The Gadfly, Vol. XXXIV, Issue 17

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The Gadfly

02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com www.issuu.com/sjcgadfly www.facebook.com/sjcagadfly Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.

Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine.

Articles for the next issue should be submitted by Wednesday, March 20, at 11:59 PM to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com.

Staff Nathan Goldman • Editor-in-Chief Ian Tuttle • Editor-in-Chief Hayden Pendergrass • Layout Editor Sasha Welm • Cartoonist Jonathan Barone • Staff Andrew Kriehn • Staff Robert Malka • Staff Sarah Meggison • Staff Charles Zug • Staff

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Contributors Virginia Early Michael Fogleman Jacob Kilgore Painter Bob Evgenia Olimpieva Davis Poore Joe Roberts

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og on to the dining hall food blog for a new article on invitro meat. The concept of growing meat in a laboratory has been tossed around by so many sci-fi writers…but lab-grown meats could be on your plate before you know it. Visit www.gastrokitty. blogspot.com for a look at the hows and whys behind in-vitro meat.

— Formaggio Elettrico

!"#$%&'())*+'!,%-.$/0-1 Grace Tyson Title/topic?

My title is “Hurrah for Kolya! The Soul’s Education in The Brothers Karamazov.” My essay primarily explores the soul’s journey: how people change, and what effect one person can have on another. I examine these larger ideas by focusing on Kolya Krasotkin, a seemingly minor or ignorable character that turns out to be a microcosm of the main characters’ spiritual journeys.

Why this work/topic?

I studied The Brothers Karamazov in preceptorial during my junior year, and fell in love with it. My book and topic chose me. I was compelled to reflect on my time at St. John’s and the type of education we pursue. I also wanted to write something personally relevant to me, something that would inform my life after St. John’s.

Advisor?

Mr. Burke.

Writing Period strategy?

I spent the first week of Writing Period at home in Florida. During that time and in the year leading up to Writing Period, I put a great deal of thought into The Brothers Karamazov. When Writing Period rolled around, I was ready to start writing, because most of my thinking had already been done. When I returned to campus, I woke up at 8 a.m. and wrote for six or more hours each day. I spent the evenings relaxing, socializing, and giving myself space from my essay. I also worked out regularly to blow off steam, and of course participated in KUNAI and SPARTA. I found that, for me, the best strategy was to wake up early and get to work, but I think I was in the minority. Many people found it more effective to work at night, but I find it impossible to focus at night.

Advice?

Pick a book you love and will enjoy spending a LOT of time with. I chose my book far before finding my topic.

The topic came to me through my love of the novel, and it came very naturally. Spend a lot of time reading your book and thinking about it. And don’t be afraid to write. Write early and often.

Write anything and everything.

The Gadfly

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Ms. Catherine Haigney

How did you come to be a tutor at St. John’s?

As a high school senior, I wanted to do the Great Books Program, but with four other children to educate, my parents made a persuasive case for the University of Virginia. Twelve years later, I wrote a letter to Dean Thomas Slakey, asking if I could be a tutor. Greek and Euclid were new to me, so in a way I got a sense of what it’s like to be a freshman...with, shall we say, extra responsibilities.

move me as a prime one.

What classes are you teaching this year?

I’m on sabbatical. I paint in my studio in the morning and read the rest of the day. I’m making my way through all the Platonic dialogues that aren’t assigned freshman year and finding new books, like Kapuscinski’s Travels with Herodotus and Les Souvenirs by the eighteenth-century artist Vigee-Lebrun.

Sabbaticals offer what Aristotle called “skolia”: there’s time to do all kinds of things—read Homer aloud in Greek, start a new language, think about what One Really Wants To Do.

What is your favorite St. John’s tradition and why?

I like the way we stand up for lecturers and for seniors taking orals. It shows visible respect and invites better listening.

What was the biggest adventure you’ve ever had?

Sailing all night from the Bahamas to Florida, trying to outrun a storm that overtook us. We had to leave in the evening to cross the Gulf Stream before the wind shifted from south to north. The waves and moonlight were magnificent. Towards morning, we saw alternating red and green lights approaching, which we took to be the port and starboard bow lights of another boat on a collision course: in a surreal shift of perception, they turned out to be traffic lights on a shore not yet visible. The wind was so strong that we’d made landfall sooner than expected, and having no GPS (not yet invented), we didn’t know where we were.

What is the single most important piece of advice you would like to give to freshmen (or upperclassmen)?

“Talkers” can learn to listen well and “listeners” to voice their thoughts—the sooner you make a serious effort to do the more difficult thing for you, the better classes will be, and not just for you.

What is your favorite seminar book and why?

May I choose three? The Iliad, Luke’s Gospel, and The Brothers Karamazov. Each re-reading is like a first. Next year I’m likely to have another three.

What is your least favorite seminar book and why?

William James’ Psychology: The Briefer Course. I think I’ve grasped something of its influence, but I have yet to see its greatness. I would rather read Joyce or Woolf with seniors.

If there is a “psychology” slot to fill, a questionable aim for SJC, perhaps we should take on Jung or read more Freud. The consideration of meeting a quota of American writers does not

What is your favorite non-Program book and why?

I have successive infatuations and multiple enduring loves, no single work above all others.

What is your biggest pet peeve (that students do) in class?

Leaving seminar.

What is your favorite class to be a tutor for and why?

Freshman laboratory: it’s evolved since my first class in 1990 and is still changing. Class conversations combine seminar’s breadth with a tutorial’s focus. The Harvey, Pascal, and Goethe readings opened up science for me more than anything else I’ve read. Freshman lab also makes a good forum to begin Aristotle, an exciting way to encounter “void” and “place” in the Physics. (His ideas about “place” changed the way I paint “backgrounds”—they’re no longer empty space.) Our practica in the patient watching and drawing of plants and animals bring observing and thinking closer together. In lab, we try to give an account of what we think we know, but we also keep going back to the openness of taking things in. !

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The Gadfly

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On Lecture O

n Thursday, February 14, the SCI convened at 11:45 in the Private Dining Hall to discuss the topic of lectures at the College. We began by reading aloud the section of the Accreditation Report discussing “The Friday Night Lecture and Question Period.” That report compares the role of the lecture at the foundation of the New Program to its current state, and suggests that the lecture has changed radically and perhaps even declined in stature.

Rather than being secondary only to the seminar, the lecture— which is scheduled on Friday evening rather than during the week—”has moved to a kind of circumference of the Program.”

We began our own discussion by asking the question that the report urges the College community to take up: do we really believe the lectures are an integral part of the Program?

The attendees at the meeting admitted that, no, our present situation does not suggest that the lecture is an integral part of the Program. While the report alluded to several reasons why the lecture might have declined in importance since the Program’s founding, the A good lecture, most pressing reason was it was thought, attendance. The attendees is open about its agreed with the suggestion premises and ques- that the lecture allows stutions, is open-end- dents to practice listening, ed, and moves the to consider a topic they may not be familiar with, and, listener towards in the discussion period, to and beyond the exercise a different kind of question period. discussion than that of the classroom. But, given the varying rate of attendance at these lectures, it seems that students do not always take this opportunity, or make the most of it when they do.

While some considered the removal of a policy of required attendance to be a loss, most agreed that it was best to assume that students at the College are adults who can make up their own minds about what was and was not a good use of their time. If students did want to attend lecture on a regular basis, how could they develop “the habit of listening”? In contrast to the music tutorial, no specific instruction was given; rather, it seemed more like the habit of listening in seminar, insofar as one learns by practicing. Of course, paying attention during a two hour seminar may be different in kind than paying attention to a one hour lecture. Both require concentration, but in a lecture, one must learn to discover its shape, and to keep the whole in mind.

What makes for a good lecture? While some suggested that lectures delivered by tutors were generally better than outside lecturers, it was felt that students could learn something regardless of the quality of a lecture. Furthermore, some students endorsed a principle of generosity similar to that which we extend to our classmates and the authors we read. If we felt that a lecture was bad, perhaps we had not put in enough effort to listening attentively and thoughtfully to that lecture, or to understanding why the lecturer might have presented the material that they did. Still, it seemed that lectures were not necessarily “Great,” as the books that we read are.

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A tutor present at the meeting asserted that there was indeed a “Johnnie lecture,” and made a tentative characterization of those lectures which are delivered by tutors. Rather than making a didactic argument which is complete in itself, a “Johnnie” lecture has a dialectical motion. A good lecture, it was thought, is open about its premises and questions, is open-ended, and moves the listener towards and beyond the question period. But first: students must move themselves to lectures.

On Class Preparation O

n Thursday, February 7, the SCI held a public forum on class preparation. What constitutes being prepared for class? How does that preparation affect the dynamics and quality of class discussions? How can students prepare in an effective and meaningful way? Do the different classes require different kinds of preparation?

All agreed that preparation was in service of having a good class, and that both the individual students and the tutor shared some responsibility in ensuring this outcome. Tutors might decide to help by explicitly outlining expectations at the beginning of the year, or by cultivating a classroom dynamic that corresponded to those expectations, but students were also quick to admit their own responsibility in doing that same kind of cultivation.

Students agreed that this responsibility could be exercised by thoughtfully reflecting on and reacting to one’s own preparation, and by frequently discussing the material and the class with the other students and the tutor.

On the individual level, all agreed that it was unacceptable and almost unimaginable that a student might be apathetic about their work at the College. Even if most students are ready to do the work, merely reading every word is not sufficient preparation, but rather, students must also engage actively with the text. At the meeting, students proposed that one might ensure this meaningful engagement by asking oneself questions, trying to answer them, taking notes while reading, and re-reading the text. Several students recommended Mortimer Adler’s How to Read A Book as a book that could help students to begin thinking about reading different kinds of texts. While all agreed that different approaches work for different individuals, there seemed to be much common ground.

Students enthusiastically suggested that they learned best when they worked together, both in and out of the classroom.

Students suggested that working together on translating, presenting mathematics propositions, and thinking about a seminar text could be meaningful and helpful to everyone—and perhaps even more fun that way.

Above all, it seemed important to continue to think and talk about these concerns with classmates, tutors, and the other students at the college. Moreover, almost everyone agreed that part of the beauty of attending this college is the continued struggle of learning how to learn.

— Michael Fogleman, A’13

The Gadfly

05

Against the Amendment: A Polity Constitution?

Virginia Early

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A’13

hen I first read the Polity Constitution, I was not im- “Delegate Council Constitution.” But this would not work: the pressed. It is full of typographical and grammatical Delegate Council derives ultimate authority from the Polity, errors, and, more importantly, fails to set the student govern- despite the muddled language in our current constitution. ment at St. John’s on firm ideological grounding. In some placWhy is it that delegates are unwilling to require the memes it invokes self-government as its intellectual groundwork; bers of the Polity to approve the new constitution? Why is it in others, it states that forming a government is a “privilege” that members of the Polity are not more concerned by this ingiven by the administration. fringement on basic freedoms? If we allow this amendment For better or worse, this imperfect document has served as to pass, giving the Delegate Council authority to unilaterally our Polity constitution for years. Somehow, adopt a new Polity Constitution, we are no the Delegate Council has managed to hand better than the ancient Greek philosopher out money every semester, and the Student who looked so closely at the stars that he The plan is to pass an Committee on Instruction holds extracurricfell down into a well. How can we expect to amendment to the ular seminars and forums that we all enjoy. succeed after St. John’s if we do not make current constitution Yet, in allowing this, we have neglected the a conscious effort to govern ourselves well that will allow for the foundational questions of government. Inwhile we are here?

Delegate Council to stead of understanding the basis of the Polity Let us not miss this opportunity to put singlehandedly—with- into practice what we think about in semiConstitution’s authority, we have acted on its murky provisions. nar. If we are not faithful over this small out Polity approval— This has had mixed results. As a two-term pass a completely new thing, how can we expect to be faithful over former secretary of the Delegate Council, I the big things throughout our lives? Let us constitution. I think saw that when there was guiding passion in think seriously about what our constituthis is a terrible idea. the officers and a constant push applied to tion should be and engage with its essential the system, some momentum and cohesive questions. activity resulted. But it is difficult to deliver to constituents In other words, I call bullshit on the idea that St. John’s stuwhen one’s relation to those constituents is not fully under- dents are apathetic. If we want to read the Great Books and stood—and here the constitution gave us no pointers, only not be hypocrites, let us at least be willing to ask an opening confusion. question about our Polity Constitution. !

Fortunately for the Polity, the Delegate Council is currently in the process of rewriting the constitution. The plan is to pass !"#$%&'#$&($'"#$)*'+,-*'+&($./#(0/#('$+1$&($'"#$2#3#4*'#$ an amendment to the current constitution that will allow for 5&6(-+3$/##'+(4$*4#(0*$'"+1$7#0(#10*89$:#;<6*<8$=>9$*'$ the Delegate Council to singlehandedly—without Polity ap- ??@AB$.C$+($'"#$D<+%*'#$2+(+(4$)&&/E$F&6$-*($,(0$*$G&<HI proval—pass a completely new constitution. +(4$%#<1+&($&J$'"#$(#G$-&(1'+'6'+&($&($'"#$2#3#4*'#$5&6(-+3$ I think this is a terrible idea. :*-#;&&H$K*4#E$LK0*'#1$&--6<$<#463*<38E I expressed my opinions on this subject first at a Polity meeting on this amendment. At my recommendation, language was adopted that would require any new constitution written by the Delegate Council to be passed by the Polity in a simple majority vote after approval by the Delegate Council. At the folJoe Roberts & Davis Poore A’16 lowing meeting, this language was dropped, and it was decidhe Delegate Council is in a state of disarray and aped that it was unnecessary and inexpedient to bring the Polity proaches an impasse. Through no fault of the offiConstitution before the Polity. After all, the delegates already cers, the impending ratification of the constitution and represent their constituents. the allocation of club funds (which are funded by the Yes, that is true. But the Delegate Council is a body ordained Polity) have been consistently stalled by inconsistent atunder the current constitution. How can a body that derives tendance.

Delegate Council members are called upon to its authority from our current constitution vote to overturn represent the Polity and themselves by their involvement this very constitution and instate a new one in its place? In this in DC affairs—this is, in fact, the explicit duty of council act, they strip themselves of their authority and are ineligible members.

It is the responsibility of a good Polity member to pass a new constitution. Instead, with the revoking of an old to stay informed about the action—or inaction—of their constitution, power must return to the people—in this case the Delegates and to act appropriately if they are not being Polity—if the new constitution is to be a constitution in fact as represented adequately.

It is, therefore, the duty of the well as in appearance.

Polity to take action to preserve sufficient representation This may not seem like that big of a deal. But for me, the of their class. The impending impeachment proceeding is problem comes down to one of basic principles. Either the the only action which remains to ensure that this reprePolity Constitution really is a Polity Constitution, or it is not. sentation remains intact. !

You might think that it would solve the problem to make a

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The Gadfly

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Representing Faith and Religion on Campus A Religious Student

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have never felt attacked for being religious on campus, not like I felt attacked by my community. I feel oppressed under the rules and structure of a religious environment like my home. So I fully embraced the freedom a secular and openminded campus afforded me. I have never been called out here for doing the “wrong” thing or told I am misrepresenting myself, as some back home who knew me minimally liked to do.

The liberal nature of religion on campus means I can, for the first time, explore the questions about religion I have harbored most of my life. It lets me interact with all sorts of people, not just people of my faith, and discuss what it means to be religious. This helps me grow into myself and my religion. But there is a flip side.

My community has an idea that wherever I go, I represent my religion. This was something I always accepted but now seems unfair. My religion has a beautiful history and tradition that I, in my search of my own identity, do not do justice. In fact in some ways I have abandoned it to discover who I am.

Yet I still represent it here on campus. To an extent I am the only one who represents my branch of faith on campus, and this frightens me.

My religion is so much more than me, the person, that when I am looked upon as a representative of my faith, I feel afraid.

It is a responsibility I don’t feel I can carry, but it is also more than my own feelings. When I, myself, was attacked on a religious basis, that person who attacked me, whether they knew it or not, was attacking my entire religion and everything I do and do not stand for.

The attack was aimed in a religious fashion against me, but since I bear the brunt of representing my religion, it was also a misrepresentation of my faith. If the attack was just about me, I would have been upset, but I could brush it off. Instead, I became infuriated. Though the attack was petty, I realized my strong emotions stemmed from a culmination of dealing with such petty things over time and also struggling with faith in general on campus.

Everyone who comes here comes with a question. Mine happened to be about my faith and religion. I am not the only one with these questions, but when someone comes to me, a person who apparently has the answers, I am as lost as they are. If they walk away thinking everybody of my faith is like this, they are wrong. I am an anomaly. I am the closest person here with answers to my religion, but I am in no way a proper representative. I am negative and bitter toward it because of my personal experience. But there is so much more to my faith than what I have experienced, and those who are truly faithful are some of the most moral, upright individuals I have ever met. I in some way envy them for the beauty they represent for themselves. When they represent themselves, they represent religion and are happy to do so. I would be a fraud if I were to claim their role. Therefore I won’t.

I am a mockery of my religion, but I am also a person trying to find my place in the world. As an ambassador to my faith, I have failed every task, and I don’t feel comfortable that I am still looked upon as someone of my religious faith. It means I represent something I don’t want to represent on campus any

more. I, a former religious, still faithful, soul searching, student, want to represent myself and nothing else. !

!"#$%&'())*+'!,%-.$/0-1 Tommy Bonn Title/topic?

“Wisdom in the Whirlwind.” I wondered why Job is comforted by the appearance of a God who does not talk about justice, and what Job learns from his revelation.

Why this work/topic?

I chose this topic in part because I’ve always been interested in the problem of evil, and the question of divine justice seemed like a way in. Mostly, though, I’m just fascinated by how strange and paradoxical the book of Job is, and I wanted to spend some time puzzling over it.

Advisor?

Ms. Kronsberg. She was extraordinarily dedicated and helpful.

Writing Period strategy?

I adopted Pascal’s advice for my writing strategy: “And if an artisan were sure to dream every night for twelve hours’ duration that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king, who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was an artisan” (pensee 386). So I made sure to sleep a good 12 hours per night, and I tried to dream about writing the greatest essay ever. All my concentration on dreaming at night was exhausting, so I took a couple threehour naps every day, to boot. Factor in the four hours eating meals in the dining hall, and I only had two hours per day left to play video games and use the bathroom (these can be profitably combined). The day it was due, I forfeited one of my precious naps to bang out 20 pages. I’m still trying to recover from the sleep deficit.

Advice?

Write about what you love. Find ways to enjoy the stress. Bond in the BBC. It’s a wonderful month.

The Gadfly

Ian Tuttle

07

A’14

The Roman Catholic Church is headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally and professionally responsible for enabling a filthy wave of crime. Ratzinger himself may be banal, but his whole career has the stench of evil—a clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel.

— Christopher Hitchens, “The Great Catholic Cover-Up,” Slate.com, March 15, 2010

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gensburg, innocuously entitled, “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections.” However, in the course of 30 minutes, he laid out a forceful critique of the modern concept of reason, arguing that the Protestant Reformers, by rejecting Greek and Medieval philosophy as alien encrustations on the original Biblical word, unwittingly cleaved reason from faith—a process that reached its fullest expression in Kant’s critiques, which declared the necessity of separating thought from faith and denied reason access to reality. That “modern self-limitation of reason,” Benedict maintained, has only bolstered the radical scientific positivism that seeks to narrow all claims of certainty to that which is experimentally verifiable.

But it is not reason alone that is reduced, said the pope:

he article from which the above quote is taken has long since been dismantled, but the “stench” of these and similar charges has stuck. Pope Benedict XVI, whose papacy will come to a voluntary close in two days, is, to many, either the luxuriantly robed chieftain of a backwards pseudo-empire (at best), or (at worst) the Oberkapo of the greatest institutional If science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man evil in human history: 2,000 years of myth-spinning, warhimself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically humongering, and sexual predation. Since the pope’s announceman questions about our origin and destiny, the questions ment, suspicions and rumors of Vatican intrigue have flourraised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the ished on the Internet—The first pope to step down in 600 years: purview of collective reason as defined by ‘science,’ so unWhat is he hiding?—aided by the prospect of the conclave that derstood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the will soon convene to elect Benedict’s successor—an event that subjective. many know only for its role in Dan Brown novels.

But between the silliness of the cloak-and-dagger crowd, An atrophied reason, Benedict observed two years later and the spite of Hitchens and Co., the significance of the mis- in an address at the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, has led sion of Pope Benedict XVI—and the Church he has led for the to precisely the tension now devouring Europe: “on the one past eight years—has been lost. hand, subjective arbitrariness, and on the other, fundamen“We were looking for a ‘good sheptalist fanaticism.” “We are building a dicherd,’” Benedict reportedly quipped after tatorship of relativism,” he famously de“We were not created for his election, “and instead we got a Gerclared in a homily to his fellow cardinals comfort, but for greatman shepherd.” That was evolution for the at the start of the 2005 conclave, “that ness.” man long called “God’s Rottweiler” for his does not recognize anything as definisteadfast defense of Catholic orthodoxy, tive and whose ultimate standard consists - Pope Benedict XVI particularly as Prefect of the Sacred Consolely of one’s own ego and desires.” gregation for the Doctrine of Faith. But “German shepherd” But Benedict’s response was neither isolation nor condemmight have been an apt description: Long before he was elect- nation; it was engagement. His papacy, like that of his predeed pope, Joseph Ratzinger had been leading the rescue opera- cessor, exhibited a fierce desire to challenge not merely the tion to retrieve Europe—and Western civilization in general— blasé dismissal of Christianity in the West, but the philosophfrom the brink of intellectual and moral decay. ical arguments underpinning that rejection. And the pope— Writing at National Review on the day of the pope’s an- whose three encyclicals were affirmingly entitled In Hope We nouncement, Samuel Gregg, Director of Research at the Ac- Were Saved, In Charity and Truth, and God is Love—was never ton Institute and author of The Modern Papacy, noted, “Bene- a Jeremiah in doing so. dict XVI is arguably the most intellectual pope to sit in Peter’s That last fact is the linchpin in counterarguments to the Chair for centuries” (italics original). And given that his pre- commentariat long seeking to slime Rome and the pope, decessor authored 14 encyclicals while pope, delivered 129 and to those who noisily accuse the Catholic Church of only lectures that constitute a groundbreaking work of theology abridging, curtailing, and enslaving: With kindness and hu(Theology of the Body), and was fluent in 11 languages, that is mility, Pope Benedict XVI rejected the narrow view of man no mean feat. The modern papacy admits of no intellectual stridently advanced by an exhausted secular culture and, paslouches. tiently and cogently exposing its flaws, offered in its place a But Benedict was not a “mere” professor elevated to the top vision of the human being as rich with potential, capable of of the Vatican hierarchy. From the throne of Peter, the “me- profound flourishing, and invited to enter into loving commudiocre Bavarian bureaucrat” articulated the intellectual foun- nion with the Logos at the root of all reason. dations for a new restoration: of reason.

“We were not created for comfort, but for greatness,” said About a year and a half after his election to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI. People of all creeds should pray for a new Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Re- pope who will proclaim that truth as boldly as this one has. !

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The Gadfly

08

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Reaching Across St. John’s Street Jacob Kilgore

S

A’16

ituated directly opposite the back campus of the college, across St. John’s Street, there sits a small collection of houses called Bloomsbury Square. The Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis (HACA), whose mission statement is “to ensure safe, decent, and affordable housing; create opportunities for residents selfsufficiency and economic independence; and assure fiscal integrity by all program participants,” established the 51-unit community in 2003. In addition to the houses, HACA also built a modest community center that includes an upstairs classroom and a playground for local children to do homework and play together.

Mr. Leron Michael Fisher, HACA’s Youth Services Manager, contacted Gordon Seltz and me earlier this semester, requesting that we represent Project Politae at a meeting with himself, his supervisor, and some representatives from the civic engagement group at the United States Naval Academy. Out of the hour-and-a-half discussion sprung the idea for an after-school tutoring program at the community center in Bloomsbury Square. While elementary school students already do their homework there, this partnership would afford them the opportunity to develop mentor-like relationships with model students in college. The hope is that, in addition to aiding with homework and study skills, the college students will become role models and friends. So we planned the kick-off date for Tuesday, February 12th, and began recruiting.

While we did not show up in uniform, we did show up in number. 17 Johnnies represented our institution for two hours, serving alongside Naval Academy students (they brought approximately 20 students). The initial event mostly consisted of students from the separate institutions encountering and conversing with one another about what a great program this will be. In the background, there was smaller talk of how nice it was for the two different groups to genuinely interact and work together towards a common goal.

Ultimately, that is what a program like this one represents from the outset. Institutions of higher learning already facilitate diversity and interaction between people from different backgrounds. Therefore, they have enormous potential to leverage their own inherent social capital to bridge gaps in their respective communities.

In this way, a major responsibility of higher education in America is to build across social divides. So, while this program appears to be (and functions well as) tutoring in the foreground, the conversations happening in the background may be more important. Three formerly separate groups of people—the Naval Academy, Bloomsbury Square and St. John’s—now have context with which to relate to one another.

So help us cross St. John’s Street. Tutor on Tuesday afternoons from 4:00-5:30PM. Contact me if interested: jcbkilgore1@gmail.com. !

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