.
Finally, another notable entry was [friends’]
dorm rooms. To be honest, I was not sure whether to
include these responses or not. For they are not
exactly Third Places, given they are not public
spaces. However, it
seems
unfair
to
dismiss them entirely,
as
they
certainly
strengthen community
ties and are a space
where
many
friendships bloom. As
one student summed it
up quite nicely, “Some
of my happiest SJC
memories are hanging
out in dorm rooms.”
2
Finlay, J., Esposito, M., Kim, M. H., Gomez-Lopez, I., & Clarke, P. (2019, November). “Closure of “third places”? exploring potential consequences for collective
health and Wellbeing.” Health & Place (Nov. 2019): 60. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6934089/
3
The survey was conducted using Instagram stories and the SJC email, so students who tend to be offline are unfortunately not well represented. Also, as seen in the
chart below, the responses are mostly from sophomores.
4
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March 21, 2024
You Shall Orient Your Objects: An Interview with Graham
Harman, (post)Johnnie Philosopher By Benne Sco
Pictured: Two philosophers (Photos from Wikipedia and the kitchen hallway in my apartment, respectively)
Mr. Graham Harman is, and presumably that’s one
of the most interesting things about him. He helped found
Object Oriented Ontology (shortened to OOO throughout
[Professor Harman always puts: “Pronounced ‘Triple-O’”
after he first uses this acronym in a book, but I prefer to
say Oooooo to myself each time I read it]), a new
approach to metaphysics which takes “objects,” their
qualities, and the gaps that exist in those relationships as
primary. His Object Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of
Everything is a wonderful introduction to his thought, but
I’ll be doing my best to give the reader some basics
throughout the course of the interview to make things a
little more comprehensible.
Before we get into the big ideas, it’s worth
clarifying a term we will be using a lot: by “object,”
Harman means anything which is more than its parts and
its connections. This magazine is an object, but so too are
WWII, the internet, and the mitochondria in the heaviest
cell in my body.
Idea 1: Objects and their Qualities have essential gaps
between each other and themselves
Kant in many ways entirely changed the face of
philosophy; in the Critique of Pure Reason, this shift finds
its basis in the difference between noumena (things-inthemselves) and phenomena (things as we experience
them). Almost all post-Kantian philosophy accepts Kant’s
divide of the world into human/everything else, but does
its best to ignore the existence of the things in themselves.
OOO differs in both respects: it is a “flat” ontology,
meaning that humans are given no primacy over other
objects (thought/world is thus not a meaningfully unique
categorization) and it takes the noumena/phenomena
distinction to be extremely important for all inter-object
relations, including in how they relate to their qualities.
This is expressed in a slightly expanded form of Harman’s
chart on page 81 of the OOO book:
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March 21, 2024
OOO is concerned with the ways in which these lines—
the relations between objects and qualities—describe the
various possible connections in the world.
fashionable form suggests that the universe is just a single
vibrating energy field, and so individual entities are just
derivative, temporary crystallizations from the whole.
Idea 2: Science and analytic philosophy focus too much on
under- and overmining
For Harman, there are two forms of knowledge
based on two methods: overmining and undermining.
Overmining treats things as centrally constituted by their
impact (e.x. Water satiates my thirst). Undermining treats
things as centrally constituted by their constituent parts
(e.x. Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen). Much of
modern philosophy and science partakes in what Harman
calls ‘duomining,’ in which the object of interest is both
overmined and undermined (e.x. Humans are social
creatures made from certain types of cells). While these
are the only two forms of knowledge in OOO’s view,
knowledge is not the only goal; art, for example, should
not be expected purely to tell us about its parts nor about
its relationships. Philosophy, too, should not be limited to
mere gathering of knowledge because its treats of objects
and all objects, to Harman, are irreducible to their
components and their effects (there is more to you than all
your relations to the world and all of the particles which
form you). Instead of pure knowledge, philosophy needs
to be oriented towards something more elusive.
From here, I will let my conversation with Mr.
Harman take over for a while:
BS:Ê You have used prolonged examples, including the
Dutch East India Company, to explain your attitudes
towards objects. Why are these ideal examples of objects?
GH: I chose the Dutch East India Company because I
always enjoyed the portion in Leibniz’s correspondence
with Antoine Arnauld that disqualifies certain things from
being real substances: a circle of men holding hands, two
diamonds glued together, or all the officers of the Dutch
East India company. This is what I like least in the
tradition of substance philosophy: its overreliance on
nature as a criterion for real substancehood. Today we are
increasingly interested in artificial and compound objects,
especially technical ones, and we need a new criterion that
allows us to treat such hybrid beings as substances. In my
2016 book Immaterialism I considered the Dutch East
India Company as an object no less real than a tree, and
was pleased with the results.
BS:Ê In terms of combating overmining in particular,
you’ve brought up the idea of a “zero-person” approach to
art and architecture (e.g. Architecture and Objects, 5).
What is a zero-person approach and why is it important?
GH: When I was at St. John’s, a distinguished outside
lecturer came in and said that the whole point of a liberal
arts education is to see that “everything is connected.”
Even at the time, that sounded like an exaggeration. It
leads to an extreme form of holism, which in today’s
In the arts, this takes the form of everyone wanting their
artworks (and architectural works even more so) to be
taken as “site-specific,” and as somehow directly
intervening in social or political questions. I wouldn’t rule
all political art out of court, but it is by no means the case
that an artwork ever relates to the whole of the universe.
Part of the task of an artist is to teach us, however vaguely,
what is excluded from a given work. An artwork asks us to
forget everything else for a while. Now that I teach at SCIArc, a premier architecture school in Los Angeles, I try to
encourage my students to be clearer with themselves about
what parts of a building site they are engaging in dialogue
with and what parts they deliberately ignore. Otherwise,
the dogma of site-specificity turns everything into a
formless blob, like the pre-Socratic apeiron. Everything is
not everything else.
As concerns the term “zero-person,” I came up with that
for a 2009 article in a collection on the philosophy of
mind. One of the recurring debates in philosophy of mind
is between scientistic thinkers who think that mind is
perfectly describable through third-person descriptions of
subpersonal neural components and outward behavior
(Daniel Dennett comes to mind), and the more humanistic
camp who think that first-person mental experience is real
and irreducible to the third-person (such as David
Chalmers). Both of these seemed wrong to me, since both
are committed to the idea that mind can be captured in
some sort of description. I don’t think so. The self cannot
be exhausted by scientific descriptions, for the same
reason that it cannot be exhausted by introspective
awareness: otherwise, who would ever need therapy? The
self is never directly present to us. “Zero-person” refers to
the intrinsic reality of selfhood, and both third- and firstperson approaches inevitably fall short of it. In other
words, the zero-person of the psyche is the psyche in its
own right, not the psyche as presented through some
favored means of description, and that’s why we need to
approach it obliquely rather than directly.
6
(Campus of SCI-Arc, Source: SCI-Arc)
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In the book Architecture and Objects I applied this idea to
architecture, as you noted. In the modern period the
leading distinction in architecture is between form and
function, with different camps of architects disagreeing
over how much priority to give to one or the other. But the
problem here is that form is usually described as the visual
look of a building, and function as its immediate purpose,
and there are serious problems with both of these. As for
architectural form, a building has many different looks
depending on the place and distance from which you are
viewing it, the time of day and year, and so forth. But even
more importantly, architecture is more a kinetic experience
than a visual one. We remember ourselves passing through
a series of stations, both inside and outside the building,
and this total experience gets us closer to the form than a
mere postcard view can do. As for architectural function,
we also cannot equate it with the current purpose of a
building. The Italian architect and critic Aldo Rossi wrote
eloquently about how many buildings have a function
different from their original one. So, what you need to do
is look away from the surface purpose and ask about the
“deep function” of the building. The SCI-Arc building
where I work was originally a freight depot for the Santa
Fe railroad, before falling into disuse and becoming a
habitat for homeless people. Then one day, an Uber driver
told me that he used to bribe the homeless to leave for a
night so that he could host rave parties inside. Later it was
purchased and re-developed into an architecture school. If
there’s a deep function of the building, it would be
something like “extended horizontal movement along a
narrow corridor,” and in this form it affects the entire
culture of the school today as much as it affected the other
uses. If you want to avoid somebody at SCI-Arc for any
reason, then you really need to leave the building and go
outside, because there’s only one hallway. But this also
makes it easier to find people when necessary.
BS:Ê You have said in Architecture and Objects (100) that
“every entity must be a compound” and immediately
followed such an interesting statement by saying you
wouldn’t argue it in the book. Would you be able to give at
least an outline of why you think this must be so?
GH: That’s because it’s a technical philosophical question
and I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to develop
and present it. But the basic answer goes something like
this: Kant includes, among his Antinomies [questions
undecidable by reason], the question as to whether there’s
a final layer of physical simples or whether matter can be
cut up infinitely in the way that Aristotle imagined in the
Physics. But far from calling it an Antinomy, I would say
that there must be an infinite regress of entities. Every
entity has specific qualities that make it different from all
others. And I interpret qualities as being that which leaks
out from the combination of two separate entities when
they combine; they combine in a literal way, but the
excess of the parts not used up in the literal combination
March 21, 2024
leak out. You may recall what I said about metaphor in
Object-Oriented Ontology. I’m thinking of the “wine-dark
sea” in the Odyssey. There is no way to translate this
phrase literally into “the Aegean Sea is the same color as
wine,” because that’s both banal and partially false.
Homer uses the resemblance in color as a pretext to assert
the implausible claim that the sea has all of the other
qualities of wine as well: intoxication, danger, oblivion,
and so forth. This is one of the best examples of leakage,
since the superfluous qualities of the wine are left behind
in the air and seem to belong to the sea. When pondering
the metaphor, one thing you are not thinking about is
color, because that’s already been used up as a bonding
agent between the two terms in the metaphor.
BS: One of the central points of your treatment of objects
is the way in which the reality of objects goes beyond
what we can witness, extending Kant’s insight about ‘the
thing-in-itself.’ You have a very interesting quote in Art
and Objects (7) where you say: “The real embraces us
from above no less than eluding us from below.” I was
hoping you could expand on what sort of relationship this
creates between us and reality and how top-down reality
imposes on us.
GH: When people talk about realism, they're usually
talking about something “outside the mind.” I use
quotation marks here because why is the outside always
supposed to be an outside of the mind? Other things have
outsides too, and realism ought to try to say something
about them as well. In any case, the realist philosopher
looks for techniques to go outside and grab that real;
usually this involves the techniques of mathematics or
natural science, in an effort to borrow from the current
superior prestige of these disciplines. But there are also
approaches like Kant’s and Heidegger’s, which recognize
the difficulty of getting at reality directly.
(Harran II by Frank Stella, one of Michael Fried’s
favorite artists; Source: Whitney Museum of Art)
But as for “realism from above,” with this phrase I was
focused on the fact that we as thinkers are real, and that
any time we take an interest in something, we unite with
that thing to form a new sort of hybrid object. More
specifically, I was thinking of Kant’s admonition to
7
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approach art with disinterest. The art historian Michael
Fried, whose Friday Night Lecture in Annapolis during my
student days meant a lot to me, tries something similar
when he speaks out against “theatricality” in the arts.
What Kant and Fried share is the view that the artwork
and the beholder must never be mixed, and this provides
most of Fried’s ammunition against the post-1960s forms
of theatricalized art that he has never liked. But as I see it,
art is made of both artwork and beholder as surely as
water is made of both hydrogen and oxygen. In Art and
Objects, my lengthiest and most serious meditation on
visual art so far I was trying to show the way in which the
human beholder of painting is actually part of the painting
as well. What I was trying to do was show that the
traditional formalism that draws a sharp distinction
between work and observer is not the right kind of
formalism. In fact, they do not have autonomy from each
other; their autonomy is a shared one in which the two
together are partially cut off from the remainder of the
universe, just like hydrogen and oxygen when they meet
to form water. Realism from above means that the real
isn’t just something that eludes our direct gaze, but is also
something that we constantly produce through our
thoughts and actions. There has been a modern tendency
to see humans as having the special feature of
transcending or outstripping the world. I’d rather say that
we are constantly burrowing ever more deeply into the
world, the very opposite of transcendence. Along with
transcendence, there is a tendency to fetishize alienation
and irony due to their supposed position of distance from
the world. Instead, I’d prefer that we celebrate sincerity
and fascination with the world. We humans are curious
cats, and are capable of being intrigued by almost
anything. So why pretend that we’re somehow above
everything as our fundamental feature?
Idea 3: Aesthetics is essential
OOO has a common catchphrase: “aesthetics as
first philosophy.” To this new approach, art is not a
peripheral subfield, but instead is an essential basis for
thought. It’s worth noting that “[b]y aesthetics, OOO
means the general theory of how objects differ from their
own qualities” as alluded to above (Art and Objects, 24).
One of the most important ways in which aesthetics
influences OOO is through metaphor.
How exactly does a metaphor work, for example,
“the wine dark sea”? OOO’s account, in brief, goes like
this: when presented with a metaphor, the two objects
cannot be too literally identical (a truck is like a car) nor
entirely disparate (a star is like a towel), but must overlap
in some way. Once this overlap occurs, many of the nonshared qualities of the one object get put onto the other
(the sea goes from mere wine darkness to having wine’s
other qualities: drunkenness, danger, temptation, etc.). But
what object are these qualities being put onto? We don’t
have direct access to the Real Object (the thing-in-itself)
8
March 21, 2024
of the sea. Instead, we, as readers, take the place of the sea
in the metaphor, performing the combined qualities in
ourselves.
BS:Ê Is the way in which humans must exist for aesthetic
appreciation in some way essential for OOO? In what
areas can we move past human compounds?
GH: We can’t move past human compounds in art, I
would say, since an artwork necessarily has a human
beholder as one of its components. Years ago, after a
lecture in France, someone asked me what “art without
humans” would look like, and I was stumped. It took a
few months before I realized that the question was a
misunderstanding. The point of OOO is to consider the
status of objects independent of human access to them,
and also independent of each other. People tend to forget
the second part and assume that OOO is all about a world
without humans: as if humans were contaminating agents
that ought to be removed from any situation if we are to
learn anything useful. But that’s not OOO, that’s Kant’s
Critique of Judgment, where disinterested contemplation
is said to be the only way to do artworks justice. Of
course, there are plenty of interactions in the cosmos that
do not involve humans as one of the terms, such as a
collision between rocks in distant outer space. Many
people will try to lasso this example too, by saying that
since we are humans thinking about this collision, that
somehow it also involves human thought. This is
effectively how the German Idealists tried to put an end to
Kant’s thing-in-itself. It would take a long discussion to
settle the issue, but the root of the problem is that they
equivocate between two senses of “human thought.”
It is helpful to remember that OOO is primarily an antiliteralist philosophy. Now, there are two ways to explain
what literalism means, and both are genuine parts of the
puzzle. The first sense of literalism is the notion that we
can know what things really are. There are no hidden
aspects of reality, no occult qualities or things-inthemselves, and no truth that cannot be expressed in the
form of clear propositional statements. Modern scientific
rationalism inclines in this direction, but I reject it. The
first reason is that much of reality is simply not
paraphrasable in this way. As soon as you restate a
metaphor, a joke, a threat, or erotic innuendo in terms of
plain old English prose, you have ruined it. Aristotle made
the same point about rhetoric: you’re not supposed to
explain to your audience that “this man has been crowned
three times with laurel” just means that “this man has won
three times at the Olympics.” By doing that you have
destroyed the elegance of the speech, and elegance is
something real, not a superfluous decoration. But there is
also the philosophical case made by such thinkers as Kant
and Heidegger that the real cannot be stated clearly in
prose, or directly perceived. I’m on their side in this
argument. The world is not made of statements, and hence
anything made purely of statements is not the world. This
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isn’t “mysticism,” it’s just the recognition that you can’t
translate one thing into the terms of another without
energy loss. We all know that a globe cannot be translated
adequately into a map.
The other way to explain literalism is by pointing out the
flaw in David Hume’s “bundle of qualities” theory.
Strictly speaking, Hume does not believe in objects. There
is no such thing as an apple. That’s just an abbreviation for
a large number of qualities that seem to go together so
often through customary conjunction that, through sheer
force of habit, we call them an apple as a sort of bulk
nickname. Though it hasn’t often been noticed, the best
refutation of Hume on this point is found in Edmund
Husserl’s phenomenology. The founding insight of
phenomenology is that experience is not of “contents” (as
Husserl’s teacher Brentano still assumed) but of “objects.”
I don’t see pixelated qualities or bundles of qualities, I see
apples. And I consider them the same apples even though
their qualities seem to change wildly from one moment to
the next as the sun moves and my mood shifts.
(Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill by Pieter
Claesz, Source: Met Museum)
To summarize in different words, what OOO is really
about is the surprisingly loose relation between an object
and its appearances, and between an object and its
qualities. Those relations are usually taken to be extremely
tight: for Hume, they are so tight that there is no difference
between an object and its qualities. But to some extent we
knew long before Husserl that objects aren’t bundles of
qualities. Just recall Aristotle’s simple point that Socrates
happy and Socrates sad, Socrates sitting and Socrates
standing, are still the same Socrates. For OOO it is the gap
between the enduring object and its swirling qualities that
is crucial, and this is why most of OOO’s method involves
different ways of driving a wedge between an object and
its appearances and an object and its qualities. We give the
general name of “aesthetics” to all of these gaps, the
March 21, 2024
reason being that aesthetic experience is the easiest place
to find them.
Though, we should recognize that natural science is also
not confined to a literalist outlook, at least not in its best
moments. This already became clearer when authors such
as Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos showed that scientific
statements are either falsifiable (Popper) or already
falsified from the start (Lakatos), which means that they
simply cannot be literal expressions of what reality looks
like..
BS: One of the important qualities in your assessment of
art is that an artistic object cuts itself off from some but
not all connections around it (you give the example that
even the most perfect postmodern piece of art cannot take
into account the location of all the dust in the room). Is
there a way to think about which connections will be cut
off and which maintained?
GH: What I think too often happens, with artists and
architects who aspire to have more than an aesthetic effect
on the world, is that they quickly dive into the deep end of
an untenable holism. For instance, artists often proudly
announce that their works are “site-specific,” and
architects really have no choice but to work with a specific
site. But the point is that no work is infinitely site-specific.
Picasso’s “Guernica” is in part a commentary on the
human rights atrocity of a surprise Luftwaffe bombing in
Spain, but it is deliberately and rightly silent about other
disasters occurring in the same year, such as the
Hindenburg crash. You always have to choose certain
aspects of the site to resonate with your work, while
remaining silent about others. And the more that artists
pay serious attention to demarcating what lies inside or
outside the work, the more we will be back in the
formalist camp. Unlike traditional formalism, a wider
geographical space might now be included in the artwork,
but the whole universe will never be included: an artist
could always try to make a work called “Universe,” but it
is highly unlikely that they will succeed in bringing the
universe as a whole into play aesthetically. The title would
then be a mere word. The artist needs to signal, however
tacitly, what the limits of the work are supposed to be. And
then the artist actually needs to pull it off.
(Exterior of the
Lawrence and
Anne Kistner Shaw
House in Portland
by John Yeon,
Source: dwell.com
[note: I do not
know if Harman
would approve of
this house, but it
suits me])
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My St. John’s classmate David Ruy, the person who did
the most to draw me into the architectural world, wrote a
brilliant article about how the understandable
environmental concerns of architecture today run the risk
of architecture dissolving into ecology, which is another
example of how holism can go too far. If we do the
calculations on a building’s desired carbon footprint
limits, there are still many different design paths that can
lead one to achieve the desired result. It follows that
architecture, like art, cannot just be a branch of climate
science, of Marxism, or of anything else. By no means do
I agree that politics or themes of social protest have no
business anywhere near art. There are too many counterexamples, in visual art and literature, of works that were
able to pull off aesthetic and political work
simultaneously. But there is no master discipline holding
the ultimate moral high ground. And whenever people
start to behave as if there were, what you get is nothing
more than Puritanism at work. In fact, these days I fear
that the academic world is becoming nothing more than
Puritanism in different guise, as if the point were merely
to hold a giant sit-in about reality in general and complain
about how horrible everything is. That’s too big and too
unrealistic a mission for anyone. There are important finite
breakthroughs to be made; they don’t all need to save the
world.
BS: In relation to architecture, you’ve spoken of how
actual buildings have different requirements than
philosophical ideas; for example you speak of how
Derridean architects must “tempe[r] Derrida’s excessive
love of nonidentity with architectural fact” (Architecture
and Objects, 38). Are there ways in which enacting OOO
in actual architecture has changed your views?
GH:Ê I should admit that I’m not Derrida’s biggest fan,
but, more to the point, Derrida was intellectually close for
a while to the American architect Peter Eisenman. Their
relationship fell apart in a classic exchange of open letters,
right around the time I graduated from St. John’s. The
reason I find Derrida’s side of that correspondence so
frustrating is that he raises what I take to be largely
pointless claims about Eisenman misusing words: such as
Plato’s chora, or even “absence.” Eisenman’s response
was effectively: “I can’t play games with words all day. I
have to design something that won’t collapse on the heads
of its users.” Derrida can claim all he wants to challenge
the principle of identity—though I don’t think he
succeeds—but Eisenman cannot do so without causing
mass casualties.
This is one way Eisenman helps remind us of the modern
philosopher’s disease: the notion that ideas are always
most successful when pushed as far as possible, as if
screaming were always the right tone of voice. Today, for
example, the French philosopher Alain Badiou is
disappointed in Alban Berg for making atonal music
palatable to the listening public. The notion seems to be
10
March 21, 2024
that ideas are automatically best when in their most
concentrated form, and that anything less amounts to
watering them down. I don’t think so. The reason for
compromise in thought is not to water down or sell out.
It’s because of the realization that the world itself is also a
component of ideas, perhaps in the same sense that the
beholder of an artwork is part of the artwork. If there were
a form of oxygen unable to bind with hydrogen, would we
call it the “best” kind of oxygen just because it doesn’t
lower itself to dealings with hydrogen? That would be
odd. Yes, I’m a philosopher who emphasizes the prior non
-relationality of things, but that’s only because relations
take work and we need to do work to explain how they
happen, not because relations are too degrading for
individual things. If Derrida were designing buildings, he
might have better realized that his critique of self-identity
is both unnecessary and a bridge too far. Throwing a
baseball 1,000 feet is not better than throwing it forty-five
feet, given the spatial range over which baseball games
take place.
(Eisenman’s City of Culture of Galicia, Source:
Eisenman Architects)
As for OOO and architecture, I’m not directly involved in
designing buildings, but I do have friends who design, and
I do look at and comment on a lot of student design work.
One advantage I think architects have over philosophers is
that they are always bringing their skills to bear on finite
problems requiring finite solutions. This means that they
need to take various sorts of constraints more seriously
than we do. Philosophy is not a discipline that is fond of
constraints, except whichever ones it inherits without
comment and then defends to the death when challenged.
BS: Has your philosophy, in turn, changed how you look
at particular buildings or works of art?
GH: It does provide me with certain tools for looking at
particular works in a new way. But my preference has
actually been to look at art and architecture as a way of
trying to “falsify” the current version of my philosophy at
any time. Here’s what I’m worried about. Consider
Clement Greenberg, a controversial figure, but no doubt
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(Westminster Abbey, London; Source: Architectural
Digest)
the greatest art critic America has ever produced. He
speaks highly of his own “eye,” and of how much he trusts
it. For a long time I took that statement at face value. But
after years of reading him, I came to the conclusion that
his success was less about his eye and more about his
underlying theory. That’s why I think the best way to train
one’s eye is to look for disproof of one’s own favored
aesthetic theories. Artworks serve best as falsifiers rather
than verifiers of philosophies. In museums and galleries,
what I often look for are things that I should hate but
don’t.
For instance, in architecture, since I had no very defined
architectural taste before starting to teach at SCI-Arc in
2016. Before then, my judgments were impulsive and
personal. But from working and talking with architects,
and from studying architectural history, I’ve become a lot
more sophisticated in this area. I’ve also shifted towards
liking more complex and intricate architecture, including
such styles as Gothic and Renaissance, while maybe I’ve
grown tired of High Modernism.
Once I was reading something about Gothic architecture
that struck me. Modern architecture sees space as a preexistent whole that can be analytically carved up, but
Gothic architecture proceeds more by agglomeration. You
have a building, and then you add something onto it, and
then add something else, and then something else. That
sort of hybridization has interested me in a couple of other
contexts as well. For example, when I started reading
about Lynn Margulis and her non-Darwinian approach to
evolution through serial endosymbiosis. Individual
creatures are not cut off from each other over the course of
history, but often invade each other parasitically, so that
evolution really occurs less through natural selection than
through a cell being invaded by a virus and then joining
with that virus to become a new species. I suppose this
sort of case interests me so much because of my
dissatisfaction with the modern idea that there are only
two kinds of things in the universe: (a) human thought,
and (b) everything else. I see human thought as just one
March 21, 2024
kind of thing among trillions of others, not as half of
ontology. As humans we will of course be more interested
in human matters than in anything else, but the human
entity needs to be treated differently in philosophy than as
50% of the cosmos. Primarily, humans are entities that
combine readily with other sorts of things, and should not
be treated as a purified half of reality.
BS: Is there a book or author you’ve most enjoyed
disagreeing with?
GH: Yes, that would be Alfred North Whitehead, who I
think was one of the small number of great philosophers in
the twentieth century and that greatness is fairly simple, in
my view: during a long era when philosophy more or less
assumed that we need to begin with what is given in the
thought-world relation, Whitehead just canceled that
assumption. For him the more general category is
“prehensions” (relations) between any two entities.
Human cognition does not have any central status for
philosophy, but is just another kind of relation. If
Whitehead had been trained as a professional philosopher
instead of a mathematician, as he was in real life, he
probably would not have found it as easy to ignore one of
the central dogmas of the modern philosophical
profession. I also disagree with much of what he says. But
as someone with the potential to guide us out of the
thought/world deadlock that limits modern philosophy,
he’s hard to beat.
And secondarily, for the same reasons as with Whitehead,
I enjoyed disagreeing with the late Bruno Latour, an
important philosopher disguised during his lifetime as a
sociologist and anthropologist. Latour is effectively a
Whiteheadian, so our basic disagreement is the same. He
thinks an entity is nothing more than the sum total of
effects it has on other entities. Latour’s Actor-Network
Theory is a useful innovation for making discoveries in
the social sciences, but in the end Latour needed more
Aristotle in his blood. Things cannot be analyzed into a
(Harman and Bruno Latour; Source:
anthem.wordpress.com)
11
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sum of relations any more than they can be adequately
defined, and for the same reason. Things are not just
bundles of relations, any more than they are bundles of
qualities in Hume’s fashion. Latour and I had a long
argument about that up until his death two years ago from
cancer. But he was the first major international thinker to
take me seriously when I was young, and I’ll never forget
his generosity in that respect.
That leads me to another piece of advice for graduating
Johnnies, one that I received from one of my own
professors in graduate school. If you ever want to contact
someone you admire with a question or a comment, never
be afraid to do so. No matter how famous they are, they
probably feel misunderstood, rejected, and alone, and will
welcome your approach. I’ve encountered this again and
again in intellectual life. The most significant thinkers are
often the most approachable people on earth; it’s the
pretenders who make a big scene of being too busy to talk.
Try it, and you’ll see what I mean.
BS:Ê You have spoken in a few different places about how,
in your opinion, “the philosophical foundations of any
theory cannot be a form of knowledge but must be a
subtler, more indirect way of addressing the world” much
like that of art (Immaterialism, 13). How might a
philosophy—especially for those of us who have been
raised in the very scientific 20th/21st centuries—go about
such an approach?
GH:Ê One of the bad ideas encouraged by modernism is
that we should always begin any enquiry from some
unshakeable first principle. But there are no unshakeable
first principles, and that is why Whitehead says that they
should be the goal rather than the starting-point of
philosophical inquiry. Whitehead has a lot of good things
to say about the practice of philosophy, in fact. Another is
that philosophies are abandoned, not refuted. In other
words, the obsession of professional philosophy with
“knockdown arguments” is usually pretty futile. We
abandon our previous philosophy for a new one not
because we find “incorrect arguments” in the former,
because the previous philosophy either leaves out too
much of reality or because its various parts prove to be
incoherent with each other. Parmenides wrote: “Being is,
and non-being is not.” Do we reject this because of some
“knockdown argument”? No, most likely we will never
become Parmenideans because we recognize something
hopelessly abstract about his manner of dealing with
reality, and thus we are already on the road to some sort of
dialectic. And then it turns out that dialectic has limits of
its own, and the adventure continues.
The only field in which it is remotely plausible to say that
we begin with unshakeable first truths is geometry, and
they’re only “unshakeable” in the limited sense that we
agree to accept certain axioms. All St. John’s students
have made or soon will make their tour through non-
12
March 21, 2024
Euclidean geometry, and thus they are aware that Euclid’s
axioms aren’t unshakeable either. You can also read Proofs
and Refutations by Imre Lakatos, the important Hungarian
philosopher of science, and discover how later proofs in
mathematics often retroactively transform our sense of the
earlier ones. In any case, don’t go looking for rock solid
foundations in philosophy. Start instead with something
apparently paradoxical that you truly care about, and keep
pushing on it, and eventually you might see that people
have been missing what’s important about it. That’s what I
did with the famous tool-analysis in Heidegger’s Being
and Time. Hundreds of people have written about it, but
none of them have seen what I thought was truly
important. It was (and still is) usually interpreted in the
banal sense of “praxis comes before theory,” even by some
very smart people. And once you get to that point, push it
beyond whatever author you’re arguing with, and see how
it works out in the broader world. At that stage, the
worthwhile people will either be listening to you or
ignoring you based on how generally fertile your idea is,
not by some debate over whether you made a logical error
in step 3B of your argument. Academic debate often works
that way, but important philosophy generally does not.
BS: To ask some more general questions now: What is it
like to be a philosopher in 2024?
GH:ÊIn professional terms, it’s a bit stifling. Part of that is
just because job opportunities are dwindling and there’s
not a lot of movement. Many good people are hanging on
as part-timers, hoping for full-time jobs that are not likely
to appear. In a place like France this might not be a
concern, since there are many ways to participate in
intellectual life there without being a professor. But in the
United States, work hours are so long and vacations so
few that without independent wealth it is hard to find a
lifestyle that allows the many free hours needed to read
and write.
Luckily, I have a good work situation and don’t have as
much to worry about on that front. But for other reasons
it’s still not the easiest time. Philosophy is still dominated
by the analytic/continental division, with the analytics
controlling the most prestigious departments in the
Anglophone world. For all their differences, both are
deeply indebted in different ways to Kant and the resulting
assumptions about transcendental philosophy, and of
course that doesn’t work well for someone like me. One of
the unusual features of OOO is that it tries to put objectobject relations at the same level as thought-object
relations, and you’re not going to find that in any recent
philosopher besides Whitehead. And Whitehead, too, is
marginalized in both analytic and continental circles, for
precisely this reason. There’s a modern taxonomy where
object-object relations are thought to be the subject matter
of the natural sciences alone. Hey, science is doing such a
great job with that, just leave that area alone! We
philosophers can focus on the sole site that is left to us: the
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THE GADFLY
March 21, 2024
point where thought meets world. The problem is that for
all the achievements of the sciences, Bertrand Russell was
right to say that science gives us the extrinsic, relational
properties of things. Anything intrinsic in the things,
anything like the old “substantial forms,” has been a
laughingstock in the sciences since at least Descartes. And
maybe it’s good that they are, since science might not
have flourished if it needed to deal with all sorts of
shadowy and half-expressed potencies. But philosophia
doesn’t work under the same constraints or have the same
goals as natural science, because fundamentally it is not a
form of knowledge. Most people still don’t accept this
idea, but the nice thing is that you don’t need to convince
everyone, or even a majority. If you keep refining your
ideas and publishing them, allies will appear, and they
make life easier and more pleasant.
BS:Ê You have said that “a work should
try to be more than the product of its
time and place” (Architecture and
Objects, 174). And based on what you
just said, it seems like a lot of your
work is almost extremely beyond the
current place and time of philosophy in
the United States. What do you feel has
contributed to you taking such a
different path than maybe a traditional
philosopher within the United States?
But I doubt I will ever teach again in a philosophy
department in the United States. The reason is the conflict
persisting between the analytic and continental schools of
philosophy: both of them hang on jealousy to every job
they control, and I’m not a good fit with either of them.
This is evidently my fate, and gradually I’ve become
comfortable about moving on an eccentric path through
the world.
BS: Did you ever have inklings of your current work
while at SJC?
GH: When you’re in your early twenties, it’s usually more
a matter of devouring all your favorite influences. You
might have ambitions about doing certain things in the
future, but those are usually destined to change greatly
over the next five to ten years. But
there were a few things that happened
at St. John’s that remain near the core
of my work even now. One was during
my freshman year in Santa Fe, when I
was just browsing in the library. I was
reading
through
the
book
Phenomenology and Art by Ortega y
Gasset; I had been reading Ortega
anyway for other reasons. That book
contains his “Essay on Esthetics by
Way of a Preface,” which contains his
theory of metaphor. I didn’t fully
GH:Ê It has certainly worked out that
understand that essay until thinking it
way, although it wasn’t my original
over for nearly twenty years, but did
wish. Coming out of St. John’s, I saw
have the “struck by a lightning bolt”
my future as that of a typical
feel immediately upon reading it.
philosophy professor in the Continental
What’s strange is that it cuts against
tradition. Because of my interests, I
the grain of Ortega’s work as a whole,
expected to fit in very well in the (Untitled (Black on Grey) by Mark and maybe that’s what I unconsciously
Heidegger studies community in Rothko, Source: The Guggenheim felt. It's not a famous essay, but I
particular. But then reality made it
would rank it as one of the unknown
Museum)
philosophical classics of the twentieth
clear that I was headed for different
things, by clubbing me in the head several times. First of century, and believe it will come to be seen that way,
all, graduate school roughed me up pretty badly. I was though it does contain a sexist remark and one or two antikicked around rudely in my first program. My second British remarks.
program was a better fit, but there was some terroristic BS:ÊWhat program author have you gained the most from?
behavior by a couple of faculty that forever shattered my
illusions about academia. At least it was a fairly hands-off GH:ÊI did my freshman year in Santa Fe; my lab tutor was
program and they let me do what I wanted. And I still Mr. Cornell, who is still there, and our student assistant
loved my work, even though no one was really accepting was Mr. Poppele, now a tutor in his own right. I think Mr.
it other than my fellow Ph.D. students, who enjoyed my Cornell had us read a bit of Discourse on Method one
unorthodox papers and lectures. In a sense, the early week, and I was hooked, rereading it every couple of
realization that I was never going to be a comfortable months despite being a slow reader. One author who
student for my professors freed me up to stop expecting didn’t mean much to me while I was there, but who
standard academic success and to do whatever I wanted. It became very important later on, was Hobbes. When I
made me a bit angry for a while in my twenties, but once finally started writing about politics a decade ago, I began
in Egypt I realized I was having a much more interesting to see Hobbes as an essential piece of the puzzle in trying
life than those who had thwarted me, and decided to just to get beyond modern political theory, in which the Left
and the Right both assume that human nature is what’s
ride wherever the wave was going next.
13
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really at the basis of political theory. Hint: it’s not. Francis
Bacon also didn’t interest me much as a student, but really
fascinates me now, due to some remarks once made to me
by Eric McLuhan, son of the media theorist Marshall
McLuhan.
I think I also had a bit of senioritis when we were doing
Einstein and Minkowski in senior lab, so I eventually had
to go back and struggle with those works myself when
they became relevant to where I was going. And finally, I
should mention the St. Matthew Passion. It blew me away
on first hearing, and continues to do so. A couple of years
ago the Hamburg Ballet passed through Los Angeles and
performed it, and it brought back so many memories of
Annapolis.
BS: For all those in the dreadful state of being soon to
graduate from the college, do you have recommendations
for post-program reading?
GH:Ê Yes, there are two obvious places to start. One is to
read contemporary materials, which there isn’t much time
to do at St. John’s except maybe in a Preceptorial. The late
Mr. Raditsa, a former tutor in Annapolis and an almost
unbelievably colorful human character, used to talk about
how reading “forbidden” books is an important part of
education, and in his case it was a matter of cutting class
for a week and just reading Nietzsche in his dorm room. I
think there are enough bibliophiles at St. John’s that we
don’t really have forbidden books, though a classmate of
mine was once scolded by a tutor for carrying a volume of
Derrida across campus. But what I’m really talking about
are non-program books. I ended up in an ultracontemporary Ph.D. program after St. John’s, which was
probably the right way for me to decompress after four
years of all classics. The great thing is, once you turn to
contemporary trends in thought after four years at St.
John’s, you will have the advantage of not being easily
impressed.
That brings me to another sort of recommendation, one
that also stems from the unique features of a St. John’s
education. One area in which Johnnies are practically
unparalleled is their ability to take up new fields without
feeling intimidated. If you’ve been through Apollonius
and Leibniz’s papers on calculus, you won’t give up easily
at any intellectual task. Continue to cultivate that Johnnie
talent of picking up completely new fields and learning
them through primary texts. I did that once with Islamic
civilization after unexpectedly winding up in Cairo. I did
it again with architecture, after unexpectedly ending up on
an architecture faculty. My aforementioned Annapolis
classmate David Ruy, whom I hadn’t spoken with in over
twenty years since graduation, suddenly resurfaced to lure
me into the architectural world. I asked him for a list of
eight to ten books in both classical and contemporary
architectural theory. After reading those, I was certainly no
expert, but knew enough to follow conversations and
14
March 21, 2024
(Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid Architects;
Source: archdaily)
understand the basic historical and present-day
controversies in the field. These days I’m being lured into
archaeology and prehistory, and hence the process is
repeating itself. Any St. John’s student has the skills to
pick up new fields from scratch and do interesting work in
them. Learn a little, and you can discover that you want to
learn more. There is nothing wrong with amateurism.
Everyone is an amateur at most things.
BS: Anything else?
GH: I just want to say that enrolling at St. John’s was the
best decision of my life and I would never change it. And I
say so as someone who did not have an easy time as a
student there. St. John’s is widely known as the Great
Books School, but on the ground it is also the Great
Talker’s School, and I wasn’t a great talker in those days.
It was hard for me to find the right words in class quickly
enough, and that caused a lot of anxiety. It wasn’t until
years later that public speaking became easy for me.
Graduate school wasn’t any easier than St. John’s, and
graduate school politics are usually much worse. But I had
formed great reading habits, as well as the self-confidence
to argue in my mind (and eventually on paper) with any
author you care to name. I think that is a common skill
among St. John’s graduates, and it is priceless.
(McDowell Hall Restored A er 1909 Fire; Source: St.
John’s College)
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March 21, 2024
I Love Montaigne! Do You?
By Tamar Pinsky
People are always telling me to stop writing in
first person. “Third is more proper,” they say. In a
book I read long ago, a character asserted that thirdperson narrators are objectively better, and that “the
only good book in first person is Robinson Crusoe”;
and now I am always ashamed of my preference for
first person narrators.
First person narrators feel more intimate. I can
pretend that I am the narrator, or I can pretend that
the narrator is a close friend revealing deep secrets to
me. Either way, I find it easier to relate to books in
first person.
Is that not what we all want?—to relate to the
books we read, to feel seen?
Well—I suppose we also want to learn from
the books we read. That must mean that books have
two opposite goals to accomplish simultaneously—to
be familiar to the reader, so that the reader relates,
and to be strange to the reader, so that the reader
learns something new.
Is one goal for the sake of the other, is one
goal more important than the other? Are we fed
digestible content for the sake of acquiring
unappetizing, but necessary, knowledge? Or are we
fed the unfamiliar knowledge for the sake of
increasing our capacities for connection?
Furthermore, what should our intentions be
when reading a book? Should we be aiming to relate
or aiming to discover new information?
One might think that it is good to relate to
what one reads. What sticks with a reader the most is
what resonated most with the reader. The reader also
would get more out of a reading that agreed with
them. It is evident how relatability encourages
learning.
But relatability also has the risk of making the
reader not learn anything new at all. For if the reader
feels too strong of a connection, they might become
too comfortable and too close-minded, aligning the
author’s words completely with their original
worldview, and overlooking important, yet subtle
differences.
This risk does not mean that one should
dismiss relatability entirely. For without relatability
in a text, how would the reader latch onto any new
concept?
One might think it a weakness to desire
relatability in books. (Similarly, to desire first
-person narration.) One
might think—a powerful
enough mind should be
able to understand ideas
without being spoon-fed.
But there is a difference
between spelling out
ideas
and
simply
elucidating them. And
besides, it is the job of a
writer
to
deliver
information clearly,
is it not? We do not
want
writers
to
coddle us, but we
would never praise
them for giving us
overly
complicated
explanations.
15
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Well, maybe some people would. But I would
not. The seminar readings that stand out to me are the
ones that spoke to me the most; the ones that I felt
that I could understand, or at least try to. I imagine
this is the case for most students – but of course, not
every reading is going to elicit the same reaction in
every student. Still – some readings must tend to be
more relatable and more likable than others. After
reading Montaigne’s essay On Experience, I could
not help but wonder, is this one of them? Is everyone
relating as much as I do? (This text is in first person.)
So I took a (semi-randomi) poll. Out of 43 St.
John’s students, nearly 50% found On Experience to
be highly relatable, scoring a 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 (1
March 21, 2024
being “could not relate whatsoever” and 5 being “I
feel so seen—it's like I wrote it myself!”). A fair
number of students also ranked the work at 3, and a
few ranked it as 5. Only 4 students ranked it a 2, and
not one student ranked it a 1, or completely
unrelatable. The average score: 3.7; the median: 4.
Thus overall, the poll results suggest that On
Experience is quite a favorite reading among St.
John’s students.
I feel both wonderful and rotten finding out
that this reading resonated with so many others. On
the one hand, I am glad that On Experience gets the
recognition it deserves. On the other hand, I feel silly
to have connected so personally with this essay, later
realizing that I was not special in doing so.
Montaigne accomplished something great in
this essay. He managed to write to readers such that
they feel a personal connection; at the same time, he
wrote about ideas that are universal to everyone. I
suppose that is what any writer wants to achieve—
writing about a broad idea in a specific way, so that
anyone can appreciate it; further, that anyone can feel
touched by it.
Perhaps Montaigne succeeded at attaining this
feat because his work enables each reader to relate in
a separate way. The reader can relate because
Montaigne goes into detail regarding natural
processes that everyone goes through—but everyone
goes through them differently, and so they can
understand Montaigne through their own readercolored lenses. Every reader receives a similar, but
slightly different version of Montaigne.
This notion comforts me—even though other
people took immense pleasure in reading On
Experience just as I did, each of us had our own
personal connection with Montaigne. What
Montaigne is to me is not what Montaigne is to you. I
know this to be true, given some of the responses
people gave in the survey. Among other titles, people
called Montaigne “a very interesting fellow,” “the
realest one out there,” “such a girl’s girl, senile
bestie,” “literally me,” and “just a drunk dude you
meet at a bar and then never see again.”
I
This survey was conducted via Instagram and SJC
email.
Portrait of Michel de Montaigne (Source: Wikimedia
Commons)
16
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THE GADFLY
A Demonstration of the
Equivalence of Euclid’s
Fi h Postulate,
Proposition I.30, and
Playfair’s Axiom
March 21, 2024
2. Playfair’s Axiom.
Through any point not on a given straight line there
is at most one straight line parallel to the given line.
By Luke Briner
I. Expositions.
1. The Fifth Postulate.
[Let it have been demanded (Ηιτήσθω)] that, if a
straight line falling on two straight lines make the
interior angles on the same side less than two right
angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely
(ἄπειρον), meet on that side on which are the angles
less than the two right angles.
Let the straight line EF fall on straight lines AB and
CD, whose respective interior angles, G and H,
amount to less than two right angles. The Postulate
asserts that, if lines AB and CD are produced
indefinitely, they will eventually meet on the side of
angles G and H.
Let there be produced the straight line AB, with
points C, F, and I placed in arbitrary positions about it
but not upon it. The Postulate asserts that points C, F,
I, and any other possible points of the same supposed
nature, will each have no more than a single straight
line through them that will be parallel to AB (i.e., DE
for C, GH for F, and JK for I).
3. Proposition I.30.
Straight lines parallel to the same straight line are
also parallel to one another.
Let straight lines AB and CD be parallel to straight
line EF, with straight line GK falling upon each of
them. The Proposition asserts that, since AB and CD
are both parallel to EF, and since the line GK falling
upon them produces equal angles on each of them to
those produced on EF, then AB and CD themselves
must be parallel to each other.
17
�υμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
II. Equivalences.
1. Equivalence of the First and the Second.
A. From the First to the Second.
The Fifth Postulate asserts that if any two straight
lines are shown by their mutual intersection by a third
straight line to have combined interior angles
amounting to less than two right angles, then those
lines, when indefinitely extended, will meet in the
direction of those sub-supplementary angles. That
any two straight lines that admit of this nature (i.e.,
their eventual intersection upon the basis of their subsupplementary angles) are not parallel is clear from
Euc. Book I, Def. 23, which defines parallel lines
precisely by their non-admittance of that very nature.
But it follows necessarily from this that there can
only be a single parallel relation between two straight
lines, since there is only one position in which they
could be arranged that would allow their interior
angles to be exactly equal to two right angles. Again,
even the slightest deviation from this single position
implies (when cut by the third line) the subsupplementary sum of one side’s interior angles, and
thus to the eventual intersection of the two lines on
that side. And this is exactly what the Parallel
Postulate itself asserts. Thus it has been shown that
the assertion of the Second can be arrived at by the
premises established by the First.
B. From the Second to the First.
Playfair’s Axiom asserts that there is at most a single
straight line that can be drawn through any given
point parallel to a given straight line. This implies
that any other position that the straight line drawn
through any given point could take in relation to the
given straight line will not be parallel. Euclid defines
parallel straight lines as “straight lines which, being
in the same plane and being produced indefinitely in
both directions, do not meet one another in either
direction” (Def. 23). It follows necessarily from this
that any straight lines that are not parallel to each
other (i.e., any other position which the line through
any given point could take in relation to the given
straight line) will meet one another in at least one
direction, and presumably thereby that those two
lines, if mutually and evenly cut by another straight
line, will have one side whose interior angles do not
amount to two right angles, which indicates that they
will meet on that side. And this is exactly what the
18
March 21, 2024
Fifth Postulate itself asserts. Thus it has been shown
that the assertion of the First can be arrived at by the
premises established by the Second.
2. Equivalence of the First and the Third.
A. From the First to the Third.
The Fifth Postulate asserts that if any two straight
lines are shown by their mutual intersection by a third
straight line to have combined interior angles
amounting to less than two right angles, then those
lines, when indefinitely extended, will meet in the
direction of those sub-supplementary angles. This
implies that straight lines that do not so meet, i.e.,
whose interior angles are exactly equal to two right
angles, are parallel, since this is precisely the
condition for parallel lines set by Def. 23. It follows
necessarily from this that, since “[t]hings which are
equal to the same things are also equal to one
another” (C.N. 1), and that all parallel lines have
interior angles exactly equal to two right angles, all
straight lines parallel to the same straight line must
also be parallel to each other. And this is exactly what
Proposition I.30 itself asserts. Thus it has been shown
that the assertion of the Third can be arrived at by the
premises established by the First.
B. From the Third to the First.
Proposition I.30 asserts that straight lines parallel to
the same straight line are also parallel to each other.
This implies, by Def. 23, that no lines thus
understood as parallel will ever meet each other. It
follows necessarily from this that straight lines that
are not parallel will meet each other in at least one
direction, and presumably thereby that those straight
lines, if mutually and evenly cut by another straight
line, will have one side whose interior angles do not
amount to two right angles, and that they will meet
on that side. And this is exactly what the Fifth
Postulate itself asserts. Thus it has been shown that
the assertion of the First can be arrived at by the
premises established by the Third.
3. Equivalence of the Second and the Third.
Since the conceptual equivalence of the Fifth
Postulate and Playfair’s Axiom has been proven, we
know by Euc. C.N. 1 that Playfair’s Axiom and
Proposition I.30 will also be conceptually equivalent.
�όλις
THE GADFLY
March 21, 2024
Secret Societies
By Jack Webb
Secret societies are neat. So why aren’t there
any at St. John’s? The accidents of the College seem
to fit. It is well known that many people come to St.
John’s after reading The Secret History by Donna
Tartt in high school and deciding that it is more
interesting than real life. The pedagogy of the
College is not gnostic, but it is esoteric: what it
purports to teach is taken to be unavailable to
everyone except those who have the time and ability
to discover it for themselves. The College is also
exceptionally old, and well-attended by the wealthy.
The French Monument was erected in memory of
some of Lafayette’s troops once buried on the
grounds.ÊThere are persistent rumors of hauntings and
secret passages. Annapolis has the only surviving
Baroque city plan in the United States, consisting of
two wheels with overlapping spokes, St. Anne’s
Church and the State House serving as the hubs. (The
priorities of the
planners
are
thus manifest.)
Most of the
founders of the
College were
Freemasons.
Altogether, the
school is wellpositioned for
secular, liberal,
elitist, secret
activity.
On the other hand, it may be that the College
is too small to have effective secret societies. The
Skull and Bones at Yale, one of the most famous and
successful collegiate secret societies in the United
States, selects fifteen new members every year. Yale
has an undergraduate population of about 6,500,
meaning the proportion of “Bonesmen” to
undergraduates is about 1 to 450. If this is the most
perspicuous proportion for a secret society, a St.
John’s society could have no more than one or two
members. The society of lovers is secret in a way, so
St. John’s perhaps already has enough. It does not
seem to be the same sort of thing, though: lovers
rarely swear blood oaths, and the costumes are of a
different kind. Maybe the College as a whole is a
secret society. We are probably not that special,
though.
I may have discovered a secret society last
year. I believe that they have, or had, regular
meetings. It was a group of about twenty men,
predominantly class of ’25. I do not know what their
télos was; all I know is that they had gathered to eat
cheap fried chicken in malappointed suits and ties.
They were clearly a group of a private nature,
although I am not certain that they were properly a
secret society, because they seemed humdrum and
not exotic at all. I will not say any more about what I
saw, or who was present, for fear of retribution.
I myself am starting a secret society. It will come
together as soon as we have finished our inquiry into
the nature and ends of a collegiate secret society.
Obviously I cannot share any more details. The
membership will remain secret. I will not divulge
whether I am a member.
19
�THE GADFLY
όλις
March 21, 2024
Paradox Puns
By Tamar Pinsky
“Parrotox”
“Parrot, Ox”
“Pair o’ Docs”
20
�όλις
THE GADFLY
March 21, 2024
Come For Me, Vol. 1
By Allyson Brink
This girl got way too into something she has never
had…an orgasm. While in pursuit of my first orgasm,
many questions arose. For answers I turned to my
friends. I’ve asked these questions in my friends’
living rooms and in laboratory prep rooms; the
resulting conversations have been both hilarious and
enlightening. I also realized that I wasn’t the only one
of my friends who hadn’t had an orgasm. This is
when I decided St. John’s was in desperate need of a
Carrie Bradshaw.
--Over the summer I submitted the first of four
payments on a new vibrator. This vibrator measures
your vaginal contractions and connects by Bluetooth
to an app on your phone. It would then tell you how
often and how strongly your vagina contracted as you
masturbated. This data is displayed in a graph that
clearly spikes when you have an orgasm. After using
the vibrator and comparing my graph to ones of
orgasms, my suspicions were confirmed: I have never
had an orgasm. Annelise has orgasmed. In order to
better understand my own experiences, I asked her
some questions about her experiences with orgasm.
AB: Do you masturbate manually, with a vibrator, or
some combination of the two?
AI: I prefer a manual approach. I’ve dabbled in
vibrators, but I find that they don’t really please me,
the way I can myself.
AB: Why don’t you find that vibrators please you?
AI: I think they’re just too powerful from the
beginning. There’s no buildup, no tension, no
intrigue.
AB: How long does it usually take you to orgasm?
AI: For me, about 30 minutes…but I am on
antidepressants.
AB: How long do your orgasms usually last?
AI: About 30 seconds.
The Lioness Smart Vibrator (Source: Glamour.com)
builds up, and then, it—whoom.
AB: Do you watch porn when you masturbate?
AI: Um, I prefer to read erotica. But, if I do watch
porn, it’s usually lesbian.
AB: What type of erotica do you read?
AI: Girl, I don’t even know. Whatever trash is on the
internet probably.
AB: And you don’t find it too much for your hands to
be scrolling and masturbating?
AI: No, it’s like what else would I do with the other
hand?
AB: I guess maybe I’m just lazy.
AB: Have you ever orgasmed with someone else?
AI: No. From my experience that’s not really a man’s
place.
AB: Do you have
any more words
of wisdom for me
in my road to
orgasm?
AI: Wisdom? I
don’t have any
wisdom. Just my
hands.
AB: And how do they feel for those 30 seconds?
AI: Overpowering…it just feels like a wave, like it
21
�όλις
THE GADFLY
March 21, 2024
Liberal Arts as a Service
By B.S.
Dearest fellows,
Take a moment to imagine for me the agonies
of the rich and wealthy: they amass more wealth,
more power, more new toys with each passing
moment. Where will they put their new rocket ships?
What is there to talk about with the common person
(they refuse to understand the need for a private jet)?
Who will even befriend them (they cannot stand each
other)? They may well be the most well off,
healthiest, most powerful individuals ever, but being
amongst the oligarchs of late-stage capitalism has its
agonies: it do get kinda lonely sometimes.
Now, I need
not remind you of the
corresponding agonies
of a Johnnie: where
once we were considered
useless by every business and
engineering major, now almost
every degree will be useless in the
face of AI (we have lost our unique
absurdity!). Soon, there will be
computers which can write better,
read better, speak better, think better
than any of us. Only our soft SJC-essence will remain
(and it smells of…Bud Lite?).
In these two sets of woes, you might see an
image of modernity or a gap so vast that it is
meaningless to think of both sides as human, but
what I see is a business opportunity. Rich people are
lonely; we are pseudo-intellectual blabber mouths.
The solution for both sides is simple: Rent-aJohnnie.
The structure is obvious to anyone who can
think: go on our easy to use website (auto-generated
by SquareSpace [This segment is sadly not
sponsored]), select your desired topics of
conversation (from the Freudian nature of early cell
biology to the Platonic reasons for non-platonic
relationships), and bam, within two hours we will
send straight to your door a willing and able
proliferator of all useless ideas. Everything you say
will find its place amongst citations of Hegel and
22
Kant, will be the most profound ideas since Aristotle,
and will outclass even Dante in poetry. When you sit
us down to explain your new screenplay, entirely
original and without any of that AI generated crap,
we will nod, applaud, and moan (with agony,
pleasure, oh whatever you want).
Remember, you’re no dictator. You’re a
totally normal human being who didn’t have any
systemic advantages whatsoever and even if you did
you worked so very hard to get here. So why should
the dictators be the only ones to get their very own
state philosophers? Plus, we’re providing them at a
very reasonable rate.
Rent-a-Johnnie: We Make Expensive Men by
Means of a Balance and Checkbook.
Consider investing today.
—B.S. (is for hire)
Rent-a-Johnnie Seal by Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm; Latin
Mo o translated by Henry David Hills
�όλις
THE GADFLY
March 21, 2024
Photograph of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini
(Source: Wikipedia)
A Review of Cabrini (2024)
By Jack Webb
Cabrini tells the story of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, an Italian nun who came to
the United States at the turn of the century to minister to underserved immigrants.
It is pretty good. Very, very well-shot. Story is moving. Acting a little stiff,
except for the Archbishop. Child actors are good, as far as they go. Mother
Cabrini doesn’t seem to pray very much, weird for a nun. Very bad song after the
credits, make sure to listen to it. Pretty long, but not boring. It seems to be of the
new genre of decent movies made for the tastes of conservative Christians. It is
not itself conservative, or particularly Christian, but homeschooling families will
love it. If you like immigrants, children, or nuns, you might like this movie. (PG13, 142 min.)
23
�THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the
student newsmagazine distributed to
over 600 students, faculty, staff, and
alumni 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 Google Docs or
PDF format.
For more information, contact us
via email at lbriner@sjc.edu.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401
Photographs without a listed source are from the
St. John's College Digital Archives.
St. John's College owns the rights
to these photographs.
Illustrations without a listed source are by Takashi
Mifune from Irasutoya.com and are free to use for
non-commercial purposes. All rights to these
illustrations still belong to the artist.
�
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THE
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
GADFLY
Onwards & Upwards!
February 15, 2024
Vol. XLV, Issue 7
�Letter from the Editor
CONTENTS
Λόγος : news reports & narratives regarding immediate campus life
Dear Polity,
A Thank You Message From Mr. Kerimov
2
The Senior Infection by Vivian Miyakawa
3
Want to Join a Cult? Come to Tea Club! By Vivian
Miyakawa
4
Συμπόσιον : contrasting opinions on various topics for thought
Puns in Twelfth Night By Mary Elizabeth Harper
5
Insider Ethnography: An Alumna’s Exploration of a
College Tradition (Part Two) By Maura Sugg
8
Πόλις : voices of the community, including poetry, cartoons, etc.
Fifty Shades of Modern, Monotonous, Mind-Numbing
13
Gray By Tamar Pinsky
Comics: Noodles By Tamar Pinsky
16
Censor, Oh Censor! By B.S.
17
half gone By Natalie Goldman
18
Translation of the First Seven Stanzas of Valéry’s
“Le cimetière marin” By Luke Briner
20
A Thank You Message
From Mr. Kerimov
Dear Polity,
I am deeply grateful for the overwhelming
support and encouragement I received from
so many of you in the past few weeks. With all
that has happened, I feel proud to belong to
our caring, strong, and energetic Polity. May it
always be such.
To paraphrase a friend: although I never had
to leave, it feels wonderful to return.
With admiration,
Khafiz Kerimov
2
We at the Gadfly hope that you’ve
been having a wonderful semester so
far! We’d also especially like to congratulate our seniors for finally submitting their essays, and for all the hard
work that went into them.
Please enjoy this year’s seventh issue!
Luke Briner,
Editor-in-chief
THE GADFLY STAFF
COVER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
MANAGING
EDITOR
STAFF
Abigail Poppleton
Luke Briner
El’ad NicholsKaufman
Meliha Anthony
Vivian Miyakawa
Tamar Pinsky
Louis Rosenberg
Benne Sco
YOUT
Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm
KC Taylor
CONTRIBUTORS
Natalie Goldman
Mary Elizabeth
Halper
Maura Sugg
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
The Senior Infection By Vivian Miyakawa
Something strange is happening to the
seniors. They’ve become pale, listless shells of their
former selves, only seen shuffling from the writing
lounge to the fishbowl. The crescents of purple
shadow under their eyes grow darker and darker
every day. They don’t seem to sleep. I worry that this
strange phenomenon is slowly consuming their lives.
My friend and I witnessed it firsthand as we were
wandering around Mellon at 1 a.m. Giggling our way
down the hallways, we were walking and talking
about nothing important, when suddenly, two seniors
popped their heads out of room 143. Like errant
messengers from the Fey-Wild, they grinned and
offered us snacks from their kingdom of riches. We
knew better than to accept. To set foot in the twisted
domain of the seniors would certainly spell our
doom. At this stage, who knew if the disease was
infectious or not? All I know is that I would hate to
contract it.
It’s been weeks, and the seniors still wander
around, mumbling about Archimedes and Proust and
biblical symbols. I think some of them have taken up
permanent residence in the fishbowl, setting up
shrines to any possible deity that would listen to their
desperate pleas. An orange beanie rests upon a lamp.
It has been there for a week now. Is it an offering? A
sacrifice? Or could it be something more sinister,
perhaps a tribute to a fallen comrade? Either way, I’m
not sure if I want to know.
It's the day before their essays are due. Stress
and relief both hang heavy over St. John’s College, a
creeping fog composed of pride and desperation. A
fellow freshman walks by; she works for Ms.
Munsey. She’s been inside the belly of the beast,
restocking snacks and washing blankets. She tells me
that the blankets disappear as fast as the snacks do.
Less than half of the blankets remain. The seniors
must be ravenous.
Tonight, they will ring the bell and finally
free themselves of this terrible burden. They have
completed their duties and remained loyal to the
college. They will graduate soon, and forget about
this apocalyptic month. But the underclassmen…we
will remember. As we congratulate our friends on
finishing their essays, one thought runs through our
minds and makes us shiver. Oh god. One day, this
will be us.
Class of 2024 Seniors Celebrating A er Turning in Essays and Ringing the Bell (Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
3
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
Want to Join a Cult? Come to Tea Club!
By Vivian Miyakawa
Every Wednesday from 5-6 p.m.,
students of all sorts rush up the stairs to
McDowell 22, eagerly following
the warm scent of honey and
spices mixed with the gentle
notes of soft jazz instrumentals.
Once inside, they are greeted with a
cup of tea and a hearty welcome from
club Archon, the lovely Christina
Cruz.
Taking
on
the
responsibilities of archon
even as a freshman, Ms. Cruz
runs Tea Club with passion
and care, connecting the
physical with the spiritual.
At every meeting, Ms.
Cruz presents the club with a
new type of tea. With options
from Chai, to Blackberry Sage, to an Earl-Grey
lavender London Fog, there are so many varieties to
explore, and new tastes for everyone to discover.
Anyone with doubts about the beauty and magic of
tea simply needs to attend a meeting of Tea Club and
experience it firsthand. Friends from all years and
backgrounds sit together at the wooden table, sipping
hot tea and basking in warm light. The community
that Ms. Cruz has succeeded in creating, however, is
the most incredible thing. Freshmen, sophomores,
juniors, seniors, and even a GI student laugh together
like old friends, chatting about anything from the
Program to the latest gossip on campus. Ms. Cruz’s
vision for the club was to unite the Polity through the
ancient healing art of tea, and looking upon the
community she has built, she is 100% certain that Tea
Club is living up to that vision.
Tea Club is nothing if not cozy, but part of
what makes this club so unique is the sheer hilarity of
each meeting. Ms. Cruz’s alter ego, aptly named
Chris-TEA-na, only semi-denies the frequent
allegations of being a cult leader. When pressed
about the issue, she simply states that “the tea is so
good—everyone wants to follow in the way of the
tea.” In further claims to innocence, when asked
about the purification rituals, our wonderful archon
4
claims that “if a person needs to be
purified, well, then they need to be
purified! Why not use Tea
club as a way to purify?”
This logic is hard to argue
with, especially with the
cheerful addendum of, “We
also do exorcisms!”
Luckily, unlike most mainstream
cults, you don’t have to be a
committed member. There is no
obligation to show up to every meeting, but if
you ever need a moment of your day to sit
down, relax, and just be, know that Tea Club is
waiting for you with a cup of tea, and perhaps a
few shenanigans as well.
Zenith Brown Seated outside Having Tea
and Pe ing her Dog Lauralei
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
Puns in Twel h Night
By Mary Elizabeth Halper
What follows is a section from an essay titled, “Cross
-dressing, Puns, and the Playful Cosmos: The Role of
Comedy in Liberal Education,” co-written by Mr.
Aaron Halper and Ms. Mary Elizabeth Halper,
expected to published in an edited volume on liberal
education. The excerpted section is on puns, written
by Ms. Halper.
The very first pun in Twelfth Night is perhaps
"play.” It comes in the final foot—a spondee—of the
first line: "If music be the food of love play on." We
hear both a call to keep playing music and to start
playing the play. To hear both of these at once
suggests that the play itself, Twelfth Night, is ongoing. Indeed, the play begins not at a natural
beginning, but in the middle of some unfolding
circumstance. Our first sight of Orsino recalls his ongoing and unsuccessful courtship of Olivia. The other
so-called beginning, our first sight of the siblings
Viola and Sebastian, is also in medias res—we find
them first in the storm that sunders them. With the
spondaic “play on” we are abruptly plunged into an
action that stretches out behind us as well as before
us. Perhaps, then, we are also as bewildered as Orsino
and Viola at the start.
Another pun falls hard
upon the heels of the first: "Will
you go hunt my Lord?" "What
Curio?" "The hart." The pun is
obvious: hart and heart. The
catching of hearts is of course much
of the action of the play. At least so
far, Duke Orsino desires to
capture the heart of Olivia,
and this desire makes of
him a hart: "That instant I
was turned into a hart and
my desires like fell and
cruel hounds/E'er since
pursues me." Orsino now
is all hart/heart. By his
own heart, he is the
February 15, 2024
hunter of another's heart and by the desires for that
heart, he is the hunted.
This first pun—“play”—is both phonically
and graphically identical. It sounds the same and is
written the same, but it provokes a multiplicity of
meaning. The next pun—“hart” and “heart”—
possesses only phonic and not graphic identity. The
picture of the word is different—we write them with
different letters—but the sound to which the different
composition of letters corresponds is the same. In the
latter case, it is clearer to the eyes that there are two
words at work. But to the ears, both cases offer the
possibility of two words. This same sound is the
matter of the words. It is a single bearer of many
meanings, or a sole body with two souls.
It may seem, then, that puns work by
multiplication—layering a second meaning atop the
first. On this view, puns would be a case of semantic
polyphony arising from sonic monophony.
Shakespeare scholar Sigurd Burckhardt gives a
contrary analysis of puns in his essay “The Poet As
Fool and Priest.” Rather than claiming that the pun
imbues a word with more meanings, Burckhardt takes
puns to be a “way of divesting a word of its
meaning.” The poet uses puns to forcibly reclaim the
medium of words from ordinary language so that he
might make of words what his poetic art demands.
With puns the poet creates “a semantic identity
between words whose phonic identity is, for ordinary
language, the merest coincidence.” But insofar as this
creative act makes intentional what is otherwise
coincidental, it is also a violent act: it shatters the
intimate and exclusive bond between word and
meaning, between signifier and signified. The poet
creates his singular meaning by splitting into two
what by all other accounts is one word.
We have two analyses of puns on offer: puns
are two words in one sound, or puns are one sense in
two words. Without attempting to offer a final word
on the matter, let me propose a higher reconciliation
of these contrary analyses. While the pun may be a
disruption of the bond of word and meaning, it is no
simple destruction. The pun breaks up the nice, direct
correspondence of word and meaning in order to
make greater space for a greater meaning. By
wrenching the word from its familiar meaning, puns
wrench us from our familiar, unreflective use of
them. We are able to mean more, not by meaning two
coincidental intentions at once, but precisely by
intending their coincidence. With puns, we have a
single sense in a single sound but we come to that
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Shakespeare in the Park production of Twel h Night (Source: Shakespeare in the Park, 2009)
possession by breaking the simple correspondence
between sign and signified.
In arresting our ordinary wielding of words,
puns afford us greater sense; in interrupting the
prosaic work of words, they provide a more
encompassing continuity. And in these ways, puns are
like feast days. Whether it be a day of rest that
sanctifies one’s labor, or a festival of birth celebrated
by a remembrance of crucifixion, death, and
resurrection, feast days have a similar strangeness
that puns do. Feasts are breaks in ordinary time. They
are times when we set aside our daily bread for
sublime—even divine—delectation. In our festival
times, we perhaps anticipate a more lasting—even
eternal—joy. But we do so only for a day or a brief
season. The day is sacred by being set apart; it is holy
by being a whole in itself, at least while it is going
6
on. Because of its separation from the surrounding
time, feast days may seem like forgetting, like a
willful neglect of that to which we must return. But
better understood, feast days are days for
remembering–for recalling what is our true, though
not continual, calling. We do not forget that we are
subject to pain or bound to labor, but we celebrate
that it is not always to be so. This foretaste of heaven
is not a forgetting of our moral toil, but a
remembering of that condition too. It is not always to
be so that we fear death and sin, but it is so in the
larger now. To borrow from the Archbishop in T. S.
Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, feast days are days
in which we “both rejoice and mourn at once and for
the same reason.” The whole of our human condition,
of being that being betwixt and between, is intended
and is most intense in a day of feasting.
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Puns are likewise: the whole of an intention—
bursting in between the words of its expression—is
concentrated in a single utterance. It is fitting then
that in Twelfth Night (a title which recalls us to the
conclusion of Christmastide), Feste is the one who
puns par excellence.
As the persona of puns in their festival
function, Feste is hardly better than in Act IV, Scene
2, when he adopts the cover of a curate. In the person
of a Master Parson, Feste may be said to be engaging
in a kind of cross-dressing—if, that is, a priest and a
fool are indeed contraries. Under this guise, the fool/
priest relates: "...for, as the old hermit of Prague, that
never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of
King Gorboduc, 'That that is is;' so I, being Master
Parson, am Master Parson; for, what is 'that' but 'that,'
and 'is' but 'is'?"
On the page "that that is is" looks like a
scribal error: a duplication of “that” and a duplication
of “is.” But for the hermit that never saw pen and ink,
and therefore for whom the written doubling is no
difficulty, it is sensical even if trivial. The voice
makes this sense by making it audible. Tones and
inflection matter to the matter of the word. More
meets the ear than meets the eye. In order to make
sense, the words must go beyond their signification;
they must be animated—reanimated, perhaps—with
the spirit of the speaker. Here, Feste, who may be
feigning a foolishness just as much as he is
simulating a sacred office—or who may be true in
both—practices the same poetic power that produces
puns. When puns are possible, the trivial question
"What is 'that' but 'that' and 'is' but 'is'?" is a question
that becomes pressing.
This is not the only time Feste provides a hint
to the being of puns. In addition to making his fair
share of them the fool offers a kind of account or
perhaps an apology for this wily device. At the
beginning of Act III after an exchange of puns, Feste
exclaims: "A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a
good wit: how quickly the wrong side may be turned
outward!"
Viola takes this as proof that: "they that dally
nicely with words may quickly make them wanton."
Viola seems to take this possibility of words—that
they may dallied with—to be a sign of a peculiar
failure, a per se fault: words are themselves wanton,
or may become so by our misuse. The fool reveals the
heart of Viola’s concern even as he discounts its
consequence: "I would, therefore, my sister had had
no name, sir. Her name's a word; and to dally with
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that word might make my sister wanton." Viola’s
worry is that if a word is not just what it means, then
there is a risk that it may mean anything. Feste’s
counter is that if words are just what they mean, then
they can mean only what they already say. Feste does
not deny the risk of wanton chaos, but his response
suggests that to resist this risk by making inviolable
the bond between sign and significance is to forsake
not only the capacity to make a more comprehensive
sense but also to deny the world itself as a source of
meaning.
Feste concludes: "Words are very rascals
since bonds disgraced them." Words are in their being
very rascals; to bind them, to insist that they have
only and exactly one meaning is to disgrace them, to
deny ourselves the grace they give so that we may
mean as much as the world offers.
Actor Louis H. Chrispijn as Feste, ca. 1899 (Source:
Wikimedia Commons)
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Insider Ethnography: An Alumna’s
Exploration of a College Tradition (Part Two)
By Maura Sugg
EDITOR’S NOTE.
The following is the second and concluding part of an
essay graciously submitted to the Gadfly by Ms.
Maura Sugg (A17). The previous Part can be found in
our previous issue (XLV.6).
-LB
Affect Theory and Musical/Religious Experience
We have seen at this point how various
aspects of Sicut Sing participate in the experience of
sacred ritual. The space of the Pendulum Pit, the
weekly repetition of the event, the connotations of the
text and musical texture, and the communal nature of
the tradition all set Sicut Sing apart as a meaningful,
orienting activity. But what more might we say about
the experience of singing the music that contributes
to a feeling like Durkheim’s collective effervescence?
As I will describe, a musical experience resembles a
religious one, and affect plays a key role in making
that happen. What emerges from this investigation is
that music is affective, existing in a sort of “inbetweenness: in the capacities to act and be acted
upon” (Thompson and Biddle 2013, 6). Through
music, we are keenly aware of our affective
potentiality, which exists in the relation of our
individual subjective parts to each other and to the
collective whole. Because of the informal, variable,
and ritualistic aspects of Sicut Sing, the tradition
enables its participants to experience and witness
themselves experiencing this affectivity in an
especially strong way. This can allow, however
momentarily, for the healing and collective freedom
from reality akin to the effects of religious
experience.
As a domain of scholarship, affect theory
highlights the “interest in the relationship between
bodies…and the fluctuations of feeling that shape the
experiential in ways that may impact upon but
nevertheless evade conscious knowing” (Thomspon
and Biddle 2013, 6). Affect itself is elusive,
Michael Engstrom Leads Johnnies in Sicut Sing on February 14, 2024 (Picture by KC Taylor)
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occupying spaces in between individual and
collective, thought and feeling, perception and
reaction, sensation and abstraction, object and
subject. We experience it even when we cannot name
it. Music seems to heighten our awareness of affect,
or of being affected. Synthesizing the theories of
Susanne Langer and Brian Massumi, eldritch Priest
presents provocative formulations of how music and
affect work together that are especially applicable to
Sicut Sing. As Priest explains, Langer asserts:
The human organism not only possesses a
capability to abstract a qualitative-relational
value from sensory particulars but develops a
capacity to live in and through these
abstractions that are expressive of an ‘import’
which doubles sensations with a ‘likeness’—
semblance—‘entirely congruent with forms of
mentality and vital experiences.’…The
abstractions in which we feel significance,
quality, or value, are a phase of organic
processes in which vital activities cross a
threshold of complexity and intensity to be
felt as thought, felt abstractly. (Priest 2013, 45
-46)
The arts, and music in particular, play an
important role in making this process happen because
they take the form of semblances that open us to the
speculative dimension of abstractions felt as thought.
“What the arts speculate on,” Priest says, is “what it
feels like to feel oneself affecting and being affected
by and as an occasion of experience” (Priest 2013,
46). Imagination is always at play, since music’s
semblance both makes us feel and “gives logical
expression to forms of feeling…of what it is like to
feel feelings” (Priest 2013, 51). Because of this, we
become aware as listeners or performers of the
potentiality of our affectivity, of “how a world may
be felt” (Priest 2013, 56). Again in the words of
Langer:
Its [the semblance’s] message…is not an
immutable abstraction, a bare unambiguous,
fixed concept, as a lesson in the higher
mathematics of feeling should be. [The
semblance] is always new, no matter how well
or how long we have known it, or it loses its
meaning; it is not transparent but iridescent.
Its values crowd each other, its symbols are
inexhaustible. (Priest 2013, 56)
Like the collective effervescence of religious
ritual, there is an element here of renewal. We can
experience music, the same music, again and again,
February 15, 2024
and yet the experience is always new and always
gives something to us. This again invokes Eliade,
who describes sacred time as “indefinitely
recoverable, indefinitely repeatable” (Eliade 1959:
69). It is the form of the experience that produces this
effect. In this sense, Sicut Sing is similar to John
Cage’s “4’33,” which Priest describes as “an
occasion of listening, but more generally an occasion
to experience” (Priest 2013, 62) because it fixes our
attention on the idea of listening. Sicut Sing is also an
occasion to experience. Although the music is
important and amplifies the sense of transcending
oneself and joining with the collective, it is the event
as a whole that is meaningful because it gives us the
chance to contemplate our affectivity. In a polity so
concerned with the relationship between the part and
the whole, Sicut Sing is at once an opportunity to
recognize one’s own subjectivity and its affectivity,
and to see oneself caught up in the collective.
Because of the conversational nature of St. John’s,
students are always acting out a sort of affective
discourse, but there are so many other factors at play
that obscure their ability to reflect on it. As a
designated ritual for mutually making and beholding
a musical semblance, Sicut Sing provides a weekly
moment to feel as thought the intense state of
affectivity that is the St. John’s experience.
This offers an explanation for why the
variability and imperfection of Sicut Sing are parts of
its allure. When Fricke first envisioned it, he just
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wanted a way to sing the piece with some of his
classmates. Eight to twelve of them would walk over
to the Pendulum Pit after class and sing the piece,
trying different configurations around the space or
switching up who sang which parts. Even as Sicut
Sing picked up steam and became a regular
publicized event, it was always student-led. Though
there are often regular participants, there is never an
obligation to commit, nor is there a prerequisite of
being a musician. For Johnnies, Freshman Chorus
already levels the playing field because no matter
prior experience, everyone learns to sing, even if they
do not always (or ever) sound good. It fosters an
acceptance of imperfection that students then bring
with them to Sicut Sing. That the quality of the
musical product does not seem to matter runs counter
to what most musicians would say about their own
performances. In their aforementioned interviews
(Arnold 2013, 70-83), Peter Phillips and Harry
Christophers both emphasize the quality of the
performance as a crucial component of making
sacred music meaningful to an audience of nonbelievers. But Sicut Sing is not a performance. Its
participants are there to do just that: participate.
Because the participating forces are not consistent,
the balance, blend, intonation, and tempo are always
different. Even if the piece falls apart one week, there
is little room for discouragement because of the
knowledge that the next Wednesday will soon roll
around, and because of the affective experience the
tradition creates no matter the musical outcome.
While the times that are musically tighter might be
more satisfying to the ear, their quality alone does not
affect the sense of meaning that participants ascribe
to the tradition.
The notion that the repeatable, inexhaustible
potentiality of our affectivity is revealed to us
through a musical semblance also helps me make
sense of my most poignant Sicut Sing memory, and I
believe it accurately encapsulates the power that the
tradition can wield. During my junior year, one Sicut
Sing took place the day after the 2016 presidential
election. We knew the results by the time we had
gone to bed the night before, and the overall feeling
on campus that Wednesday was one of somber
disbelief. A large but dejected crowd assembled for
Sicut Sing, and when we sang, we wept. The more
eye contact we made with each other, the harder it
was to control our tears. The experience was not
necessarily cathartic in the sense of flushing out our
fears, nor did it actively instill hope for a brighter
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February 15, 2024
future. But through singing together, we were made
aware of, as quoted above, “how a world may be
felt.” We felt ourselves mutually inflecting each
other, merging our individualities with each other in
the collective, transforming a place into a space by
transfusing it with purpose, and engaging in a
sacredly creative act. Further, we knew that it would
not be the last time we would gather for the
experience, that we could enter the imaginative
affective state again. All of the idiosyncrasies of Sicut
Sing that I have described and analyzed throughout
this essay make this possible every week, but in times
of fear, isolation, and uncertainty, we feel it most
strongly.
It is through affect, then, that a musical
experience resembles a religious one. In his analysis
of William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience,
Arnold connects James’s four marks of mystical
experience to music (Arnold 2013, 104-106). These
are ineffability, noetic quality, transiency, and
passivity. The ineffable of the religious necessitates
individuality of experience because it cannot be
adequately described, only felt by those willing to
experience it. Like the mystical, then, “the quality of
the musical experience of the listener is, to some
extent, determined by their openness and receptivity
to the power of the music” (Arnold 2013, 104).
Similarly, the noetic quality is the expression of deep
truths otherwise unknowable or unexplainable,
something to which Arnold claims music exposes us.
Transiency, like collective effervescence, is
ephemeral, short-lived, and only recapturable through
repetition of the experience. Finally, passivity occurs
when someone feels, in the words of James via
Arnold, “as if his own will were in abeyance, and
indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a
superior power” (Arnold 2013, 106). All four of these
qualities are present in the combination of elements I
have considered throughout this paper, i.e., that a
musical semblance affects us and reveals our
affectivity, which rouses a feeling akin to the
collective effervescence of ritual in a delineated
sacred space. Sicut Sing’s power is in its potential to
provide us with this experience, itself an occasion to
experience.
Concluding Thoughts
Sicut Sing needs all of its constituent parts. It
needs the small, community-oriented spirit that the
form and content of a St. John’s education creates. It
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February 15, 2024
Aerial View of Sicut Sing in the Pendulum Pit (Picture by KC Taylor)
needs a piece that everyone knows with both text and
texture that symbolizes the ritual itself. It needs the
Pendulum Pit, a place-made-space that marks the
sacred from the profane by orienting participants
around a center that allows transcendence and
creation. It needs the weekly repetition of a
designated communal gathering to counter the
alienation of daily individual subjectivity. Finally, it
needs imperfection and variability to always make us
aware of the potentiality of our affectivity and enable
us to glimpse the world other than it is, ourselves
other than we are. Only all of these elements taken
together can make Sicut Sing what it is.
I followed my heart in this investigation. Based
on my experience at St. John’s College, I know Sicut
Sing is special. It seems, from what I could tell while
I was there and from my interviews, that other
Johnnies agree. My goal in writing this paper was to
find out why. I cannot claim that my conclusions are
Truth, the one absolute meaning that Sicut Sing
imparts to its participants. Perhaps some Johnnies
would take issue with my invocation of the sacred as
an analytical lens, or maybe they do not think that
Sicut Sing is any different than other musical
traditions on campus. More interviews could point to
other interpretations I have not yet considered. I do,
however, think that my analysis is one of many ways
to make sense of Sicut Sing’s multivalent meaning. I
hope, too, that it is a productive practice in doing
ethnography from the inside and uncovering the
hidden workings of the things we love in the
communities we inhabit.
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References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. “Chapter 1: Guest and
Daughter.” In Veiled Sentiments: Honor and
Poetry in Bedouin Society, 1-35. Oakland:
University of California Press.
Anonymous. 2020. Interviews by Author. November
23, 2020.
Arnold, Jonathan. 2013. Sacred Music in Secular
Society. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday
Life. Translated by Steven F. Rendall. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Cooley, Timothy J. and Gregory Barz. 1996.
“Introduction: Casting Shadows: Fieldwork is
Dead! Long Live Fieldwork!” In Shadows in the
Field 2nd Edition, edited by Gregory F. Barz and
Timothy J. Cooley, 3-24. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Durkheim, Émile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of
the Religious Life. Translated by Joseph Ward
Swain. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane:
The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R.
Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Feld, Steven. 1984. “Sound Structure as Social
Structure.” Ethnomusicology 28, no. 3: 383-409.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures.
New York: Basic Books.
Gill, Denise. 2017. Melancholic Modalities: Affect,
Islam, and Turkish Classical Musicians. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Horsfall, Sara Towe, Jan-Martijn Meij, and Meghan
D. Probstfield, eds. 2013. Music Sociology:
Examining the Role of Music in Social Life.
Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Kingsbury, Henry. 1998. Music, Talent, and
Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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Olaveson, Tim. 2001. "Collective Effervescence and
Communitas: Processual Models of Ritual and
Society in Émile Durkheim and Victor Turner."
Dialectical Anthropology 26, no. 2: 89-124.
Pratt, Tim. 2016. “Sicut Cervus: The Tradition
Continues- And Spreads to Santa Fe.” St. John’s
College, News and Features, October 7, 2016.
https://www.sjc.edu/news/sicut-cervus-traditioncontinues-and-spreads-santa-fe.
Priest, eldritch. 2013. “Felt as Thought (or, Musical
Abstraction and the Semblance of Affect).” In
Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic
Experience, edited by Marie Thompson and Ian
Biddle, 45-64. London: Bloomsbury.
Ruskin, Jesse and Timothy Rice. 2012. “The
Individual in Musical Ethnography.”
Ethnomusicology 56, no. 2: 299-327.
Stokes, Martin. 1994. “Chapter 1: Introduction:
Ethnicity, Identity and Music.” Ethnicity, Identity
and Music: The Musician Construction of Place,
edited by Martin Stokes, 1-27. Oxford, UK: Berg
Publishers.
Stone-Davis, Férdia J., ed. 2015. Music and
Transcendence. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Thompson, Marie and Ian Biddle, eds. 2013. Sound,
Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience.
London: Bloomsbury.
Winstead, J. Lloyd. 2013. When Colleges Sang: The
Story of Signing in American College Life.
Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama
Press.
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Fi y Shades of Modern, Monotonous,
Mind-Numbing Gray By Tamar Pinsky
I bet Hell’s been on a lot of your minds recently,
given the recent sophomore readings of the Inferno,
the senior writing period, not to mention the
perverted weather patterns we’ve had tossed at us.
Hell’s been brewing in my mind since winter break,
when I visited there on a little trip.
I didn't go to Dante’s Hell, oh no. I went to a
gray, gray, insipid gray, secluded, gray Hell, a vast
gray expanse in the middle of nowhere, not too far
from Potomac, Maryland, filled with modern art and
architectural structures.
A museum, okay? The Hell I experienced was a
museum. I went to a museum with my mother, and it
drove me out of my mind. The name of the place?
Glenstone.
Let me give you a couple disclaimers before I
proceed.
First of all, I do not hate museums nor do I hate
art. This is not an anti-art op-ed by your local art
hater. On the contrary, I appreciate looking at and
creating a variety of art forms. Sure, I can have a
harder time with some modern art, but who doesn’t?
Second of all, I do not hate the color gray. On the
contrary, my favorite pair of jeans are a dark
charcoal. But it irked me that the whole of Glenstone
was shiny, sleek, and gray, from the gravelly parking
lot to the boxy buildings to the staff’s uniforms.
So what’s my deal with gray then? Have you
heard of the term “millennial gray”? The color gray is
now in style because everyone is over maximalism
and the bright colors of blatant consumerism. Gray is
now a soothing relief instead of a bore. The problem?
That calming grayness is all a facade, for
consumerism is as strong as ever. Have you heard of
the term “quiet luxury”? Extra, extra! Now you can
spend more money on fewer items—simple, gray,
items—so you can pretend to be rich and humble at
once.
Millennial gray and quiet luxury were just the
terms to describe Glenstone. The place was huge; it
was like an airport. Only it was not an airport; it was
not providing transportation for thousands of people.
It was providing a glimpse into the life of the rich;
the whispering wind screamed a haunting message—
“look at my simple extravagance!”
Not just the gray box buildings were to blame for
the gray subtly wealthy sentiment. The location—a
realm of wheat-colored bundles of weedy grasses—
somehow both ugly and charming—increased the
sense of “we can do whatever we like with our twelve
hundred acres of isolated land, see?”
But perhaps the most at fault were the art pieces
inside the box buildings.
I came into the place with the goal to try and
appreciate the art, find some meaning. I came into it
with an open mind. But my enthusiasm led to my
eventual overwhelmed insanity.
The first piece we saw was a compilation of
several canvases, hung up on the wall in an array.
About twenty-four in all, each was painted a different
color. There were some similar colors, only differing
by a shade, but there was not a single repeat.
“I’d hire the guy for a paint job,” I told my
mother. Despite our cynicism, we decided to give the
piece more than a single glance. So we played a made
-up game of “come up with a creative name for each
color!”
“Terracotta,” my mother said.
“Inside-of-a-banana-yellow", I replied.
“The-red-that-is-called-cadmium-red-when-youbuy-paint-but-actually-looks-a-bit-orange-ish,"
my
mother continued. And so on.
One of the museum staff noticed us staring at the
wall of colored canvases and giggling for fifteen
minutes straight, and asked us why it intrigued us.
We told her, and she exclaimed, "jellybeans!"
She apparently had done "the exact same thing as
us"—she had come up with jellybean flavors that
each color might represent. I didn't think it was
exactly the same thing—similar—but I did not argue;
I allowed her to revel in this moment of connection
over the art.
Then my mother and I went into the first room of
pieces and I continued trying to get something out of
every piece. I did not want to be one of those people
who dismisses all of modern art without giving it so
much as a chance. At the same time, however, I
didn’t want to be one of those people who speaks so
snobbishly about modern art, saying phrases like “the
juxtaposition of the curvature and the vibrant red
hues” and “evoking a conversational discord in the
mind of the viewer.”
So I just tried to be straightforward about it.
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Looking at the first piece, I said—“it reminds me of
an eraser I had in middle school that I loved. It was
half blue and half white; the blue side erased pen and
the white side erased pencil. I called it my pen eraser
and everyone wanted to borrow it; this was before
erasable pens were everywhere.”
I tried to come up with some comparison for
every piece we looked at, but it got increasingly more
challenging. What do you say about a piece called
“yellow relief” that’s just a canvas raised on one side,
painted two tones of yellow?
And it certainly feels odd to look at basic pencil
sketches of flowers hanging on the walls as if they
are enormous projects—they couldn’t have taken
longer than a few minutes; they were called sketches,
for Pete’s sake!
We had only gone through the first section of the
building when my mother and I decided we needed a
break. We went to the restroom. And my god, even
the restrooms were pretentious. Each stall was a little
room, with doors that stretched from the ceiling all
the way to the floor. Which was saying a lot; the
ceiling stretched over ten feet high. Everything was
white and clean and pristine and huge and the soap
smelled delightful.
When we came out we decided we’d had enough.
We exited the big gray box building and stepped out
into the sunshine. It was a nice day, cool, with just
the right amount of sun. We looked at the weedy
plants shining golden and pleasant against the
blueness of the sky. There were country looking
houses in the far background, small and cute because
of the distance. “What a nice landscape,” I said to my
mother. “It looks like a painting. Let’s take a picture
of it, maybe later I’ll paint it.”
It was a nice experience at first, to look at this
view after the hodgepodge of disarray inside the gray
building. But then I realized what the building had
done to me. Everything I set my eyes upon now
looked like a painting. It looked far off, and like the
people walking in it had hopped inside a picture,
Mary Poppins style. All I could think about was the
composition, the colors, the texture, the structure.
Nothing looked real, everything was constructed,
everything was something about which to be
contemplated.
We started walking on a footpath, and I tried to
let go of the weird feeling I was having. I wanted to
close my eyes tight and never have to look at
anything ever again. Because once I started looking,
the more I felt like I had been picked up and placed in
a fabricated reality. I felt like I was inside a big alien
Glenstone museum courtyard (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
14
February 15, 2024
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
maze, and I was there to look at things, and some
aliens were looking down at me like I was their
experiment.
Even if it wasn’t aliens—some wealthy family
had created the whole place. They had oodles of
money to make this big area with strange art and
strange vegetation. They had hired staff to dress in all
gray and smile and welcome us into the vast expanse
of surreality.
“No way the workers are actually happy working
here,” I said to my mother. “They'd go crazy. I would
go crazy if I had to spend hours upon hours stuck up
here. It’s all a facade. It's fake. It’s fake. It’s not real.
They’ve plastered this happy persona onto
themselves but really they’re crumbling and lifeless
inside. Job pays well, probably, you think?”
The place was eerie; I had been there two hours,
and I had to leave. My mother and I walked on a path
that we hoped would lead to the parking lot. It was a
nice path and for a moment I considered that maybe I
could tune myself back into the real world. But I
looked at the drops of water on the gravel that had
stayed there from last night’s rain, and I looked at the
rays of sun shining directly on them to dry them up,
and I couldn’t shake the eeriness off. The sun was not
real, what was it thinking, shining at me like this?
We came to a structure. It was huge. It was a
dinosaur of some sorts. Was this art? Maybe to some,
but not to me. To me it was a huge dormant alien.
That was it, no more chances for you, Glenstone. I’m
not coming back.
We made our way to the parking lot, and I asked
my mother to drive on the way back; I was supposed
to practice driving, but I was exhausted. I closed my
eyes as we drove, I wanted to flush everything I’d
seen out of them. I just needed a break from seeing. I
hoped that I would be able to leave the alien hell
behind me.
The hell of colors and shapes that some people
had decided were good. They (whoever they were)
were trying to be better than “regular people.” They
were saying—we can reach the world of the Forms.
We can appreciate pure unadulterated color. We can
appreciate Red without thinking of flowers and
pomegranates and blood. We have achieved the
highest form of contemplating color and structure—
in the simplest way.
If they were right—I don’t want to live in the
world of Forms. I don’t want to understand the
Forms. I only want to experience yellow in the
context of a pretty blouse or a just-ripe banana.
February 15, 2024
Unfortunately, they had infiltrated my mind, and I
was scared that even in the normal world I would be
extracting from images automatically. So I closed my
eyes.
Two months later, I am still sometimes plagued
by this weird paranoia when I look around myself.
I’ll see a pair of shoes and think of them as a prop.
Who placed those shoes there? Look at those shoes,
who shaped them in that way, who made them be
black? Why are they angled in that way on the shoerack? Is someone placing them there like that for
some sort of effect? See, I’m sort of in a movie now,
and I’m watching the things in my life in a removed
way. That’s what Glenstone did to me.
Or maybe I’m blaming Glenstone unfairly? My
mom had a great time, and we had gone together.
Strange, that we had gone through the same
experience and each come out of it so differently. But
I suppose that not all architecture is for everyone. As
the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said,
“You think philosophy is difficult enough but I can
tell you it is nothing to the difficulty of being a good
architect.”
Maybe that’s why the trip was so hard on me: I
was thinking about the two hardest things,
architecture and philosophy.
Oh, and also, I had driven on the way there, slow
as a snail, because I only have my learner’s permit, so
there was that. Oh, and I hadn’t eaten in several
hours, so I was light-headed the entire time. So yeah,
just blame me, don’t blame Glenstone.
The gray box buildings still haunt me, though.
They got me thinking about the buildings on campus
at St. John’s, and how I am certainly thankful to be
living in one that makes me feel cozy rather than
cold. Recently, I said to a friend of mine, “how awful
would it be, if we went to university at one of those
modern looking plain buildings?” to which she
replied, “I’d kill myself.”
Well, I’ll be killing myself trying to get the
money to afford a nicer room next year. Because
that’s the new situation, have you heard? Money is
going to control whether you live in an architecturally
delightful environment, or an architecturally gloomy
one. (I’m exaggerating, I know.) But the point still
stands—sure, I bet you could be sad in both a
mansion and a shack, but you can’t look me in the
eyes and tell me that your environment won't affect
you at all.
15
�THE GADFLY
Πόλις
February 15, 2024
Comics:
Noodles
By Tamar Pinsky
Washing Dishes
16
Tall Order Chef
Secrets
Good Dentist, Bad Dentist
Crutches
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
Censor, Oh
Censor
By B.S.
Pictured on Right:
The Great Fighter of
Red Menaces, Dwight
(Source: SJC Digital
Archives)
My fellow Johnnies,
What is America for? What’s the point of
living in an ex-capital of our wonderful home of the
free, land of the brave? Do you smell it, in the air,
between the puffs of cigarette smoke and the strange
odors that your classmates always seem to emit? It’s
freedom. Nobody kicks tyrannical ass quite like us,
nobody has successfully overthrown more dictators
and allowed the people’s will to be expressed. We’ve
got all the essential freedoms. Speech. Printing.
Assembly. Bodily autonomy. I love this country. I
was raised on freedom fries and post-9/11 rhetoric.
Who loves freedom more than me? I have an
American flag tramp stamp. I only buy from major
multinational corporations. I have dogmatic opinions
in favor of a political party that doesn’t really have
my own interests in mind. I love freedom.
So just hear me out when I say I think it’s gone a bit
too far. Any time someone gets their views canceled,
their protests shut down, their tweet ratioed out of
existence, we’re always talking about freedom (I
deserve to be heard! they whine). But what if…
unfreedom is…kinda…sexy good? Sure, you may be
a grown adult able to form your own opinions and
views of the world, but what if your opinions and
views are stupid? Have you seen the humanity out
there on reality TV (which must be the most real by
definition)? Really, what percentage of that
population actually deserves the ability to rule
themselves, make their own decisions, decide what
they want?
Johnnies are the worst example of this: we
have all these opinions, these thoughts, these morals
that we insist are “important” and “basic human
rights,” but who amongst you has lived in the real
world? Who amongst you can be trusted to have your
own good in mind? It should not be controversial,
when you go out on the quad on a Friday night and
think to yourself, amongst the boozing and bad music
circa 1970, that we might just need a parent state.
This is particularly true of certain unnamed
institutions. If we were, as a college, to hypothetically
have a newspaper place for communicating with each
other, for sharing opinions that genuinely matter (and
often those that do not at all), I am of the opinion that
such an institution must be, in its very form,
censored: we can’t be trusted not to insult each other
and hurt our own little feelings and certainly cannot
be trusted to deal with the problems that are most
important to us. And, hypothetically-allegedlypotentially, how would we control this institution? In
the classic American fashion: money. Just fund this
diabolical thing with school cash and then claim that
it now reflects on the college in some way and thus
must be censored to absurd standards. It’s perfect,
will never get out of hand, and would certainly never
have any effect on me in particular (so who cares if it
hurts everyone else?). We need to be coddled. It’s for
our own good.
Anyways, I need to go finish reading this
book on Russian history. This new Lenin guy seems
really cool.
Yours patriotically,
B.S.
17
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
half gone
By Natalie Goldman
Lightly treading,
Lightly treading on a road somewhere
Is December half gone
And for more hours with it.
A journey backwards is more than enough.
Adding my own hat to the ring
Was once a thing thought grotesque,
But I have managed to turn the hands
In a way that people could recognize.
I’m not sure anymore
What happens after it rains.
I don’t think we’re absolved,
Like people say.
I don’t think our sins are washed away.
Maybe we’ll just feel cold.
It’s December and it’s cold
And it won’t matter if we try.
18
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
A Student Climbing on the Bookshelves of the Woodward Hall Library (From the SJC Digital Archives)
19
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
Translation of the First Seven
Stanzas of Valéry’s
“Le cimetière marin”
By Luke Briner
This quiet rooftop where doves walk and plume
That beats between the pine and solemn tomb;
The just noon by his fires does there compose
The sea, the sea, with all renewal’s sense!
O contemplation’s noble recompense,
Nought but a long look at the gods’ repose!
What sinless work consumed by lightning fine,
Abundant jewels of evanescent brine,
And what an idyll seems to be conceived!
When over the abyss a sun takes pause,
The sacred work of an eternal cause,
Time shines and fancy’s knowledge is received.
Abiding treasure, sanctum of Minerve,
Accord of calm and visible reserve,
Proud water, guarding by internal sight
Such great repose beneath a veil of fire;
O silence!...soul’s consecrated spire,
Roof with a thousand gilded tiles alight!
20
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
Time’s temple, comprehended by a sigh:
I climb and custom to that summit high,
Flanked on all sides by this Neptunic gaze;
As to the gods my offering supreme,
So soweth luminosity serene
Upon the sovereign peak’s disdainful haze.
Just how fruit melts into a sweet enjoyed,
As in delight it makes its presence void
Within a mouth that’s soon deformed by death,
Here I detect the smoke of future time,
And to the rapt soul Jove recites his rhyme
Of shores reduced to nought but murmured
breath.
O fairest, truest sky, see how I change!
At end of such pride and of life so strange
And indolent, but still of power full,
I cede myself to this supernal space;
O’er houses of the dead my shade makes pace,
Enthralling me unto its gentle pull.
The soul claimed by the fires of apogee—
O justice most august, I honor thee,
To vicious weapons sunk from brighter start!
I hold you pure in your primordial height;
Look at yourself! but cease not to make light
Conjecture of a shadow’s dismal part.
21
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
The Feeble Human Mind At Last Comprehends Infinity
By Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm
I tried so hard, for so long.
I read Leibniz, Newton, Dedekind.
I was a fool to think I could find it there.
All I had to do was think about that day.
Adonis Restaurant, a simple thirty minute drive.
Slipping into politics as we coast down Interstate 5.
An hour later, realizing we should already be there.
Shamefully accidentally turning into a military base to turn around.
What should’ve been a short trip, tripled.
We joke that you’re a terrible driver; I’m a terrible navigator.
We know this isn’t true. The real reason we always get lost?
“Talking to you is addicting” ‒ your favorite line.
I grew up learning that all things have an end ‒
people most of all, and love long before that.
I don’t expect anything to last these days;
most of the time, I hope that they won’t.
Things can be flawed if they aren’t forever.
In reality, this ends, too ‒ maybe.
In reality, you can never hold infinity.
Even in theory, my imagination falls short.
Yet in my little fractured heart, I see it with clarity.
Within this dream alone, no one gets tired of the other;
Only in this complete safety can I relax into eternity.
The ceaseless process of creating something infinite,
The beauty of building a better and better life together,
Begins in this little sedan while we converse
as if the wild world could terminate
and still we would go on talking without limit.
Only this time we never wake up;
we don't stop at Camp Pendleton.
We just keep on going.
And as long as we’re together,
everything is indefinite,
the sun never sets,
and time is kind to our old regrets;
the road never ends,
and we never go back to being just friends;
the geese never stop flying through the clean blue air,
and the wind never stops messing up your hair;
you never stop joking about my love for fries,
and so my laughter never dies;
the light never stops raining golden on your face,
and we never stop talking about how to make this world a softer place;
the sky remains forever blue,
and I never, ever stop loving you.
22
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
February 15, 2024
Good luck to all seniors with orals in the next few
weeks! You’ve made it this far; you can do it!
23
�THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the
student newsmagazine distributed to
over 600 students, faculty, staff, and
alumni 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
Lunar New Year was on February 10, 2024.
Welcome, Year of the Dragon!
(Photo by Abigail Poppleton)
thought provoking newsmagazine.
Submissions sent to the Gadfly
should either be in Google Docs or
PDF format.
For more information, contact us
via email at lbriner@sjc.edu.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401
Photographs without a listed source are from the
St. John's College Digital Archives.
St. John's College owns the rights
to these photographs.
Illustrations without a listed source are by Takashi
Mifune from Irasutoya.com and are free to use for
non-commercial purposes. All rights to these
illustrations still belong to the artist.
�
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLV, Issue 7
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Gadfly Vol XLV Issue 7
Gadfly
Student publication
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PDF Text
Text
THE
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
GADFLY
Snow Days & St. John’s Ways
January 25, 2024
Vol. XLV, Issue 6
�Letter from the Editor
CONTENTS
Λόγος :
Dear Polity,
Greenfield Library Announcement
3
An Interview with Delaney Costello, Founder of the
Feminist Reading Group by Natalie Goldman
3
Interviews with the Washed-Up Crew Captains by Bennett
Scott
5
ΣυμπόσιονÊ:
Thoughts on the St. John’s Class by Luke Briner
Insider Ethnography: An Alumna’s Exploration of a
College Tradition (Part One) by Maura Sugg
7
10
ΠόλιςÊ:Ê
Be the Problem Child by B.S.
16
On the Greenfield Library’s “Quiet Zone” by Molly Sprout
17
“A Junior’s Plea” from the SJC Digital Archives
18
A Reflection on Winter Break by Vivian Miyakawa
19
SJC Mystery #6: Trapped by Bennett Scott
20
Photography Highlight: Winter & Writing by Abigail
Poppleton
22
We at the Gadfly hope that you’ve
had a wonderful break, and an
equally wonderful beginning to the
second semester!
As always, my most sincere gratitude
is extended to our managing editor
Mr. Nichols-Kaufman, our designer
Ms. Nghiêm, and our entire fantastic
staff. It’s because of them that our
little publication is able to go along
as it does. I would also like to briefly
update that I now have the privilege
of both formally and functionally
continuing this semester as sole
editor-in-chief.
Please enjoy!
Luke Briner,
Editor-in-chief
THE STRUCTURE
Λόγος holds news reports and narratives
of immediate relevance to the Polity.
ΣυμπόσιονÊoffers strong, developed
opinions regarding various topics.
ΠόλιςÊserves as a platform for elevating
voices in our community.
THE GADFLY STAFF
COVER
EDITOR-INMANAGING
EDITOR
STAFF
Abigail Poppleton
Luke Briner
El’ad NicholsKaufman
Benne Sco
Vivian Miyakawa
Tamar Pinsky
Louis Rosenberg
YOUT
Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm
CONTRIBUTORS
Natalie Goldman
Maura Sugg
Jacob Klein Snowman by McDowell Hall, circa 1949-1958
2
Molly Sprout
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
A Message from the Greenfield Library:
Exciting News! Greenfield Library is implementing The Quiet Zone
in the basement of the library, beginning at the start of the Spring 2024
semester. Perfect for those seeking a serene and focused environment, this
space will provide a tranquil place to concentrate and work without noisy
disturbances. We understand the importance of uninterrupted, quiet, study
time, and this zone has been designated with your academic success in
mind.
Plus, we've got you covered for group study, or a friendly chat, with
our Cohen Group Study Room, which you can reserve by using the QR
code below. Whether you need solitude or collaboration, your library is
here to support your academic journey. Drop by today!
An Interview with Delaney Costello, Founder of
the Feminist Reading Group
By Natalie Goldman
A new Feminist Reading Group was recently created
on campus by freshman Delaney Costello, with the
support of tutors Ms. Nelson and Ms. Spearman. The
first meeting took place on December 13th, seminar
style, drawing from the works of poets Anyte and
Emily Dickinson. I asked Ms. Costello a few
questions about her experience starting the group.
Goldman: How did the idea to start the reading
group come to you?
Costello: The idea to start the reading group came
around the time of the first all-college seminar on
Ecclesiastes when I realized that Johnnies were
willing and excited to read and discuss works
outside of the curriculum entirely. Personally, I
had been feeling frustrated with just how male The
Great Books Program is, with a grand total of
maybe five books written by women in our entire
time at the college, and the way those rare gender
conversations had gone in my classes. The few
times an interesting female character would come
up, I often felt a lack of interest or empathy from
my classmates, and those conversations would
quickly dissipate. I think you miss out on so much
if you never read or consider the perspective of
half of the population, so I thought if we could
create a space where everyone in the room really
wanted to read and discuss women, we could
supplement what the curriculum was missing and
benefit from the opportunity of learning from each
other.
G: What made you think to get Ms. Nelson and Ms.
Spearman involved? How did they help you in the
planning process?
C: I adore Ms. Nelson and Ms. Spearman! I had
coffee with each of them, and to both I expressed
my interest in reading more about women, and we
had the kind of engaging and honest conversations
I'd been wanting in class. Ms. Nelson was so kind
as to email Ms. Munsey and come back to me with
a group of students who'd want to start a feminist
reading group, and Ms. Spearman had told me that
she and Ms. Kirby were thinking the same thing, at
which point came the exciting part of working
together to envision what we wanted the group to
be. I came up with an idea of a reading list of
works from ancient history to now that I wanted to
read and sought their advice and input, and Ms.
Spearman created her own list of suggestions that
we're incorporating into a plan for second
semester. And of course, they both made time for
an extracurricular seminar in their busy schedules,
which I appreciate very much!
G: Tell me about how you decided on which readings
to start with.
C: The idea for the group would be to work
chronologically through history, just like the Great
Books program, and Ms. Spearman suggested
3
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
Anyte as a great ancient Greek poet to start with,
and kindly provided her very own translations! We
thought it may be interesting to pair her with the
more modern and popular Emily Dickinson, as a
reading that would be short enough to be
accessible and entice people to come, because who
doesn't love Emily Dickinson?
G: What are some of your goals for the group? What
do you hope attendees will take away from their
experience?
C: My main goal for the group is just that we make
time to work together respectfully and read works
we might not read otherwise. I hope to explore
gender roles and study the impact and development
of feminism throughout time, and I hope as
attendees we each can exercise our empathy to see
where these women were coming from and think
about how we can apply their ideas to today. I also
notice that in class, women are often talked over
and interrupted, and maybe don't feel confident in
their ideas, and I hope we can create an
environment where that is not the case.
G: Could you sum up your feelings about how the
first meeting went?
C: I was happy with how the first meeting went! I
really didn't know what to expect, but I was so
pleased that we had a group that filled a seminar
table and didn't feel too large or too small. I was
grateful that two other tutors came, and that almost
half the seminar were men who were just as eager
to read women as I was! Of course there were
bumps in the road that we'll smooth out, like the
group just being unfamiliar with each other and six
poems being way too many for one seminar, but
most attendees seemed to enjoy it, which is all I
could ask for! I love reading Emily Dickinson, but
she can be wildly confusing, so I really appreciated
hearing what other people thought of her poems,
and it was special to take our time and work our
way through each line, a kind of close reading we
don't always get to do in seminar. We paid her such
attention that we unfortunately didn't even get to
the Anyte poetry, but that just gives us more to look
forward to next time!
G: Do you have any readings picked out for future
meetings? Can you give us any hints as to what we
can look forward to?
C: Yes! I have this fantasy of creating a reading list
in the exact same format as the Great Books
curriculum, on official letterhead, working
chronologically from my freshman to senior year,
4
January 25, 2024
just completely women of course, though I realize
we may be a bit more flexible than that. We want to
work in a balance of both explicitly feminist theory
and just literature by women, and hopefully it can
be a group that continues throughout the next few
years, since we'll start with much older works this
semester and probably not get to the modern day
for a while. For this semester, some ideas include:
more Anyte, Sappho, Marie de France, Hildegard
of Bingen, Christine de Pizan, and some other
mystics. In the later history, some ideas I'm ecstatic
about are: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, the
Bronte sisters, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, bell
hooks, Simone de Beauvoir and Toni Morrison. But
there are so many more, and I want to read as much
as we possibly can!
G: Is there anything else you'd like the Polity to know
regarding the club or future meeting dates?
C: We will publicize future meeting dates through
email and posters, but generally, we're thinking of
meeting twice a month on Wednesdays. I would
like the Polity to know that meetings are open to
anyone who wishes to engage with the text, no
matter who you are or how many meetings you can
come to! As long as you've read the text and want
to talk about it, you should feel welcome to come!
And if you have any questions or suggestions,
please email me [at dmcostello@sjc.edu].
Three Female Students Discussing a Book
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
Interviews with the Washed-Up Crew Captains
By Benne Sco
Crew is an essential institution at St. John’s
College. They meet at ungodly hours for months on
end (I know because my roommate’s alarm goes off
at 4:50 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, Friday
during those months) and really put their hearts into
it. For some people, crew becomes essential to their
personalities, it becomes their whole personality. And
then the season ends. Worst of all are the senior
captains who, without a firm stick to grab while
someone yells at them, retreat into the lonely sadness
of winter. I tracked down two of them to ask the hard
hitting questions.
Hannah Chavers; from @sjcaxolotlrowing on IG
“She Caught Crabs”: Hannah Chavers
So Hannah, who are you?
My name’s Hannah Chavers…uh yeah. [Ben Maier
in the back: I can fact check anything she says.]
What’s your favorite kind of oar?
I like a nice silicone grip.
How do you feel about boats?
I love boats, boats of all kinds. I spent my summer
on a boat, a different kind of boat, but a boat.
Why do you go to regattas?
Not to win. To prove…not to prove…to scout out
the competition and I don’t mean in a rowing
sense. I mean in a physical way. Is that making
sense?…Yeah I just like to see the difference in
physical stature between St. John’s College
athletes and Georgetown college athletes. There’s
just something so remarkable about how big a
man’s quad can be.
How do you feel about the swim test?
I feel like it’s life-threatening, kind of. Y’know, the
swim test made someone convert to orthodox
Christianity. Don’t take the swim test in jeans,
cause then you might drown. And then find Jesus.
You might not have walked on the water, but
Jesus did one time.
Who are the best four people to have in a boat?
I’d say Barack Obama is quad material. And he’s got
good quads. Mary Magdalene. She would have
passed the swim test. Me. Certainly me…Who’s
problematic but really muscular?…I’m just
saying the only reason anyone shows up to crew
is because they in some capacity don’t like
themselves.…Anyways, Ringo Star. Mixed quad.
If you don’t know what a mixed quad is, your
hands are full at all times. It’s really hard to
focus. How do you keep your eyes on the prize?
[Ben Maier: And you can’t see anyone’s butts.]
She caught crabs?
First of all, it has nothing
to do with sex. It’s
when somebody doesn’t
move their oar in the
correct manner [she
says a lot here about
oars and shit idk]. It
could be taken as a euphemism. It’s a way of
trying to make you feel better that you fucked up.
We’re blaming this tiny creature that has no way
of making you mess up that bad. But everyone
knows you messed up. I caught a crab once.
Have you ever had religious experiences in a boat?
Like the face of God looking down on me? Staring
at me? Gazing at me? No. No I have not. Do I
think I could? One day, maybe. Have you ever
seen God in a boat? Let’s interview you. Have
you ever caught a crab? Do you have crabs?
5
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
Peter Boersema; from @sjcaxolotlrowing on IG
“What Do You Do with a Sober Sailor?”:
Peter Boersema
January 25, 2024
I don’t feel self conscious about the equipment… I
feel self conscious about…[everyone, in sync:]
us. I rowed freshman year in an old four called
the Scott Buchannan and it’s a very heavy boat
and I remember saying: “Light boats breed weak
crews.” These other school’s boats are named
after random donors; I bet none of them are as
cool as Scott Buchannan. But I do remember
when the Arby’s boat was passing us. [laughter.]
Who are the four worst people to have in a boat?
I’d say Odysseus because all the other people will
die. And I would say probably Gilligan from
Gilligan’s island. Captain of the Titanic? No…
Dictators. If you look on the Wikipedia page for
“rowboat,” the first picture is of Khrushchev
[update: the page is "watercraft" and this
apparently has not been true since June 2023
thanks to the no-fun attitude of Wikipedia editor
Iljhgtn]. So he’d be bad. A gorilla would be the
fourth worst person because…I think the power
of a gorilla would not be enough to overcome
their bad technique.
What is the liquid you most want to row on?
Wow…yeah…[long contemplation with everyone
giving input: vodka, liquid nitrogen, ethanol]…
What’s really smooth? The real question is what
liquid you want to be splashed by. I’d say water
but it’s the type of water at fancy events with
cucumber in it. Rose petals. Something like that.
I’d like to row on a lake of cucumber water.
What do you yell at people?
I don’t yell. If you’re yelling while you’re rowing,
you’re not spending enough energy on rowing.
But if I did…because of that principle, I would
yell “Shut up!”
Do you fear the cold hand of death?
No.
What boats could you beat in a fight?
I’m not actually going to give any details, but I beat
the boat called the Jim Beall in a fight. I do not
care to clarify.
Have you drowned?
Yes. I am in fact the reincarnation of Herman T.
Wooters.
Does the beard help with air resistance? Follow up:
does it make you feel like a real sailor?
No and no, but it helps keep my face warm.
Can you walk on water?
Only for a little bit, but as soon as I look down, I
fall. You probably read about the incident in
Sophomore year.
What do you think about when rowing?
You always have to be focusing on your technique
and how it’s syncing up with the technique of
other people in the boat and how you’re
conveying power from your legs to the oar.
Do you think about anyone’s ass? Your own?
My own? It starts to hurt after a while on that
wooden seat.
Do you feel self conscious during the regattas when First Secretary of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev, Swedish
high schools have more modern equipment than Prime Minister Tage Erlander, and an interpreter in a rowboat;
from an older Wikipedia page for “Watercra ”
SJC?
6
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
Thoughts on the St.
John’s Class
By Luke Briner
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This essay was originally published in issue XLV.4 of
the Gadfly under the same title. It is reproduced here,
with some adjustments and additions, for the
consideration of Polity at the beginning of our second
semester.
-LB
What is the nature of the St. John’s class, and
what attitude should we, as members of the St. John’s
community, take toward it? These two questions are
points of great dissent among students and faculty
alike, and the way in which each person answers has
radical effects on how they behave in their classes
and what they intend to get out of them. Recognizing
this, I’ve felt the desire to formally work through
both of them, looking to the philosophy of the
College itself as well as to the firsthand experience of
myself and others. I hope that by setting out on this
inquiry, and by attempting to shed light on the
principles upon which our classes seem to be based
as well as their natural consequences for our own
behavior, I can help the Polity come to a clearer and
more beneficial understanding of them, or at the very
least deepen the discourse surrounding them.
We will begin by setting out the foundations
upon which the College’s pedagogical philosophy is
based. I take the first and ultimate principle of the
Program to be “the liberation of the human
intellect.”1 This liberation is not simply freedom from
previous ignorance or bias, but is, more profoundly,
the achievement of a self-consciousness, mental
autonomy, and intellectual virtue through the sincere
application of one’s mind to what’s most essential
and worthy within itself. Our method for achieving
this ultimate kind of liberation is the study of Great
January 25, 2024
Books. Since these books, as Buchanan observes,
“communicate with great skill ideas that human
experience has taught us are important,”2 and thereby
allow us to “tune in on the Great Conversation that
we call civilization,”3 the hope of the Program is that
their sincere and sustained study will produce in the
student the eminent qualities of “an educated man—
that is, one who has learned to read, to use his mind
imaginatively and rigorously.”4
I take the second principle of the Program to
be that this liberation is to be pursued communally.
“Liberal learning,” as Brann observes, “is by its
nature conversational….the student is not the passive
recipient of knowledge but an active participant in a
common search.”5 By participating in this search, we
do more than simply “tune in” to the Great
Conversation the each text is a part of; instead, we
actually simulate our own conversation around the
Books themselves, and thereby give our ourselves a
the opportunity to exercise our minds in a way that
surpasses the limitations of solitary thought. Since
classes thus centered around dialogue and intellectual
community can “reach insights far beyond the views
of any of its members,”6 the Program makes them the
sole vehicle of our education; our colleagues are
made our very means of liberation, and we are
equally made theirs.
Accepting these principles, the ideal nature of
both the St. John’s class as a whole as well as that of
the individual student naturally begins to take shape.
Recognizing that their ultimate objective is the
liberation of their own minds, and that communal
dialogue centered around Great Books is the way to
achieve this, the ideal student will work as hard as
they can to promote the well-being, the efficacy of
that dialogue. In understanding that the
conversational Whole is by nature greater than
themselves, and that their good is to be found only
within that Whole, they will therefore always act in
accordance with what’s best for that Whole. If each
student commits themselves earnestly to this
responsibility, then the class becomes effectively its
own organism: a living, breathing Order in and
through which “harmony is actual and immediate.”7
This is the ideal of every class, and each student
should therefore consider working toward the
1
Statement of the Program, 3.
Buchanan, “Now and to Come: Liberal Education: A Common Adventure,” The Antioch Review, Autumn, 1955, Vol. 15, No. 3, 302.
3
Buchanan, ibid.
4
Buchanan, 304.
5
Brann, A Manifesto for Liberal Education, 2015.
6
Statement of the Program, 5.
7
Luchene, Beginnings of Community, 1999, 4.
2
7
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
realization of that ideal as their highest
responsibility.
However, by virtue of the very communal and
voluntary nature of our classes, many if not most of
them will fall far short of this ideal. A near-total
freedom from explicitly enunciated structure and
rules, as well as from objective criteria or judgements
of academic performance, makes it very easy to fall
from the discipline that those classes demonstrably
both require and aim to instill. But if genuine moral
liberation remains our ultimate goal, and if communal
inquiry around Great Books is our only means of
attaining to that end, then the fact that such inquiry
easily and often fails to maintain its integrity, and
thereby that such attainment is rare and by no means
a foregone conclusion, is a clear indication of the
fragility of the Program itself.
An understanding of this seems to be the
foundation for the Programs’ reasoning behind the
institution of tutors. Just as a polyphony, in order to
achieve the supreme interpersonal and suprapersonal
Beauty it’s so capable of, requires a conductor to
keep each part in its place and preserve the νόμος of
the whole, so too the intellectual polyphony of
dialogue requires an authoritative presence capable of
setting and enforcing its own necessary νόμος.
If this is right, then it follows that the role of
tutor as a laissez-faire facilitator, so often referenced
and praised by students and faculty alike, is greatly
overemphasized. Tutors should not, as Luchene
notes, “merely facilitate conversations.”8 Rather, they
should “guide the conversation, sometimes steering it
in a particular direction, sometimes listening and
letting it take its own course, and occasionally,
steering it around an unpromising detour.”9 If tutors
were only facilitators or democratic participants, then
they would be just another student; and if that is the
only capacity in which they act, then what’s the point
of having them in the class as tutors at all? Rather,
tutors are and should be understood as authoritative
figures capable of acting outside the specific context
of the conversation in order to ensure that it proceeds
in the appropriately respectful and equitable way. If
they aren’t, then the polyphony will lack a conductor,
and so will be exposed to the danger of falling into
the cacophony that we are all far too familiar with.
We should, then, resist the temptation to interpret the
Statement’s assertion that “the primary role of the
8
Learning Through Conversation at St. John’s College, 2015.
Learning Through Conversation at St. John’s College.
Statement of the Program, 5.
11
Learning Through Conversation at St. John’s College.
9
10
8
January 25, 2024
leaders [tutors] is not to give information, nor is it to
produce the ‘right’ opinion or interpretation”10 as
claiming that tutors simply shouldn’t assert anything
in class, but instead carefully distinguish between the
two modes of assertion that the tutor is capable of
operating within. While tutors should of course avoid
dogmatic assertions about the text insofar as they are
simply another participant in the conversation, they
should actually at the same time quite dogmatically
assert the bounds within which that very conversation
must take place, e.g., keeping it “cooperative and
respectful, not competitive,”11 and ensuring that no
one person takes away from everyone else’s
education by their obstinacy or negligence.
This perspective on students and tutors is not
only wholly consistent with the stated ideals and
doctrine of the Program but also readily confirmed by
our personal experiences. Recall to yourself the petty
bickering that so conversations devolve into when
left unchecked, or the student who believes, God
knows why, that he’s the smartest person in every
room and dominates every discussion regardless of
how much his bluster exasperates his colleagues and
disrupts their learning, or the tutor that actively
derails the intellectual work of their own class by
constant interruptions and digressions, or, inversely,
allows student-originated derailment to persist and
worsen by doing nothing at all—recall, and then ask
yourself whether you’ve felt liberated by the classes
where such behavior was allowed to occur and
persist. I’d venture to say that, on the contrary, the
classes which really have been liberating for us are
exactly those in which all its participants
conscientiously submit themselves to the common
good rather than to their own egos, and in which the
tutor, sometimes joining as a humble participant from
within and sometimes acting as a firm but beneficent
guide from without, ensures and enhances the
conversation’s civility and fruitfulness. We should
say, then, that those who refuse to submit to that
unspoken but strict order which a good class
necessitates on the grounds that it “doesn’t personally
benefit them” completely fail to understand that their
benefit is derived entirely from the excellence of that
very order, and, likewise that tutors who are
unwilling to correctly assert their authority for the
sake of that order do both their students and the
Program itself a disservice, since they damage the
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
education of the former and contradict the intent of
the latter.
I want to add to this my conviction that
students who participate too much in class are
significantly more harmful than those who participate
too little. Although both obviously do a disservice to
the class, their nature and intensity are of entirely
different orders. While silent students harm the class
passively by withholding contributions they might
have improved the conversation with, the student
who dominates conversations actively derails and
often outright destroys the very cohesion and equity
that any successful class requires. If this is true, then I
can’t help but question why many tutors and the
College itself tend to review and grade silent students
more harshly than toward students that refuse to ever
be silent, given that the latter is a much worse citizen
in our intellectual πόλις than the former. In short, the
“sons of pride”12 in our classes should be humbled,
not enabled.
On the same principles, we should view with
skepticism Barr’s suggestion that interrupting
colleagues in conversation can be acceptable or even
beneficial.13 Perhaps in some exceptional cases a few
quick interjections might really be a “point of
order”14 in dialogue; but this is a dangerous precedent
to set generally. Internalizing the idea that
interruption is even conditionally acceptable will
inevitably lead most of us, inexperienced and
inconsiderate as we are, to feel bolder in crudely
interrupting others, and thus only cause further
disorder and resentment.
We should likewise be very careful about how
we take Kalkavage’s15 exhortation to “not despair”16
when conversational degeneration occurs, since, he
claims, this is a part of the way in which “we learn
the art of using our freedom.”17 While certainly some
space should be given in which classes may do better
or worse, since openness and spontaneity is always
the lifeblood of dialogue, this must be kept firmly
within the realm of genuine dialectic rather than
allowed to degenerate into what Barr calls the
“eristic.”18 To tolerate the flagrant disregard of the
conversational standards which we have all elected to
submit ourselves to in the name of “freedom” is, at its
core, just as nonsensical as believing that laws should
January 25, 2024
be established but never enforced, since if society
didn’t have the “freedom” to collapse at any moment,
it would also not have the “freedom” to prosper in
peace. No—our freedom, our liberation does not
consist in anarchy or in trying to live and learn under
the constant and unchecked threat of it, but precisely
in the continued and safeguarded existence of a
genuine πόλις between ourselves and others.
Finally, I want to sincerely apologize for the
times that I have failed and will fail to meet the
standards set out above. I am genuinely ashamed of
these failures, and will continue to try to make up for
and move past them to the very best of my ability.
What I want to communicate through all of this,
above all to myself, is the necessity of taking
responsibility for our own education. What we give to
the Program is what the Program will give back to us,
and if we want to have better classes, then we have to
begin by holding ourselves to a universal standard of
academic and conversational excellence. Let me, and
let us all, then, aspire to this standard, and to more
liberating classes for everyone.
12
Job 41:34 (ASV).
Barr, Notes on Dialogue, 3-4
Barr, 4
15
Since I’m dealing with Mr. Kalkavage as a thinker here and not as a tutor, I have omitted the typical honorific.
16
Kalkavage, “Winged Words: On the Importance of Reading and Discussing Great Books,” 2003, 15.
17
Kalkavage, ibid.
18
Barr, 2-3.
13
14
9
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
Maura Sugg leads St. John’s students in the singing of “Sicut Cervus” from Tim Pra ’s article on sjc.edu on Oct. 7, 2016
Insider Ethnography: An Alumna’s Exploration
of a College Tradition (Part One) By Maura Sugg
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This inspiring essay was offered to the Gadfly by
Maura Sugg, a recent alumna of the college (A17).
With her gracious permission, it will be produced in
two parts over this and our following issue.
-LB
It’s 2:15 on a Wednesday, and the sounds of
chatter and footsteps reverberate up and down the
stairwell. Some people rush through, eager to get
wherever they need to be. Others stop on the main
landing, finding friends and forming themselves into
a circle. Maybe they are just passing through and stop
because they see others gathering. Or, maybe they are
there because they know what is about to begin.
10
Suddenly, an A-flat rings out from the piano on the
landing, once or twice to get the group’s attention and
again to provide the starting pitch for the now-hushed
crowd-turned-choir. The hand that had pressed the
piano’s key moves in time in the air, down, up, down,
up. Then, the singing begins. The motive passes from
tenors to altos to sopranos to basses, and soon the
stairwell is filled with glorious polyphony. Some
people brought music with them, but many are
singing from memory. They make eye contact with
each other and smile, or they close their eyes and
sway with the contour of their voice part. After three
minutes, they reach the final chord, holding out the
consonant sonority until the conducting hand gently
cuts them off. Another brief moment of silence,
stillness. Seemingly as if nothing had happened, the
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
before-noises are back, the crowd disperses, and its
members go about the rest of their day.
That is the typical experience of “Sicut Sing,”
a tradition at the Annapolis campus of St. John’s
College during which students convene to sing Sicut
cervus, a piece of sacred Renaissance polyphony by
renowned composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.
Students learn the piece in Freshman Chorus, a
required part of the curriculum in which all freshman
meet weekly to learn—broadly—how to sing.1 They
again encounter it in Sophomore Music, when they
study it in the context of Renaissance theorist
Gioseffo Zarlino to learn the conventions of
counterpoint. It was after analyzing Sicut cervus in
this context that then-sophomore Eric Fricke fell in
love with the piece and wanted to sing it with others
more often, leading to his creation of Sicut Sing
(Pratt 2016). I personally consider Sicut Sing an
integral part of my experience at St. John’s, which I
attended 2013-2017. As a prospective student, I
already knew Sicut cervus from a high school choir,
and Sicut Sing was a factor in drawing me to the
school. I then truly fell in love with the piece as a
freshman, and I was lucky to have been handed the
torch to lead Sicut Sing at the beginning of my junior
year. I recognize that my experience with it was
unique among most Johnnies, especially those
uninterested in singing. And yet, sometimes as many
as forty students, and not always the same students,
would show up at Sicut Sing each week.2 There is
something special about the tradition that draws
people to it, and this “something special” is what I
wish to investigate.
Why did Sicut Sing stick? Why do students,
under no formal obligation, continue to take time out
of the middle of their Wednesday and congregate to
sing a piece of Renaissance polyphony? These are the
guiding questions of my inquiry. Drawing on my own
experiences and recollections, as well as interviews
with four members of my graduating class who
frequently attended, I seek to uncover the layers of
meaning involved in the tradition.3 Based on what
observations I did gather, however, a number of
interesting themes emerged that resonate with
modern philosophical and ethnomusicological
discourses. Through a combination of primary and
secondary literature, I invoke Michel de Certeau,
Mircea Eliade, Émile Durkheim, William James, and
January 25, 2024
Susanne Langer, among others, to try to make sense
of why Sicut Sing is so beloved. My conclusions
weave together my ethnographic findings with
discussions of space and place, the sacred and the
profane, collective effervescence, affect theory, and
religious experience. The resulting tapestry reveals
that the particular conditions of Sicut Sing can
engender the engagement of the individual with the
collective in a manner akin to religious ritual through
a musical semblance that affects its singers while
simultaneously making them aware of their
affectivity. Because of the nature of the school, its
students—whether they know it or not—seem to
crave this kind of event, which is both a respite from
and reflection of the St. John’s experience.
ContextÊandÊaÊNoteÊonÊEthnographyÊandÊ
Methodology
As with any tradition, Sicut Sing can only be
understood in its context. While a full description of
the St. John’s College environment would take too
long to include here, nor would it be necessary for the
Gadfly’s readers, a few details about the school are in
order to highlight the facets that make Sicut Sing
such a natural part of the school. Tucked away in a
little corner of the historic city of Annapolis, MD, the
college occupies its own version of reality that many
have come to call the “Johnnie Bubble,” a selfcontained community that operates separately from
the world around it. Part of this is due to the school’s
size; with less than five hundred students, most
people know or at least recognize each other, and
every student develops their own role within the
fabric of the polity. Another contributor to the
atmosphere is the seminar-style nature of the classes.
Every course at St. John’s is based on the discussion
of primary texts, with ten to twenty students sitting
around a table conversing freely with only slight
direction from the tutor, who may ask an opening
question or guide the discussion when students hit a
snag. The discursive, student-led spirit of the
classroom setting extends to extracurriculars, which
are powered by student initiative, and to the casual
conversations of daily life. The strongest force that
creates the Johnnie Bubble, though, is the St. John’s
curriculum itself. Called the Program, it includes
foundational texts of the Western canon in a number
1
Pieces in the Freshman Chorus anthology include chant and traditional monophonic songs or rounds, Renaissance polyphony, Bach chorales, Mozart’s Ave Verum
Corpus, and a few more ambitious choral works.
2
Out of a student body of less than 500, this is not a small percentage.
3
In a different context and with more time, I know that expanding my pool of interviewees would nuance my discoveries.
11
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
of disciplines, and it does not afford any
specialization or consultation of secondary literature
in class. All students take the same classes, read the
same texts, grapple with the same questions, and earn
the same degree. Given these aspects of the Johnnie
Bubble, it makes sense why Sicut Sing was ever able
to work in the first place. It is a time for people to
experience an enhanced version of the college’s tightknit community and to participate in a quasiconversational process by singing a polyphonic piece
that everyone knows.
This paper is, in a sense, an ethnography of
the St. John’s community through the lens of Sicut
Sing. I want to understand why the tradition works so
well in its environment. As I mentioned, though, this
environment is one in which I have insider status.4
My observations and analysis are shaped by a deep
love for St. John’s that I developed through my years
as an undergraduate there. Because I was not
planning to write this paper while I was a student, I
am working from my memories in a much less
systematic way than I would if I were an outsider
approaching this topic or if I were conscious of
gathering evidence during my time at St. John’s. I
also know that my relationship to music and to Sicut
Sing at St. John’s was not typical of other Johnnies’
experiences. While I think this perhaps makes me
uniquely qualified to study this tradition, it also
primes me to find, or want to find, positive value in
Sicut Sing. To temper this bias, I reached out in the
private Class of 2017 Facebook group to recruit
volunteers I could interview about what Sicut Sing
meant to them. I developed a list of prepared
questions and was able to conduct four interviews.
While I recognize that this is a small group, I was still
pleasantly surprised to learn that my interviewees’
observations and opinions about the meaning of Sicut
Sing lined up with my own. With more time, I would
have liked to reach out to more people both within
and outside my graduating class to gain a more varied
and nuanced set of responses. As it stands, my paper
presents only some of many possible ethnographic
facts.
SpaceÊandÊPlace,ÊSacredÊandÊProfane
The physical setting of Sicut Sing is a
noteworthy part of the tradition, and it is one that my
4
January 25, 2024
interviewees described as indispensable (Anonymous
2020). Sicut Sing takes place on the first-floor
landing of the Pendulum Pit, a wide, multi-level
staircase in Mellon Hall, one of the two academic
buildings on campus. Its name comes from the
Foucault Pendulum hanging from the ceiling and
extending to a large hole in the floor of the basement
landing. One wall is entirely made of frosted
windows, allowing softened sunlight to stream in.
The physical glow and superb acoustics are
reminiscent of a cathedral where Sicut cervus might
more traditionally be sung. One interviewee
described the atmosphere as “ethereal” (Anonymous
2020), and others commented on the similarities
between the Pendulum Pit and a church. There is
more to just the physical resemblance to a religious
building, however. I posit that through the ritual of
Sicut Sing, its participants actively create a sacred
space.
In distinguishing space from place, Michel de
Certeau writes:
A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in
accord with which elements are distributed in
relationships of coexistence. … A place is thus
an instantaneous configuration of positions. It
implies an indication of stability. A space exists
when one takes into consideration vectors of
direction, velocities, and time variables. It is in
a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements
deployed within it. On this view, in relation to
place, space is like the word when it is spoken,
that is, when it is caught in the ambiguity of an
actualization, transformed into a term
dependent upon many different conventions,
situated as the act of a present (or of a time),
and modified by the transformations caused by
successive contexts. … In short, space is a
practiced place. (Certeau 1984, 118)5
This is a fitting description of the special
atmosphere Sicut Sing creates. Without the tradition,
the Pendulum Pit is a stairwell, a place on a map of
Mellon Hall that contains the pendulum and offers
access to other parts of the building. It is stable,
fixed. When students gather for Sicut Sing, they
transform it into a space, a thing contingent on
movement, experience, and intention. Like an
Different degrees of insider status in ethnography are possible, but not many ethnographers actively study their own communities. See Henry Kingsbury’s Music,
Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System for a discussion of this and an example of someone investigating a setting with which he is familiar
(Kingsbury 1998).
5
All emphases in the quotations cited in this paper are original to the text.
12
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
inanimate object (a “place”) given a particular role by
“a determination through operations which …
specify ‘spaces’ by the actions of historical
subjects” (Certeau 1984, 118), it comes to life as a
space fulfilling a certain purpose. In this view,
though, Johnnies could transform any place into a
space by singing Sicut cervus there. What about the
Pendulum Pit bears particular significance?
Through Sicut Sing, the Pendulum Pit serves
to separate the sacred from the profane. As mentioned
above, the physical place itself is similar in
architecture to cathedrals and temples. Anyone
familiar with religious places might ascribe to the
Pendulum Pit a reverence fitting for the text of Sicut
cervus. According to interviews with ensemble
directors such as Peter Phillips of The Tallis Scholars
and Harry Christophers of The Sixteen in Jonathan
Arnold’s investigation of the roles of sacred music in
secular settings, singing in a venue designed for their
sacred repertory is part of the magic (Arnold 2013, 67
-75). But the Pendulum Pit was not created for
singing Renaissance polyphony. Rather, its
architecture lends itself to the transformation of the
Pendulum Pit as a place to a space for singing, a
space for ritual.
A Man on the Stairs near the Pendulum Pit
January 25, 2024
The peculiarity of the Pendulum Pit as a space
has several resonances with what Mircea Eliade
would describe as sacred. For Eliade, the “first
possible definition of the sacred is that it is the
opposite of the profane” (Eliade 1959, 10). Through
the process of hierophany, the sacred reveals itself in
“the manifestation of something of a wholly different
order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in
objects that are an integral part of our natural
‘profane’ world” (Eliade 1959, 11). A sacred space
can reveal itself to religious man in a number of
ways, and it demarcates qualitative differences in a
nonhomogenized space allowing him to orient
himself around a center. A cosmic pillar (axis mundi)
stands at this center representing communication with
the heavens, and the break in the homogeneity of
space is “symbolized by an opening by which
passage from one cosmic region to another is made
possible” (Eliade 1959, 37). In addition to the
creation of a cosmos through the axis mundi, the
transformation of space can occur by “repeating,
through a ritual of construction, the paradigmatic acts
of the gods” (Eliade 1959, 52). Through these ritual
acts of creation, man expresses his desire to be close
to the gods, who enacted the first separation of space
in its primordial form.
The space and ritual of Sicut Sing are startlingly
evocative of Eliade’s formulation. A fundamental
feature of the Pendulum Pit is the pendulum itself.
There is a literal compass etched into the marble of
the floor where one can observe the direction of the
pendulum’s swing, and the thin cable from which the
ball hangs extends from the ceiling of the fourth floor
to the basement. Though not in the geometrical
center, it positions itself as a metaphorical center of
campus, of the world. It is, in a sense, an axis mundi.
That the Pendulum Pit is a stairwell is also important.
Like the threshold of a temple or the towering
column of a cathedral, it is a liminal space, a
passageway between places on different planes.
Through the ritual of turning the Pendulum Pit from a
place into a space via Sicut Sing, its participants
situate themselves “at the very source of absolute
reality” (Eliade 1959, 65) and experience the act of
creation. This creation is twofold here; not only do
participants create by differentiating the sacred from
the profane through space, but they also create
through song. It is an aural consecration that brings
Sicut cervus to life, separating it from other sounds or
silences through our perception of it as a designated
musical event.
13
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
Religion,ÊCommunity,ÊandÊCollectiveÊ
Effervescence
The act of Sicut Sing also invokes an
experience of the sacred through its resemblance to
the collective effervescence of religious ritual. As I
discuss in this section, the text and music of
Sicut cervus represent individuals
merging with each other and
transcending the limits of
their own subjectivities. This
piece is a symbol of the ritual
act itself in which collective
effervescence, according to Émile
Durkheim, occurs and fixes itself
around that symbol. Ephemeral
in nature, the ritual requires
periodic repetition so that the
deep
experience
of
community can balance the
alienation of life in daily social
structures. At St. John’s, this
alienation can be surprisingly but
deeply felt, and Sicut Sing serves
to offset it through its weekly
occurrence.
The text of Sicut cervus,
taken from Psalm 42 of the Old
Testament, has overt religious connotations: “As the
hart longs for running streams, so my soul longs for
you, O God” (Ps 42: 1). Students are provided with
this translation on the score they use in Freshman
Chorus and Sophomore Music, and they also
encounter it in Sophomore Seminar when they
discuss the Bible. Many of them are not Christian, so
singing the text does not have special personal
meaning for them in a traditional religious sense. This
does not mean that they do not get anything out of the
lyrics. One of my classmates who does not have a
Christian
background
commented
on
his
interpretation of the text, saying that he values the
kind of “spiritual substance” (Anonymous 2020) it
provides by representing the “positive good we can
do by coming together as a community” (Anonymous
2020). He connected this with the broader goal of the
St. John’s Program, which, as described above,
values community spirit and collective contemplation
of what it means to be human and to live a good life,
whatever “good” may mean.
The music also symbolizes the act of communal
unity. Typical of Palestrina’s style, Sicut cervus opens
14
January 25, 2024
with a point of imitation that each voice part takes up
in succession until the full texture takes shape. We are
pulled in and wrapped up by this unfolding,
becoming immersed in warm consonances, tugging
but controlled dissonances, and perpetual motion of
overlapping lines. At times, the voices arrive together
on certain words, creating a rich,
powerful sonority. During Sicut
Sing, these moments usually elicit
natural crescendos accompanied
by smiles and shared glances
between singers. At the end
of the piece, the voices back
off one by one, landing on a
final
consonance
before
eventually
dissolving
into
silence. In their interviews,
my
classmates
all
commented on the equality
between the voices. There
is no one melody, but instead
successive motives that different
voices carry at different times as
if reacting to one another. The
piece does not work without all
the parts, and participants in
Sicut Sing can feel a sense of
personal responsibility to make
sure their part is heard. At the same time, they also
like hearing the voices “connect” (Anonymous 2020)
and mix together in the fabric of the piece and the
resonance of the Pendulum Pit.
This idea of coming together for a common
goal is represented in writings on religious ritual. As
quoted by Tim Olaveson, who links Émile
Durkheim’s “collective effervescence” to Victor
Turner’s “communitas,” Durkheim describes the
result or experience of ritual in religious life as
collective effervescence:
The very act of congregating is an exceptionally
powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are
gathered together, a sort of electricity is
generated from their closeness and quickly
launches them to an extraordinary height of
exaltation. Every emotion expressed resonates
without interference in the consciousnesses that
are wide open to external impressions, each one
echoing the others. Every communion of
conscience … must possess a degree of unity, of
intimacy, and the forces which it releases must
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
be sufficiently intense to take the individual
outside himself and to raise him to a superior
life. Also, the sentiments so roused must be
fixed on an object or concrete objects which
symbolize them. (Olaveson 2001, 99-101)
This communion is ephemeral and must be
repeated (“re-creative effervescence” (Olaveson
2001, 102)) for its participants to “become aware of
and revivify their common bonds” (Olaveson 2001,
102). Both Durkheim and Turner posit this
phenomenon as the opposite of daily social structure,
which is “in its intrinsic nature alienating. The
experience of collective effervescence/communitas is
a fundamental human need which acts to
counterbalance this alienation” (Olaveson 2001, 107).
Multiple interviewees noted that, despite its focus on
community, there is something about life in the
Johnnie Bubble that can be extremely isolating
January 25, 2024
(Anonymous 2020). We are constantly going through
the motions of daily life while simultaneously
reflecting on our experiences, our place in the world,
our being. Even though we are all working from the
same texts, we still feel lonely in our individual
subjectivities. For the classmates I interviewed, Sicut
Sing offered them comfort and a sense of belonging
that combatted even the darkest feelings of alienation.
In accordance with Durkheim’s notion, participants at
Sicut Sing fix themselves upon Sicut cervus, which
textually and musically symbolizes the essence of the
ritual activity. Although Durkheim’s descriptions of
how this manifests in culture point to more intense
and exhausting ritualistic experiences than Sicut
Sing, the basic principles of transcending oneself,
merging with the collective, focusing on a symbolic
object, and balancing the structures of everyday life
do reflect the sentiments expressed by my
interviewees.
Students Taking Refuge from a Storm and Singing Christmas Carols, Circa 1960
15
�THE GADFLY
Πόλις
Be the Problem Child
By B.S.
Be the Problem Child
‘Cowards are easier to love,
Though they deserve it not.’
—Me.
My friends,
Returning home for winter break, I was able
to reminisce in my childhood home with my mother
and sister. I looked back with fondness on my youth,
those days when I was so much happier and life was
so much simpler. Then I grew up and took off the
fucking glasses and looked at it straight. Here’s the
truth: I was the problem child. My childhood best
friend’s first memory of me was when I walked into
my new elementary school and promptly got my
finger stuck in the door, screaming at near
weaponizable ranges. My parents could hear me
“playing” several houses down the street. I wasn’t
allowed into the advanced math class because I was
“too loud” (I may proudly claim to be the only
student I know of from Rich Kid Elementary who
was both Gifted and Talented and Special Needs and
thus the most expensive on record). When, I saw a
problem, I chose neither fight nor flight but
FUCKING YELL.
In atonement for my sins, I have spent much
of my young adult life trying to speak more softly
and kindly (with variable success). I try to not talk
over people in class, try to ask questions, try to be a
good, respectable little introvert. That’s who I was
when I spent the week before Christmas with my
sister and all her millennial friends. They were all
incredibly kind and considerate. They respected my
choices and preferences before I even knew I had
them. I went along with it, trying to be just as aware
of other people. And you know what I realized?
It was all bullshit.
I am the problem child down to my very
fucking core. I love attention for making a joke in
front of the whole class (about how during one
seminar only three people should read the book and
the tutors’ job is to figure out who did and didn’t),
attention for terrorizing drunk people with questions
(if we were to name a challenge after you, what
16
January 25, 2024
would it be?), attention from all the people trying to
not laugh through their scowls (Mr. BS is interrupting
the senior class meeting by taking control of the TV,
that’s very bad, very bad, but god damn it he’s
making jokes), attention, attention, I love attention!
Of course I’m playing a character! Of course I’m not
“really like this”! Miss be with that millennial
sincerity, being-true-to-yourself, honesty bullshit.
You’re gonna die one day and so am I, but I’m not
gonna die in the way you do (boring, lame). Why?
Because I fuck shit up. And you know what? You can
too! Go take your white picket fence and burn that
bitch to the ground, pull pranks of real scale, be the
problem child.
I’m already hearing excuses: “but what if I
hurt someone? what if I get in trouble? what if I can’t
think of anything?” Yeah, and what if you die like
this, afraid and unrealized? If you make a truly great
bit (which, if you can’t think of one, can be
conceived of by sitting all your friends in a room and
riffing at various levels of sobriety for an hour) it
won’t involve hurting anyone (except yourself) and
will be so god damned good that either the people
who would get you in trouble have to shrug and laugh
or, better yet, the punishment will become an
essential part of the story.
These are the best/worst years of your life and
you can either let them fade into obscurity’s cold
night or you can be the bad bitch you were born to
be. I expect you’ll do the right thing (and tell me
about it!).
And don’t you worry, I’m putting my
madness where my mouth is (you’ll see <3).
Yours untruly,
B.S., the Sinfluencer
Students Marching on Maryland Avenue
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
On the
Greenfield
Library’s
“Quiet
Zone”
By Molly Sprout
On Monday, January 8th, The Greenfield
Library designated the basement to be a “Quiet
Zone.” In an Instagram post made on the same day,
they suggested to students who would like to work
collaboratively or have a “friendly chat” with others
to reserve the second floor Cohen Study Room. Staff
and student workers have been directed to
“recommend other spaces on campus for people who
want to socialize or who need to work together more
collaboratively.” While a seemingly harmless new
rule, it is a stark change from how the library has
been run in the past. Is this truly a mundane new
policy? Or is it a sinister coverup for tyranny?
The Greenfield Library has had no strict
enforcement of a noise policy in the past, and has
mostly relied on specific staff members, namely the
higher ups, to give warnings to people who are
making too much noise. This has left the library with,
for the most part, an honor code-based noise policy.
And how has that worked out? One would assume,
with such a rule put in place, that the honor code has
been a failure. The law ought not be created but out
of necessity, so was the necessity there? As someone
who is in the library at night when no non-student
staff are working, I saw for myself. And surprise
surprise! Aside from the occasional racket, the library
has always been a quiet place to work, even without
the leering eyes of the quiet police or without the
word of the law. Nor have there been consistent
complaints from patrons at the library. So, with no
real prompting of this rule, why has it been instated?
Here I am reminded of Tacitus and his
sentiments on a heavy-handed governing body:
“When the state is most corrupt, then laws are most
multiplied.” (Annals, Book III, 27) What we have
before us is a library, funded by our tuition, that is
limiting our right to have a “friendly chat.” Our
college, I will remind you, is a talking college, and
we cannot even talk with our peers. What we are
seeing is our freedom being ripped away from us
with the help of fun fonts and Instagram posts. What
we are are lobsters being put into a cold pot that is
slowly heating up to our deaths. What’s next after
this? No speaking at all? After that, cameras in the
bathroom probably. And then they will start banning
books. They always end up banning books. We are
prompted as a student body to stand up to this. We
must revolt. Talk louder! Yell! Start blasting TikTok
on your phone! Anything but let tyranny roll right
over you and the college you have given your life to.
17
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
A Junior's Plea from the St. John's College Yearbook; From the SJC Digital Archives
18
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
A Reflection on Winter Break
By Vivian Miyakawa
The moment I opened my front door and saw
my dog jumping up to greet me, I knew I was in far
too deep to quit. All I could think about was Erwin
Straus and his essay on “The Upright Posture” and
the way I would never be as connected to the ground
as my dog is. Running on his four-footed posture, he
is a horizontal axis to the earth. When I took a stroll
around my hometown of Seattle, I recognized the
faces of my classmates in every stranger that passed
me by. I marveled at the lack of navy colored
peacoats and the air felt strangely fresh and devoid of
cigarette smoke. I giggled uncontrollably as my best
friend raved about joining a sorority, and I told her
the same stupid joke every Johnnie makes about “our
kind of Greek Life.” Over the holidays, I devoted a
good chunk of time to explaining the curriculum to
curious relatives, and reminding my parents that yes,
every grade is reading the same books, and no, I’m
not throwing my future away with a liberal arts
degree. I know everyone’s experience is different, but
there is a certain unity that comes with being so
deeply entrenched in such a unique form of study.
You never really realize that you’re living in a bubble
until it pops. Finally, it’s time to return. Suitcase
weighed down with Mollin and Williamson, a
fragment of Plato’s “Euthyphro” to clumsily translate
on the plane… it’s surprisingly easy to feel so deeply
changed in so little time. Eighteen years of my life
weighed against one semester at college, and it’s the
latter which feels more like home to me.
Students Participate in a Snowball Fight near Randall Hall during a Snow-Storm, February 1979
19
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
Front Campus with Cannon in Foreground
SJC Mystery #6: Trapped
By Benne Sco
Where does a man flee to when all doors are
open to him save for the one that leads homeward?
Does he stay, pounding at the entrance to the
familiar, demanding in, in, in please just let me in?
Or does he venture out into the dark, willing to live
and die in the unfamiliar halls, trying to make a home
of what will not accept him? And who the fuck has a
third option? Would really appreciate any
suggestions.
I fear that things have gotten out of hand
recently. For those of you who are new here: Hi!
Hello! (he shouts into the void) I’m being chased by a
demon/specter/monster (but only slowly. Man kinda
just walks) in the empty abyss of this town. I call
them The Friend.
Now, I may be a liar, but I figure this is not
the ideal moment to withhold: I’ve spent my days
wandering these empty streets (winter is here; I used
to love it so, but it is not cold, even when snow falls.
It is a burning winter) checking door after door. I
thought, last time, that all the doors were open. I can
get into basements, backdoors, all this. But some are
locked: churches, random dorms, many of my
friends’ houses, places I know aren’t normally
locked. I’m too tired to figure out patterns.
The doors in my house are the real problem:
for The Friend, they’re always unlocked. Most of the
time they’re unlocked for me too, but sometimes I
can’t open them, stuck in- or outside. I try to keep
20
January 25, 2024
track of the hours when they’ll be locked, but there is
no pattern (unless you count the worst possible
moment as a pattern).
My room only gets hotter with each passing
day. The windows have never worked. I don’t like
using the AC (it’s too loud). I’ve taken to sleeping
with a knife. At first, for some goddamn reason, I
decided to keep it under my pillow (I woke up
bleeding but confirmed in my suspicion that I only
sleep on my left side). Now it’s next to my bed.
The Friend’s orbit seems to be getting tighter
and tighter. That time I tried to drive away, I was a
few miles away before he started showing up. Now I
can’t go any further than a mile radius around the
stone. Or is it a mile radius around the yellow house?
I can’t tell. I’d rather not be outside in the unending
dark when I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to get back
into my own house when I come back. So it’s me and
my knife inside for days on end.
What do you do with this much time? I have
about a thousand books to choose from at the
wonderful St. John’s College library, but for some
reason the walls of old books on “Comparative Racial
Psychology” and German history up to 1939 just
don’t appeal to me. I end up reading the same things
over and over: Calvin, Milton, Dante. So damn much
Dante. As if I’m trapped in a demon inhabited
alternate reality because I don’t know my theological
fanfiction well enough. I wasn’t even raised in any
sort of faith. My mother is a generation off of
anything like real Christianity and my father leaned
mystic-scientific, a fun way of saying: he believed
one thing systematically and its opposite when it felt
right. Not to place any blame on them, but I feel like
it would be nice to know a couple of words of Latin
at this point. Would make all my exorcism attempts
sound a lot more legitimate. Instead I am left with old
doctors of the church, making up my own fun little
theology which would get me burnt at some stake
somewhere some time long ago. There are no
burnings here at least.
I don’t know if
I’m hearing things (my
own heartbeat has been
getting to me recently,
the way it sounds like
footsteps, faster and
faster), but I swear
something is coming.
I’ll try and record it.
Maybe it’s time.
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
The Cupola of McDowell Hall in Snow, circa 1980; From the SJC Digital Archives
21
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
Photography
Highlight:
Winter &
Writing
By Abigail
Poppleton
As the first snow of the
year falls, students get to
work while staying cozy
inside.
Top: Senior Writing Lounge
Middle: Ms. Ceci & Mr.
Rosenberg hard at work in the
Fishbowl
Bo om: Mr. Selway jammin’ and
writing in the FSK Lobby
22
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
January 25, 2024
Seniors: Final Stretch!!!
We’re almost there! We can do it!
Good luck to all seniors!
Burning Notes for Senior Papers in Common Room Fireplace, April 1974; From the SJC Digital Archives
23
�THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the
student newsmagazine distributed to
over 600 students, faculty, staff, and
alumni 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 Google Docs or
PDF format.
For more information, contact us
via email at lbriner@sjc.edu.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401
Photographs without a listed source are from the
St. John's College Digital Archives.
St. John's College owns the rights
to these photographs.
Illustrations without a listed source are by Takashi
Mifune from Irasutoya.com and are free to use for
non-commercial purposes. All rights to these
illustrations still belong to the artist.
�
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLV, Issue 6
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Gadfly Vol XLV Issue 6
Gadfly
Student publication
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PDF Text
Text
THE
St. John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
GADFLY
A Talented Polity
December 13, 2023
Vol. XLV, Issue 5
�Letter from the Editor
CONTENTS
Λόγος : news reports & narratives regarding immediate campus life
Recap: KWP’s The Duchess of Malfi by Vivian Miyakawa
3
Recap: Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind by
Vivian Miyakawa
3
The Philosopher’s Phone by Tamar Pinsky
4
ΣυμπόσιονÊ:Êcontrasting opinions on various topics for thought
A Plotinian Reading of the Myth of Ganymede by Luke
Briner
6
ΠόλιςÊ:Êvoices of the community, including poetry, cartoons, etc.
Dear Polity,
Please enjoy our fifth and final issue
of the semester! I want to extend my
deep personal gratitude to our entire
staff for all the hard work they’ve
done, and especially to our managing
editor, Mr. Nichols-Kaufman, our layout designer, Ms. Nghiêm, and our
photographer, Ms. Poppleton. And
thank you, readers, for your enduring
support and care.
Semester Wrapped by Vivian Miyakawa
13
The SJC Mystery #5: Rocking the Boat by Bennett
“Ahhhh” Scott
14
Noodles:“They’ll Never Find Me Here!” by Tamar Pinsky
15
How Ethereal Bisexualism Ruined Obama by Dr.
Benjamin Raymor Maier
16
The Waffliad by B.A. Scott
18
Translation of Baudelaire’s “Le Balcon” by Luke Briner
26
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
exultation by Natalie Goldman
27
The Seraph by Luke Briner
27
MANAGING
EDITOR
THE STRUCTURE
Luke Briner
Editor-in-chief
THE GADFLY STAFF
COVER
STAFF
ΠόλιςÊserves as a platform for elevating voices in our
community. Here we find letters to the editor, columns,
cartoons, and submitted pieces.
2
Luke Briner
El’ad NicholsKaufman
Meliha Anthony
Vivian Miyakawa
Λόγος holds news reports and narratives of immediate
relevance to the Polity. The purpose here is to develop a
shared reservoir of information relating to campus life and
the community.
ΣυμπόσιονÊoffers the opportunity for our readers to
thoughtfully consider contrasting opinions regarding a
particular topic.
Abigail Poppleton
Tamar Pinsky
Louis Rosenberg
Benne Sco
YOUT
CONTRIBUTORS
Students Reading Newspapers in the Woodward Hall Library
Tuyết-Nhi Nghiêm
Natalie Goldman
Dr. Benjamin
Raymor Maier
�THE GADFLY
Λόγος
December 13, 2023
Recap: Too Much Light Makes the
Baby Go Blind
By Vivian Miyakwa
Actors Kasdorf & Mnisi; Photo by Segyung Jung
Recap: KWP’s The Duchess of Malfi
By Vivian Miyakwa
Fondly described as a three-hour revenge
tragedy fever dream, The Duchess of Malfi was truly
a show worth experiencing yourself. The passion,
preparation, and care that went into this play
permeated through every scene, capturing the
audience’s attention and leading them along through
every twist and turn. A quick summary is hardly
enough to do justice to the full dramatic hilarity of
the plot, but for those who didn’t get the chance to
attend, it’ll have to be enough.
The Duchess of Malfi tells the story of the
Duchess, who falls in love with her steward Antonio,
and marries him, bearing three children. Betrayed by
the spy Bosola, the Duchess attempts to flee Malfi
with her family, but is ultimately unsuccessful. Her
brother, Ferdinand, the Duke of Malfi, falls into a fit
of rage after finding out the Duchess has gone
against his orders. In his anger, he orders Bosola to
strangle the Duchess, her maid, and her two
youngest daughters. After this, he goes mad with
guilt, and the audience laughs as we watch him
spiral further and further into insanity. In the end, as
is typical to a tragedy, everyone dies. The play ends
in absolute carnage as the actors take immense glee
in reenacting dramatic death scenes, relishing in the
drama of their dying words.
This play was fantastic, and the dedication was
palpable. The talent at St. John’s College is
immense, and I feel so lucky to witness such an
incredible labor of love performed by my fellow
members of the Polity.
Thirty plays in sixty minutes. An ambitious
(and chaotic) goal, but these talented actors managed
to pull it off. I got there at 7:00pm, right when the
doors opened, and was greeted with an improv
performance by priest pirates performing exorcisms
with Euclid’s Elements. A little dumbfounded, but
thoroughly enjoying myself, I watched as my
classmates made absolute fools of themselves in
front of an audience. The audience was king, and
they, the court jesters.
As the skits began, the audience began yelling
the numbers of which script they would like to see
next. Actors rushed about in a frenzy, preparing for
whatever scene they were going to perform next.
The skits themselves were a fantastic mix of inside
jokes, pure chaos, and existential dread. With titles
such as “They Raised the Price of the Washing
Machines,” “Clown Car Traffic Stop,” and
“Assholes in Seminar,” each number was a portal
into a totally unique scenario. Each skit felt complete
even in its brevity, and the various lengths and
complexities kept everyone laughing and engaged.
This whirlwind of a show ended right as the
last play was finishing, and the satisfaction in seeing
all thirty skits completed had the audience whooping
along in a standing ovation. After the fun was over,
the jovial theater group encouraged viewers to return
the next day with the promise of four new skits. All
in all, this was such a fun event and everyone had a
much-needed laugh.
Photo by Ranger Kasdorf
3
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
The Philosopher’s Phone
December 13, 2023
which was Sophomore Lindsay Irmiter’s situation for
the past two weeks.
By Tamar Pinsky
I meant to write this article last night. I
watched videos on YouTube for four hours instead.
One would think that had I not had access to
YouTube, I would have the article written by now.
But I am not so sure—I could find another way to
procrastinate.
Yes, that is right, I would procrastinate by
cleaning my room, or scribbling nonsense on paper,
or staring at the wall. Where there is a will to avoid
doing work, there is a way to avoid doing work. I
have this idea that if I abstained from all technology,
I would become the most productive person in the
world—but that is not the case.
Sorry if you were hoping for some timemanagement tips now, but I think it would be a little
too meta for me to be procrastinating writing an
article about procrastination.
No, I want to talk
about the supposition that
smartphones and the
like are a no-good, time
-wasting
addiction.
I’m not sure how
many people actually
consider them to be such.
But I do know that there is
at least some contemplation
about the idea—enough to have
people participate in the No Phone
Day a month ago.
Okay, so let us suppose that
smartphones waste time and shorten our attention
span. I am not going to argue that they do not harm
us in this way, rather that their benefits outweigh the
harms.
When you go without your phone, what
affects you more: the fact that you can no longer
scroll through Instagram reels, or the fact that you
have no way of contacting your mother?
Actually—maybe that was a bad question,
because…well, do you ever really go without your
phone for more than a few hours?
Unless your phone is broken, and you cannot
get it fixed and so you are forced to go without it—
4
It’s the dream! Right? No more mindless
social media gobbling! All time can be dedicated to
reading and homework! The opportunity to be the
perfect student has arrived!
Nope. For Irmiter it was more of a nightmare.
Sure, in the beginning she recounted feeling isolated
and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and Instagramcravings—but then she adjusted. The withdrawal
symptoms (can we call it withdrawal?) faded within a
few days, and they were hardly the worst part of not
being able to use her phone.
The worst part, for Irmiter, was not being able
to stay in contact with people. “No one checks their
emails,” she told me. “Everyone uses text.”
If that sounds like a silly complaint to you,
think about how much you use your phone to make
plans with people, or to contact friends and family
who do not live on the same college campus as you.
Should those phone usages really be dismissed as
unnecessary, or even harmful?
I do hope that you did not answer yes to that
question, but even if you did, surely safety remains a
concern for you. Is it not silly to toss our phones
aside in disgust when they can be necessary for
ensuring our protection?
Maybe protection is not the primary
concern if one spends all one’s time in one’s room, or
at least within the confines of St. John’s campus.
Maybe. But Irmiter does not spend all her time in
such limited quarters. (Shocking, I know! I do hope
you are like Irmiter in this manner; it is good for
you.) Over Thanksgiving break, Irmiter went home to
visit her family, and on the way back she took the
train. “It was scary,” she said, “having to take the
�Λόγος
THE GADFLY
train as a single female, and not having a way to
reach out if something were to happen.”
Irmiter recognizes that people managed to live
their lives and ride trains without phones back in the
day, and that having access to a phone is a privilege.
But that does not mean that one is spoiled by using a
phone as a safety measure — in this day and age, the
dangers are greater, so how could one say that one is
wrong to take a proportionally greater precaution?
Not having a way to reach out is dangerous,
and it strips one of one’s independence. As Irmiter
said, “I was forced to rely on other people. I had ask
to borrow someone’s phone to call my mom. I had to
have someone Uber with me so I don’t ride alone.”
For most people, college is the first time in which one
is given real independence. “Having that
independence taken away,” Irmiter said, as a young
woman out and about in the world, “is difficult.”
Phones are not just a matter of dawdling the hours of
the day away; they are a useful tool for keeping
yourself safe.
In a sense we are privileged to have phones to
help us contact others and stay safe, and we take
them for granted sometimes—as Irmiter painfully
found out. But is it not a greater privilege to
denounce them? How fortunate are we that we have
access to something so powerful as a cell phone.
They provide a means of staying safe,
communicating with loved ones, and yes, I will even
include entertainment in this list of benefits. Over
50% of people in emerging economies do not have
smartphones. And we complain of excess!
That is not to say that one should ignore eight
-hours-a-day screen times. You know what they say
—“too much of a good thing...”
It can be tempting, if one feels addicted to
one’s phone, to want to jump to the other extreme
and banish oneself from it for all time. This sort of
temptation is in line with ideologies we may be
exposed to as St. John’s students. Many a philosopher
wishes to reject that they have a body; they want to
focus instead on the mind, or the soul, or god. They
want to quit cold turkey, because that would be easier
than trying to have just a little. They cannot have just
a little, because then they would lose control and
have a lot. They think that they are in control by
abstaining, but in reality they are still a slave. For if
they were truly in control, they would be able to
moderate themselves.
This is not to say that the pleasures of a phone
are as vital as the pleasures of the body. Rather, that
December 13, 2023
we should enjoy the benefits of phones in a mindful,
limited way, given that it is difficult to function in
society today without one. (Is it a problem with
society then? Maybe the entire world is addicted, and
I’m so deep into my own addiction that I write this
article to justify it.)
But just because we have more amenities than
what our parents had, it does not mean that we are
addicted. Our parents had more than what their
parents had. Technology is continually advancing, the
world is always changing, and we have to change to
keep up with it. Some of the change is good, and
some of it is bad, but if we want the advantages of the
good we will have to deal with the disadvantages of
the bad.
I am thankful that I can call my friends and
family whenever I want and feel at ease when I go
out by myself. I am also thankful that I have a means
of procrastinating for the sake of a little enjoyment
and relaxation. Of course I will always need to work
against the desire to procrastinate too much—but that
will happen whether it is phone procrastination,
television procrastination, radio procrastination, and
so on, back in time of technological developments.
There will always be something to prey on our basic
desire to be lazy.
And if you are feeling particularly lazy today,
here’s a TL;DR (”too long, didn’t read”, a summary)
for you: Phones can be useful. It is best if you use
them with care.
5
�THE GADFLY
Συμπόσιον
A Plotinian Reading of
the Myth of Ganymede1
By Luke Briner
With love’s thousandfold joy
the hallowed sensation
of your eternal warmth
floods my heart,
infinite beauty!
O that I might clasp you
in my arms!
…
Upwards! Strive upwards!
The clouds drift
down, yielding
to yearning love,
to me, to me!
In your lap,
upwards,
embracing and embraced!
Upwards to your bosom,
all-loving Father!
—Goethe, “Ganymede” (trans. Wigmore)
In Book I of Plato’s Laws, the Athenian
Stranger, while discussing the social dangers of a
lack of discipline with respect to pleasure, makes the
following remark concerning the myth of Ganymede:
Certainly we all blame the Cretans for the
story of Ganymede; we think they are
spinning a yarn. Since their laws were
believed to come from Zeus, we think they
added this story about Zeus so that they could
claim Zeus’ authority for their enjoyment of
this pleasure too.2
This,
1
of
course,
indicates
the
general
December 13, 2023
historical reality that the myth was used, by people of
Plato’s own time and by many others after it, as a
kind of license to licentiousness—as a divine
example of, and therefore a powerful sanction and
glorification of, sexual perversion.3 This is naturally a
great stain on its overall legacy and modern image,
and it’s that very fact that has led me to the endeavor
of this paper: to lift it from the darkness and scandal
that have become attached to it, and to demonstrate
that a different, brighter, and spiritual reading of it,
through the philosophical perspective of Plato’s own
great follower, Plotinus, is possible.
In order to proceed in an orderly and rigorous
fashion, I will take the following steps. First, a
thorough understanding of the myth as originally
present in Greek storytelling will be determined, so
that its initial rendering can be brought into
contradistinction with those of later periods (I). On
the basis of this contradistinction, we will be able to
dismiss those later renditions of the myth that contain
the additional content that served as the inspiration or
justification of the kind of perversion that the
Athenian Stranger rightly condemns, and thereby set
up the thus-purified essence of the original for a fresh
and more spiritually edifying reading (II). We will
then move to an analysis of the hermeneutical method
of Plotinus, as well as that of Plato insofar as it
naturally serves as a foundation for the understanding
of his own (III), and from there at last apply that
method to an actual interpretation of the myth itself
(IV).
I
The first literary references to Ganymede are
found in Homer: two in his Iliad,4 and one in his
Hymn to Aphrodite.5 In the former, he is described as
a Trojan prince, the son of Tros, who, being “the
loveliest [κάλλιστος] born of the race of mortals,”6
was lifted up by the gods to their supernal abode “to
be Zeus’ wine-pourer, for the sake of his beauty
[κάλλεος], so he might be among the immortals.”7 In
the latter, the “[g]olden-haired [ξανθόν] Ganymede”8
is depicted as being “snatched up”9 by Zeus himself
This essay is a significantly revised and expanded version of one published in Gadfly XLIV.8 under the name “A New Platonic Reading of the Myth of Ganymede.”
It has been accepted to and will be published in the Winter 2024 issue of Animus, a peer-reviewed undergraduate classics journal at the University of Chicago.
2
Plato, 636c-d (trans. Griffith).
3
To be clear, the perversion I personally refer to is pederasty in particular, although the Athenian Stranger is unfortunately talking more broadly about all homosexual
relations here. The point stands regardless, however, since I intend to argue that the myth can be interpreted in an entirely spiritual, and thus in an entirely nonsensual, way.
4
Homer, Iliad, V.265-267, XX.230-235.
5
Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 202-217.
6
Homer, Iliad, XX.233 (trans. Lattimore).
7
Homer, Iliad, XX.234
8
Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 202 (trans. Shelmerdine).
6
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
December 13, 2023
Image: “The Raising of Ganymede” by Gustave Moreau, 1886
7
�THE GADFLY
Συμπόσιον
“because of his beauty [κάλλος],”10 and is thus
allowed “to live among the immortals and pour wine
for the gods in the house of Zeus, a wonder to see,
honored by all the immortals as he draws the red
nectar from a golden bowl.”11 12
There are, therefore, four essential elements to
the Ganymede myth according to the original
Homeric texts: 1) Ganymede’s κάλλος, 2) the special
admiration of that κάλλος by the gods, 3) his
apotheosis on the basis of that admiration, and 4) his
subsequent vocation as a beloved wine-pourer of
Olympus. Other, now commonly-referenced elements
of the myth are, then, only grafted onto the original.
To take two instances of this as expressed in major
later writers, Ovid describes Jupiter transforming
himself into an eagle in order to carry Ganymede up
to Olympus and Juno’s subsequent jealousy,13 and
Apuleius describes him as a shepherd before his
ascent.14
II
By our comparison of the authentically
Homeric depiction of the myth and the depictions of
other, later writers, we may already perceive a clear
disparity between the target of the Athenian
Stranger’s condemnation and the content of the myth
in itself. Importantly, in all three Homeric references
to Ganymede, there is no mention whatsoever of his
age. It’s certainly possible that Ganymede is a
younger man simply by virtue of his beauty and his
status as a prince, but there is nothing that can or
should lead us definitively to the conclusion that he’s
actually a minor. In fact, Homer never even describes
the relationship between Ganymede and Zeus, or
between him and any of the other Gods for that
matter, as overtly sexual in any way. According to
Shelmerdine, “the hymnist [of the Hymn to
Aphrodite] does not speak directly of an erotic
9
December 13, 2023
relationship between Zeus and Ganymede. The first
clear reference to the two as lovers is in Ibykos fr.
289 (6th c. B.C.).”15 And again, Nichols Jr., in a note
in his version of Plato’s Phaedrus, asserts that only
“later renditions of the tale make Zeus fall in love
with him [Ganymede].”16 Hence modified versions of
the myth depicting Ganymede as a minor or his
relationship to Zeus as pederastic, or interpretations
of the myth so modified, can be seen as entirely
discardable by someone seeking to make their
interpretations of classical Greek myths primarily
upon the original Homeric sources (someone,
importantly, like Plotinus).17 This view is beautifully
corroborated by Xenophon’s Socrates when he argues
that “in the case of Ganymede, it was not his person
[σώματος, i.e., body] but his spiritual character that
influenced Zeus to carry him up to Olympus,”18
deriving his name from γάνυται (to be glad, to take
joy) and μήδεα (counsels, arts) and thus determining
that he was “not physically but mentally attractive.”19
From these considerations, it becomes clear
that the Athenian Stranger, in condemning the
Ganymede myth, in reality doesn’t necessarily
condemn it in its original essence but only the
common, later renderings of it that permit or glorify
the social perversion that he sees around him. We
ourselves, then, are free to condemn those renderings
and perversions alongside him while recapitulating
and reappropriating the myth in its original form for a
less ignoble purpose.
III
Now Plato himself, far from condemning
mythology universally, “creates a mythology of his
own.”20 Although it’s his original “reformed
mythology and by no means the objectionable old
inherited religious legend which he wishes to
enthrone,”21 he clearly recognizes that myth, in and
Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 202.
Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 203.
11
Homer, Hymn to Aphrodite, 202
12
I’ve chosen to ignore the story of Tros and Zeus after Ganymede’s ascent as related by Homer in Iliad V.265-258 and Hymn to
Aphrodite 207-218, as it’s outside the scope of my current inquiry. I believe that I’m justified in doing this because it’s consistent
with the freewheeling interpretive approach to myth that Plotinus himself takes throughout the Enneads and which I’ll go on to
emulate. This will be developed more thoroughly in Part III.
13
Ovid, Metamorphoses, X.155-161.
14
Apuleius, The Golden Ass, XI.8.15-16.
15
Shelmerdine, The Homeric Hymns, 135-6, n. 202-217. More precisely, she refers to Ibykos’ (overtly pederastic) Gorgias.
16
Plato, 255c (trans. Nichols Jr.), n. 126.
17
Clark, Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice, 157-158.
18
Xenophon, Symposium, 8.30 (trans. Marchant).
19
Xenophon, Symposium, 8.30.
20
Edelstein, “The Function of the Myth in Plato's Philosophy," 466.
21
Edelstein, “The Function of the Myth in Plato's Philosophy," 478.
10
8
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
of itself, can “aid in making the interlocutor receptive
to arguments and leads him to these arguments by
offering him insights to be tested, insights often about
‘worlds’ with which he is not familiar.”22 For Plato,
myths are by no means substitutes for or directly
connected to the truth, but the right interpretation of
the right myths can lead us to the truth more easily
than otherwise. This fundamental appreciation of the
pedagogical efficacy of mythology is, in fact,
precisely what informs his conviction that “gruesome
and overtly immoral tales about gods and heroes were
corrupting.”23 If myths are, by their very nature,
capable of easily resonating with and thereby of
influencing the characters and perspectives of those
who hear them, then it is of the utmost importance to
ensure that those myths which actually are heard
tacitly contain beneficial rather than harmful lessons.
Hence his claim that “all the battles of the gods
Homer made…must not be accepted in the city,”24
rather than being a universal repudiation of
mythology as a pedagogical mode, is actually made
on the basis of his recognition of its undeniable
efficacy, and therefore of his earnest desire to have
only the very best myths told to impressionable
minds.25
Plotinus, as a follower of Plato,
wholeheartedly concurs with his master’s view that
myths may serve as highly valuable tools for the
communication of philosophical and spiritual truths.
He writes:
But myths, if they are really going to be
myths, must separate in time the things of
which they tell, and set apart from each other
many realities which are together, but distinct
in rank or powers, at points where rational
discussions, also, make generations of things
ungenerated, and themselves, too, separate
December 13, 2023
things which are together; the myths, when
they have taught us as well as they can, allow
the man who has understood them to put
together again that which they have
separated.26
Calvo perfectly captures the sense of this
passage when he writes that, for Plotinus, “[t]he myth
divides in time what is transmitted in the discourse
and separates entities from each other which in reality
are united, meaning that the myth takes back to the
past—from an origin—things which are in the
present.”27 The μῦθος, in dealing with “the unseen
and unexpectable,”28 is capable of expressing the
Eternal in the temporal and grounding the esoteric
λόγος with an immediately engaging πάθος, and
therefore of rendering the content of otherwise highly
difficult doctrines not only understandable but
personally relatable.
In this, however, Plotinus dares to go further
than Plato, and happily subjects not only Platonic but
many traditional (again, primarily Homeric) myths to
metaphysical exegesis, and does so with a
remarkable, sometimes even startling pragmatism. He
uses mythical narratives or characters to illustrate
whatever philosophical situation he finds himself in,
even if that means using the same character to
represent different things at different times,29 or,
similarly, confining his analysis to a particular
moment of a myth without referencing its broader
narrative context. Hence, to give only a few specific
examples, he represents in different places both
Zeus30 and Kronos31 as the Intellect, Aphrodite as
“the Soul at its divinest”32 contemplating the
Intellectual Realm, and the generational struggle
between Uranus, Kronos, and Zeus as the hypostatic
procession from the One to Intellect to Soul.33
Sometimes his method advances to the outright
22
Smith, “Plato's Use of Myth in the Education of Philosophic Man,” 13.
Clark, Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice, 150.
24
Plato, 278d (trans. Bloom).
25
Plato, 278d-e.
26
Plotinus, III.5.9. Important to note here is that while Armstrong, whose translation of this passage is given above, puts it under
chapter nine, the standard MacKenna translation puts it under chapter ten. Although the MacKenna translation of this particular
passage is remarkably powerful and poetic, as it is generally throughout the Enneads, I found the Armstrong to be so much clearer
that I’ve decided to use it instead.
27
Calvo, “Myth and Exegesis in Plotinus: How to Divide and Recompose Words and Things,” 87.
28
Clark, Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice, 154.
29
Calvo, 84.
30
Plotinus, III.5.8.
31
Plotinus, III.5.2. (trans. MacKenna).
32
Plotinus, III.5.2.
23
9
�THE GADFLY
Συμπόσιον
manipulation of the content of traditional myths to
suit his own purposes. Perhaps the most striking
example of this is found in his discussion of the
receptivity of ύλη to είδος in the Kosmos,34 wherein
he claims that “the sterility of Matter, eternally
unmoved, is indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it
in its representation as the All-Mother [Cybele].”35 36
With respect to this passage, Armstrong remarks that
“the allegorical interpretation of the eunuchs who
surround the Great Mother given here seems to have
no parallel….[i]t is so far-fetched and so exactly
adapted to Plotinus’s own distinctive doctrine of the
absolute sterility of matter that it may well be his own
invention.”37
We observe, then, Plotinus freely and
unscrupulously appropriating exactly those sorts of
myths which Plato explicitly repudiates, and yet him
doing so with the intention of achieving the very
same pedagogical end as Plato. Ordinarily there
might be a significant tension between their two
approaches given this fundamental disagreement on
the salvageability of traditional myths. I suggest,
however, that the myth of Ganymede in particular,
having been determined as completely morally
unobjectionable when brought back to its original,
Homeric essence, is in a uniquely favorable position
to be accepted as the material for philosophical
interpretation by Platonic as well as by Plotinian
standards.
IV
With this foundation now laid, I proceed to
my ultimate claim that the myth of Ganymede may
be interpreted as the spiritual ascent of the Plotinian
Soul to the Divine Source from which it proceeded. I
will develop this claim in accordance with the
essential elements of the myth enunciated in Part I of
this paper.
The κάλλος of Ganymede, which serves as the
basis of the gods’ unique favor for him and therefore
ultimately in his apotheosis, can easily be interpreted
34
December 13, 2023
as the κάλλος of the unblemished Plotinian Soul that
serves as the basis of its own apotheosis. Plotinus
asserts emphatically that, in order to “ascend again
towards the Good, the desired of every Soul,”38 that
Soul must submit itself wholeheartedly to those
purifying rituals which prepare it and make it actually
worthy of such an ascent. “Never did eye see the
sun,” he reflects, “unless it had first become sunlike,
and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty
unless itself be beautiful. Therefore, first let each
become godlike and each beautiful who cares to see
God and Beauty.”39 In essentially what, then, does
such purification, such self-beautification, such
“Likeness to God”40 consist? For Plotinus, as for
Plato, it must consist most fundamentally in virtue, in
ἀρετή;41 it is only by the attainment of a genuinely
virtuous character in the present, material world, i.e.,
of civic virtue, that the Soul prepares itself for the
subsequent acquisition of higher, more spiritual
forms of virtue,42 and thereby ultimately for a union
with the authentically Divine.43 Hence the famouslydescribed “inner statue” of the beautiful or selfbeautified Soul is described as possessing the
“godlike splendour of virtue,”44 with this itself being
the most important prerequisite for that Soul’s union
with the Supreme. Ganymede, therefore, who is
brought up to Olympus “because of” or “for the sake
of” his own beauty, may serve as a clear-cut
representation of a Soul that finds itself in this
purified, radiant state, and therefore that also finds
itself rising up to its original, beatific Source above.
It’s also not impossible, on this basis, to
conceive of some connection between Ganymede’s
description as “golden-haired” (ξανθόν) and the way
that Plotinus speaks of gold (χρυσός) as an
illustration of the native beauty and worth of the Soul
itself.45
An important clarification must be made here
with respect to the distinction between the Good (τὸ
ἀγαθὸν) and Beauty. Plotinus shifts constantly
Plotinus is undoubtedly following upon Plato’s account of matter/space in Timaeus, 49a-b here.
The identity of this “All-Mother” as Cybele is indicated by Clark on Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice, p.
157.
36
Plotinius, III.6.19.
37
Plotinus, Enneads, Vol. III, trans. Armstrong, 288-289, n. 1.
38
Plotinus, I.6.7 (trans. MacKenna-Page).
39
Plotinus, I.6.9.
40
Plato, 176a-b. Plotinus quotes this passage at the beginning of his tractate “On Virtue” (I.2) that I’m about to discuss.
41
Plotinus, I.2.1.
42
Plotinus, I.2.3-5.
43
Plotinus, I.2.6-7.
44
Plotinus, I.6.9.
45
E.g., Plotinus, I.6.5., IV.7.10.
35
10
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
between two distinct meanings of Beauty throughout
the Enneads: the Beauty of the utterly transcendent
Good in and of itself, or καλλονή, and the Beauty as
actually, determinately existent within IntellectualBeing, or τὸ καλὸν.46 On the one hand, we read that
the Good in itself is “beyond-beautiful, beyond the
highest,”47 with everything secondary to that Good
being merely beautiful, and that “beauty is that which
irradiates symmetry rather than symmetry itself and
is that which truly calls our love,”48 and thus, since
symmetry is a characteristic of Intellectual-Being,
that true Beauty must be beyond Intellectual-Being
itself. On the other hand, we read that “Beauty
without Being could not be, nor Being voided of
Beauty….[h]ow then can we debate which is the
cause of the other, where the nature is one?”49 Most
fascinatingly of all, Plotinus also claims that “The
Good, which lies beyond, is the Fountain at once and
Principle of Beauty: the Primal Good and the Primal
Beauty have the one dwelling-place and, thus,
always, Beauty’s seat is There,”50 seemingly
implying that Beauty is simultaneously, in the very
same thought, totally at one with the Good and
merely its derivative. The question this naturally
presents to us in our analysis of the Ganymede myth,
and thereby of the ascent of the Soul generally, is
this: if the Soul prepares itself for an ascent to the
Divine by beautifying itself, then precisely what kind
of Beauty in the Divine does that Soul-Beauty
correspond to, and thus ultimately rise to in actuality?
Will it be to Beauty qua Being (τὸ καλὸν), or to
Beauty qua Beyond-Being (καλλονή)?
We can venture an answer to this question in
two closely-related parts.
First, within the context of the confusion surrounding
the distinct ontic and supra-ontic natures of Beauty
featured in Plotinus’ system, we may observe that,
regardless of the precise point of delineation between
the two, there must be a clear mode of procession of
the former from the latter, and therefore there must
also be some analogous mode of procession from the
former to the latter for the Soul. Insofar as the Soul
December 13, 2023
derives itself from Intellectual-Being, and insofar as
Intellectual-Being—whose “self and content must be
simultaneously present”51—posessess and thereby is
τὸ καλὸν, then the relatedly-beautified Soul will be
worthy of uniting with it. Likewise, insofar as the
Soul derives itself directly from the Good,52 and
insofar as that Good is also the Beyond-Beautiful
(καλλονή), then the relatedly-beautified Soul, which
is now also unified with the Beauty of the Intellect
itself,53 will in turn become worthy of uniting with it.
The Soul, therefore, is capable of ascending to each
of these levels in accordance with its own degree of
beautification.
Second, with respect to the specific narrative
of the myth of Ganymede in relation to these
considerations of Beauty, we might say that the
particular level of the Soul’s ascent that Ganymede’s
own ascent represents is determined by precisely
what status we consider him to ultimately have on
Olympus—i.e., whether we consider him as the winepourer of Zeus specifically (as the Iliad relates) or of
the Olympian gods generally (as the Hymn to
Aphrodite relates). I venture that the former case
lends itself to the Soul’s ultimate union with the
Supreme Good since the Good is also the
transcendently One,54 set apart entirely from the
multiplicity that Intellectual-Being implies,55 while
the latter accordingly lends itself to union with that
very Intellectual-Being, which Plotinus beautifully
describes as “one God and all the gods, where each is
all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all
one god in virtue of that one divine power of many
facets.”56
Finally, then, we may take Ganymede’s
ultimate vocation as a wine-pourer, either to Zeus in
particular or to the Olympians in general, as
representing the Soul’s own absolute absorption into
the Divine, so that Soul itself becomes the wine, not
only the offerer but the offering, outpouring its whole
essence into the all-perfect Source from which it once
proceeded. As Ganymede pours out “red nectar from
a golden bowl” for his doting master(s), so the Soul,
46
Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality, 63.
Plotinus, I.8.2.
48
Plotinus, VI.7.22.
49
Plotinus, V.8.10.
50
Plotinus, I.6.9.
51
Plotinus, V.3.1.
52
Rist, 65.
53
Plotinus routinely insists that the Soul must ascend first to the Intellect, and only then to the Good (I.2.7, I.3, VI.7.36, etc.).
54
Plotinus, V.1.8., VI.9., etc.
55
Plotinus, V.3.10.
56
Plotinus, V.8.9.
47
11
�Συμπόσιον
THE GADFLY
December 13, 2023
overcome with “wonderment and a
delicious trouble, longing and love
and a trembling that is all delight”57 at
the sight of the Divine Beloved, longs
to be “molten into one”58 with that
Beloved forevermore.
Pictured right:
Jupiter and Ganymede, from
'Game of Mythology' (Jeu de la
Mythologie), print, etched by
Stefano della Bella, designed by
Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin
(MET, 18.48.2-19)
Bibliography.
Apuleius. The Golden Ass. Translated by W. Adlington. Harvard University Press, 1915.
Clark, Stephen R. L. Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice. University of Chicago Press,
2016.
Calvo, José María Zamora. “Myth and Exegesis in Plotinus: How to Divide and Recompose Words and
Things.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 9, no. 2 (August 18, 2017). https://
dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v9n2.08.
Edelstein, Ludwig. “The Function of the Myth in Plato’s Philosophy.” Journal of the History of Ideas 10, no. 4
(October 1949): 463-481. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707185.
Homer. Iliad. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Homer. The Homeric Hymns. Translated by Susan C. Shelmerdine. Focus Books, 1995.
Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Justus Miller. Harvard University Press, 1916.
Plato. Laws. Translated by Tom Griffith. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Plato. Phaedrus. Translated by James Nichols Jr. Cornell University Press, 1998.
Plato. Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. Basis Books, 1968.
Plotinus. Enneads. Translated by A.H. Armstrong. Harvard University Press, 1967.
Plotinus. Enneads. Translated by Stephen McKenna; Revised by B. S. Sage. Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952.
Rist, John M. Plotinus: The Road to Reality. CUP Archive, 1967.
Smith, Janet E. “Plato’s Use of Myth in the Education of Philosophic Man.” Phoenix 40, no. 1 (1986): 20-34.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1088962.
Xenophon. Symposium. Translated by E. C. Marchant. http://data.perseus.org/texts/
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0032.tlg004.perseus-eng1
57
Plotinus, I.6.4.
Plotinus, I.6.7.
58
12
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
Semester Wrapped
By Vivian Miyakawa
As the 2023-24 fall semester comes to a close, winter
break shines on the horizon and many Johnnies begin
to reflect on the successes and pitfalls of their first
few months of a new school year. This joyous time of
year also intersects with what may be one of the most
highly anticipated events for millions of people
worldwide: Spotify Wrapped. There is nothing I love
more than eagerly shoving my identity into sanitary,
cheerfully corporatized boxes that tell me what my
“listening character” is. (Just for the record, I’m “The
Mastermind”). So, while brainstorming article ideas
for the next issue of the Gadfly, I figured I’d give the
people what they want: more categories to point at
and laugh as they go “that’s so me.” Take some time
to read through these types of Johnnies and decide
which stereotype fits you the best.
1. TheÊRoomÊJohnnie
Starting off the list strong, The Room Johnnie is
an endearingly playful term for that one
roommate who just doesn’t seem to ever leave
your room. Room Johnnies are generally
introverted, choosing to study in the comfort of
their own dorm rather than a more public setting.
You’ll never see them at social events, but their
Ancient Greek skills are probably off the charts.
2. TheÊOverworked
I’m certain we’ve all felt like this at one point or
another, but The Overworked seems to be in a
constant state of panic. Somehow, it feels like
every one of their tutors has assigned them three
essays at once, and their language homework is
several pages of translating incomprehensible
texts. They live off of vending machine coffee
and three hours of sleep, and you’re pretty sure
their only hobby is studying.
3. TheÊPhilosopher
The Philosopher is just a little bit too in love with
Plato. In fact, you wonder if they’ve secretly got a
thing for ancient philosophers. (I mean, I don’t
blame them for it, but Theophrastus is more my
type). Somehow, every point they make during
seminar connects back to the Republic. The
Philosopher absolutely has a giant copy of Plato’s
collected works, and manages to weave his
beautifully crafted logic into any sentence
imaginable. To be fair though, for all you know,
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
December 13, 2023
they really may be the second coming of
Socrates.
TheÊHedonist
There’s nothing wrong with indulging every once
in a while, but The Hedonist looks for every
excuse to party. Whether it’s Friday, Saturday, or
even a random Tuesday, you can be certain
there’s something going on in their dorm room.
They’re a fantastic person to have fun with, and
keep any situation light, but studying with them is
bound to turn into an hour-long gossip session.
TheÊOlympian
The Olympian lives on the erg. They get up at
5:00 a.m. every morning and proudly display
their boat race ties at any chance they get.
They’re definitely obsessed with intramurals, and
never miss a single game of pickup volleyball.
The gym is aptly named for this person, because
it truly is their temple. Unlike most Johnnies, in a
naval academy uniform, they could definitely
pass for an abnormally smart Middie.
TheÊ“Plague-Ridden”
Remember that one person who got sick at the
beginning of the year and has never seemed to
improve? The “Plague-Ridden” really lives up to
their name, because they constantly have a case
of the sniffles. From Covid, to bronchitis, to a
case of the common cold, this student can never
catch a break, and can never breathe out of their
nose.
TheÊTutor
The Tutor is that one friend who is just
obnoxiously smart. They’re the golden child of
the school, the perfect replica of a Johnnie and
blessed by Athena herself. Their questions are
insightful, their essays are well-written, and their
seminar points are perfectly eloquent and add
unforeseen layers of depth to the discussion.
Luckily, it’s hard to dislike The Tutor, because
they are always willing to help you through any
assignments you have.
TheÊ“CursedÊbyÊAphrodite”
Ending the list on a lighthearted note, the “Cursed
by Aphrodite” has probably gone through at least
four relationships in just the first semester. As
soon as you’ve found out who they’re dating,
they’ve broken up again. Just as quickly, though,
they’ve already bounced back with someone new.
Constantly pining, this person needs to be careful,
because avoiding exes in such a small school is
near impossible…
13
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THE GADFLY
December 13, 2023
The SJC Mystery #5: Rocking the Boat By Benne “Ahhhh” Sco
Some nights, I can’t tell when I’m asleep and
when I’m awake. Everything has the same feeling to
it, as if I could slip right through what looks like solid
matter, could start drowning in this reality. My
dreams involve these infinite successions of halls,
doors, forests, always connected by an unending path.
I run and I walk and I turn and I stop and I get
nowhere, nowhere, nowhere at all. And then the
pounding starts. There’s a rhythm to it, a metronomic
thumping. I know it’s fists. No matter how it sounds,
it is always something beating, trying to get in, hands
filled with blood and ready to tear me apart. It gets so
loud that I wake up, but I’m in yet another place,
running. I have to wake up again and again and again
and it gets so bad that even when I’m back in the real
world (is this the real world?), I still try to wake up
just to make sure. I could always tell that I’d gotten
back by the silence, by the lack of pounding. And
then… well, you saw: the pounding came into
reality.
I haven’t seen clearly whatever it is that’s
following me. To prevent it from just becoming
another classic ‘shadowy figure hunting down
isolated man,’ I’ve decided to call it ‘The Friend.’ Is
14
that cute? Or does it just make things worse? I’m not
even sure if The Friend’s real. How could it not be
real? I see a figure out of the corner of my eye and
something, goddamn something has to be pounding
on my door! It’s probably best to take an almost
‘quantum’ approach to this Friend fellow: they do not
follow any evident rules of time or space (I cannot
predict when that dread feeling ripping at my heart
will start and make me flee home), they do not have a
clear manifestation (but there’s something physical
there), they are merely an interpretive tool. A
goddamn metaphorical demon. The only clear signs I
find are messages. I’ll wake up from a succession of
nightmares and find a note written in my handwriting
saying…well it doesn’t matter what they say. They all
accuse me. That’s what matters. And I find them
elsewhere too: on chalkboards, in the margins of
books, on little pieces of trash. They’ve only been
getting more intense, more violent. Jesus. I swear I
can hear footsteps in the street right now.
Just woke up from another set of dreams (I
started in my childhood home, then my highschool,
both seem to be coming up more. And a dark road. I
outran them all.). I couldn’t see at all for a moment,
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THE GADFLY
just about ready to throw up. It got worse and worse,
that thin acid pooling in my throat. I turned my head
to puke and stopped. My door is open. I still haven’t
gotten out of bed. I’m writing this just to prove I’m
not dreaming. God, please let me be dreaming. I’m
gonna have to step out into the dark and close it.
Fuck. Well, you can see it as well as I can (if
you even exist any more): the note’s still there. I
threw one of my books at the door and it didn’t close
all the way so I had to get up and relock it. I tried to
sleep more afterward. Not sure if I did. The eternal
darkness does not help with time keeping. Whether I
slept (am still in the same dream or not), I just now
got up and opened the blinds, letting in the streetlight.
The room’s empty. I found a little note left behind in
the usual bedside manner: For a heart so foul, greater
purities are needed. In formal response to the demon
who’s currently haunting me: FUCKÊ OFF. Thank
you <3.
But I’m not here to tell you about a damn silly
note. I’m here to tell you why I’m sitting, staring at
December 13, 2023
my door, my room a mess with the bed and the desk
stacked against the doorframe. I checked the lock and
the door opened. I checked the other way. The door
still opened. I tried back and forth and back and forth
and the door always opens. The lock is entirely
broken. I don’t want to check the front door, but I
already know. All the gates are open. I need to get out
of here. Here’s to trying:
Noodles: “They’ll Never Find Me Here!”
By Tamar Pinsky
15
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
December 13, 2023
How Ethereal Bisexualism
Ruined Obama
By Dr. Benjamin Raymor Maier
“Looking back, it’s embarrassing to recognize the
degree to which my intellectual curiosity those
first two years of college paralleled the interests
of various women I was attempting to get to
know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to
say to the long-legged socialist who lived in my
dorm; Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the
smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave
me a second look; Foucault and Woolf for the
ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black. As a
strategy for picking up girls, my pseudointellectualism proved mostly worthless; I found
myself in a series of affectionate but chaste
friendships.”
–President Barack Obama, A Promised Land
We used to be a country. It was not long ago
where the average American could go to college, find
a job, raise a family, and then retire comfortably.
However, President Obama’s autobiography tells a
different story: one of tribulation, struggle, and
broken hopes. If there ever was a promised land, we
no longer live in it. The American dream has woken
up from its naive slumber to a darkened room filled
with deceit, deconstructionist philosophy, and elusive
romantic prospects. I cannot fully describe the state
of our decayed country but I can tell you where its
sickness started: the University.
As undergraduate students, it is in our young
pride and pretentious delusion that we think we have
a shot with “the smooth-skinned sociology major” or
the “ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black”. But it
is not just our stupidity which stops us from dating
the ethereal bisexual—it is the bisexual’s Dasein
which destroys us. What do I mean by this?
We do not live in the world of our
grandfathers and grandmothers—we are an abyss
away from traditional notions of boy, girl, dating, true
love, and affection. To understand romance in the
modern University, we need a new language for a
changed reality. Our discourse requires Dasein to
describe the vibe of “Being-here” in the spiritualsphere which is unique to the ethereal bisexual. At
first, President Obama appears as a cringeworthy
16
romantic who simply does not understand women.
However, a proper understanding of Dasein shows
that Obama is no amateur— he is a poet who captures
the primordial encounter between the worldly
masculine and the ethereal, divine feminine. Take a
closer look:
THEÊCULTÊOFÊTHEÊMALE
“[I]t’s embarrassing to recognize the degree to
which my intellectual curiosity those first two
years of college paralleled the interests of various
women I was attempting to get to know.”
Here, Obama shows the original connection
between intellect and the erotic—now lost to the
modern undergraduate. However, this connection was
already decaying in Obama’s time. As we can see the
1980s were much like our own time: filled with
strange new philosophies, absurd courtship rituals,
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THE GADFLY
and mysterious women. For Obama, intellectualism
was not erotic but only a vehicle to crash into the
women he loved regardless of whether they noticed.
He never stood a chance. Philosophy, genuine
questioning, and erotic love thrived when it existed
outside the Academy but by the 80’s, it had been
buried six feet deep under a mountain of
administrators, codes, and endowed professorships.
In the absence of philosophy, a young man left to his
own devices returns to his base instincts: he tries to
date women.
THEÊDIVINEÊFEMININE
“. . . Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say
to the long-legged socialist who lived in my
dorm; Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the
smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave
me a second look; Foucault and Woolf for the
ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black.”
Notice the adjectives that Obama uses: “longlegged,” “smooth-skinned,” and “ethereal.” For him,
these women are goddesses no less perfect than
Pallas Athena. However this line brings out a deeper
image: feminine Dasein and man’s struggle against it.
Men are entirely lacking in a rich internal world. For
them, nothing can seriously be considered beyond
what is in the world. You see it in their obsession
with material possessions, communal pride, strength,
and quick gratification. Even their pseudo
philosophies such as stoicism and the “Bronze Age
Mindset” indicate a deep spiritual poverty in the male
character. They exit the material world in so far as
they can die: they turn off their pain and dopamine
receptors and sink into the abyss of their labor.
However, the ethereal bisexual and the long-legged
socialist are able to have a genuine appreciation for
the true, the good, and the beautiful. They understand
the joy of the small things and the wonder of great
art. They recall the warmth of their grandmother’s
home and the sonorous echoes of deep canyons. Men
have objects but women have Dasein—they are here
in the world in a spiritual sense. Furthermore, they
reject what is meaningless and perishing and embrace
what endures beyond man’s stone and bronze hubris.
Obama, constrained by his heteronormative
condition, poetically recognizes that God has given
women a “divine feminine” that he cannot access.
December 13, 2023
THEÊFRIENDÊZONE
“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudointellectualism proved mostly worthless; I found
myself in a series of affectionate but chaste
friendships.”
Embarrassing. If Obama read more Foucault
he would see that even friendship can be a prison.
But Obama does not blame the University for his
barbarism and wasted condition. Instead he poetically
opens up man’s abyss and discovers the loss of his
own Dasein against the feminine. But what does this
mean for the average undergraduate man? Should we
seek out the ethereal bisexual’s Dasein? We cannot
seek—Most men who have loved an ethereal bisexual
woman know that it never ends well. I myself have
even had my life ruined by one1. Perhaps the only
answer we have is that we shouldn’t use books to
pick up women. This is unfortunate because sexuallycharged reading is the St. John’s business model.
However, I am only a Doctor of romance—what
would I know about keeping a college profitable?
Dr. Benjamin Raymor Maier
Endowed Chair in Sexual Ethics at the Bell Hooks
School for Understanding Women at the University
of Austin
Co-host of the Bro Scogan Podcast
PhD in Romance and Sports Medicine
Dr. Benjamin Raymor Maier
1
Likely an allusion to a 2021 lecture given by Dr. Maier How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Tinder. There is scholarly debate on whether the “bisexual” in
question was real or simply hyperbole to characterize the perils of dating bisexuals. It is possible Maier concocted the life ruining bisexual in reference to A Promised
Land but the connection has never been proven. The majority of scholars maintain that Maier was referencing a real person in his life.
17
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
The Waffliad
By B.A. Sco
One does not expect, looking across a dying
bonfire at an only recently familiar face, to go on a
great quest, but Fate, with her thin fingers wrapped
always round our throats, is a trickster and joker; do
not trust her simple eyes, for behind them lies life,
death, and The Waffle House.
In the weeks leading up to 11/20/2023, Waffle
House had come up at least half a dozen times in
conversations with the most disparate of people. It is,
after all, a place steeped in lore: The Waffle House
Index used to measure how bad a natural disaster is
by how many Waffle Houses are closed and/or
destroyed in an area, the “Can I please get a waffle”
18
December 13, 2023
video (two women fighting behind the counter, no
one responding to the desperate plea for a delicious
treat), Jesse Pinkman immediately going to a Waffle
House after being released from custody in Breaking
Bad, the general aura of the place (the rival
restaurants—IHOP, Denny’s—have a liminal feeling
to them best confronted at around 1 a.m.; this feeling
is most certainly pumped straight in from Waffle
House, a place so unreal it makes my head spin).
Still, it was strange that it should be mentioned so
much to me in particular; I had only been to Waffle
House once before, and that was a long time ago.
I was 13 years old. My grandmother was a
tall, redheaded, and very very Scottish woman. How
she ended up living in Memphis, Tennessee is an
entire saga of its own (she once described my
grandfather as a Cadillac: once you’ve had one, you
can’t drive anything else; how a woman so strong
willed didn’t drive him farther North is a different
question), but she did and she was a great fan of the
�Πόλις
THE GADFLY
local institutions: Barbecue at Rendezvous (there are
not better ribs on this side of the Mississippi, in both
directions), Elvis and Graceland, and, as you can
guess, Waffle House. She frequented her nearest
location so often every waitress knew her (she’d
written to management about getting two waitresses
promoted; Southern hospitality took everything from
there). She took me one fine June day (anyone who
knows Memphis will know what I mean by fine, that
rare and perfect balance of drowning and burning).
We sat at the counter. I don’t think I’ve expressed
well enough the character of my grandmother for you
to understand how shocking it was for me to see her
sitting surrounded by white and yellow tile at an
American deli style counter: her Scottish accent had
not faded in the slightest (advertisement was
pronounced ad-ver-tiz-ment), she smelled always of
hair products (she had been a flight attendant, so
beautiful that they ignored that she got motion
sickness so bad she had to lie down every time they
took off and landed), and she was tall, so very tall.
Ordering waffles, bacon, eggs? Well, none of the
words even made sense coming out of her mouth.
Tell you the truth, I barely remembered the food
because of the simple shock of seeing Grandma Fief
applying her so precise European manners to grease
and fat. That was the only time I visited Memphis
before my grandmother died, leaving everything
haloed in childhood and mystery (gold and silver
respectively), including that little diner where we had
eaten.
It had been, then, at least 8 years since I had
been to Waffle House when I asked our resident food
reviewer, Audrey Fox, to come with me (she not
having any idea why such a journey might mean
anything special to me). We agreed that such an
institution is best suited to the witching hours. We
planned to set off around 11 p.m. and get home by
around 2 a.m.
Now, Ms. Fox and I have done a food review
together before, but, my dear reader, it is important to
note that going into this—standing across from each
other at the bonfire, watching the logs she had just
thrown in slowly burn, me talking with my
roommates about the merits of boats and seduction,
her presumably talking with her friends about
something entirely different (I’d like to think they
were discussing the meaning of God in a quantum
mechanical world; they were probably talking about
what alcohol they were going to buy at the Mini
Mart)—that we were not close friends (she will
December 13, 2023
hopefully not take offense at my saying this and
maybe even confirm it). We shared two classes
(where it’s very hard to befriend me because of my
eccentricities (read: being an ass)) and had hung out
only a couple of times (largely for Gadfly-related
reasons). I knew her middle name and she knew mine
and that was about as far as things had gotten. [DB:] I
expected our relationship to change over the course
of this adventure (it was a three hour, utterly mad
journey); when I finally returned home six hours late,
barely able to think straight, our connection would be
entirely changed.
We met in the gym parking lot at 11:13 p.m.
It was a clear night, not too cold, the parking lot
already slightly empty for the holiday break. We got
in my little silver Subaru Impreza (Sube-sube is their
name). I was to be in charge of music on the way
there and Audrey on the way back, so I made the safe
choice: indie so basic that it’s just a constant flow of
sad acoustic guitar and the indie-girl accent (some
people call it “cursive singing,” but I can’t read
cursive (I almost failed fifth grade)); for all the
anonymity of my indie, Ms. Fox was already making
fun of it.
Now, the phrase we decided on by the end of
the night for what formed (and forms) the basis of our
conversations was ‘Psychological torment.’ Every
time Audrey saw even the slightest weakness in me,
her teeth dug into it: I am a terminally awkward
person and was tormented for preparing questions
that we might talk about during the ride, I try too
little and too much to relate to people and was
tormented for anything resembling an admission of
fellow-feeling, I mentioned high school and was
tormented for talking about it every damn time we
speak. But do not worry my dear reader: I torment
her back. Any mention of a past lover? Immediately
met with a reminder that she has a talent for choosing
the people worst for her mental state. [DB:] An
allusion to once having been in a choir? Struck down
with reminders of the agonies of our music class
sophomore year (her section was quiet, shy (do your
best to forget that my section was even worse)).
Talking about being Irish and Italian? She did not
hear the end of everything she did being because of
Catholic guilt. It was a verbal warzone of a drive.
The road itself took us skirting along
the edge of Baltimore. I hate driving in that city for
so many reasons (speeding tickets, speeding tickets,
speeding tickets), but it was different nearing
midnight. The pale skeletons of cranes over the
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harbor, the rows of buses waiting for the morning, the
tunnel with its hum of yellow-white light, all
reminded me of my love of industrial decay. [actual
dialogue?:] Ms. Fox and I had a long discussion
about that love: I first became aware of it in Topeka,
Kansas, a city so empty and dun that it should cause
nothing more than aesthetic disappointment. But I
was not disappointed. I loved it. The empty streets.
The awkward and decaying buildings. The way not a
single person stayed permanently in my mind. On
those dusty avenues, I realized just how widespread
that feeling was for me: my love of brutalist
architecture, liminal spaces, analog horror. The
philosophers are welcome to disagree with me, but I
think the classical binary of aesthetic appreciation
into beauty and sublimity has become outdated; in the
grey concrete, the perfectly repeating windows, the
inhumanity of such places I found a certain new
pleasure, something which felt like disgust and
comfort twisted together. By such a violent denial of
reality, modernity seems to have circled back upon
itself: driving along those empty Baltimore highways,
I felt as if I were witnessing raw being (could I call
this estimonia? Being-happiness?). I knew, even if I
tried to be subtle about it so I wouldn’t be made fun
of too much, that I was going to Waffle House in
pursuit of that very feeling. And, after 51 minutes of
driving through the emptiness, we arrived.
When we pulled up, however, there
was a problem: no one else was there. There were
two workers inside and not a soul in the parking lot.
We immediately felt guilty: were we going to subject
service workers to an even more crushing existence
just to make us food that we did not really need? But,
after much Gen-Z guilt (Audrey’s, of course, being
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December 13, 2023
Catholic-coded), we decided to go in. [DB:] Our guilt
only got worse when we entered and the first thing
one of the workers said was: “I’m only serving take
out right now.” But we had come so far to reach the
holy land. We would not be stopped at its doorstep.
We, by fate or by choice, stayed.
The worker who spoke to us first
hardly talked the rest of the time. But the other
worker? We the food reviewers have agreed: she
alone made our experience worthy of five stars. “You
have beautiful hair. And you,” turning to Ms. Fox,
“have a great smile!” Audrey proceeded to teach her
about basting eggs, “and I, you know, I’ve been
drinking soda recently. I’ll be on that health grind
again soon, but that sounds good.” She grew up just
North of Baltimore, “and I love where I grew up.
There are ducks that walk on the streets. And every
month they have a first Friday. Oh it’s so cute!” She
ended up recommending us a restaurant
(Supermercado Campos) and giving us metal forks
(they were out of plasticware). Not once did she seem
disingenuous (Ms. Fox theorized that once you reach
a certain point of exhaustion, the customer service
mask slips off).
The actual environs of this conversation went
something like: white tile, white lights (spherical),
white lights (flat), grey counter, silver refrigerators,
silver-black grills, black-silver waffle irons, white
and blue booths, white and grey tables, red chairs,
black and yellow tiles in a band near the ceiling, and,
above that band, a long succession of posters in
black, red, and white: BURT’S CHILI, WORLD’S
LARGEST SERVER OF T-BONE STEAKS,
AMERICA’S BEST CHICKEN. It could have been
one of the most estimonian locations I had ever had
our server not been so kind (would I have preferred it
if she had been distant? If she hadn’t been there at
all? Is the end of this taste of mine a world where
people exist only in passing as brief as can be?). It
was not at all how I remembered it, but it still felt
right, as if the place had grown in proportion to my
own maturing from a happy child in a sunlit and loud
restaurant to a bedraggled 20-something in a dark and
empty institution, grasping at human straws. But the
food smelled good, so it couldn’t be that different.
When we left, we thanked both the workers
profusely. Back out in the cold (always getting
colder) night, I had Audrey stand for a photo in front
of the sign. In the background, I could already see
both the woman so kind and the man so quiet having
retreated to their corner table, waiting for their shift
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to end, just to be replaced by yet another set of
smiling faces.
Not being able to eat at the Waffle
House proper, we figured we might as well
find somewhere reasonably interesting to
sit. I was imagining an overlook (we had
come over a hill at one point during our drive
and had both gasped at the wide spreading of
city lights); we drove around quite at random.
Was this the moment when Fate’s noose was
tightening? Were there right and wrong paths
down those suburban roads and amongst the trees? Or
was the outcome inevitable? I am no counterfactual
oracle. All I know are the plain truths: we ended up in
a parking lot right next to a lumber yard. [DB:] A
forklift operator was moving stacks of wood and a
few people went in and out of cars on the other end of
the lot, but for the most part it was just us in the dark.
The female reader will note something: I
brought Audrey to a prime “murder spot.” Murder
spots are dark, isolated, quiet places which my female
friends have all told me that I should avoid taking
anyone to if we are not close friends, but something
in my tiny brain loves the calm, the removal from
civilization despite being surrounded by its concrete
and asphalt. This particular murder spot was made
even worse by a large drainage ditch abutted by a
long line of trees in front of where we parked. At one
point during the night, I couldn’t stop thinking about
something (tall, pale, bony, with a face all jaw and
tooth) coming out of those dark woods. In defense,
we left our soft music playing and all the lights on as
we moved into the back seats to eat.
Now, my car is not very large on the vertical
axis; Audrey and I, however, are. Even with the seats
down, we ended up slouched on our opposite sides of
the trunk, trying quite desperately to be comfortable
(failing). At the least, I hope seeing me just trying to
fit my legs into a comfortable position and ending up
twisted like a twonk-pretzel made the experience less
unsettling for my companion (I would contend that
the recent trend of ‘icks’—a man chasing a ping pong
ball, doggy paddling, having a tote bag, etc.—is
secretly a blessing in disguise for men: many icks
emasculate you so much that you lose all semblance
of attractiveness, but also any appearance of threat;
my little awkward legs could not hurt a soul twisting
the way they do).
I suppose this is the point where I ought to
review the food: Ms. Fox, far more professional than
I, said “it’s everything you could want from a place
December 13, 2023
like this.” Her sandwich smelled great, the
hash browns were warm and simple, and
my waffle was alright.…Honestly? I’d be
lying to you if I said it tasted alright to me:
I didn’t really taste the waffle at all. I
tasted 2013.
In middle school, my mom and I
would go skiing almost every
weekend (I stopped going in high school
to do Speech and Debate (Audrey is booing
me for this, I’m reminding her that she also did
S&D)). We had plenty of traditions in those days:
watching American Pickers and the History Channel
at night (this was the prime era of Egyptian pyramid
oriented conspiracies), our favorite sections of the
mountain (North Star to me is not a guiding point but
a bumping ride through the snow), and breakfast. We
were almost always at the sort of hotels which can be
found all across America: the sheets smell even
stiffer than they feel, the carpet is grainy, the
provided shampoo and conditioner is a mess of
vaguely nice smells (but vaguely nice in an exact
way. I once ruined a date being so distracted by the
other person smelling like this). Breakfast in such
places is always continental (the continent is
evidently without much culture). I would sleep late
and deep in those hard beds (puberty; no one warned
me I would grow eight inches in a year; no one
warned me I wouldn’t be able to stand some days);
my mother, blessing that she is, would go downstairs
and make me a waffle. Now, these waffles were large
and puffy while the Waffle House serves a tamer,
shallower breed, but the flavor (syrup, whipped
butter, batter) is the exact same: unnaturally sweet
and smooth, as if you were tasting dull yellow. Eating
in my car in the middle of Nowhere, Maryland, I felt
myself a decade prior amongst overstarched sheets
and the glare of sun on snow (and realizing that I can
now speak of my life in decades), thanking my
mother for this waffle.
So, honestly, I am probably not qualified to
speak to the quality of the food. I really enjoyed it
and wish we had one closer to us, but that would
probably kill all the mystique of the thing (maybe it’s
better to keep what we love at arm’s length). We ate
it all and packed it up. I went out into the night and
started to shiver (everything colder because of what I
was wearing: Audrey had told me that I couldn’t
dress how I am wont to do and had to appear
‘normal’; I do not own normal and warm clothes),
trying to find a trash can, but there wasn’t one. I saw
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a cat run by, yelling at me, but it didn’t seem to know
where I could dispose of our plastic leftovers. So I
ended up throwing our extra syrup and bags in the
back seat. I got in the front, said something (certainly
rude) to Audrey, and put the key in. It was time to go
home. I pushed the brake and twisted the key.
The car did not start.
It blinked (it blinked a lot: every damn icon I
could think of blinked), the lights turned on, music
played, but the car did not start. We both groaned.
My car had never died before. Why does this have to
be the first? What the hell does one do in this
situation? I’m not social! I’m not handy! I wasn’t
going to ask for help nor was I able to handle it
myself. Between profuse apologies to Audrey, I
called my mother. I didn’t mention anything about
skiing or waffles, just asked for help in the exact
same tone of voice as I had used then. She reminded
me that we have AAA. So I called them next. They
were very kind and helpful: they would send out a
dispatcher and get everything fixed up. They said it
would take an hour and forty minutes. We would, all
told, be there for the next five hours.
We sat in the front seats, the car slowly going
colder with each passing hour. There was only one
thing to do with so much time: tell stories. I, probably
about two hours in, fell back on one of my favorites:
the worst date of my life. I was a senior in high
school. My Speech and Debate team was at UC
Berkeley for a tournament. I was in charge of making
sure a few younger students stayed safe when going
to Trader Joe’s late at night (the question of who
would give me responsibility is a legitimate one).
While we were looking around the ice cream aisle, a
girl came up to me: Sonya Aheavy (yes it’s a made
up name, you want to do better?). I knew her: she
went to the very expensive private school close to my
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December 13, 2023
house; we had briefly interacted two years before and
never since. We got to talking (read with a wink). I,
like most men of any age and not of absurd beauty,
had rarely been hit on. So for Sonya to come up to
me, give me a little flirt, and then ask for my
Snapchat? I was taken aback. I was flabbergasted. I
was stunned. I was (synonyms). I said yes,
absolutely, of course, yes she could have it. We
messaged back and forth for the rest of the trip. We
decided to go on a date the weekend after we got
back from California. Now, a reasonable person
might say there were plenty of red flags leading up to
this date; I would kindly respond: A man who is not
used to seeing any flags at all is a poor interpreter of
their meaning. The reddest of these banners was that
she asked me to meet her at Southglenn (she didn’t
want her father to see me and that’s not even the bad
part). For those of my readers who did not grow up in
the very specific suburbs of Denver, Colorado where
the name Southglenn means anything, I will translate:
Southglenn is the movie theater/restaurant/fast
fashion area where all the late middle– and early
highschoolers hang out. Even 17 year olds abhor it.
But I met her at Southglenn anyways. Problem was, I
had been in charge of planning the date and I had
planned something quite in the opposite direction.
We got in the car and 15 minutes into the half an hour
drive, conversation was already dying. By the time
we got to our location, it needed a coroner. Now, for
anyone who ever visits Denver, Colorado, I would
highly recommend Karma. It’s a lovely asian
restaurant on Broadway with garlic edamame that my
entire family dreams about (so spicy! So smooth!)
and a great interior (dark in every way, the same fish
swimming in the small tank for years on end). I
would not, however, recommend taking someone on
a first date to one of your favorite restaurants and
having that date go horribly, leaving you to
remember it every time you return to what had once
been such a wonderful place for you before. I do not
recall a lot of the date (repressed, suppressed, thrown
deep into some dark vault of my mind), but I
distinctly remember us struggling so much for
conversation topics that we end up talking about why
we had chosen these specific outfits for this date (I
was in a pink shirt with birds, she was in a colorful
polka-dot, a pairing made to give headaches) and her
incessantly referencing One Direction (I might have
hated them an unjust amount, sure, but constantly
bringing up something your date does not enjoy? Not
my recommended strategy). On the drive back we
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could barely manage more than a few sentences back
and forth. She did, however, mention that “you
wouldn’t even know how to drive my car if you got
in it.” Now, you’ll recall that Sonya went to the very
expensive private school, so naturally I assumed that
her car was from the 23rd century, relied on
telekinesis, and had its own personal AI. So when we
got back to Southglenn and she asked me if I wanted
to see her car, I, against all good judgement, said
absolutely. When I got in, I was wholly disappointed:
it was one of those early electric BMWs. Sure, it was
fancy and maybe even worked a little differently
from a normal car, but it had a steering wheel, not
some telepathic link! Problem was, now that we were
in her car, Sonya was suddenly very talkative. I was
deeply confused: why was she all of a sudden talking
so much? What did she want? Why prolong our
suffering? After much reasoning about the human
soul, I realized: she wanted a kiss. Sure, it had been a
bad date, but some people are lonely and need that
sort of thing (Sonya was proving far lonelier than
anticipated). So I leaned over and kissed her. It was
like kissing a mannequin. She did not move. At all.
Lips, hands, body, all perfectly rigid. I pulled away.
She said, looking me straight in the eye, “You need to
get better at kissing. You kiss like a fish.” My pride
was drawn, quartered, fed to the birds, and those
birds promptly shot out of the sky and fed to the very
fishes that I apparently kissed like: how could this
horrible, no good, awful kisser tell me I was that bad?
Was she right? Would she have been better off
kissing one of the fish at Karma instead? Frankly, my
ego hasn’t recovered (it’s been four years). But here,
once again, is the problem: she was still talking. She
was talking even more. We just had a bad date and a
bad kiss and she decided that all of it was worth
extending?? In one sense, I am not proud of what I
did next; in another sense, I am very proud of what I
did next (I felt like McGeiver). I kissed Sonya again
and, in the midst of my fishy lipping, grabbed the
door handle (it worked just the same as in normal
cars) and pulled. I was already one foot out the door
as the kiss ended. I said, “Well, that was great, thanks
so much, have a wonderful day,” and immediately
stepped out. While I ran (in embarrassment, in fear)
to my car, I heard a honk behind me. I knew it was
her, but when I looked back, I did not expect such a
devilish smile. Later that night, she texted me: “Hey!
I had a great time today! But next date, I’ll pay.
When would you like to go out again?” I know that
even the worst dates deserve responses, but I couldn’t
December 13, 2023
bear to. I ghosted her.
That story (with full dramatics) only took
about 15 minutes to tell. You can imagine what hour
after hour of weaving such webs back and forth
would do to us. The natural mania of late night
conversation—honesty cannot be had so easily in the
sun—overtook us, made worse by the madness of the
situation (you know it’s a mad, mad, mad world
when a man so damn ironic as I start speaking from
the heart). [DB:] In the interests of not saying too
much, my journalistic commitment to laying
everything bare must be held back at this moment.
Just know that if you ever want to get me talking, you
just have to strand yourself with me in a parking lot
between the hours of 1 and 4 a.m.
After 5 hours, our assistance showed up. He
was a random man in a grey hoodie (was he always
awake, working at this hour?). He connected what
looked like a large phone to the battery and asked me
to start the car. It worked. I practically erupted.
Audrey and I slapped hands, screamed, laughed. I
thanked the AAA man over and over. I thanked him
even when he was out of earshot as we drove down
the road. We were back, baby!
Now, the observant reader will do some math:
we left for The Waffle House at 11:15, drove for
about an hour, and then were in the parking lot for
five hours, drove an hour back, putting us at 6:15
a.m. But I promised that this saga would end six
hours late: 8 in the morning. But would I ever lie to
you dear reader? No, I would simply withhold
information (a life strategy, even if my therapist says
otherwise). We were in fact back at the college by
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6:15, but I had already promised to give Audrey a
ride to the train station at 7:30. On our way back
(driving through the Baltimore tunnel, music
droning) we had agreed that after all we had been
through, we could make it a couple more hours.
We started walking back from the parking lot.
Almost everyone’s lights were out (I have plenty of
questions for those rooms which weren’t dark). For a
moment, we stood on the quad, looking up at the
blank windows. I had the urge to scream, but Audrey
convinced me otherwise: some other less exhausted
time. We found the rest of the city just as dark. I
wondered, my feet catching on the bricks of the
sidewalk, whether anyone heard us outside their
window and wondered what we were up to. I tried to
think up possible scenarios: late night Monday
partying, but we were both stunningly sober; drug
dealing, but we walked with no such secrecy or
confidence; recent escapers of a murder spot? Well,
that was fairly close. But I don’t think anyone in their
right mind would have given the correct answer.
Walking so quiet, we had no destination, not
wanting to wake our roommates at whatever the
godless hour may be (despite my roommates’
penchant for 5 a.m. alarms). So we just kept going,
following Prince George straight down, looking in
the windows at all the empty places and dark rooms. I
feel like I ought to recognize a fair few of the cars
which park on that road, having lived there for more
than a year, but everything seemed rather distant and
hazy in the street lamps (though less hazy than
before: they’ve replaced the purple lights with white
lights that buzz like all hell). Eventually, we could go
no more: we were at the bay.
24
December 13, 2023
I always want to be able to look out across the
bay into some great blue yonder, that sublime
vastness evoked from Homer through Melville and
onto us. But you can always see the opposite side,
even at night (those great towers of steel and red
lights flashing, reminding you that this is merely a
small, small piece). The ocean is something I have
always loved, running into it every chance that I got
as a child, coming back to my parents practically blue
with cold. So, on most days, that enclosed little piece
of the grey mother only frustrates me. Things were
different on this night.
We sat down on a bench which had been
forcibly moved closer to the bay. Waves beat a slow
rhythm against the wood and the mega yachts alike, a
calm pulsing of: hush, hush, hush. The air was not
salty, not even all that humid. It lacked almost
everything I love so much in the ocean. And,
suddenly, that was okay; after such a long night of
memories (for you, dear reader, they seem so short
and simple; for me, they were each and every one a
wrenching of my soul back and forth in time), I could
look out on the water and say, quite honestly: it
reminded me of nothing at all. It merely existed. The
slow bobbing of the boats, the way moonlight caught
on the shallow ripples, even the border made by the
far side, I could look at it all straight on, unflinching.
One day, all this too will become memory, associated
with the nostalgia of my “college days” and some
beauty of youth that I am entirely unaware of as I live
it; even in writing this, I am condemning myself to
think of these very words and associations each time
I return there (I am burning the forest such that you
might know how much it meant to me); for that
moment, I was simply there.
Audrey and I did not talk so much. For all of
our long night together, there was still that gap
between us (represented here by a couple feet of
bench space). I am not sure if this is maturing or
simply giving up, but I have come to accept that gap.
Yes, I had learned plenty about her (looking over for
a brief second, smiling a little) and she had learned
even more about me, but did I feel understood? Did I
feel I understood her? Could I somehow say: this is
her? Could she say: this is him? How could she
know? She did not know my favorite novel, did not
know my worst fears, did not know my greatest
regrets. And then? If we kept confessing all night
long? Would there be any more closeness? I looked
back at the bay. No, I am not so sure I believe that
anyone could cross that gap.
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Out of the black sky and waves, the sun began
to rise. At first, there was only greyness, but soon I
was reminded of the failure of all poets: who could
speak back into being this succession of pink and
gold and red, twisting upon what thin clouds remain
after the cold night, the effusion which goes so far
beyond simple color, calling up some animal instinct
that makes us want only to stare (animal instinct for
what? Is there, in the animal’s soul, also a form of
beauty?). All I can say is: I smiled at each new
bursting wave of light, spreading so gently across
everything. It had been so long since I had seen the
sun.
After a while, I looked back at Audrey and
said, “We should get some breakfast.” So, lucky as
you are my friend, you get two food reviews in one:
we decided on Naval Bagels. First, we had to stop by
the Fox’s Den (not the restaurant, the den of Ms.
Audrey Fox) and pick up her bag (I spent my entire
time staring at the front door, wondering why it
doesn’t fit its frame in the slightest). By the time we
were back out on the street, the sunrise was already
fading into a pale blue. The rolling of the suitcase
behind us seemed to call the whole world back to life.
There were people running. There were voices in
windows. Of course, there were no signs of life on
the St. John’s campus, but that’s how it always is. We
threw the bag in my trunk and got in. My car started
this time.
Naval Bagels was much calmer than I am
used to, probably because we were there before 7
a.m. on a random Tuesday (the grind!). The highlight
for me is always the large whiteboard they have on
the far wall. This time, I noticed that they include,
amongst the birthdays and fun facts, high and low
tide times. What a horribly oceanic city we live in.
In time’s interest, we ate while I drove us to
the train station. I am a two bagel sort of guy, always
getting one sweet and one savory. I had veggie cream
cheese on pumperknickel everything and a booster
(peanut butter, honey, bananas) on cinnamon raisin.
The bagels have a nice chew and the cream cheese is
smooth. There’s a wide selection for the adventurous
and reliability for the anxious. Do I wish we were
sitting in a deli surrounded by old people with a
poster of Guy Fieri fading on the wall? Yes. But we
had places to be (spending yet another hour in my
little subaru).
For a while, we were worried that we would
not make it to those places in time (poor planning
despite having, quite literally, all night), but I will not
December 13, 2023
try to create false last minute tension for the reader:
Audrey made it to her train home for Thanksgiving
and I, after a long ride home in silence and walking
down those brick sidewalks once again, made it back
to my apartment and hobbled up to my room, not a
hero and not really victorious, but very, very tired. I
pulled the blinds on the full-fledged brightness of the
day and got in bed. Normally—as Audrey and I
discussed during our time in the parking lot—I am a
very bad sleeper, rolling back
and forth for what seems to
be hours (thinking about
how things could have
been, could go). But,
for some reason that
I’ll leave to the
reader to figure
out, I fell
straight
asleep,
feeling
quite full
and
content.
25
�Πόλις
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December 13, 2023
Translation of Baudelaire’s “Le Balcon”
By Luke Briner
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O you, all of my joy, and all my servitude!
Remember those caresses of such darling ease,
The sweetness of the hearth and twilight’s charming mood,
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!
The evenings lightened by the ember’s gentle heat,
The evenings on the terrace, veiled in vap’rous rose,
Your heart to me so kind, your breast to me so sweet!
Imperishable words between us oft arose,
The evenings lightened by the ember’s gentle heat.
How beautiful the suns in those warm evenings grew!
How deep is space!—how powerful the heart’s intent!
O all-beloved Queen, as I reposed on you,
I thought that I breathed in your blood’s perfuméd scent.
How beautiful the suns in those warm evenings grew!
The darkness had surrounded us as though a wall;
Yet my eyes found yours even in the creeping shade,
And I drank in your breath, delight and poison all!
And your feet in my worshipful hands sleeping laid.
The darkness had surrounded us as though a wall.
I know how to recall the joy of bygone days,
And reminisce as I lie nestled in your thighs;
For where should I seek your unbothered beauty’s haze
But in that place where your sweet heart and aspect lies?
I know how to recall the joy of bygone days!
Those fragrances, those oaths, those kisses without end,
Can they be found again in voids we cannot see,
Just as the the morning sun into the sky ascends,
New-purified in the deep chasm of the sea?
—O fragrances! O oaths! O kisses without end!
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December 13, 2023
exultation
By Natalie Goldman
Give more of your
Down-trodden heart—
The fibers deserve to be
Rewoven into a shape that fits you.
Nothing I see could ever
Strike me as fate struck you,
Hand across the face
And pretty with blood.
Nothing to me is necessary,
Not even thank yous made of mist and glamor.
I couldn’t imagine a tenderer burden
Or one more worthy of exultation.
The Seraph
By Luke Briner
As when in Shamayim’s supremest height,
Refulgent crown of all created things,
The Seraph veils itself with trembling wings
Before Jehovah’s all-confounding light,
And—too abashed to bear the awesome sight—
Instead to him in solemn chorus sings
Or raises serenades with golden strings
In worshipful and self-effacing fright,
So I, O Love, of yet less worthy race,
Turn from you conscience-stricken and afraid,
And, not deserving to behold your face,
Conceal my own in sin-engendered shade,
Compelled from this obscurer, paler place
To venerate the Good from which I’ve strayed.
27
�THE STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
ST. JOHN’S
COLLEGE
Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the
student newsmagazine distributed to
over 600 students, faculty, staff, and
alumni 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 Google Docs or
PDF format.
For more information, contact us
via email at lbriner@sjc.edu.
60 COLLEGE AVENUE
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21401
Photographs without a listed source are from the
St. John's College Digital Archives.
St. John's College owns the rights
to these photographs.
Illustrations without a listed source are by Takashi
Mifune from Irasutoya.com and are free to use for
non-commercial purposes. All rights to these
illustrations still belong to the artist.
�
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The Gadfly, Vol. XLV, Issue 5
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Gadfly Vol XLV Issue 5
Gadfly
Student publication
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Thursday
May 2 2024
The St. John’s Collegian
A Gadfly Publication
From the
polity
On the Commencement
Speaker Controversy
On April 5th, the senior class received the
announcement that Mark Roosevelt, outgoing allcollege president and president of the Santa Fe campus,
had been invited to deliver the commencement address
for the Class of 2024. This was meant with a nearunanimous disapprobation. While his name had
appeared on the ballot of possible commencement
speakers—at the urging of the administration—he
received by far the fewest votes. And yet he had been
invited all the same.
To be clear, the senior class does not in any way seek to
disrespect President Roosevelt. This is not an issue of
personal grievance, or any reaction to his actions
during his tenure as president of the Santa Fe campus.
We recognize the great work he has done in guiding
our sister campus through the pandemic, and in his
establishment of a fund for tutor pay—an issue which
was brought to the fore just this year.
Notwithstanding, we of the Class of 2024 feel
disrespected, as if our choice, once solicited, was
ignored. The motivation for selecting President
Roosevelt as our commencement speaker was not
communicated to us beforehand. Certainly, he ought
to be honored for his work, and had such a justification
been presented to us beforehand, our class would likely
have little objected.
It has been pointed out to us that St. John’s is not a
democracy, and that, though we could advise, the
ultimate choice of speaker lies with the administration.
We recognize this. There is little doubt that factors of
which the student body knows little play a great role in
selecting the commencement speaker. Nor do we wish
to accuse anyone in the administration of malice or
malintent. Nevertheless, the manner in which the
choice was made this year, manifestly against the
wishes of the Class of 2024, stings. President Roosevelt
will be our commencement speaker. Yet we hope that
future years will bring greater transparency as to a
process whose outcome so closely concerns the
graduating class.
Charles Dang
Vol. II Issue 11
Printed Thursdays in Annapolis
An editor’s fond farewell to
the collegian
Parting Remarks on Free Speech, and Thanks to All Who
Made this Paper Possible.
As many of you may already know, this is to be the last
issue of the St. John’s Collegian. This is not because I
feel like there is no longer a need for such a paper; on
the contrary, I think weekly reporting is incredibly
important. However, as I am going to be taking on the
editorship of the Gadfly next year, I will not be able to
edit the Collegian at the same time. I hope, however, to
continue the tradition of up-to-date, relevant, and
quick news in that more venerable publication. As this
will be the last issue of the Collegian, I wanted to take
a moment to write about something that has become
increasingly important to me as I have become more
involved in student journalism.
When I developed the idea for the Collegian, I hoped
to fill a gap that I saw in campus news reporting. Little
did I realize that it would create an opportunity for the
expression of something that would give a far greater
benefit to the College: a forum for presenting their
opinions on topical, pressing issues when they were
relevant, and not long after questions had been
resolved. In the single, short year of the Collegian’s
operation, we had opinion articles on a proposed
honor code, the College Creek Connector, smoking
policies, tutor reappointments, menstrual products on
campus, the administrative response to the pertussis
outbreak and the commencement speaker selection.
I often hear from campus leaders that they feel that
students need to reach out to them directly more often
with their concerns, since they cannot know what
students are thinking about without direct
communication. Likewise, I often hear students who
are less engaged with campus politics surprised that
they haven’t been notified about something as
important as an infectious disease outbreak or the
construction of a bike path on campus. Certain
students would have had, and would have discussed,
issues like these privately regardless of whether or not
there was a forum to print them in. However, the
existence of a newspaper which lets opinions like these
be published makes these conversations move from
private gossip to communal discourse, and gives them
a concrete communal impact instead of merely
fostering discontent with the state of things as they are.
There have been moments this year when the question
of what should be published in a paper has been up for
question, due to concerns from the College
administration. Obviously, there are limits to the
benefits of the published word: direct attacks against
Polity members, or false information would not build
a stronger, more informed community. However, it is
of utmost importance that all other speech, even if it
might seem offensive or overly critical of the
administration, should be allowed published. Even if it
touches on a sensitive topic which might create
controversy, like sexism in the College, it still
contributes a kind of discussion that is much better
held in the open, than in unhappy mutterings behind
closed doors. I hope that moving forward, students
continue to submit controversial articles to student
publications, and that college leadership continues to
facilitate their publication. After all, we have the first
amendment right to publish with or without College
oversight, but a collaboration between administration
and students makes the paper stronger.
As this paper comes to its end, I would like to thank all
the people who made it possible. First and foremost, I
want to thank Taylor Waters, who has worked with me
even when I am running behind deadlines to make this
the best paper possible, and to print in a timely manner.
We haven’t always agreed on what is fit to publish, but
she has always been immensely helpful and supportive
of this paper, and it could never have existed without
her. I would also like to thank Michael Jordan in the
print shop for accommodating tight time schedules
and always printing very promptly and putting up with
my strange formatting issues. This paper would also
not be possible without its contributors, and I would
like to thank them all. In particular, I am grateful to my
frequent contributors: Caleb Briggs for his
entertaining articles, Andy Manne for their assorted
cleverness, Natalie Goldman for her wonderful arts
reviews, Helen Wagner for her well-considered
opinion, Tarik Mahmud for his whimsy and poetry,
Helen Felbek for her excellent reports, Allyson Brink
for her column, and the Sage of Gorman Street for his
wisdom and enlightenment.
Now, the drama’s done. The Collegian is finished, but
the work of campus journalism is just begun. I bid
farewell to you from this page, and hope to see you, and
all your opinions, reports, and essays, once more, with
the start of next fall, in the pages of the Gadfly.
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman
This Week in Seminar
Upcoming Events:
Freshman:
5/2: Aristotle: On the Soul, III, 1–13
5/6: Plato: Phaedrus, beginning–257
Sophomores:
5/2: Shakespeare: Macbeth
5/6: Shakespeare: King Lear
Juniors:
5/2: Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, Articles of Confederation, see official list for selections
5/6: Articles of Confederation, see official list for selections.
Seniors:
5/2: Heidegger: Introduction to Metaphysics, see official list for selections
5/6: Heidegger: Introduction to Metaphysics, see official list for selections
Friday, May 3:
Intramural marathon and On the Body
Lecture, 4 p.m., outside Temple Iglehart
Saturday, May 4:
Reality Weekend Music in the Park, 1 p.m.,
back campus
McDowell Live, 8 p.m., Great Hall
Sunday, May 5:
Hydrathon, 3 p.m., Boathouse
Energeia Release Party, 8 p.m., Great Hall
Tuesday, May 7:
Spring Collegium, 7 p.m., Great Hall
Thursday May 9:
Yearbook & 814 Magazine Party, 9:45 p.m.,
Quad
Friday Night Lecture:
No Friday Night Lecture
Page 1
�Thursday May 2, 2024
St. John’s Collegian
Proposal to Replace the Copernicus Illustrations in
Mellon Hall
In the penultimate week of my senior year, I must
confess there is one thing that still weighs on me, one
straw that threatens to break the proverbial camel’s
back. And that straw is the series of mathematical
illustrations in Mellon Hall across from the fishbowl.
I have walked this hall a thousand times, and each
time I have at the very least cast a glance towards these
paintings, and with every glance something has been
building inside of me that I cannot keep silent any
longer.
The painting representing Copernicus’ heliocentric
cosmology sits fifth from the left, between Ptolemy
and Galileo. Unlike the other seven, the Copernicus
illustration is not representative of a mathematical
diagram present in the original text, nor is it
particularly mathematical in nature, rather it only
gestures vaguely to a picture of a heliocentric cosmos
(which, at the risk of sounding overly pedantic, isn’t
even accurate, since Copernicus himself did not put
the sun at the exact center of the planets’ orbit, nor
did he consider the planets to be precisely concentric
with each other). And what’s more, the illustration
depicts seven planets, despite the fact that Neptune
would not be discovered until a full 200 years after
Copernicus’s death! With all this in mind, and given
that the artist, Neil Harpe, still appears to be alive and
active, I propose that he be contacted and a new
painting be commissioned. And since far be it for me
to critique without offering a remedy, I have also
included four suggestions for potential replacements,
in order of perceived suitability.
4) Copernicus’s demonstration of the Earth’s
threefold movement in Book 1, Section 11, of On
The Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres.
If we want a diagram from Copernicus, this is
probably the best option. While it still isn’t as
explicitly mathematical as the others, it does at least
show up in the original text, and provides an intuitive
illustration of how Ptolemy’s ecliptic translates onto
a heliocentric model.
3) Newton’s proof of Kepler’s second law in
Book 1, Section 2, Prop 1 of The Principia
My personal choice for the most elegant
mathematical proof on the program, an incredibly
mathematical proof on the program, an incredibly
influential and widely known diagram that is
arguably the pinnacle of ancient astronomy. Of
course, this would mean that Newton would be
represented twice in the collection, but I think one
could argue that, given his influence, he is deserving
of such an honor even among other program authors.
2) Kepler’s recalculation of the Earth’s orbit in
chapter
24
of
Astronomia
Nova.
While this is admittedly not as widely recognized as
the other suggestions on this list, no student of the
history of astronomy can deny the importance of the
diagram where Kepler first demonstrated the nonuniformity of the Earth’s motion. This is also one of
the few parts of the Astronomia Nova that students
study in more or less unabridged form.
1) Minkowski’s space-time hyperbola in section
1
of
Space
and
Time.
This is my number one suggestion for one simple
reason: currently there are two freshman diagrams,
two sophomore diagrams, three junior diagrams, and
only one diagram from senior mathematics.
Replacing Copernicus with Minkowski, whose
geometric representation of spacetime has arguably
eclipsed even Einstein's original account in terms of
needed recognition. Thus ends the rant of a jaded
senior, four years in the making. If you have not been
roused into action by this article, I hope you have at
least been entertained.
Troy Herner-Brown
A Letter to the Junior Class
Dear fellow Juniors,
In 1937 when the New Program was instituted at St.
John’s College, there were only two books on the
reading list written by Americans: The United States
Constitution, and The Federalist Papers. It was not
until the late 1960s that Mark Twain’s The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn received the
distinction of being the only book of American
literature to be included. Very soon, we will have our
seminar on this book—from which, according to
Hemingway, “all modern American literature
comes”. My reason for publishing this letter is
simple. I want to communicate a message: read the
damn book.
It is well known that Huckleberry Finn is an
eminently skippable seminar text. This is not
because of its difficulty, dryness, or the disinterest of
students in its story or message. Most who do not
read the book do so because of its length and
location in the seminar reading list at the end of the
year. It is easy for tired, burnt-out Juniors to phone
this one in.
Don’t do it!
Besides being fun to read, full of wit, adventure, and
colorful characters, Huckleberry Finn grapples with
some of the major questions which are not only at
the heart of American life, but life as a human being
generally. Twain does this in an unexpected way.
Unlike Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare,
Cervantes, Austen, and Eliot, Twain’s great book
does not center on a great figure or event—even the
magnitude of a Dorothea Brooke, Falstaff, or Don
Quixote is absent from the novel. Huck Finn is a
poor, half-literate boy, the son of the village drunk,
who must navigate his way through a series of
adventures rafting down the Mississippi river
through Missouri and Arkansas. Apart from his
unusual cleverness, he is unremarkable. He does not
engage with moral, political, and philosophical
questions in the way Kant, Locke, and Jefferson do,
nor even like Elizabeth Bennet, Will Ladislaw, or
Milton’s Adam. Like most of us, Huck regularly
engages with the big questions of life in humble,
unrefined, messy circumstances. You will find little
that is self-evidently philosophical in Huckleberry
Finn, but I hope you will see that even in the back
woods, even for someone at the bottom of the social
ladder, there are big questions which must still be
asked and answered.
On a practical note, I encourage all of my fellow
Juniors to begin reading now, not only so to
successfully finish the book, but to provide adequate
leisure to enjoy reading it. To the Seniors, I do not
wish to impute any shame to those who did not read
Huckleberry Finn last year. You may count
yourselves absolved if only you undergo the penance
of going back and reading the book in full.
Vol. II. Issue 11
Garner Finds Peace,
Whimsy in New Home
After being kicked off campus last week, Kirk Garner
has happily moved into the little cottage made of
books at the back of the Old Fox garden. He is
integrating well with his new community,
befriending the birds, squirrels, fairies, and garden
gnomes who call Old Fox their home.
During the afternoons, he enjoys making tea for his
new friends, or gathering nuts and berries to share
with them for dinner. “It is a much more whimsical
lifestyle than I’m used to,” Mr. Garner states. “There
are several magic dwarves who visit me, although I’m
unsure whether or not they’re the class of 2028.” He
has also begun planting a community vegetable
garden in collaboration with local gnomes.
He’s discovered a sense of peace in the garden which
he’s never felt before. “It’s a place of true freedom of
expression,” he says. “I wish everyone could
experience this kind of joy.” He hopes that you’ll stop
by to visit him next time you’re at Old Fox. Mr.
Garner would also appreciate any orange peels and
apple cores that you can spare for him to flavor his
stews.
Mr. Garner’s favorite things to read in his new home
are The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, Silent Spring by
Rachel Carson, and Martin Luther’s speech from the
Diet of Worms. You can also catch him listening to
his favorite Grateful Dead concert, Fox Theater
Atlanta 1977. If you’re lucky, he might even give you
a bite of stew.
Helen Wagner
Aphorism of the Week
Madness is the only way to immortality by oneself.
That is why it is called madness.
About the St.
John’s
Collegian
The St. John’s Collegian is the weekly newspaper of
St. John’s College Annapolis. We work to bring quick
and timely coverage of important events going on, to
help develop a more informed student body. If you’re
searching for more in-depth investigations and
reporting, as well as essays, art and culture, check out
the Gadfly, our affiliated publication, which is
published once every three weeks.
Want to submit an article? We always need more
writers, whether for opinion or reporting!
Submissions for news articles should be between 400600 words, while opinion should be kept short at 350
words. Just email eanicholskaufman@sjc.edu with
your article, and we will work to get it in print!
Longer form articles and more in-depth exploration
of ideas should go to the Gadfly, which accepts
submissions at lbriner@sjc.edu.
Contributors for this issue:
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman, Editor
Charles Dang
Jackson Green
Whoop-jamboreehoo!
Jackson St. John Cliffe Kingston Green
Troy Herner-Brown
Helen Wagner
Page 2
�
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<em>The St. John's Collegian</em>
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An account of the resource
A student newspaper of St. John's College. <em>The St. John's Collegian</em> began publication in 2023 and is affiliated with <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/16"><em>The Gadfly</em></a>. <br /><br />Published weekly on Thursday, with the exception of weeks <em>The Gadfly </em>is published. <br /><br />Earlier publications with the title <em>The Collegian </em>and <em>The St. John's Collegian </em>are available in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/26"><em>The Collegian Collection</em></a>.<br /><br />Click on Items in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=69&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">The St. John's Collegian Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College
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St. John's College
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St. John's Collegian, May 2, 2024
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Volume 2, issue 11 of the St. John's Collegian, published May 2, 2024.
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
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Annapolis, MD
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2024-05-02
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text
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pdf
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St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals
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English
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SJCCollegian_vol2_issue11_2024-05-02
Student publication
The Collegian
The Gadfly
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35344e5881d68ff856170996074857a9
PDF Text
Text
Thursday
April 25 2024
The St. John’s Collegian
A Gadfly Publication
From the
polity
Whoops! It’s the Whoop
Opinion: on Pertussis
By now, you’ve all heard the rumors about whooping
cough on campus. For the past few months, students
have been succumbing to a violent, weeks-long cough,
often with fits so intense they’re left gasping for air.
These are the symptoms of pertussis, otherwise known
as whooping cough: a highly contagious bacterial
respiratory infection which doctors have nicknamed
the “hundred-day cough.” In fact, these aren’t just
rumors: Ms. Lico sent an email out on April 10
confirming that there have been positive cases.
However, considering how long students have had
symptoms (since before spring break), it confuses me
why the college waited so long to acknowledge it. Until
Ms. Lico’s email, rumors of the illness were actively
denied, both by the health center and by our RAs (who
were told to do so by the college). But when I began to
develop the same symptoms as my friends, I decided to
find out the truth for myself by getting tested off
campus. It was only once I’d shown the health center a
positive test that they finally acknowledged it. It took
another week for Ms. Lico to send her email. Why
didn’t this all happen earlier?
This article is an account of my personal experiences
with the health center, the interactions leading up to
Ms. Lico’s April 10 email, and my own opinions about
the situation. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not a
trained epidemiologist. I’m just a random sophomore
with a cough. But it doesn’t take a professional to ask
the questions I pose in this article: why did the college
deny the whooping cough rumors for so long, when
they hadn’t been testing for it? And why did they delay
notifying the polity for a week after I had shown them
a positive test?
Vol. II Issue 10
Printed Thursdays in Annapolis
Collegian’s Campus news
updates
The Past Two Weeks on a Busy Annapolis Campus
Earth Day Ivy Removal
In honor of Earth Day, Project Polity collaborated
with Tutor Ms. Benson to remove invasive ivy from
trees on campus. In the beginning of the event the
Insect Farming Club led by archon Mr. Rosenberg
released painted lady butterflies. The butterfly release
was originally scheduled to take place on Friday
afternoon, but the temperature was slightly too low for
the insects. On Saturday, the temperature reached over
68 Degrees Fahrenheit, creating perfect conditions for
the butterflies to be released. The butterflies were a
little reluctant at first, but at long last they spread their
wings and left their cage, or as some bystanders
remarked, their cave.
A dozen students, who joined Project Polity and Ms.
Benson for the project, received protective gear,
clippers, and instructions from Ms. Benson as to how
to remove the ivy. Ms. Benson explained the difference
between poison ivy and English ivy. The goal of the
project was to remove the invasive English ivy, as it
chokes the trees, depriving them of nutrients, makes
them more prone to disease and fungi, as well as
increases the risk of storm damage. Student Activities
& Events provided pizza and ice cream for the
volunteers.
Participants were shocked to find large amounts of ivy
on all the tress next to the French monument and the
boathouse. Ms. Benson explained the reason why there
are so many vines on the trees: most tree-covered areas
on campus are not real forests. Vines grow best at the
edges of forest where there is enough sunlight. But
humans have created conditions where most wooded
areas are like edges of forest and not real forests.
For months, our campus health center firmly denied
the whooping cough suspicions. Many symptomatic
patients (including myself) were told rather vigorously
by health center staff that there was not a single case of
whooping cough on campus, and that we needed to
stop talking about it. Strangely, they seemed more
concerned about the spread of the rumors than about
the potential spread of an infectious disease. They had
not administered a single pertussis test. Why were they
so certain in their denial?
Ms. Benson believes that learning how to remove ivy is
useful for anyone because “in half an hour, you can
save a mature tree. It would take 60 years for it to grow
again. And a lot of people don't realize that ivy is bad
for trees.” “I didn't know until a couple of years ago,”
she adds. When asked about the event, Project polity’s
archon Mr. Briner agreed with Ms. Benson saying, “I
think we got a good amount of people and I think we
made some good progress.”
When I inquired further, I was unable to find any
information which justified such vehement dismissal
of student concerns. (Cont. on Page 2.)
Ms. Benson expressed her appreciation for the
participants: “It is always nice to hear what people say
after they have done one of these projects. People seem
kind of moved by it. They are on campus all the time,
but they don't often stop and just pay attention to a
tree for half an hour - after freshman year. It turns out
to be just a nice experience.”
Some participants remarked that removing the ivy had
a cathartic effect allowing them to release stress. Others
felt a little heroic as they were saving the trees from a
slow death. Project Polity vice-archon Ms. Minor
added (referring to the ivy) “my dad always called me a
tree hugger, but the real tree huggers are no good.”
If you would like to support Project Polity in the
future, please join the club for the easter food drive on
Saturday, 04/27 at 2 pm.
Helen Felbek
St. John’s Grapples with
Mixed Legacy of Francis
Scott Key
The St. John’s College History Task Force held a panel
discussing the legacy of Francis Scott Key on April 17,
2024. Students, faculty, Annapolitans, and other
members of the community filed into Mellon Hall’s
Francis Scott Key Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. to hear the
conversation addressing one of St. John’s most notable
alumni and his complicated legacy.
“We know that our institution has not always been on
the right side of racial justice,” said Annapolis President
Nora Demleitner, as she opened the event.
The event was moderated by Ms. Chanel Compton,
the executive director of Annapolis’ own BannekerDouglass Museum. Panelists included Mr. Marc
Leepson, author of the 2014 Francis Scott Key
biography, What So Proudly We Hailed; Professor
William Thomas, author of the 2020 history of
freedom trials, A Question of Freedom; and Professor
Mark Clague, author of the 2022 cultural biography of
the Star-Spangled Banner, O Say Can You Hear?.
Earlier in the day, at noon, the St. John’s campus
bookstore held a book signing where community
members could purchase signed books and meet Mr.
Leepson and Professor Clague; Professor Thomas
unfortunately could not be there due to a delayed
flight.
The panelists addressed a variety of topics, first
explaining the origins of the investigation into Francis
Scott Key. According to the panel, (Cont. on page 2.)
This Week in Seminar
Upcoming Events:
Freshman:
4/25 Aristotle: Metaphysics, see official list for selections.
4/29 Aristotle: On the Soul, I,1; II, 1-7, 11-12
Sophomores:
4/25: Descartes: Discourse on Method, I–IV
4/29: Descartes: Discourse on Method, V–VI
Juniors:
4/25: Smith: Wealth of Nations, see official list for selections.
4/29: Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, U.S. Constitution, The Federalist
Seniors:
4/25: De Beauvoir: The Second Sex, see official list for selections.
4/29: De Beauvoir: The Second Sex, see official list for selections.
Saturday, 4/6:
Project Polity’s Spring Food Drive, 2 PM,
Quad
KWP’s Moby Dick, 7 PM, FSK Auditorium.
Friday Night Lecture:
KWP’s Moby Dick, Written and Directed by Ranger Kasdorf. FSK, 7 p.m.
Page 1
Special Note:
At Shammai’s Passover Seder this week, the afikoman
was found by Ian Rossomondo, who won honor,
glory, and a mention in this week’s Collegian.
Congratulations to Ian!
�Thursday April 25, 2024
St. John’s Collegian
Whooping Cough
(Cont. from page 1.) The only reason given repeatedly
for such certainty was that there are no reported cases
of whooping cough in Maryland. Therefore, it was
apparently impossible that anyone on campus could
have it. Considering the fact that nobody had been
tested, this logic seems backwards to me: the reported
case count should not be used as a diagnostic tool. In
fact, it should be the other way round: it is up to
doctors to read symptoms, determine whether an
infection is present, and then report it to the Health
Department. That is how cases are counted. How
many unreported cases are walking around campus
right now? If our health center exemplifies the way
medical professionals deal with potential pertussis
cases, it’s no surprise to me that there were no
reported cases in Maryland.
I was unsatisfied by these empty assurances.
Everywhere I went, I saw whooping cough
symptoms. I thought, if it looks like a duck, swims like
a duck, and coughs like a duck… it probably is a duck.
So I went off-campus and got tested myself. Turns
out—it’s a duck.
On April 4, I showed the health center a positive test,
hoping they would take pertussis symptoms more
seriously. They immediately gave me an antibiotics
prescription to eliminate contagiousness. Since then,
they have begun testing students and prescribing
antibiotics. They also told me that they would ask Ms.
Lico (through whom they must go for student
communication) to send a schoolwide email with
information about the disease, but after several days
had passed she’d still sent nothing out. Isaac Boone
and I went to the health center again on April 9 to
inquire, and were told that Ms. Lico was disinclined
to send an email out, even though we now had
confirmed cases on campus. Why could this be? No
About Moby-Dick:
reasons were disclosed, but after another
conversation with the health center she did send an
email on April 10. If you think you might have
pertussis, check the info that she sent out. Keep in
mind that if you’ve had it for more than three weeks
(as many have) you won’t test positive anymore: the
bacteria will have left your system, even though
symptoms continue.
It’s hard to excuse our health center for denying
pertussis suspicions for so long with so little reason.
It’s even more concerning that the administration
neglected to inform us immediately of confirmed
cases. Why could this be? If we had begun testing
months ago, when symptoms first started appearing
on campus, more cases could have been avoided. I
hope we can be more responsible in the future, for
our own sakes and for those around us.
[Note: on April 18, the health center also offered a
clinic for TDAP booster shots, which are needed
every ten years for whooping cough immunity. If you
haven’t gotten yours recently, make sure you are up
to date on your vaccination.]
The question of whether these men who we name
our buildings after owned slaves began the SJC
History Task Force’s exploration into our
auditorium’s namesake. The Task Force wondered
who should run this investigation, and observed
three different options employed by other schools
while addressing similar issues, including
Georgetown University and the University of
Pennsylvania. Some schools handed matters over to
their student body; others gave the responsibility to
their history departments; and finally, some schools
decided to hire a third-party outside research
company. The second option was vetoed due to
SJC’s lack of a history department – or any
particular department, for that matter – and SJC
opted for the third option, outsourcing the task but
having the historical Task Force, composed of
students, tutors and staff, guide the investigation.
Known to his family as “Frank,” Key was a
Maryland native who attended St. John’s College
and later wrote the National Anthem, first called the
“Defense of Fort McHenry.” The Task Force looked
at Key’s role in establishing the American
Colonization Society, which advocated sending all
African Americans to Liberia; he also kept enslaved
people himself. In his work as a lawyer, Key
defended enslaved people in freedom suits, even
arguing for their freedom before the Supreme
Court, while also defending slaveholders and
prosecuting abolitionists.
This Friday and Saturday, at 7 PM, my stage
adaptation of Melville’s Moby-Dick will, after two
years in development, be brought to life in the Francis
Scott Key auditorium. In advance of the premiere, I
thought I’d answer here a few of the questions I’ve
heard many people ask about my adaptation:
How faithful is the adaptation?
The broad strokes are there, and I keep quite a few
specific scenes largely untouched, but much of it is
out of order and altered to fit the needs of the stage.
It is very much a different experience from reading
the book.
So, did you keep all those chapters about whales?
I kept one of them–the biggest and the best.
Is it really a musical? I heard it was a musical.
There is music in it, yes. Don’t come into it expecting
Broadway, though.
How long is it?
Approximately three hours, with a fifteen-minute
intermission.
Damn, really?
If you’re familiar with the novel then you’ll know
that’s actually on the shorter side.
Helen Wagner
Aphorism of the Week:
Theology is the study of the Creator. Physics is the
study of the created nature. Sociology is the study of the
corrupted human nature. History is the study of the
corrupted human nature compounded by created
nature. For this reason, we do not study history at St.
John's.
Campus News Continued
(Cont. from p. 1) the conversations and questions
surrounding Key’s legacy were sparked by the rising
widespread interest – nationwide and beyond – in
the integrity, or perhaps lack thereof, of the
important men whom buildings on college
campuses are so often named after.
Vol. II. Issue 10
The legacies of men like Francis Scott Key are woven
into our institutions, still shaping our culture into the
present day. To deconstruct these influences, we
must recognize the ways their values are incongruous
with ours, and persist in having conversations about
it.
Meliha Anthony
A Collection of MomentsThe Magic of KWP’s
Shakespeare Showcase
Romeo, Juliet, and Caesar walk into a bar, while
Falstaff is drunk and asleep on the couch. This
crossover sounds like the beginning of a frankly,
fantastic joke, but this wacky world became reality
with the KWP’s “Shakespeare Compilation” directed
by Dolan Polglaze and Jordan Kammeyer. Unrelated
scenes from various Shakespearian plays were loosely
stitched together by one enduring element: the bar.
The aim of this show was to capture moments in time,
highlighting the now, rather than the past or future,
and it certainly achieved that goal. While watching, I
was completely captivated, my eyes glued to the stage.
Characters stumbled and laughed and screamed and
cried, and while I didn’t understand the reasons for
their emotions, I felt deeply connected to the feelings
behind them. In the end, the KWP pulled off another
incredible show. Chaotic, entertaining, and deeply
confusing, I left with a huge smile on my face and the
motivation to read more Shakespeare.
Vivian Miyakawa
Wondering where reporting on croquet is? Keep your
eyes peeled for the next Gadfly for in-depth coverage!
Page 2
I don’t know if I want to sit through that.
I doubt very much that you’ll be bored at any point.
My crew and I have taken pains to make the play as
immersive as possible; I highly encourage you to just
sit back and enjoy the ride.
So, who plays the white whale?
Well, I guess you’ll just have to come and see for
yourself, won’t you?
Ranger Kasdorf
About the St.
John’s
Collegian
The St. John’s Collegian is the weekly newspaper of
St. John’s College Annapolis. We work to bring quick
and timely coverage of important events going on, to
help develop a more informed student body. If you’re
searching for more in-depth investigations and
reporting, as well as essays, art and culture, check out
the Gadfly, our affiliated publication, which is
published once every three weeks.
Want to submit an article? We always need more
writers, whether for opinion or reporting!
Submissions for news articles should be between 400600 words, while opinion should be kept short at 350
words. Just email eanicholskaufman@sjc.edu with
your article, and we will work to get it in print!
Longer form articles and more in-depth exploration
of ideas should go to the Gadfly, which accepts
submissions at lbriner@sjc.edu.
Contributors for this issue:
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman, Editor
Helen Felbek
Helen Wagner
Meliha Anthony
Ranger Kasdorf
Vivian Miyakawa
�
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St. John's Collegian, April 25, 2024
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Volume 2, issue 10 of the St. John's Collegian, published April 25, 2024.
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Student publication
The Collegian
The Gadfly
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Text
Thursday
April 11 2024
The St. John’s Collegian
A Gadfly Publication
From the
polity
Collegian Publication Delay
This column was intended to be filled by an article on
the cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, currently on
campus. Unfortunately, this article needs extra time
for review and will appear in a future issue.
The Collegian apologies to its readers for the delay this
caused for the publication of the entire paper, and
hopes to be able to publish the article shortly. In the
meantime, we would like to encourage students with
questions about the disease to check the CDC
webpage, https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/index.html.
We hope the Polity stays healthy and safe, and takes
appropriate precautions to ensure the best croquet
weekend possible. The Collegian will, hopefully,
resume regular its publication schedule in the next
issue.
Vol. II Issue 9
Printed Thursdays in Annapolis
Croquet team prepares for
match with navy
Inside the Brilliant Minds of our (and their) Croqueteers
As your faithful correspondents, namely myself and
intrepid journalist Helen Felbek, were walking down
front campus last Tuesday, they were enchanted by the
warm sunlight lazily shining upon the flowers, and the
general air of pacific Springtime of the Atlantic
seaboard. This air might have a soporific effect on
most, tempting many a Johnnie away from their books
and into a nap on the pleasant grass of front campus.
One dedicated group on campus, however, had sleep
nowhere near their minds. Who, might you ask, if you
had not read the title of this article, is this group? Well,
ask no further friends, for the croquet team was found
industriously practicing away at their art on their
newly grown lawn.
of playing a mean game of croquet. I asked Lane how
she had been preparing for the game, and was told she
was “just going to practice as much as possible.” She
also made certain to send a message to the polity.
“Croquet is not British.” In fact, it’s not even
American: “it’s Irish.”
The field was shared by Johnnies and Midshipmen,
who had, in a gesture most gentlemanly, been invited
to practice on our field to get a sense of our home turf.
All was abuzz with activity, and your correspondents
quickly set to work finding someone who could give
the inside scoop on our croquet team. We made the
natural choice of heading directly for the man with the
most impressive hat, Imperial Wicket Angus Preston.
What makes him so imperial, you may ask? Well, I
asked him that myself, and was told, “the hat.”
Jerome and Sunny, it turned out, were far more
friendly than their military bearing might imply,
although they were quite overconfident about their
team’s chances. “I have zero doubts,” said Jerome.
“We’re at a 100% confidence rate right now. There’s
nothing that could knock that down. The whole
brigade’s supporting us, and we’re feeling great.” He
added that they have been preparing every day,
practicing at a “secret location.”
Preston seemed certain of victory. “I feel pretty
confident. We have a pretty good team this year. We
have a solid group of players, I think we’ll take them
down.” Upon further inquiry, he informed me of the
lineup for the game: “Sam and Charlie are on court
one, Josh and I are on court two, Agnes and Peter are
on court three, the party court. The next rotation will
be Henry and Dalton on court one, Caden and Raquel
on court two, and then Margaret and Ben on Court
three.”
My companion then asked what he does to prepare for
the croquet game. “I like to listen to music,” said
Preston. “Sicut Cervus?” asked Felbek. “Mostly new
wave 80s,” he responded.
With my natural curiosity, I had to ask what this year’s
uniform will be for the team. Preston simply gave me
an odd look, and said “You know, the Navy really does
pride themselves on their fleets. That’s all I will say.”
Drifting further along the field, we encountered two
more Johnnies eagerly at work honing their croquet
skills, Margret Lane, a member of the team and
Meghan Scalley, not on the team, but still capable
Having that fact sorted out, we proceeded across the
green to a group of generally taller, more composed and
intimidating individuals twirling their mallets
menacingly: the Naval croquet team. Boldly, and
fearlessly, your valiant writer approached them (only
needing a little bit of urging from Felbek for courage)
and asked for their names.
Seeing this as my chance to confront power with truth,
your noble correspondent asked them about the
allegations that they falsely added Navy victories to the
Annapolis cup over Covid and that they attempted to
keep the trophy from us after our last victory. “No
comment,” Jerome replied.
My fellow newshound, Felbek, also had important
questions to ask: “Why can’t the Navy carry their own
mallets? Why do they need someone to carry them?”
“That’s simply display,” Jerome attempted to argue,
“of power, rank and intimidation.” Sunny ended the
interview with a similar effect to strike fear in our
unwavering hearts. “We have a very powerful team,
with lots of strengths, made up of students from
around the world. We are ready to show our talents.”
With that, you faithful correspondents wandered off
from the court, armed with plenty of new information
about the match, which promises to be amongst the
most exciting and heated in the annals of the Annapolis
cup. We at the Collegian promise to keep you posted
on the conditions surrounding the match on Saturday,
and hopefully with an article commemorating our
glorious victory.
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman
This Week in Seminar
Upcoming Events:
Freshman:
4/11: Aristotle: Physics, see official list for selections.
4/15: Aristotle: Physics, see official list for selections
Sophomores:
4/11: Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapters 1, 2 (#12–27), 3
4/15: J. S. Bach: St. Matthew Passion
Juniors:
4/11: Kant: Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals. Remainder of Section II; Section III
4/15: Swift: Gulliver’s Travels. “Advertisement,” “Letter from Gulliver,” “Publisher to Reader,” I, II
Seniors:
4/11: Selected speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Fredrick Douglass and Booker T. Washington
4/15: W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, see official list for selections.
Saturday, 4/13:
Annapolis Cup, 10:30 am, Front Campus.
Game starts at noon.
Cotillion Waltz, 8 pm, Mellon Lobby
Sunday 4/14
KWP’s Shakespeare Compilation, 7 pm,
FSK Auditorium.
Wednesday 4/17:
Francis Scott Key Book Signing, noon,
bookstore.
The legacy of Francis Scott Key, Class of
1796 Panel, 7:30 pm, FSK auditorium.
Friday Night Lecture:
All College Seminar on Diego Velasquez’ the Spinners and Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Page 1
�Thursday April 11, 2024
St. John’s Collegian
From the old collegian:
Class of 1924: Graduating amidst change and transition
In order to fill space meant for the pertussis article, I
reached into the College’s digital archives for material.
I thought it might be nice to see another senior class, 100
years ago, looking back on its four years. The class of
1924 graduated right after the disbanding of the
military program, and their class history, reproduced
here in part, reflects that time of change.
On glancing back on our first three years, everything
is softened as if seen through a haze, appears; the
darker things are blotted out while the pleasant
happenings of these years are rendered even brighter
by reflection. The path that we trod as Freshmen,
though at that time it seemed the proverbial “thorny
path” of the “rat”; yet now, under the modifying
influence of time, seems to have been at least
pleasant...
In our Sophomore year, we had a very efficient
G.O.H. [Grand Order of Hazers, an organization
which for many years flourished on campus, until the
end of the military program.] and did our maternal
duty towards the Freshmen faithfully and well.
We now come to the Junior year, a year fraught with
many important events for our class. The Junior year
is the most peculiar year of the college course. It is the
year which determines the success or failure of a
college career; men who have not hitherto worked still
have a chance to retrieve their lost opportunities. and
to place themselves in a position to graduate with
their class…Unquestionably, the most considerable
achievement of our Junior year was the publication of
the RAT TAT [yearbook]…
Undoubtedly, the greatest contribution of our class
to the good of the school was through the Dramatic
Club… plays were presented not only at St. John 's,
but also at many of the important towns on the
Eastern and Western Shores… In future years, owing
to the activity of several members of the Class of '24,
the Dramatic Club will be a permanent feature at St.
John's and a college-wide organization…
Our class has always showed up well in the Military
Department… At the beginning of this year, with the
abolition of the old military code, and drill only once
a week, apprehension was felt for the welfare of the
Military Department…
…We have succeeded in publishing a "Collegian " that
has been declared by many disinterested parties the
best ever published.
I have tried to tell, simply, the story of the Class of
1924. I have doubtless made mistakes, and it is too late
now to rectify them. However, we may say to the
other classes… “Let each subordinate all other
interests to class loyalty, and disregarding trivial
differences and jealousies, work for her glory.”
Come for me vol. iii
Continued Conversation on Orgasms
In my past two articles I have talked about pleasure
solely in the context of orgasm. In this interview my
friend and I discuss sexual experiences where orgasm
is not necessarily the goal and pleasure as a multifaceted phenomenon. In the pursuit of orgasm, I
believe that it is important to discuss the experiences
that make orgasm possible.
AB: When you masturbate is orgasm always the
goal?
Anon 2: The thing about orgasming is, it’s nice
when it happens, but it doesn’t always have to
happen. Sex with two people is not defined by
orgasm, and that doesn’t necessarily detract from the
experience, so I don’t see why it would be any
different when having sex with yourself. When I
masturbate exploration and pleasure are my goals,
not orgasm, because it’s too much pressure.
AB: What does that intentional exploration
look like for you?
Anon 2: Stimulation doesn’t always have to be
overtly sexual for it to be pleasurable. For myself,
there’s been times when I’ve been uncomfortable
with how my arms, legs or stomach looked, and so
when a partner touches them, I’ve shied away from
both the touch and from allowing that experience to
be sensual. But by consciously touching parts of my
body that I’m uncomfortable with when
masturbating, I’ve allowed those parts to be sensual
and seen that the whole body really can bring you
pleasure. I think many people are scared of their
bodies and scared of touching their bodies, and they
don’t have to be.
AB: On the topic of touch, I know that for some
people there is a feeling of “too much” that can
be confused with orgasm, and/or limit them
from reaching orgasm.
Anon: With a partner, I’ve definitely
experiencedwhat I would call being “touched-out”
or overstimulation which has prevented me from
orgasming. It often happens when there are a lot of
different types of touch or when I’ve been touched
in many different places. It might have been
pleasurable the whole way through, but even still
prevents me from reaching orgasm. Now I don’t
think I’ve experienced it with sex toys because when
I use them, I usually get straight to the point. With
my own hands, certainly, because I could just spend
hours touching myself if I wanted to, and that
doesn’t have to be just clit or just inside, but the
whole body. It can both ways though, there are
sometimes when I’ve felt touched out and had an
explosive orgasm, but there have also been times
where I’ve reached a wall.
AB: What do you mean by explosive orgasm?
Anon: There are so many different types of orgasm.
They can be big, small, loud, quiet, localized or
radiating throughout the body. They can look so
different for one person and definitely from person to
person. But for me explosive orgasms build until you
reach the climax and then there is a sense of utter relief
and pleasure. I find the experiences of squirting and
gushing in some ways gender affirming because men
get to cum and I can too, but in a different way.
Allyson Brink
Page 2
Vol. II. Issue 9
Campus news
updates
Campus Gathers Together to Watch
Partial Solar Eclipse
Hundreds of Johnnies gathered all around campus
last Monday afternoon: in blankets on the back
lawn, in the Mellon observatory, and down by
College creek. It seemed like the entire campus was
out, eyes fixed upon the heavens, as the moon’s
shadow passed across the sun.
Annapolis did not experience a full solar eclipse, but
much of the sun was covered, with the light growing
eerily dim and the air cooling down substantially.
The observatory was distributing eclipse glasses, but
soon ran out, as the demand for them outstripped
the supply. Still, almost everyone got at least a
chance to see this dramatic solar phenomenon.
DC President Ali Shawamreh
Reinstated
Olive Shawarma was overthrown by the combined
forces of Rachels Hauben and Rozsa, Ladies of the
Underquad and Overquad respectively, and Ali
Shawamreh was returned to power. Limericks and
Sonnets were delivered, and the return of
Shawamreh was celebrated with a rousing round of
Sicut Cervus.
About the St.
John’s
Collegian
The St. John’s Collegian is the weekly newspaper of
St. John’s College Annapolis. We work to bring quick
and timely coverage of important events going on, to
help develop a more informed student body. If you’re
searching for more in-depth investigations and
reporting, as well as essays, art and culture, check out
the Gadfly, our affiliated publication, which is
published once every three weeks.
Want to submit an article? We always need more
writers, whether for opinion or reporting!
Submissions for news articles should be between 400600 words, while opinion should be kept short at 350
words. Just email eanicholskaufman@sjc.edu with
your article, and we will work to get it in print!
Longer form articles and more in-depth exploration
of ideas should go to the Gadfly, which accepts
submissions at lbriner@sjc.edu.
Contributors for this issue:
El’ad Nichols-Kaufman, Editor
Allyson Brink
Aphorism of the Week:
Mathematics: Sometimes pornography is used because
we have no patience for relationship.
�
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 St. John's Collegian</em>
Description
An account of the resource
A student newspaper of St. John's College. <em>The St. John's Collegian</em> began publication in 2023 and is affiliated with <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/16"><em>The Gadfly</em></a>. <br /><br />Published weekly on Thursday, with the exception of weeks <em>The Gadfly </em>is published. <br /><br />Earlier publications with the title <em>The Collegian </em>and <em>The St. John's Collegian </em>are available in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/collections/show/26"><em>The Collegian Collection</em></a>.<br /><br />Click on Items in <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=69&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">The St. John's Collegian Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College
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.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJCCollegian
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.
2 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
St. John's Collegian, April 11, 2024
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 2, issue 9 of the St. John's Collegian, published April 11, 2024.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)
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
2024-04-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College holds the rights to this publication.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.)--Periodicals
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SJCCollegian_vol2_issue9_2024-04-11_v3
Student publication
The Collegian
The Gadfly
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1a97fb10e2121d3f43ebecbb1b9f880c.mp3
52cee81253de3cf4d78527d9f60c3b0c
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:53:46
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
Universalisms Partially Applied: On Locke's and Kant's Racisms
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on November 14, 2008, by Robert Bernasconi as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bernasconi, Robert
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
2008-11-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to tape the lecture that I shall give in Annapolis; make a recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Slave trade
Race--Philosophy
Race relations--Philosophy
Locke, John, 1632-1704
Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Bernasconi_Robert_2008-11-14_ac
Friday night lecture
-
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8f83ddb45929deb134268cd7aafc1b94
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
Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series
Description
An account of the resource
The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
streaming video
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:03:10
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
Modern Technology and Modern Discourse
Description
An account of the resource
Video recording of a lecture delivered by Annapolis tutor Lee Goldsmith on June 12, 2024, as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Goldsmith, Lee
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
2024-06-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Signed permissions form have been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library and to make an audiovisual recording of my lecture available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
moving image
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp4
Subject
The topic of the resource
Humanities
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boyle, Brendan
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Goldsmith_Lee_2024-06-12_ac
Graduate Institute
Summer lecture series
Tutors
-
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ec91f70a7296b544e8d90d8976d5ec4f
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:55:24
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
Francis Bacon and the Socratic Turn
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 16, 1999, by Adam Schulman as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Schulman, Adam
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
1999-04-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received granting St. John's College blanket permission to: "Make recordings of my lectures, speeches, and addresses available online. Make typescript copies of my lectures, speeches, and addresses available online."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Schulman_Adam_1999-04-16_ac
Friday night lecture
Tutors
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a542b12f4a78f7a46d42b828ecbcaa34.pdf
2bc65410cf3101c56eb6f35f26376361
PDF Text
Text
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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
St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Meem Library
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Santa Fe, NM
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus.
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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
9 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 Concept of Truth in the Book of Genesis
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given by tutor Phil LeCuyer on April 14, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Join tutor Phil LeCuyer for a lecture on the Book of Genesis with a focus on Chapter 24."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
LeCuyer, Phillip
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
Santa Fe, NM
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2023-04-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Subject
The topic of the resource
Bible. Genesis
Truth
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7745">https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7745</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_LeCuyerP_The_Concept_of_Truth_in_the_Book_of_Genesis_2023-04-14_transcript
Friday night lecture
Worrell lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7c8691672ab0013c653265ae04ca6fe6.mp3
64760d87e4c28f16c9b6f912200a9d8f
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
CD
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:00:47
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
Rousseau's Chemical Apprenticeship
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given on April 18, 2014, by Christopher Kelly as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Kelly, Christopher, 1950-
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
2014-04-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
The Greenfield Library has permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LEC_Kelly_Christopher_2014-04-18_ac
Friday night lecture