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Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the stu-dent newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and sta! of the An-napolis campus.

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

The Gadfly meets every Sunday at 7 PM in the first lower level of the Barr-Bu-chanan Center.

Articles for the next issue should be submitted by Wednesday, February 6, at 11:59 PM to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com.

Nathan Goldman • Editor-in-ChiefIan Tuttle • Editor-in-Chief

Hayden Pendergrass • Layout EditorReza Djalal • Photographer

Sasha Welm • CartoonistJonathan Barone • Sta!Andrew Kriehn • Sta!Robert Malka • Sta!

Sarah Meggison • Sta! Charles Zug • Sta!

S$*--

C,'$+16%$,+#Alix Boraks

Daniela Lobo DiasMichael FoglemanEsteban Freeman

John Ropoulos

T"# G$%&'(02

You may have noticed that no Gadfly appeared in the Co!ee Shop last Tuesday for your usual lunchtime reading pleasure. After much soul-searching, agonized

reflection, and more than a few pilgrimages to various oracles, the Gadfly sta! has decided to move to a biweekly printing schedule for the second semester. Because of a fluctuating volume of submissions, an increasingly heavy junior year workload, and several still-unwatched episodes of Downton Abbey queued on Netflix, our small editing and layout sta! felt a change was necessary. However, we hope that a biweekly schedule will allow us to accumulate enough material to ensure that every issue is substantive, and we hope the increase in content will compensate for the longer period between issues.

To facilitate our new schedule, we ask that all submissions be sent to us (sjca.gad-fly@gmail.com) by the Wednesday between issues. We will make sure to feature prominently in each printed issue the next deadline, for your assistance. Articles for our next issue should be submitted to the above address by 11:59 PM on Wednesday, February 6.

At the end of the semester, we will evaluate whether this change has been benefi-cial, and we hope to have your input as we make that determination. Please do not hesitate to contact us with comments, concerns, or questions.

We hope that this shift does not precipitate too much garment-rending. We ask for your patience as we make this transition, but we are confident that the Gadfly will continue to interest, illumine, and amuse—and maybe even, on occasion, manage a bit of fruitful stinging.

Best, Nathan Goldman & Ian Tuttle Gadfly Editors, 2012-2013

In our previous issue, Mr. Steve Weinstein’s (A’75) tribute to

tutor David Stephenson recalled the passing of Mr. Stephenson’s wife, Helen. Alas, that mention escaped the notice of our fact-checkers: Mrs. Stephenson is, in fact, well and very much alive. We apologize to Mrs. Stephenson, to her family, and to our readers for this mortifying mistake.

!"##$%&'"()*"&'%$+On January 11, 2013, Aaron Swartz, developer of RSS 1.0 (“Really Simple

Syndication”), e!ective co-founder of Reddit, crusader against SOPA and PIPA, hanged himself. He was twenty-six.

Within us all resides a great tension—to be comfortable, or to be in pain? To believe and seek pleasure, or to inquire and find truth? To do tremendous things and experience at times tremendous failure, or to reside in that gray twilight which knows neither victory nor defeat? This tension is never resolved. Most of the time the temptation to live a predictable and satisfying life is overwhelm-ing. To pursue the cause about which one is most passionate is paradoxically much harder. For what if one fails? Does one even have the constitution to live a life focused on one thing at the cost of everything else?

Most of us do not have such resilience, instead opting for the safe, long life in which we become unknowns. Aaron Swartz chose the path less traveled. He was committed to the freedom of the internet and of information. He pursued

Continued On Pg. 04

Robert Malka A’15!"#$%#&'"$()$*&+(,$-.&+'/

T!" G#$%&' 03

What is your current job?I work at the Potter Violin Company in Bethesda, Maryland, where I repair and restore violins and cellos there for the rent-al and repair departments. We have a collection of about 2800 rental instruments in circulation.

Did you attend other schools after St. John’s?No. I had planned to go to the Chicago School of Violin Mak-ing, but during the summer before the first year would have begun, I got in touch with a violin maker, Daniel O. Smith, who lived in my home town. What started o( as a couple of lessons with carving tools soon grew into an o(er to make a violin under his tutelage. I ended up working a whole year with my teacher. We both felt that after spending enough time together to learn some repair and setup technique, I was ready to ven-ture into the job market. I supplemented my apprenticeship by attending workshops with the Violin Society of America. As it turned out, I was able to find a good job without going to a violinmaking school.

Did you know what you wanted to do while at St. John’s?I always knew that I wanted to devote my life to the violin—it’s in my blood (I’m the fourth violin maker in my family). The decision I had to make was whether to be a player or a maker. It was at St. John’s that I had the chance to make that decision.

What didn’t St. John’s prepare you for in your field?St. John’s didn’t prepare me for the specialized field I chose, but no undergraduate programs o(er that kind of instruction. One of the main reasons I chose to apply to St. John’s was the idea that I could simply focus on education for its own sake, rather than as a means to some other end.

How did you feel you compared, in graduate school or early jobs, to people from di!erent educational backgrounds, particularly those with field-related degrees?Because I was able to find a job after one year, I didn’t have to bear the expense of a three to four year violin making pro-gram. I was also able to begin work at a younger age than my colleagues. They all studied at top violin making schools, so I don’t think I could say I was better prepared for the job. I was just able to start working earlier.

Can you describe a general track someone from St. John’s might take to get into a career in this field?

Typically, someone interested in making violins would apply to one of the violin making schools. Prior woodworking expe-rience is helpful but not required. The schools often receive o(ers from shops searching for workmen. The other option is to find a maker willing to take the time to teach the craft.

Any general advice, especially for an upperclassman who is interested in this field but is not quite sure what to do?Violin making is a small field and requires a great amount of dedication. In order to get a sense of what it’s like to work on violins, one might try the various summer workshops available.

How did you market yourself with a St. John’s degree?I have always tried to make the point that the St. John’s edu-cation encourages creative thinking and helps its students to approach di)cult situations systematically and confidently.

How would you characterize your field as a whole? Is it ac-cessible to newcomers or di"cult to enter? Stable or fluid? My field is somewhat di)cult to enter. There is a firmly estab-lished tradition in the schools. On the other hand, because it has been around for hundreds of years, the violin business is fairly stable.

What was your senior essay topic?I wrote on the world of chivalry in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. I was particularly interested in the author’s choice of Theseus as the perfect knight and ruler, the relationship between the opposing knights, and the di)culty in combining the life of the warrior with the struggle to woo a lady.

What is your favorite book on the Program?Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. It’s di)cult to choose a favorite among such great authors.

Do you find that you lead a philosophical life? Yes. Although working on violins is a craft, I’ve found that it is often quite easy to find philosophical meaning in its theory, artistry, and application. Because there’s a kind of mystery surrounding the design and tone of the bowed string family that even the most sophisticated scientific machinery and re-search can’t fully explain, makers are constantly compelled to seek their own personal understanding of what the violin is and what it means to other people as both a heavily-used tool and a work of art. !

!"#$%&'()%*$%+,(-.//!"#$%&'()*+",-Despite graduating only two years ago, Rich Max-ham has already found a footing in an exclusive craft. He recounts his journey from the halls of St. John’s to the shop where he now builds and re-stores violins.

On Thursday, January 25th, the SCI held a public forum to discuss freshman lab, specifically the first semester: biol-

ogy. Why do we begin with biology? How does the class relate to the junior and senior Labs? Are the readings unified?

Most noted that students are in a state of wonder for the first weeks of freshman lab. As they turn to more varied read-ings, they are forced to reconsider opinions or facts they had learned before about a subject which is extremely familiar to us. Moreover, they are given an opportunity to become better students, and are initiated into the work we do at St. John’s College. Many students claimed that the more di!cult and technical readings enabled their classes to learn to work to-gether in conversation.

However, some wondered if a combination of small tweaks, changes to readings, and expanded practica might unify the class. It was suggested that certain technical problems might be avoided by adding a glossary of terms for more di!cult read-ings like Driesch. When some students objected that making a glossary for oneself provided an excellent opportunity to learn to read dense, technical material, one tutor suggested that the Driesch readings were quite long, especially considering the schedule’s allotted time, and implied that a glossary would not be overly obtrusive.

Some students noted that they received a glossary from their tutors, even though one wasn’t intentionally included in the manual. On a broader level, several uno!cial changes were being considered: o!cially expanding the time spent with biology at the end of the semester, returning to a practi-cum with the hand after Driesch, and supplementing Virchow with Portmann.

Students praised several readings which are often unof-ficially included in the biology sequence. Almost all were in favor of Jonas, despite its modernity, and suggested adding certain readings to the o!cial sequence. The Goethe read-ings on plants were also quite popular, and one tutor noted that Goethe works well in combination with the Theophrastus reading at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, it might be helpful to return periodically, both inside and outside of the classroom, to observing magnolia trees or other living beings. One student reported that their class had done a reading on the cheetah’s motion, and paired this reading with a practi-cum examining the students’ bodies when running. Of course, each additional reading or practicum requires the subtraction of another.

More generally, students raised the question of whether it was best to do a reading or a practicum first. Some reported that if they did a reading first, it felt as if they were merely verifying the reading’s conclusions when they turned to the practicum. Similar problems had been reported at a previ-ous meeting on the junior year lab sequence. It was not clear, however, if something would be lost by doing the practicum first, or if there were certain readings where an inverted order would be detrimental to the students.

A tentative answer was o"ered to the question of unity, with respect to both freshman lab and the lab program more gen-erally. The segment of freshman lab devoted to biology was divided into two segments: observing full living beings, and observing developing creatures. The question of quantifica-tion taken up in second semester should remind students of living beings—could living beings really be quantified? And of course, the biology segment in senior lab should serve to re-awaken questions about life, parts and wholes, and complex-ity. Whether or not specific alterations could bring out this thematic unity so early in the Program was unclear. !

T#$ G%&'()04

!"#$%!&'#(!$)*++,!!##$*($,(%!-&)!,*(.Examining Freshman LabMichael Fogleman A’13

this work relentlessly at the cost of his health, his friend-ships, and eventually his own life.

One imagines that such ambition would come at odds with suicide. Perhaps it did, but he crossed his first ma-jor enemy too early: an overzealous prosecution. Deter-mined to keep information free, Swartz released millions of documents from an academic archive called JSTOR, book cataloguing data from the Library of Congress, and electronic federal court records from the system, PAC-ER. How many millions of documents? About twenty-five million. Almost all of these documents were paid by taxes; in his mind, that was enough to make them free. He downloaded them with alarming speed from a closet at MIT with a program he wrote. It was uploaded before anyone could stop him.

Naturally, the Department of Justice didn’t like his tampering with PACER. (MIT and JSTOR settled.) For his crime, Swartz was threatened with thirty-five years in prison and a one million dollar fine. Precedent is a $100 fine and thirty days in jail. (Much of the problem stems from a lack of a legal distinction between mali-cious and non-malicious hacking, a problem in ongoing resolution.)

This weighed on Swartz for two years, moreso re-cently. His depression compounded the case’s impact. He couldn’t imagine a world in which he spent his entire life not living out his ideals, not disrupting the system in which we live. Thirty-five years is a long time. And so, on one especially heavy day, he saw the light no more.

And that is a great shame. Swartz fought for his ideals and passions with conviction and selflessness. He was righteous, skirting the life of comfort for the life he be-lieved in, and he lived it more than many of us will ever live our long lives, short as his was.

Is he a role model for us to follow? Perhaps, and per-haps not. But we need more heroes in the world, people who value an idea more than their own lives. He will be sorely missed. !

Continued From Pg. 02

T!" G#$%&' 05

As the blistering wind sweeps over the barren quad, and we burrow in our beds beneath an abundance of blankets,

our minds drift to the halcyon days of fall, when the athletic field was lit with the dying rays of an October sun. What bet-ter way to relive the glory of those warmer days than with a fall sports round-up?

The margin between teams coming into the winter season is fairly slim. We’ve grasped glimpses of each team’s basketball prowess through the Holiday Tournament, but the team to win the overall championship is by no means decided. The Waves have solidified their place atop the mountain after a strong showing in the HIT, beating the Spartans in a winner-take-all match, 45-38. That victory gave them a seven-point lead over the second-place Guard-ians. The Druids, coming o( a strong Reasonball season, hold onto third place by a slim margin. Meanwhile, the Hustlers, with their formidable basketball and handball teams, are eye-ing to take third place from the Druids, while the Spartans sit in last place.

But enough about the present! Let’s talk about the past. Here’s a breakdown of the fall sports seasons:

Ultimate: The season was, once again, dominated by the Guardians. Not to be denied another championship, the Guardians crushed the runner-up Greenwaves in all three of their meetings, climaxing in a 15-9 shellacking that brought their winning streak to 19 straight games. Led by captain Dan-iel “Hellfish” Popov and Daniel “The Other Daniel” Gilles, the Guardians once again capitalized on quick turnovers, stellar handling, and superior receiver mismatches to claim gold once again. The Druids, on the other hand, adopted a di(erent style, preferring not to rely on any handlers in particular, but rather trying to open the field through strings of connected passes. Though they started slow, they emerged as a solid powerhouse toward the end of the season with a strong final victory over the Hustlers. The Hustlers and Spartans, though they played valiantly, often su(ered from lack of turnout, which ultimate-ly led to their downfall. Shout-outs go to Graham “Flash” Gor-don for his ridiculous defense, sophomore Charles Pisaruk for his four foot vertical and killer pulls, and Eric Shlifer, for pull-ing most of the weight in getting his team to second place.

Reasonball: After the Hustlers skipped out on two of their games, the double round robin season was switched to a single round robin and a single elimination tourney. The Greenwaves

conquered the round robin handily, winning all their matches with the dual strong arms of Sebastian Abella and newcomer Nikos Frank. The Guardians, riding largely on team play and crazy overtime victories, managed to squeak by the Druids for second place, while the Spartans finished fourth with a great individual play from freshman Chris Zeller. The Druids, not

to be outdone, cultivated some razzle-dazzle, rip-roaring, sometimes-pure-ly-outlandish trick plays which, com-bined with some great individual runs from Dylan Tyler, produced a tourna-ment victory and a sentence with many commas. The Reasonbowl and title match was a hard fought battle in in-clement weather, all coming down to hypertime. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Reasonball season without some sort of controversy, and the Druids ended

up on the positive end of the referee’s whistle, ending a hard-fought game with the title. A shout out goes to Drew “Wild Card” Menzer for being probably the best individual runner and also most likely player to be on the ground at the end of a play.

Soccer: This year’s soccer season was marked by two of the best soccer teams St. John’s has seen in quite some time in the Hustlers and Greenwaves. The Greenwaves, helped by alumni strikers and sweepers, rode the breakers churned up by freshman Noe “Papi” Jimenez, dominating the first half of the season. The Tsunami eventually finished with an unde-feated season, but their performance slipped toward the end of the season, drawing in their last three games. The Hustlers, captained by Captain Dhidhat, overcame their first defeat to storm back and dominate their opponents, outscoring them by a ratio of at least 6:1. The championship game was a physical battle, but ultimately the Men in Red emerged victorious, win-ning 1-0 o( a header from senior Manish Thapa. The Guard-

ians made their mark on the turf, with no small thanks to Santa Fe transfer Charlie Martin, but barely fell short to the Hustlers and had to settle for third. The Spartans, though they fought valiantly, were no match for the Brothers Cox, who pulled the Druids to a solid fourth. Indi-vidual accolades certainly go to Henry Hirsch, who was finally able to overcome his curse and score some pretty spectacular goals, and Joe Hamd, for clos-ing in on just about every long

ball booted into his defensive third. And of course, I would be most remiss to not mention Joe Roberts for his penalty save in the championship to preserve the title for his team.

Well, that about wraps it all up. See you on the court! !

Jonathan Barone A’13An Account of Autumnal Athletics

!"#$"%&'#%$!"##$%&'#( !!!)&"*+&$( "#,")+*( $$-)(./#"( $%01&".&$( &'

“The margin between teams coming into the winter season is fairly slim. We’ve grasped glimpses of each team’s basket-ball prowess through the Holi-day Tournament, but the team to win the overall champion-ship is by no means decided.

Since coming to college, my poor indie soul has been starved for live music. I grew up in North Carolina, two hours away

from the college towns around the prominent music scene of Chapel Hill, where during high school I got to see bands like Sebadoh, The National, She & Him, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, and Jenny Lewis. Then I thought going to college in Annapolis would be pretty sweet, as I could keep going to shows, given the proximity to D.C. and Baltimore. But alas, lack of a vehicle and incompetency in regards to public transportation has largely prevented that.

So when a friend, whose music taste I trust and enjoy, told me that a band called The Evens was going to be playing at Ka-Chunk Records last December, I was quite excited. I hadn’t heard of the band before, and the only thing I’d learned be-forehand was that the was a husband-wife team (which is cool), and that the guy, Ian MacKaye, is a veteran of the DC hardcore scene as a member of Minor Threat and Fugazi (I have minimal experience with both). So it got to be early that Saturday night, I didn’t have anything else to do, and I always enjoy finding new music, so I made the (very short) pilgrimage down Maryland Ave. to the re-cord store with a small group of fellow musically-inclined Johnnies to see the show.

The show cost me the pal-try sum of $5, and the crowd was small. (I mean, it’s not a huge store or anything. But I love love love small venues—they’re just a better experi-ence for concerts). When 7 PM hit, The Evens assembled in the back of the room, and we sat on the floor to watch. I can’t really give you a play-by-play of the show itself or the songs they performed, since I had never listened to them before and didn’t know what to expect. The songs I do remember, though, that you should really check out, are “King of Kings,” “Wanted Criminals,” and “All These Governors.” There was also this hi-larious point during the first song where the band’s son, in the front row, was playing with his toy airplanes or whatever and said something about them and made his dad crack up in the middle of the song.

For a two-piece band, The Evens have a rather full sound. MacKaye plays guitar, chord-heavy with that “wall of sound” feel I love. His wife, Amy Farina, is the drummer; I’m kind of a sucker for female drummers (probably because I have been a maniacally devoted fan of the White Stripes since age 14), and that in itself was pretty cool, but she’s also just a fantastic drummer. Their sound was incredibly solid and heavy, espe-cially for a band only composed of guitar and drums. MacKaye sang most of the songs, but he and Farina traded singing roles every now and then.

T!" G#$%&'06

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m no Miss Manners. If you asked me which of several forks was the appropriate one to use

for salad, my response would be to start hyperventilating and stab you in the neck—I simply don’t know anything about eti-quette, and I’d consider a study of etiquette to be a massive waste of time that could potentially be spent picking at scabs or chewing on fingernails. However, there is one issue of eti-quette that’s simple common courtesy, and since I’ve seen it a thousand times at St. John’s, I’m afraid I have no choice but to address it. The issue I’m referring to is:

When you’re in a hallway, and there’s one other person in the hallway, and you are about to pass each other, for God’s sake, nod.

Is this a stupid ritual? Hey, maybe. But that doesn’t change the fact that when you nod at somebody and they don’t nod back, you feel pain. There is no other action on that small a scale that can cause so much heartbreak and mortification. If somebody socks me in the jaw out of nowhere, I have to as-sume that there’s some reason for it, however obscure it may be in the moment. If somebody bumps me while passing me on the stairs or lets a door shut on me, any number of motives might be behind the rudeness. However, if someone catches my eye and still fails to respond to my personable nod with one of their own, it means only one thing: they are loathsome, possibly sociopathic, and certainly unworthy of others’ com-panionship.

What does the passing nod really mean? I’ve considered and analyzed it, and what I’ve decided on is that it implies a mutual recognition of souls. You know that quote that gets reblogged on the really spiritual section of Tumblr, “I honor the place in you in which the entire Universe dwells”? That’s what you can do for another person in a hallway, with just a simple nod! You can tell that person that while you may not know them or care about them in any way, you understand that the two of you are in this hallway together, and you don’t intend to let the moment pass without acknowledging its sig-nificance. If dogs never pass other dogs on the street without a quick tail-wag and some courtesy sni(ng, why should we?

Generally, my opinion of manners is pretty low. They’re nothing but aesthetics, wrapped up in a cloak of moral self-importance. Sure, I chew with my mouth closed and try to ob-serve the rules of cutlery to the best of my ability (I don’t know why the only legitimate rules of etiquette I can ever remember are related to food), but I do it because it’s pretty, not because it’s civilized. Still, this is one rule that appeals to civility as much as aesthetics. It’s easy, it’s instant, and it doesn’t take up any more time than simply passing someone unacknowledged. Go ahead. Nod at strangers in the hallway. Be a neighbor. !

“So when a friend, whose music taste I trust and enjoy, told me that a band called The Evens was going to be playing at Ka-Chunk Records, I was quite excited.

!"##$"%&'()*+,((,Alix Boraks A’14

Continued On Pg. 10

In Concert: Beating the Odds with !e Evens Sarah Meggison A’15

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Meta-physics, writes that “only those arts are called liberal or free

which are concerned with knowledge; those which are con-cerned with utilitarian ends that are attained through activity, however, are called servile.” From the outset, an important distinction is made between the liberal arts, those that serve the free man to discover knowledge per se, and the servile arts, those that serve man to make a living and which have a purely practical end. Thus, a liberal arts education, as it is concerned with truth for its own sake, must acknowledge two important na-tures of man: 1) that man, being a rational crea-ture, seeks out knowledge, and 2) that man is a personal being, which must be respected if he is to be brought into contact with truth, i.e., only a free man whose human dignity is recognized will be capable, through a liberal arts education, of discovery.

In the pursuit of knowledge, a liberal arts education is meant to impart the intellectual skills and habits of mind which will aid the student in realizing that profound form of freedom which occurs while on the road to grasping the totality of real-ity, and not merely one’s subjective notions of reality. As free-dom and human dignity are natural to every human being, a liberal arts education, if it is to be truly liberating, must also recognize in every student a realm of privacy. Modern sen-sibilities often times hawk at the notion of privacy as an old-fashioned ideal, but it may help us to understand its need and meaning by reflecting on the words of Richard M. Weaver: “It is a truth of the greatest importance that our original ideas and our intuitions of value form in certain recesses of the being which must be preserved if these processes are to take place.”

There is a special kind of self-mastery which cannot be im-posed from without, but must grow from within. It is in our private world, where we can reflect deeply on the liberal arts and develop our individual faculties, abilities, and skills.

However, just as in every good home you find that central meeting place, the dining room, so in the house of education we must come to share a meal with our fellow man and engage in conversation. Why did Socrates reject Crito’s o!er to go into exile to Thessaly? For the same reason he rejected go-ing to the civilized city of Thebes: he would have no one to engage in dialectic. Callicles did not wish to examine his life, for he was unvirtuous, and the barbarian king was not “free” to know what he did not know, for he lacked culture. And so, even while living in the not-so-perfect city of Athens, Socrates

built his cities in speech, so that, in a way, we may free our-selves from them.

Aristotle constantly a"rmed that we do not make ourselves as human beings, but that we make ourselves good or bad hu-man beings. As there is a proper pleasure attached to every human activity, and “education is concerned with the whole man,” as John Henry Newman repeatedly said, it is clear that,

because we are free to become bad or evil, we must picture the path towards freedom as one consisting of acquiring virtues and avoiding vices. This is why focusing on fulfilling one’s passions without a proper ordering of the soul sadly produces an illiberally educated human being who has divorced the liberal arts from being concerned with knowledge, and negated reason’s higher power and authority over man.

If the study of the liberal arts, as Josef Pieper understood it, is truly “necessary not only for the good of the individual who so devotes himself, but for the good of human society,” then what are the implications for a society whose citizens do not have order of principle in their souls? It is not far-fetched to see the ill e!ects an illiberal education may have in organiz-ing a society and the types of morals they choose to embody in their laws if their guidepost is simply fulfillment of desires. In Plato’s eighth book of the Republic, the description of the democratic man who lacks the very order of soul and mind to be called “free” is an example of what a liberally educated man is not.

My fellow Johnnies, the liberal arts are studied for the ad-vancement of truth, so that through our wrestling with the great thinkers of old, we may strengthen our intellectual skills and habits of mind, and through the practice of acquiring vir-tue, we may truly become free to choose the lives we are meant to lead. Let us draw from the well of classical liberal arts, so that we may be reminded of the liberating power of entering into conversation with Plato and his interlocutors. It is from our study of the liberal arts that we may find ourselves rec-ognizing reason’s higher power and authority over man and illuminating our path towards self-mastery of our passions. It is a path that takes us to our natural state, where, through our reason, we order our passions and walk upon that higher plane which reveals what man was intended to be. So let us not squander the years we have at St. John’s; let us do justice to the wisest that have come before, and those that will follow, as we journey towards freedom through self-mastery. !

Esteban Freeman GI

!"#$%&'()%*+(,-./&*"01(&1-(*2$(3&*2(*0(4%$$-05

“There is a special kind of self-mas-tery which cannot be imposed from without, but must grow from within.

T#$ G%&'() 07

How can learning the liberal arts be liberating? Esteban Freeman, from the Graduate Institute, tries to answer that question by looking at some of the College’s favorite teachers —Plato, Aristotle, and St. !omas Aquinas—as well as other notable non-Program authors.

T!" G#$%&'08

The sculptures around campus. Don't worry, they are not permanent.

Actually, they are a part of the newest exhibit at the Mitchell Art Gallery, “David Hayes: A Sculptor of Space and Nature,” which opened January 1 and runs through February 17, al-though the outdoor sculptures will remain on campus through the end of May.

At first I found it di(cult to be accustomed to these ab-stract, steel strangers on my everyday paths. But taking an-other look, I realized the artwork accomplished quite a feat. The Connecticut artist David Hayes absorbs our overwhelm-ingly sensuous world—full of complex sights, smells, tastes, sounds, touch—and distills and simplifies them to shapes and solid colors.

It's okay to not know what these sculptures are “supposed to be.” In a way, that's the point: to not know. Rather, we should simply expe-rience these shapes. We should let our minds be unchained from our daily task of figuring out, analyzing, understand-ing. Instead, we should take some time to leisurely meditate on how our senses are not overwhelmed, due to the clear cut steel and unambiguous colors. Let our minds simply experience the pleasure, or displeasure, in the shapes, the col-ors, the textures. We can enjoy our train of thought as we seamlessly discover a wing at that jagged corner or a face at that smooth curve. Look away, and look back again to discover new figures, or maybe none at all. Walking around it, the each di)erent perspectives creates a new visual experience. Notice how the sculptures change in the context of day or night, in sunlight or rain. We don't need to wrestle the art to the ground until it gives up and tells us its “point.”

But if you prefer less abstract work, come by the Mitchell Gallery for my favorite piece by Hayes: Woman with Sheep. This five and a half feet tall statue represents a woman walk-ing under the weight of a sheep draped on her neck and shoul-ders. Despite being made from forged steel with straight and simple lines, the woman looks like flesh and blood. The subtle curves and shadows, the forwarding-leaning posture, and a gentle crease on her dress showing a leg forward, make this unadorned statue feel alive with a full and heavy momentum forward. The delicate face and petite body has the appealing quality of an intense yet fragile endurance and power. Put sim-ply, it is understated and stunning.

In the Mitchell Gallery you will also find Hayes' thought process for his steel structures: beginning by painting in gouache the shapes and combinations that inspire him, Hayes then translate these drafts into small steel maquettes. These are the rough drafts to larger pieces, such as the four outside.

You will be able to see the relationships in color and shape that Hayes explores, both in the positive an negative spaces.

So I welcome you to take the opportunity while David Hayes' artwork is on campus (1/11-2/17) and allow yourself into a unusual experience from our daily Johnnie routine. !

Future Events at the Mitchell Gallery:January 29Lecture. David M. Hayes, the sculptor's son, will lecture on his father's work in the “David Hayes” exhibition at 5:30 p.m.

January 30Art Express. Art Educator Lucinda Edinberg will give a lunch-time gallery talk on the “David Hayes” exhibition from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m.

February 5 Seminar. St. John’s tutor David Townsend and artist Ebby Malmgren will lead a seminar related to the ex-hibition at 7 p.m. Space is limited. Call 410-626-2556 to register.

February 7Book Club. Join members of the Mitch-ell Gallery Book Club for a docent tour of the “David Hayes” exhibition fol-lowed by a discussion of The Architec-

ture of Happiness by Alain de Botton from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Registration is required. Contact Kathy Dulisse at 410-626-2530.

February 10Sunday Afternoon Tour. Art Educator Lucinda Edinberg will lead a tour of the “David Hayes” exhibition at 3 p.m.

Daniela Lobo Dias A’13

Days in liquid waveswashed up on shore

spread like the snowflakesand the cracking seashells

and the grains of sand;my home is here

among the foaming surfbubbling up and settling

back to the center of the earth.

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“It’s okay to not know what these sculptures are “sup-posed to be.” In a way, that’s the point: to not know. Rather, we should simply experience these shapes. We should let our minds be unchained from our daily task of !guring out, analyzing, understanding.

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The most facile and vulgar manner of approaching music is to treat it as something that can be “solved” or “explained

away.” Most people hear music as a display of sublimated non-sense, as an entertaining spectacle which possesses the mys-terious ability of being able to evoke an “emotional response” from its listeners (“emotional” as something purportedly in-comprehensible, unpredictable, and illogical). When heard like this, music is nothing more than a magic show or a riddle in tones: it has value solely because it entertains, and it ceases to entertain (and thereby loses value) when it is “solved” or “explained” through interpretation. For this reason, most peo-ple cringe at the idea of hermeneutically examining the struc-tures of a musical composition.

To those sorts of people, music most exoterically manifests itself; the listener who approaches music as something that can be “solved” is just as hopeless as the reader who approach-es poetry as something that contains a “basic message” that is hidden in stylized speech. It goes without saying that this approach is simply not in step with the composer’s or poet’s original intentions.

And yet it is on account of this approach that so called “pro-grammatic” music lends itself quite readily to vulgar taste; because it can be viewed as an accompaniment to a program, one can (supposedly) follow the music’s development as one might follow a story. Approached in this way, programmatic music yields its “basic message” to listeners without having to be interpreted as music. It can be “understood” without losing its ability to entertain.

The real idiocy of such an approach to programmatic music is this: the music is treated as a conduit between two contrived spheres—the sphere of “comprehendible things” (the pro-gram) and the sphere of “emotional entertainment” (the mu-sic itself ). The listener imagines himself as the beholder of an allegory, inasmuch as the music exists in a symbolic relation-ship with a comprehendible story. He justifies his approach in this fashion: “I could never begin to interpret the music itself, and why would I want to? I am fully capable of comprehend-ing the basic meaning of the story, and now that story exists here before me, with music in its service. I grasp its meaning, and am stirred and entertained nonetheless!”

However, when programmatic music is approached in the correct manner, these two contrived spheres disappear, be-cause the music is no longer in the service of a listener who desires to be entertained through mystification. The music itself is no longer a mysterious means toward “emotional en-tertainment”; rather, it is a form of utterance which, through its form and development, raises imminently grave and un-answerable questions. And it happens that these questions, raised by music, are of the same nature as those raised by po-etry and philosophy: the questions that pertain to man’s Being as a Being, to his Dasein.

A superb illustration of everything hitherto discussed is the adequately named “tone-poem” or Tondichtung of Strauss. This truly singular part of Strauss’s oeuvre is often regarded as “programmatic” (and for that matter, I have often heard of Strauss referred to as a “programmatic” composer), to the chagrin of Strauss’s true adherents. The fact is that the accom-panying stories or “programs” of these compositions do abso-

lutely nothing to aid in their interpretation.Death and Transfiguration for large orchestra is an example

of what I am referring to. Supposedly, the program of this work describes the dying minutes of a hero’s life. The compo-sition begins with a low rumble on the timpani, and gradually becomes an entire musical development, with multiple epi-sodes and a recapitulation. The programmatic account of this composition begins with the timpani rumble; supposedly, this is the heartbeat of the dying man, and each successive devel-opment is one of his memories. Needless to say, this account is worthless.

A correct interpretation of the work is an examination of the development of motifs. For example, this descending motif (which is first presented by the flute in the exposition) can be viewed as an essential germ for the development of the entire work:

Here, much later, it is developed on the first and second vio-lins,

And here, in the coda, it is inverted and played tutti:

Ultimately, these developments give rise to hermeneutical questions, such as: “How are these motifs being manifested toward me, as I hear them in their separate instances? What developments have they undergone and brought about? What is the nature of the impetus that is driving this development, such that a motif can actually motivate an entire development? Why am I perceiving this as a motivation?”

As I have stated before, this approach of motivic interpreta-tion is akin to the approach we take with poetry: for example, Achilles’ anger, Aeneas as a man-at-arms, Socrates’s down-ward movement at the beginning of the Republic.

Ultimately, a listener’s ability to consider the implications of a motif within the context of the development of an entire composition speaks to that listener’s ability to behold what a composer is really up to, i.e., to contemplate one’s own contem-plation by asking questions like: “How and why is it that I can hear this work and behold these developments as I do?” More importantly, it means banishing the idea that music can ever be “solved,” “explained,” or reduced to a “basic message.” !

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Charles Zug A’15

The recent shooting sprees at a Cen-tury movie theater in Aurora and at

Sandy Hook Elementary have frightened many Americans. The issue, as it should, has become politicized, and we have all been witness to the various rhetoric on gun control for some time now, from “we do not need assault rifles for hunting,” to “high capacity magazines are for killing a large number of people,” etc. Leaving over-zealous bear hunters and zombie apocalypse fanatics out of this, let us ask the question: What would our founding fathers say about the right to bear arms?

Some of us may remember our lessons from the American History class we took in high school, or more likely, will remem-ber the Simpsons episode on the subject:

Lisa: The second amendment is just a remnant from revolutionary periods; it has no real meaning today.Homer: You couldn’t be more wrong, Lisa. If I didn’t have this gun, the King of England could just come in here and start pushing you around. Do you want that, well, do ya?Our American forefathers decided

to go to war because hefty taxes (min-iscule by today’s standards) were im-posed without proper representation by that pushy King of England. After the colonists defeated the British and ratified a new Constitution, a Bill of Rights was de-manded. The second from the top of the list of those rights was the right to be armed, not only to hunt, but also to protect the inalien-able right to defend oneself against all forms of oppression. Please do not take my word for it. George Washington said:

A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have su!cient arms and am-munition to maintain a status of in-dependence from any who might at-tempt to abuse them, which would

include their own government.

Now, we can all agree America has a problem. With a population of about 315,000,000, the U.S.A had about 8,7751 gun murders in 2010, a shocking fig-ure. On the other hand, gun deaths do not come close to other causes of death, such as heart disease (597,6892), cancer (574,743), and diabetes (69,071). Still, shooting sprees at elementary schools and movie theaters really hit home, and the frightened American public cries out for safety. Some Americans head to their gun stores; others demand legisla-tion to limit the availability of weapons, because they believe access to guns is the problem. Regarding the latter, the words of Benjamin Franklin come to mind: “Those who would give up essen-tial liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Gun activists and anti-gun activists can all agree that a person with a crimi-nal history or mental problems should not be able to own a gun. They can also agree that guns should be registered with the various levels of government in order to prevent crimes. The propo-sition that teachers be armed frightens

some parents; the idea that the person sitting next to you in a movie theater has a concealed weapon frightens many. But is a little fear better than the loss of lib-erty?

Taking away Amer-icans’ guns means taking away Ameri-cans’ liberty. George Mason said, “To dis-arm the people is the most e"ectual way to enslave them.” I

will take a stand and echo the words of Thomas Je"erson: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” Either we admit to our proud forefathers that their progeny would rather live with an ill sense of security, or we “gird our loins” and actualize the tenacity that is required to be a true American. !

John Ropoulos A’13

“Taking away Americans’ guns means taking away Americans’ liber-ty. George Mason said, “To disarm the people is the most e!ectual way to enslave them.” I will take a stand and echo the words of Thomas Je!erson: “I prefer dan-gerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

T#$ G%&'()10

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

“Love one another as I have loved you.”It does not matter from where or to whosimply that you doyou love, and be loved.That’s all there is.

! Anonymous!"#$#%&'

Most of the reason I love going to shows is that connection you feel with the band. It’s one thing to lis-ten to music and love it; it’s another to convene with a bunch of people you don’t know who love it just as much as you do as the band stands on stage and gives the music you love to you more directly. Then again, it’s slightly di"erent when you don’t know the band at all, as was the case with me at this Evens show, but not really; I might not have been able to sing along with songs I already loved, but I’ve found new territory to explore. In this sort of case, I didn’t go to the show be-cause I loved a specific band, but be-cause I love music itself. And in that love, there’s always something new to discover. It’s exciting, to dive into the unknown and find something new that adds to that love. !

Continued From Pg. 06

Ian Tuttle A’14

Until the improbable rise of Elizabeth Warren, he was America’s most famous fake Native American—and, like

Massachusetts’ newest senator, a “diversity hire” at the Uni-versity of Colorado at Boulder.

There he taught “ethnic studies” for nearly two decades, from 1990 to 2007, turning his podium into a bully pulpit for an assortment of vogue leftwing causes.

But it was when he referred to the “technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire”—that is, the several thousand workers in the World Trade Center—as “little Eichmanns” who deserved death on September 11 (for their participation in “power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated…into the starved and rotting of flesh of infants” abroad) that he called down upon himself the op-probrium of an entire nation and demonstrated—if any doubt remained—that some of the stupidest people around have ad-vanced degrees.

In a more just world, Ward Churchill would have been tossed from the academy for sheer silliness. In 21st-century America, it took a faculty committee, the university’s Board of Regents, and eventually the Colorado Supreme Court. In September 2012, the state’s highest court finally decided that the Regents were within their rights to fire the professor unanimously found guilty by a committee of colleagues of “multiple acts of plagiarism, fabrication, and falsifica-tion.” And to think: the faculty committee only wanted him suspended.

In December, Churchill appealed his case to the Supreme Court.

Call him Lie-a-watha. With more than a dozen books and several articles to his name, not to mention a cushy tenured job secured after just one year as an associate professor (he somehow skipped the usual six-year probationary period), Ward Churchill managed to spend years on the dole of a ma-jor public university, where, drawing on a background in radi-cal politics and a knack for tall tales (mainly about himself ), he became a leading “Native American” voice in academia.

When, the day after his termination, Churchill filed suit in state court against his former employer, he began what must be, to-date, the century’s most specious claim of academic “repression.” But with titles like Marxist and Native Ameri-can to his name, he rallied a colorful—if predictable—group of supporters: Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, two other professors whose fame outstrips their accomplishments, declared their support for Churchill, as did the ACLU, unre-pentant Weather Underground terrorist-cum-academic Bill Ayers, and convicted cop-killer and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal (who issued not one but two statements of support). Their testimonials are available at the website of the “Ward Churchill Solidarity Network.”

But if Churchill managed to turn his case into a cri de coeur for professors’ First Amendment rights, hoisting “academic freedom” like an oriflamme, it was only a matter of time until he was forced into retreat. Even in Churchill’s pseudo-disci-

pline, professors are expected to write their own politically correct hokum—but he could not manage even that standard.

Yet it should have come as little surprise. Besides the never-proved claims of Creek and Cherokee ancestry, in the résumé submitted to the University of Colorado in 1980 Churchill claimed that, while in Vietnam, he “wrote and edited the bat-talion newsletter and wrote news releases.” Seven years later, he told the Denver Post that he had attended paratrooper school, been part of an elite Long-Range Reconnaissance Pa-trol in Vietnam, and run “point” in a combat unit. U.S. Army records support none of these claims. Churchill was trained as a film projectionist and light truck driver.

But his radicalism is no yarn. In the same 1987 interview, Churchill claimed he hung around the o!ces of Chicago’s Students for a Democratic Society, befriended Black Pan-thers, and taught members of the Weather Underground how to make bombs. True or not, he was a star guest at the 2009 trial of Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, two members of the Black Liberation Army accused of killing San Francisco Police Sergeant John Young in 1971 and suspected of involve-

ment in several other terror attacks on police in the 1970s.

And yet, despite hugs from Lynne Stewart (convicted of aiding terrorism) and face-time in the documentary When They Came for Ward Churchill—as if CU Boulder’s then-president Hank Brown came in brown shirt and jackboots—Churchill’s legal road is likely at an end, and he is quickly fading from memory.

The essay in which his inflammatory 9/11 remarks appeared, “‘Some People Push Back’: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” is now available at sites like Kersplebedeb.com, which advertises itself as “a one-person project devoted to producing and distributing radical books and pamphlets and agit prop [sic] materials”; it hosts links to “anti-police” and “queer revolt” material. Churchill is rapidly becoming a footnote in monographs of September 11 analysis.

But, unfortunately, Churchill is only one example of the faux-intellectualism that has come to define the university dominated by niche “studies”: ethnic studies, black stud-ies, LGBTQ studies. You name it, there’s an aggrieved Ph.D. teaching it—or at least pointing out the systematic persecu-tion perpetrated by white/male/heterosexual/colonial/capi-talistic norms.

Still, if it is no longer possible to boot a professor who spends class time justifying the Oklahoma City bombing and whose published work likens the American treatment of Native Americans to the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, Ward Churchill’s moment in the national limelight was a much-needed reminder that, in too many places, the professors are o" the reservation. !

“Churchill is only one ex-ample of the faux-intellec-tualism that has come to de!ne the university domi-nated by niche “studies”...You name it, there’s an ag-grieved Ph.D. teaching it.

T#$ G%&'() 11

This article originally appeared at The College Fix. It is available at http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/12367.

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Michael Fogleman A’13

On Thursday, January 17th, the SCI convened to discuss the senior essay. The various features of the senior essay—picking an advisor, a month-long writing

period, and the public nature of both the essay and the oral—make it distinct from any other annual essay. But what about the essay itself? Does the length requirement of twenty to forty pages make its structure distinct? If so, are seniors prepared to write and think through such a large and deep paper?

The participants quickly agreed that the scope and tenor of topics was generally distinct from the other annual essays. Students aim for a deep consideration of a question or topic that they are particularly interested in, one that often draws from multiple texts. This essay is often the culmination of their work at St. John’s, or a stepping stone to post-graduation interests. Thus, seniors felt that they could not merely add length to the paper to make an acceptable senior essay. On the other hand, the assignment is similar to previous annual essays, and if students treat the process too di(erently, they might harm their projects. Some felt that the cultural distinction given to the senior essay has made junior essays better than senior es-says.

Still, no one was in favor of fundamentally altering the time-honored tradition of senior essays. Students appreciated the chance to consider a single text, topic, or question of their choosing for an extended period of time, and felt that this was the most ambitious intellectual project at the college. Students felt that this opportunity presented a unique challenge in the Program. Students are expected to spend their time wisely—although accord-ing to one tutor, it was not clear that this is the case, and the time might be better spent by institut-ing seminars at the beginning of the month.

All agreed that students must also maturely pick a book to write about. Certain o(-Program choic-es in recent years have gener-ated much discussion about what books are appropriate to write about. Given that the senior essay is not merely for the individual, but also for the community, the participants in the conversation agreed that large, obscure books, or books that are potentially less “Great” than the o)cial Program books are not ideal for senior essay topics. According to a tutor at the meeting, the Instruction Committee’s conven-tional policy is that if students truly want to write about a book, and that they can find an advisor, then their choice should generally be permitted. In Santa Fe, the Dean reviews all essays and presents potentially objectionable topic choices to the Instruction Committee.

One topic of conversation was a potential change, or even decline, over time in the senior essay’s quality and focus. Students cited how distinct early prize essays seem; there, topics seem much broader, more creative, and even more ambitious. While no one wanted to go back to a time where one could hand in a dialogue, some were concerned that there might be presently be a detrimental conformity with respect to the structure of papers and questions. It was unclear whether this phenomenon ex-ists, what its cause is, and how the polity can re-invigorate a sense of craftsmanship. Overall, all endorsed the Polity’s high standards for the senior essay. !

“Still, no one was in favor of funda-mentally altering the time-honored tradition of senior essays. Students appreciated the chance to consider a single text, topic, or question of their choosing for an extended pe-riod of time, and felt that this was the most ambitious intellectual project at the college. Students felt that this opportunity presented a unique challenge in the Program.

!"#$%!&'#(!$)*++,!!##$*($,(%!-&)!,*(.A Look at Senior Essay Writing