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Winter break is almost here. Already the campus is filled with chilled air running across your face, leaves dancing through the wind, and a mixture of

trees—some barren, others as full as the magnolia. Every night continues to have its own little twist, as if the campus somehow became a realm of Grimm, filled with a fairy tale of some type with a moral at the end of each one. Some stories take longer than others, and some stories barely last a day, but as soon as you finish one, you can’t help but fall right into another.

Only a semester. It’s only been a semester, but so much has already occurred. Socially, academically, everything seems to have escalated to a new degree. Then there is a funny word that comes to mind: re-strictions. You were thrown into a completely new environment, and as you adjust to it, those who are used to the change or who have been here for a while claim you have put too many restrictions upon your-self. But that is simply not the case.

On the first day, the second I walked onto campus, an empty string fell into my hands. I did not see it, nor was I able even to fathom it, but it was there. Everyone received one unknow-ingly, and all of a sudden college life began. It took a while to see the thread: it took the harsh realizations I had when I came here after such an array of experiences. But now I see it. That string is a string for diamonds.

Such beauties are earned, though, and not only by experience, but by what you have learned after the fact. If the knowledge that follows an experience is not ac-knowledged, then a diamond has yet to be earned. Therefore,(each diamond is dif-ferent, from the way it is shaped to its texture. Nor can you rush a diamond in the making. It remains undiscovered how long a diamond takes to form, for some take days , some months, some even a million years. Just like a personal realization. You can’t rush that, either. What may come as a realization to you could take much longer for someone else, or vice versa. Those who own some diamonds may have forgotten that fact and try to rush others to earn them.

Go and earn those diamonds on your own time; don’t feel pushed into trying to make one when you’re already in the process of creating another. !

Welcome back to the pages of the Gadfly. We hope you have

enjoyed this semester’s issues, and we cannot thank you enough for your contributions.

However, we want to o)er a much broader thank you: for your readership and support during our nearly two years as editors of the Gadfly. It has been our privilege to work with talented writers, artists, and photographers, to produce a newspaper that, we hope, provided a forum for the expansion of the conversation that, at St. John’s College, takes place in and out of the classroom. We inherited the notion that the Gadfly was “the voice of the Polity”; we hope

that the many voices that have spoken through our pages have started a new discussion, furthered the dialogue—or, as has often been the case, provided a much needed dose of humor when tensions rose, when bleak midwinter rolled around, or when Dining Hall food had you down.

We Johnnies are used to talking and listening, but, of course, that takes place only after writing and reading. The Gadfly has sought, over its lifetime, to ensure that the reading and writing around here are not restricted to the authors on the Program, but that every member of our community has the opportunity to scribble—to ponder, to

contemplate, to challenge, to provoke. We believe that providing that outlet serves the health and growth of our Polity. It is our hope that other students believe the same, and will ensure that the Gadfly remains a vibrant part of the community for years to come.

We want to o)er a special thanks to Hayden Pendergrass, our layout editor. Without him, this newspaper would have been impossible—or, at least, impossibly ugly. Hayden: Thank you for contributing your talents, your late nights, and your Spotify password.

Best of luck in the new year, Johnnies!

—Nathan Goldman & Ian Tuttle

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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 neces-sary to publish a professional, informa-tive, and thought-provoking newsmaga-zine.As of December 10, 2013, the Gadfly is on hiatus, pending new leadership. No meetings will take place during that time.Articles can continue to be sent to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com. They will be held until the Gadfly returns to a regular printing schedule.

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

Hayden Pendergrass • Layout EditorSasha Welm • Illustrator

Will Brown • Sta)Andrew Kriehn • Sta)Robert Malka • Sta)

Sarah Meggison • Sta)

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Jessica BenyaEric EvansBrian Liu

Tim McClennen

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!"#$"%&'()*+,&-*(.#+/0Jessica Benya A’17

“On the !rst day, the second I walked onto campus, an empty string fell into my hands....That string is a string for dia-monds.

St. John’s has resurrected ancient Athens.Has this noble goal been accomplished through Socrates’

teachings of Virtue? Has our regimen of reading and reflection instilled a love of the Good in us? Has Solon made us work tirelessly toward our own betterment, unflinching in the face of adversity?

No. We have instead allowed a once-democratic Delegate Council to rule over us oligarchically, as though we were its subjects.

I shall return again to the Preamble of this new constitu-tion, as it serves to lay out the ideological foundations for the entire work and is a lens through which to view what the Council thinks itself to be:

“We, the students of St. John’s Col-lege in Annapolis, Maryland, recognize: our right to establish an instrument of governance; and our privilege, vested in us by the Dean, to have an active role in deciding policies and priorities.”

I will not here go into the di!er-ence between right and privilege. That should be, at least in kind, apparent to us all.

If the Council believes that it is the right of the students to establish an in-strument of governance, then why did the Council run this right down? The Council, in passing a new constitution while denying the right of the Polity to establish its government, sent several disturb-ing signals.

First, the Council showed that it does not believe that the Polity Constitution actually constitutes anything. If the Polity does not have to vote on the new constitution—or the amend-ment granting the Council the “authority” to pass it—then ob-viously this constitution is not “establishing an instrument of governance.” So what is happening?

Article I, §3 of the new constitution is entitled “Authority.” It states that “the authority of this constitution is the basis for the conduct of all business in the undergraduate government. The Council is an established, organized body with authority vested in its representatives and o"cials.” This is its whole text.

This Article reveals that the Council thinks itself an entity that exists above any Constitution or consent of the Polity. There is no explicit statement of the source of authority—there is only the intimation that, because the Council “is an established, organized body,” it has authority already by virtue of its existence. Reading the past tense here, we must conclude that no new “instrument of governance “is being established, because it already has been. And if it has already been estab-lished, then this new constitution is nothing more than a for-mality of restructuring powers.

Second, the Council showed that it does not believe that the Polity supersedes the Council in authority and right. For if the authority of the Council comes from the sole fact of its prior existence, and not from its constitution by the Polity when-ever the Polity last voted to exercise its rights to “establish an instrument of governance,” then the Council had no need to allow the Polity to exercise its rights. This is precisely what occurred.

Third, the Council showed that it believes itself to have some sort of eternal and immutable existence, authority, and right above the entire Polity. For since the Delegate Council

remained the same in a visceral sense—no new elections were held to appoint representatives or o"cers under the new Constitution—then it is easy for the Council to fall into the illusion that its power comes from its members them-selves, and not from the play documents that define their purpose as servants of the Polity.

Perhaps this is why there is now an Oath of O"ce. Article III, §1, states : “All delegates and o"cers…shall recite before the Delegate council an oath of o"ce to be determined by the Delegate Coun-cil.” Representatives on the Council are not representatives of the Polity—they are oath-bound to the Council, not to us.

What oath need there be except to serve the Polity in accor-dance with the Polity’s will as expressed in the constitution? And why should it not be sworn before the true holders of power—the Polity?

But this is not possible, as serving the Polity is not the aim of the Council any more. Its aims are to “manage funds…sanc-tion and regulate all student clubs, organizations and activi-ties; create and manage Polity Law; and appoint committees…to further the execution of its duties.”

And the largest failing of this council is found in the Pream-ble: “we hereby institute an undergraduate government to…es-tablish a forum for the free exchange of dialogue,” presumably to “represent student interests.” But the Council has shown that it cannot e!ectively communicate with the Polity, either to inform the governed of what the government is doing, or to receive meaningful feedback from the Polity as a whole.

This is the entire aim of my writing: to push the Council to become truly representative by communicating with the Polity at large. By giving opportunities for consideration and discussion to the Polity at large—that is, by keeping students informed—we can break down the barriers to governance and cognizance that exist and undo the detached tyranny that the Council has become. Let us demand accountability from the Council, starting with the rejection of this constitution, and ending with a Council that truly represents the Polity. !

Zeke Schumacher A’15Detached Tyranny? D.C. Accountability

“ This is the entire aim of my writing: to push the Council to become truly represen-tative by communicating with the Polity at large.... Let us demand account-ability from the Council, starting with the rejection of this constitution, and ending with a Council that truly represents the Polity.

T#$ G%&'() 03

T!" G#$%&'04

The Great Hall is a better space than the BBC computer lab. We can feel it. It allows us to be free, whole, and at peace.

It lets us flourish. Yet we spend a good portion of our lives in spaces like the computer lab, which make us feel dead and wasted inside. It is important to note that this is a feeling, and that we all have it. So say we’re trapped in a world with lots of places like our computer lab: What are our options? There are only two: 1) stoicism, or 2) architecture.

Stoicism takes that feeling we all have, plugs its fingers in its ears, and says, “I’m not listening!” Or, less harshly: “I don’t recognize my feeling about this space as real—who’s to say my feeling is relevant, valid, or actually informative about the way things really are? I say it’s not.” Stoicism is nothing but a giant problem, because not only does it try to label as unreal feelings that everybody throughout all time feels, but also because it cripples the world by denying the existence of problems that need solving.

Stoicism is architecture’s degenerate twin. Architecture says, “I recognize this feeling as real and as valid. Furthermore, we all agree on it (so it is likely objective). Rather than retreat inwards and ‘solve’ the problem by severing my relation with the world, I ac-knowledge that spaces really do have an ef-fect on me, so I will make good spaces.” Only by this architect’s manifesto are we whole. If we are stoics, then we are attempting (and calling virtue) the amputation of the part of ourselves that feels one way or another about a certain space. I see something ugly, so I will gouge out my eyes.

We read a few stoics on the Program, but no architects. This is not because architecture is an inferior practice to stoicism. It is because of an historical accident: Philosophy came up with a new idea that justified the proposition that our feel-ings are invalid, retroactively legitimizing the philosophy of stoicism instead of the philosophy of architecture—that idea is the mechanistic conception of order.

Christopher Alexander, a philosopher-architect most active in the 1970s who believed that modern architecture system-atically falls short, attributes this mechanistic conception of order to Descartes. (I would point another finger at Bacon.) According to Alexander, Descartes’s method was this: “If you want to know how something works, you can find out by pre-tending that it is a machine. You completely isolate the thing you are interested in...and you invent a mechanical model...which obeys certain rules and which will then replicate the behavior of the thing.” The mistake of Descartes’s populariz-ers, then, was to confuse actuality with mechanism, to say that reality actually is mechanical. To what e(ect? Alexander: “The picture of the world as a machine doesn’t have an ‘I’ in it....The inner experience of being a person just isn’t part of this pic-ture. Of course, it is still there...but it isn’t part of the picture we have of how things are.”

But consider, for example, Rivendell from Lord of the Rings. It’s an eccentric example, but that’s okay. Its design is a testa-ment to this proposition: If it makes us flourish as beings, there must be something true about it. This is why we feel that we would flourish if we could be there. This is the opposite of sto-icism, and indirectly a counterpoint to Descartes and Bacon. It feels like a much more beautiful proposition than Descartes’s, and is a more sensible place to start philosophical/scientific inquiry.

But the West didn’t take that route—instead, we say that re-spectable knowledge is what can be mechanically modeled; ev-erything else is either not knowledge (a belief, opinion, prefer-ence, or taste) or not really scholarship (metaphysics, art, etc.). Yet the mechanistic model is not rich enough to account for all of our experience. For example, as Alexander argues, it leaves

artists in the cold. It also cannot tell us what is good. In fact, the two are related: that is why modern architecture seems so arbitrary. As Alexander says, “Architects make di(er-ent idiosyncratic choices because within the mechanistic worldview it is not possible to function mentally without making some pri-vate choices of this kind.”

The mechanistic view cannot furnish us with statements about value because in a mechanistic world the good is not an abso-lute, accessible to rational discourse, but a matter of opinion. The mechanistic world-view limits what kind of statements can be

considered true or false. Alexander says: So far the 20th-century response to the arbitrariness inher-ent in mechanistic thought has been to keep on asserting the dignity and privacy of value: … ‘Science only tells us about facts. It is your natural right to work out your own values. Not only will our scientific worldview not tell you anything about value, it is your democratic obligation to do it for yourself.’ But [this] makes cooperative work, collabo-ration, and social agreement very di)cult in principle. It has a superficial permissiveness which seems to encourage dif-ferent opinions. But what is encouraged, really, is only the essential arbitrariness of ideas rooted in a mechanical view.

This is a giant problem here at the College. To believe that value, that the good, is a matter of personal discretion, deter-mined only by unaccountable, idiosyncratic internal forces, is e(ectively to believe that what we do here is useless. If we believe in “the dignity and privacy of value,” then we believe that philosophy can only be done alone, that its fruits are only for us to eat, and that philosophical discussion cannot lead to knowledge of anything except other people’s opinions.

The poverty of the mechanistic worldview in dealing with

“ ...we say that re-spectable knowl-edge is what can be mechanically modeled.... Yet the mechanistic model is not rich enough to account for all of our experience.

!"#$%&'()*+&'$,--.&/$01$+2&$3"*4/Eric Evans A’14

Continued On Pg. 05

determinations of value banishes the most important ques-tions from serious academia—“What is the good?”, for exam-ple—since they cannot be answered by mechanistic inquiry. Their answers become a private matter, aided only by the arts, which in a mechanistic world have to do only with essentially idiosyncratic regions of ourselves.

Yet the very formulators of the mechanistic worldview—physicists—became its most potent critics. The mechanistic view only gained traction and re-spectability by analogy to the hard sciences, especially physics, but it is precisely there, in quantum mechanics, that such a worldview is overthrown. As it turns out, the basic, underly-ing composition of the world is not like a ma-chine, which can be analyzed into independent parts, but like a living thing, whose parts defy analysis because they are proper to the whole. It may even be that the whole can feel (non-local causality recalls Aristotle’s Prime Mover).

Yet we did not need quantum physicists to tell us that the mechanistic conception of order is inadequate: All we have to do is go into McDowell to re-member that our feeling is real, even though no machine could recognize it. We encounter this truth unimpeachably during sophomore year. We note that no oscilloscope can register or model dynamic qualities, but that these are nevertheless feel-ings that we all have. These feelings are objective, even though they do not submit to mechanical modeling. These feelings are scientific in the sense that one can observe them as universal phenomena that possess such precision and consistency that all of Western music can be built on them, and that we can

even give accounts of what these feelings are and how they act. These feelings are not relative; they are objective as the truth is objective, and that is likely because our feelings ac-tually are informative about the way things truly are, though most of us have trained ourselves to mistrust them.

There are no longer grounds to conceive of the world, or of ourselves, as actually mechanical (though that is not to

say that mechanistic modeling cannot be ap-propriate for certain applications; only that it should never be confused for a faithful de-scription of what is really going on). Hence, there is no reason to deny the validity of our feelings. But where does that leave us? What conception of order is the right one, or at least a better one?

We can look to quantum physicists, who continue the intellectual arc of Bohm and Stapp. Modern quantum physicists know that the world isn’t mechanical, and we can look to see what kinds of things these scientists un-earth in the future. We can look, in the pres-

ent, to Christopher Alexander, who attempted to broaden science to account for feelings and value judgments that the mechanistic model was too impoverished to explain. (Alexan-der lays out a new worldview in his four-volume series The Nature of Order; the earlier quotes came from the first volume, The Phenomenon of Life). But we can also look back, before Descartes and Bacon, to those like Theophrastus and Aristo-tle. After all, there was science before there was a mechanistic worldview, and it may have gotten something truly right that we’ve been getting wrong for 400 years. !

T!" G#$%&' 05

Continued From Pg. 04

“ ...there was sci-ence before there was a mechanis-tic worldview, and it may have gotten some-thing truly right that we’ve been getting wrong for 400 years.

The principle of democratic (please note that this is a small “d,” and that I am not referring to any existent political

party) representation is to elect the person who feels as simi-lar to you as possible about as many issues as possible, and will therefore vote exactly as you would if you had their seat on as many bills as possible. The principle of republican (again, small “r”) representation is to elect the person with the best judgement, who will make the best decisions, even if you would vote otherwise on the individual bills, through your own limited judgement.

Of course, the definition of “best decision” is already an issue. That is: what is meant by “best”? There is the decision that is best (most beneficial) for the voter himself, without re-gard to anyone or anything else. There is the decision that is most beneficial for the nation, even if that decision is less beneficial for the particular individual voter. I am sure that oth-er types of best decision are also possible.

Let us assume that all voters are passionate patriots and therefore want the most benefit to the nation as a whole, not at the expense of harm to themselves (that would be radical patriotism, which is beyond passionate patri-otism), but at the expense of lesser benefit to themselves than the most possible. Therefore, if such a patriot is voting according to republican principles, then he will vote for the candidate who he thinks is most likely to make the de-cision that will most benefit the nation as a whole.

But there is not agreement about what will benefit the na-tion. If two such republican patriots are voting in the same election, and disagree on what constitutes the good of the na-tion, then they might make opposite decisions for the exact same reasons.

Thus, a candidate who wishes to get elected by republican principles must show that his understanding of what is good for the nation is the same as the understanding of the people whom he is trying to convince to vote for him. That is: that he will, when in o!ce, do the same as these people would do, if they had the o!ce instead. That is, the republican principle of choice is the same as the democratic principle of choice, with the added layer of “for the good of the nation as a whole.” Of course, a democratic patriot also wants what is good for the nation as a whole, even at the expense of what is less good for him-

self personally; he just thinks that a plan of his own imagining, or at least choosing, is such a plan, and he wants his representative to im-plement that plan.

Finally, I seem to have erased any distinction between a re-public and a democracy, as long as there is universal su"rage. Certainly, in a representative democracy, a voter who is not a passionate patriot will want what is most good for himself,

even at the expense of a lesser good for the nation as a whole (even if he does not want what is good for himself at the expense of the harm to the nation as a whole) and will elect a candidate who promises to do that when in o!ce. In a representative republic, a similar tepid patriot will vote for the candidate who will do the most benefit to them (the voter), even if they are not telling their representa-tive how to bring that about. But people dis-agree on what is beneficial to themselves, and so will vote for the representative who agrees with them on what is beneficial to individuals, or, to put it another way, will do the same as that voter would, if he got the o!ce instead of the candidate. So, whether we posit passion-

ate patriotism or not passionate patriotism, there is not real di"erence between republican representation and democratic representation, except for honesty. That is, the one admits that he is only doing what his constituents want, while the other pretends to act according to some principle, while he is in fact (in secret) a democrat.

Let us extend the analysis. When an elected representative makes an unpopular decision, that is, a decision di"erent from what the majority of his constituents would do if they held the seat, the result of that decision is an e"ect on the nation that some will call a benefit to the nation and that others will call not beneficial to the nation. Thus, when contemplating such

an unpopular decision, and at-tempting to calculate what ef-

fect it will have, the repre-sentative acts in such

a way as to make the e"ect one which the ma-

jority of his con-stituents will

call beneficial to the nation (if he was

elected by passionate patriots, or beneficial to his constituents if he

was elected by not pas-sionate patriots). !

!"#$%&!'"(&)*+$,#-.,!Tim McClennen A’14

T#$ G%&'()06

“ ...whether we posit passionate patriotism or not passionate pa-triotism, there is no real di!erence between republican representation and democratic repre-sentation, except for honesty.

T!" G#$%&' 07

If despair comes naturally to conservatives, it is in the same way that obesity comes naturally: on the whole, as the re-

sult of too much of a good thing—the good thing being, for the conservative, what Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno called “the tragic sense of life.”

That sense liberals don’t have. Despite a tendency to start from outrage at the world’s myriad injustices, liberals are constitutionally optimistic. History is a grand ascent toward Justice. We’re getting better (“evolving”) all the time. Once the human race sloughs o( the knuckle-draggers, we’ll frolic our way toward Eden hand in hand.

Some of that same reflexive optimism exists on the Right. Jonathan Tobin, senior online editor of Commentary maga-zine, edged toward such triumphalism in his recent web piece, “Rescuing Freedom from Despair,” at Intercollegiate Review:

If American exceptionalism means any-thing at all, it is that belief in individual liberty is embedded in the political DNA of American society. The collectivist and utopian impulse that has ravaged other societies...must always collide with that impulse, and the result of such collisions is an inevitable if not always swift victory for those who stand for more freedom against advocates of government as be-nevolent despot.

I want to stand with Mr. Tobin in this declaration—it has such gusto—but his strokes are too sweeping. Conservatives ought not to despair (it is, as William F. Buckley Jr. said, a mortal sin), but if they do, it stems from their crucial “tragic sense of life,” that con-stitutional hypersensitivity to the precariousness of their po-sition. Conservatives are acutely aware that our gains are got-ten incrementally, when gotten at all, and are always apt to be lost at a blow. We do not see history as an inevitable ascent toward Olympus, but as a struggle to maintain the garden against never-ending sorties of encroaching weeds.

Liberalism struggles and strains toward new achievements. There is always more to be done, progress to be made. But conservatism strives to conserve. We are the custodians of traditions tried and refined by history, and of those things within them that have, over the ages, enlivened and elevated the soul. We are the keepers of passé beliefs and old-fash-ioned ideas, which, though buried by the press of time, we are certain will someday reassert themselves, strange gods come

again.In the years succeeding the fall of Rome, it fell to monks

gathered in scriptoria to preserve the learning that had ac-cumulated over the previous centuries, and by their teach-ing were the works of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Virgil passed on. Even an unsympathetic twentieth-century scholar could say of the monks, “To them, both collectively and indi-vidually, was due the continuity of thought and civilisation of the ancient world with the later Middle Ages and with the modern period.”

Their time and their task are not alien to the modern con-servative. In his landmark volume After Virtue, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre concluded, “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us….We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very

di(erent—St. Benedict.” MacIntyre is not despairing. He is articulating something conservatives already recognize: their monastic vocation to preserve, in Mat-thew Arnold’s phrase, “the best that has been thought and said.” When circum-stances are propitious, perhaps those things can be taught, perhaps those truths refined by the ages can be evangelized; when circumstances are not, the best we can do might be to hunker down for the long night. But amid the former we es-chew talk of “victory,” and amid the latter we do not despair of “defeat,” because we

recall that, in T.S. Eliot’s words,

There is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes be-cause we know that our defeat and dismay may be the pref-ace to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.

The barbarians are always at the gates, and conservatives don’t presume that they will ever be stamped out. Rather, we accept that our task is simply to keep the flame of the eternal things burning no matter how close the hordes come. !

Ian Tuttle A’14

“ “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.... We !ght rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.”

—T.S. Eliot

[An earlier version of this article appeared at the website of Intercollegiate Review. It remains available there, alongside Mr. Tobin’s article, mentioned above.]

Tuesday 12/10Kunai Netball

4 PM

Collegium7 PM

Wednesday 12/11“The Life and Legacy of a Proud Johnnie: Roberto Salinas-Price (A’59)”

Library, Nutt Room3 PM

Basketball Championship7 PM

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For me, the first “tor-pedo fish” of freshman

year is the staggering com-plexity of virtue. What is it?, and how does it mani-fest itself? Indeed, if we try to sum up the entire Program and these Great Books, some may conclude that the whole endeavor is really to discover what vir-tue is. More importantly, many of us came to this college to begin seeking out virtue in the hope that, uncovering even a bit about it, we might live in a better way this life we have been given. I know I did.

In sophomore year (so far), I’ve seen authors and characters continuing to probe the question of vir-tue. Lucretius, Epictetus, and Tacitus all give ac-counts, though sometimes abandoning the moniker of virtue. One of the most pro-vocative accounts is that of Jesus Christ, who tells of

denying yourself and carrying your cross daily (Luke 9:23), claiming that in doing so, your life can be saved and your self preserved. I’ve wondered what kind of virtue he was getting at with that illustration. But in that passage, one thing is clear: there is an exchange involved. There is a cost.

I remember Aristotle telling me what to do to live virtuously, but I do not remem-ber him telling me about any price or sacrifice. I know that for myself I often fail to realize that there is a price involved in doing good in this world. I don’t often under-stand how painful a choice sacrifice can be—and I also often don’t realize how much worth and meaning there there can be in fighting and sacrificing.

It is for this reason that on January 18, the Film Society and I will be hosting a screening of the recent Sundance-winning documentary, Blood Brother. Blood Brother follows the life of Rocky Bratt, a young man with a broken, abusive past, who finds something worth fighting for: he sells all that he has and moves to an AIDS orphanage in India. His decision is di(cult; it entails su)ering and even death —but through it all joy, meaning, and friendship emerged. The film has garnered rave re-views for its powerful, provocative, evocative portrayal of an incredible life.

So, allow me to add another question to the pile of those about virtue: Is there a price to it? If so, what is the price? (And seniors still pondering post-graduation life, perhaps Rocky Bratt can help....) So please, join us—maybe we can find some answers together.

Blood Brother will be screened in FSK Auditorium on January 18, 2014. !

!""#$%&'()"'&**+',$-"Blood Brother: A Film ScreeningBrian Liu A’16