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T!" G#$%&'02

We present to you the final issue of the

year. It’s hard to believe it’s already terminado. The Gadfly will be taking a seista for the summer. In the meantime, you can mull over ideas for a column, practice your photography and sketching skills, and start listing your advice for los niños who will be joining us next year. Everyone, enjoy your summer. ¡Hasta luego, Juanitos! !

( — The New & Improved Tripulación ARC Gadfly

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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.The next Gadfly submissions will be due May 2, at 11:59 PM. Next meeting Sun-day, April 27.Articles can continue to be sent to sjca.gadfly@gmail.com.

Nathan GoldmanIan Tuttle

Hayden Pendergrass

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Jessica BenyaCaleb BernardPatrick KellyDanny Kraft

Owen MorganJustin ShucherHugh Verrier

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I'4,51'/ S$*--Sebastian Barajas

Noe JimenezAllison Tretina

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!"#$%&&'%$(")*++,-Owen Morgan A’17

Answers On Pg.8

What is your current job?Food Security and Agriculture Coordinator, Mennonite Cen-tral Committee, Rwanda. I run a cooperative project with five Rwandan NGO’s promoting zero-tillage and soil conserva-tion among members of thirty rural credit unions throughout Rwanda. I also have an advisory role for a no-till project in Burundi and hope to begin some work in DR Congo soon.

Did you attend other schools after St. John’s?I have a master’s in International Agriculture and Rural De-velopment from Cornell University.

Did you know what you wanted to do while attending St. John’s?No.

Did St. John’s help prepare you for work in the field?St. John’s instilled in me an appreciation for learning together and instilled a blurred distinction between teaching and being taught, both of which have allowed me to cultivate a degree of much-needed humility in working with farmers. Good ex-tension work is very much a process of learning together and asking questions, and those are skills I learned at St. John’s.

What didn’t St. John’s prepare you for?Everything else.

Any specific disadvantages to a St. John’s background?Unfamiliarity with conventional scientific writing and lack of research skills were certainly a disadvantage.

How did you feel you compared, in graduate school or ear-ly jobs, to people from di!erent educational backgrounds, particularly those with field-related degrees?I entered graduate school after serving in the Peace Corps. I was in a program in which virtually everyone had been out of school and working for several years, so it was more an atmo-sphere of shared professional experience than a really com-petitive academic environment. I did feel a little unprepared for some of the chemistry and biology, but I was able to learn them with some concerted e!ort.

Can you describe a general track someone from St. John’s might take to get into a career in this field?For agriculture generally, it’s a hard to say. Personally, I joined the Peace Corps having no idea what I was getting into. Be-cause I had worked on farms as a summer job in high school and college, I was assigned to work in agriculture and agro-

forestry in rural Senegal. I had a great time, learned a lot, and ended up staying a third year.

Any general advice, especially for an upperclassman who is interested in this field but is not quite sure what to do?Spend some time, either during the summer or after gradua-tion, getting any kind of farming experience you can. Definite-ly consider Peace Corps, or some comparable service experi-ence, if you’re interested in the international side of things.

How did you market yourself with a St. John’s degree?To the extent that I marketed myself, it was largely to lay tenu-ous claim to abilities in subjects such as French and science. But, in all seriousness, if you’re able to come up with some quick quip that communicates the basic idea of the program, it will make you seem interesting and well-rounded.

How would you characterize your field as a whole? Is it accessible to newcomers or di"cult to enter? Stable or fluid? Etc.The intersection of agricultural, environmental, and economi-cal issues is a fascinating area to work in. Agricultural exten-sion is a great file with a lot of really wonderful people in it. It’s a field that puts as much, if not more, weight on real-world experience as on academic-theoretical pursuits. It is a field in which ideas are constantly evolving. There’s a fair amount of deep, even bitter, disagreement on a lot of very basic concepts. Practices that were universally admired a few decades ago are often now thoughts to be actively harmful. This might sound grim and, in many ways, it is, but it leads to a lot of very intense self-doubt among practitioners, and a burning desire recon-cile theoretical formulations with often very messy realities of a farmer’s life. Everything is questionable. Some degree of failure is inevitable. It’s a field that demands a lot of humility and lots of honesty.

What was your senior essay topic?Personal and world-historical consciousness in Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

What is your favorite book on the Program?Descartes’ Le Monde.

Do you find that you lead a philosophical life?Day-to-day, most of my time is spent doing things that need to be done. Philosophy certainly has been a guided me into the field that I am in. Time to reflect, however, is not something I often have. !

!"##$%&'("#%)'*+,!"#$%&'()*+",-Former Peace Corps volunteer, Matthew Gates, has used his skills of questioning and farming to face agriculture issues in Rwanda. In this pro!le, he discusses his road from St. John’s undergrad to Food Security and Agricul-ture Coordinator.

T"# G$%&'( 03

For the third consecutive year, student-run recycling has featured prominently at Croquet—even making it into the of-ficial “branding,” with wristbands proudly proclaiming that Croquet has “gone green.” I am proud of our environmental engagement, which to me is an unequivocal indication of the pride we Johnnies take in our community.

On the verge (some would say brink) of graduation, I have had the opportunity to reflect on the role of environmental activ-ism in our community over the past four years. These thoughts snowballed into the following general observations. I felt it would be appropriate to share them here, in part because they touch on the question of what it means to be a “Johnnie”—a con-nection I will address later.

First, it strikes me that concern for the environment is fun-damentally conservative. By “conservative,” I do not refer to the neo-conservative—that mixed ideological breed who la-ments the loss of traditional values while simultaneously ad-vocating the unrestrained development of our lands and wa-ters. This position, admittedly par for the course in modern conservative thought, strikes me as untenable.

Instead, I am referring to the traditional conservative—ex-emplified by such thinkers Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century, and Russell Kirk and Michael Oakeshott in the twen-tieth. The last of these summarized his political disposition in a wonderful paragraph:

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the un known, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the ac-tual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the su!cient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. Familiar relation-ships and loyalties will be preferred to the allure of more profit-able attachments; to acquire and to enlarge will be less impor-tant than to keep, to cultivate and to enjoy; the grief of loss will be more acute than the excitement of novelty or promise. It is to be equal to one’s own fortune, to live at the level of one’s own means, to be content with the want of greater perfection which belongs alike to oneself and one’s circumstances.

Here Oakeshott recognizes that, while necessary, progress should be incremental. This conclusion is born from the ob-servation that change always causes loss, but only sometimes brings gain. In this sense environmentalists are preeminently conservative—they are acutely aware that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

How imprudent, then, to develop an entire forest at once, or to jettison industrial waste into our lakes! To both Oakeshott and the environmentalist, such grand, sweeping initiatives are often ‘Sicilian Expeditions’—hubristic over-reaches with un-intended terrible consequences. Much better to proceed with caution—to prefer “familiar relationships and loyalties” to “the allure of more profitable attachments”—to be, in a word, conservative.

Above, I imagined a straw-conservative who advocates un-

fettered development while also promoting traditional values. I called his position untenable because it is, as far as I can tell, based on the premise that it is possible to preserve our values while also obliterating the land that forms our individual and cultural identity.

Such a premise is misguided. Oakeshott recognized that human society is formed by the particulars. You cannot separate our values from our history, our culture, our traditions, our familial and religious a!li-ations, or our land. I am Canadian, and the rivers and forests of rural Quebec have in-formed my own growth and identity. We all have such a place, or places; a land that we have become a part of, and that has become

a part of us. As creatures with material needs, we are inevita-bly tied to the earth that sustains us. Environmentalism is an expression of that age-old conservative fear: the fear of losing our identity.

Imagine if The New Program shut down tomorrow. In a sense, every alumnus would be orphaned. Some part of their identity would lose its roots. Whether they appreciated their experience here or not, this education is formative, and one cannot renounce the e"ects of such formation. They are part of you for life. Innocence, once lost, can never be regained.

So it goes with land, water, and air. We cannot renounce the e"ect a particular place has on our identity or values. But we

“ Environmentalism is an expression of that age-old conservative fear: the fear of losing our identity.

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

Continued On Pg. 8

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T#$ G%&'()04

Dearest Polity,

Hello. If you do not know me (and you are likely in the majority if you don’t) my name is Justin Shacher, and I’m an overdramatic and remarkably neurotic freshman. If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to do three things for you: Tell you the abbreviated tale of this past year, sing the praises of the Class of 2014, and publicly o!er my services to said class, and the rest of the polity as well. And, while doing these things, I will try to do one thing for myself: not sound too idiotic.

This time last year I was lying in my bed, sobbing uncontrollably, watch-ing Tangled for the 17th time, wondering, and wondering, and wonder-ing, “When will my life begin?” My gap year was coming to an end, and my friends would soon be

coming home. They would talk of newfound friends and par-ties, classes and grades, midterms and finals, professors and extracurricular activities. And I would talk about my count-less mental breakdowns (and Tangled). I had wasted my gap year, which I had taken for no other reason than trying to re-cover from having wasted four years of high school, and not wanting to waste away my college experience.

I thought my life would begin when I stepped foot on this campus. I thought I would be confident. I thought I would be studious. I thought someone with a name like Eugene Fit-zherbert would ride across the red bricks on a white stallion with a big personality and sing a duet with me while floating lanterns crowded the campus. Okay, not really. But I did ex-pect some sort of romance.

What happened when I got on campus? I moved into my dorm, and alternated between vomiting and lying down in my new bed, because I was so unbelievably nervous. So I made no friends that day, and though I did make polite small talk with my roommate and his parents, I otherwise abandoned all hope of success here. I made no further friends until a par-ticularly spunky woman, another freshman, introduced her-self, and then proceeded to drag me around to talk to other people (Thank you, Ms. Cawood). And as a result of such a lucky break, I decided by the end of the first semester, all of my dreams would come true. And at the end of that first se-mester, where was I? Lying in my bed, sobbing uncontrolla-bly, watching Tangled for the 26th time, wondering, etc.

I think you can guess how successful I’ve been this year. Why bother telling you this? Well, because if you haven’t already, you should go watch Tangled. More importantly though, I’ve become an expert on feeling unsatisfied. I know all too well what it is like to have regrets pile on you at the end of some part of your life you hold dear. And the 2013-2014

school year is one such period. And for some of you it was your last year at St. John’s.

Congratulations, Class of 2014. You’ve overcome innumer-able essays. You were enabled. You tackled many of the most confusing, dense, and mysterious books the western world has to o!er. You sang, probably sang pretty well, and you sang a lot. You made friends. You kept some of them around. You gave at least one, and probably many more, neurotic and over-dramatic freshman something to aspire to. And whether you like it or realize it, you’re all super adorable.

With praises sung and story told, I now publicly o!er you my services, Dearest Polity. If, while reflecting on your time here, you find yourself as I often have, with regrets, ideas never brought to fruition, or any wisdom you would like to share with others, then I’d love to hear it. Because as peers, and as humans, you have consistently proven yourselves and your ideas worthy of being shared with the world. And if I can help in any way to record, or share, or work to bring to fruition any ideas you delightful folk may have, then regard-less of my own personal shortcomings, then I will leave St. John’s (hopefully three years from now), having in no way failed myself or others. And hopefully, you’ll feel the same.

Warmest regards and best wishes,Justin Shacher(408)-644-4261justin.shacher@gmail.com

“With praises sung and story told, I now publicly o!er you my services, Dearest Polity.

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Justin Shacher A’17

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Hey, Polity, I’ve missed you! It seems like only yesterday that I was still a student and my biggest concerns were for the next seminar reading or the Guardians’ margin of victory. But times have changed. I’m writing now to share with you a se-cret: despite what our experiences, national laws, and rhetoric tell us, compulsory public educa-tion in this country does not ex-ist. Sure, we require kids to show up at a building called “school,” but that doesn’t mean education takes place. I don’t say this in any kind of liberal or artsy sense. Our school systems don’t o!er a “real education” directed towards truth or beauty or whatever. The reality is much more dire than that. In low-income public schools across the country, students do not re-ceive even the most necessary skills for higher education, employment, or the chance to craft a meaningful life.

I’m a middle school teacher in beautiful Tulsa, OK. I work in a highly impoverished school. The average 7th grader comes to us reading at the 4th grade level. My job is to work with our lowest readers. My students are intelligent, hard-working and have supportive families. But they read on average at the 2nd grade level. I have 8th graders who do not know the alphabet and could not sound out most of the words in this article.

This is a tragic reality. The failure of our schools traps whole American communities in brutal lives they cannot control, lives of poverty and helplessness. I heard the statistics before I took this job. Only 47% of black males in this country gradu-ate high school, though in many districts that number is much lower. By the end of 4th grade, students in low-income schools are at least 2 years behind their high-income counterparts. Entire neighborhoods, thousands of families, and millions of children’s futures are at stake in the failure of our educational system.

There are a myriad of reasons for this injustice. Writing about them would take up more pages than the Gadfly can spare. Poverty, the failure of integration, systemic and insti-tutionalized racism, low payed teachers, and the terrible bu-reaucracy of public institutions, all have combined and con-spired to rob too many children in this country of a future. The chief culprit that makes me angriest and turns this issue from a tragedy into a crime is the terrible apathy most middle and upper class Americans feel towards the issue.

So many times I’ve mentioned the name of my school to a Tulsan, only to have them respond with a kind of half-laugh, and something to the e!ect of: “Yikes! That’s a rough school, isn’t it? Wowzers, I’m glad my kids don’t go there!” They say this as if that’s just the way the world works, as if some kids get good schools and others don’t. We might as well just laugh at it

and shake our heads and then stop caring. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can change this status quo. I’m not asking you to become a teacher in a high poverty school. Although if you’re up for it, that would be wonderful. I’m only asking you, at the very least, to open your heart and mind to the situations

of those in these kind of schools, those you might otherwise sco! at.

The families who send their kids to failing schools want and deserve a good education as much as any-one else. They just don’t have the resources to guarantee it like their whiter or wealthier peers do. We need to lose the mindset that con-siders these schools simply “rough,” simply “failing.” When we write these schools o!, we accept the sta-tus quo. We accept the fact that by virtue of zip code or household in-

come or skin color, children living in the same cities as us do not have the opportunity to be adequately educated.

I know the status quo can change because I have seen it. I have students who’ve grown over a year in reading in this semester alone. I don’t say this to show you that I’m a great or transformational teacher—trust me, I’m not—but to illustrate that kids with tremendous disadvantages can show tremen-dous growth. Sometimes all they need is someone who loves them and is obsessed with reading.

But I’m only one teacher in a vast school and a vast system. Please consider taking time to volunteer at your local, disad-vantaged public schools. Even a couple hours a week can have an unspeakable impact in the life of a child. During my time, it’s true, I’ve seen children commit extraordinary acts of dis-respect, cruelty, and violence. Most days I feel defeated and depressed by their terrible power. But I’ve also seen moments of breathtaking compassion, perseverance, and love. I’ve seen students come to peace with themselves and with their expe-riences in ways that only can be described as actions of grace. I’ve seen illiterate teenagers read fluently for the first time in their lives. The instant when they realize that they can read, learn, and possibly have a future is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

In your thinking and talking, I urge you to keep in mind that all children can learn and deserve the opportunity to do so. If you want ideas for how you can use your strengths and re-sources to be a part of this movement, email me. Kids’ lives hang in the balance. On my toughest days when I feel ready to give up, I remind myself what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said: “In a democratic society, not all are guilty, but all are responsible.” If our generation takes responsibility for the failure of our nation’s impoverished schools, we can end the opportunity gap that exists in this country.

Ok, I’ll get o! my soapbox now. Go Guardians! !

Daniel Kraft A’13

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For that Beauty everlasting Do I write with ink and pen. From worlds far it chose to land On this earth of mortal men.

Came sweet graces of the Lord, Brought by they who never die, Round the circle of the World And circumference of the sky.

Echoed by angels of the darkness, From the mighty, ancient deep, To the arc of highest heaven By the star-gods in my sleep.

Rejoice we all in Her the one! Possessed of cosmic light. She whose fairness we do praise And sing for such a sight. With the hautbois and the lyre, Strings, harpsichords, and lutes, No harmony we fear to make. Praise her with fagottos, and flutes!

All the choirs of high heaven Clangorously resound, Praising her and God almighty, Through the galaxy around.

Exalt her we do with the drums, The trumpets and the fife. Organs blast for her and He, Salvations of my life.

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

In my last freshman laboratory, my tutor brought the class out back to the magnolia trees in the courtyard by the fishbowl so we could end the year just as we started. The class scattered to look at the magnolia trees and there was something di(erent—something that wasn’t there before. I stood next to a faithful friend of mine and we remi-nisced about the year. Then I remem-bered that the last time we were here, the courtyard was filled with anxiety of a sort. I met this same friend when we were simply trying to figure out the col-lege, and had a case of the New-Johnnie Jitters. It’s progressed so much beyond that. Now everyone in the class knows each other, some better than others. Over the year, like Aristotle’s Nicoma-chean Ethics starts to explain in Book Beta, we have either habituated our-selves to be courageous or cowardly.

Looking at the magnolias for the first time, I hadn’t imagined how much would change: how some people who nearly didn’t speak at all would be-come a prominent voice in the class, how a dear pair of friends would stick together the whole year while others split, how logic from a seminar read-

ing would be used against someone for a real life issue. And may we not forget those who we barely came to know, who would leave early in the year or announce their plans to leave once the school year had ended.

From a freshman point of view, cer-tainly this is skewed. I can’t seem to fathom it changing anymore. Though I couldn’t fathom anything that has happened during the year either, and that was why the courtyard changed. The magnolia trees changed. Every-one since the beginning of the year has changed, no matter if they want to ad-mit it or not. The magnolia trees have grown. We have grown enough to see maybe a few new things about our-selves that would prove to be prosper-ous as we continue. The magnolia trees stand tall, just how one would to defend a point in seminar. Finally, at least to us, the magnolia trees have settled in the spot they currently stand. Watching orals and being active in extra semi-nars, it seems that the anxiety escapes even more. Though we can relax now, we have no idea how it will change in the next few years —seemingly, for the better. "

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can lose the lands that have become a part of us, and the e(ects of such a loss are devastating and dehumanizing. Environ-mentalism is the recognition that we must preserve our mountains, our deserts, our Arctic, and our waterways if we hope to preserve ourselves. To give up these places to immoderate exploitation is to surrender who we are – as a culture, a people, or a nation.

Why articulate these thoughts in the Gadfly? Because the polity of St. John’s College is a conservative community. I hear the pitchforks rattling, so let me quickly defend myself. There are few poli-ties with such profound antipathy toward change. Think of our response to Siegelvi-sion, or the intense self-reflection we en-gage in regularly through organs such as the SCI—with little concrete reform ensu-ing. Change happens slowly here. This is

because we appreciate that what we have is very good, and we are consequently sen-sitive to what we may lose through aggres-sive advancement.

Yet our antipathy to change has not naturally extended to our physical envi-ronment. Because of the nature of our ex-perience here, it is not surprising that we identify far more with our polity and the Program than we do with College Creek. But I am glad to see that our culture is slowly changing in this respect, and glad to have seen the recycling e(orts at Cro-quet grow each year—a testament, I think, to a growing sense that the pursuit of Vir-tue and the cultivation of our polis require more than abstract notions of the Good. These undertakings demand that we es-chew cavalier enterprise and reject our in-ner Icarus in favor of keeping, cultivating, protecting, and enjoying. !

Continued From Pg. 8

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