A Letter to the Dean
Written: Feb 25 '02 (Updated Feb 26 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: On paper, it's the best liberal arts education in the country.
Cons: Count the number of times I use the word "bong."
The Bottom Line: This is the college for you, is it? You might change your mind after you read my review and visit.
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| greenboat's Full Review: Saint John's College (NM) |
Dean Levine,
I am a discontented undergraduate in search of true education, where my own thinking and reading and discussions outside the classroom will complement the learning inside the classroom—and that kind of active education, I am discovering, is sadly rare among colleges and universities across the United States today.
Now, when I came across St. John's College, I dropped to my knees and thanked the heavens (whether they heard me or not is another question), because I thought I had finally found the prime place to learn: the reading of classics, the conversing of ideas, the historical approach to mathematics and science. I was thrilled, for it appeared that I would not have to take the stripped down, strapped up education-in-a-box that the University of X feeds to its students like dry crackers. Reading St. John’s brochure, I saw a community striving toward the highest virtues of man through music, art, science, philosophy, math; a community committed to pursuing Truth—and this, I said, is the place for me!
A visit was in order. I packed an overnight bag and drove down from Suburbington to visit St. John's Santa Fe. I was eager to see all of the things I mentioned above, and more. But when I arrived, I was disappointed. Instead of the thriving community of passionate intellectuals, I found a bunch of drug-licking zombies.
The tour guide picked a smoked joint off the ground, sniffed it (to see if it was still fresh), then lit it up as we walked. In the freshman seminar, the comments were fluffy and erratic, like popcorn from a renegade popcorn popper; nothing came of the discussion, and I could see many of the students hadn't even read the material.
I came back to my dorm disillusioned. Patience, thought I. I may have come to a hasty conclusion about the place, and there were still plenty of hours left in the visit. In my dorm I met a friendly junior who was scribbling Newtonian equations on one of the mini-chalkboards in the hallway. I told him I was disappointed and asked him about the College. "You really want to know what it's like for a freshman?" he said, "Go visit the freshman dorms. It's a Thursday night, there's always something going on down there now."
Following the Junior's advice, I went to the freshman dorms and stood outside to see what would come. As it happened, I counted more bongs that night than the bongs that ring in an entire day from the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. There were crystal bongs, soda-bottle bongs, mystical glitter bongs, big bongs, little bongs, so many bongs that they could have fully ornamented the 60' Norwegian Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center in New York City. The number of bongs was so great that, for a moment, I thought I had been dropped in the center of a bustling Colombian drug cartel.
"Excuse me," I said to boy at the end of a clay bong, "I'm a prospective student, could you tell me a little about the College?"
"Huh? Oh, a prospie. Sure, what do you wanna know?" The maxim that people with bongs are friendly held true. The ones that were able to speak were a goodly, affable bunch. Most answered my questions, then hurried on to Wonderland.
There was one student that invited me into his dorm to talk. As it turned out, I had stumbled into a rare vacuum of sobriety. The people there talked to me for hours. One strummed his guitar and said, "I could never go anywhere other than St. John’s, because I don't have to do any work here." Aware of the Don Rag and teacher evaluations, I didn't entirely believe him, but after seeing the anarchy at the freshman seminar, I didn't entirely discount him.
Others were frustrated because they didn't understand the work they were doing: "We just ran through Lavoisier," one said, "and I didn't understand a wink of it." Many freshmen I spoke with were confused about Lavoisier, but they said they had to just take what they could and keep moving to keep pace.
Another girl had bags under her eyes and said she didn't get sleep at night because the people next to her were banging their music all night. She had a sheet up to buffer the sound, but it wasn't helping. "It's better than last semester," she said, "the smoke from in my room was so bad I had to go home."
"But I thought you didn't smoke," I said.
"I don't. The marijuana came through the vent."
As I walked back to my dorm at the other end of campus, I ran into a couple of freshmen girls. I told them I was a prospective student and asked what they thought of the school. They said the drinking and partying and smoking was out of control, and that people who didn't party hard were in a very small minority.
I could go on. I could tell more tales of the students I met and their academic practices, such as coming to class stoned, protesting that marijuana wasn't permitted in class, and one student’s happy memory of masturbating into a cup during lab to examine the semen under a microscope--"Highest virtues of man?"
I could tell details of the Friday night lecture that I stayed to see, how the lecturer had so crammed himself like a tampon into the recesses of Aristotle's diction that his own commentary had lost all meaning.
I could elaborate, but I think I've conveyed my frustration. A year later, my search continues, and I've had to settle for the dry-cracker education of a state university.
My question to you is two questions. What will you do to clean up your College? On paper, it is the best liberal arts college in the country. In practice, the bongs are still making my ears ring. What will you do? You will do something, won't you?
As for my academic plight—what do you recommend? Is there a conservative analog to St. John's? Does perfection exist in reality? Or am I, like Plato who pined for the Philosopher King, asking for too much perfection in an imperfect world?
What can you tell me?
Cordially,
Greenboat
In Search of True Education
Recommended:
No
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greenboat
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Location: Lost
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 18 members
About Me:
Every man's filth smells sweet to him. -Erasmus
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