Club controversy

[danielshrugged]

I thought I would share my tale of recent events about the Objectivist Club here at St. John's College. The background is that we are trying to get our club officially charted, so that we are eligible for funds. This requires a majority vote approving our charter by a group of elected students known as the Delegate Council. (The Gadfly is the name of our student newspaper). Note that although the DC is giving me a hell of a lot of trouble, I have an encouraging quantity and quality of support from most of the people I see. These are all taken straight from my journal (I am including a copy of my recent article for the Gadly at the end):

9/29 - This week's Gadfly will include an article about the Objectivist Club, by a Delegate Council member, which I do not have to be told will not be arguing in our favor.

9/30 - The Objectivist Club charter got onto today's Delegate Council agenda, to my surprise and disgust, surprise, because I expected it to be on tomorrow's agenda; disgust, because an article by a DC member which essentially outlined his case against our club appeared in today's Gadfly, published late this afternoon, giving me about one hour to come up with a response, and no time to present a response to the college community generally. The actual DC meeting was incredibly interesting and full of surprises. The biggest surprise was that I got many DC members to agree with many of my points, resulting in the most honesty I've seen from the group. Sam Spalding admitted that his only reason for opposing the charter was that he could not in good conscience sanction a club which promoted selfishness; another DC member said it was pretty obvious that the DC was only looking for excuses to reject the charter and obviously had their minds made up which way they would vote, whereupon he motioned to make our charter a regular voting item so that they could all reject it as soon as possible; and another member, who has always and will always oppose the charter, after the aforementioned motion passed, motioned to overturn that motion and continue the discussion four weeks from now, in order that I am not perceived to be--yes this was his own word--a martyr. In technical terms, this is known as covering one's ass.

10/2 - The DC representatives from Paca are having their building fill out a referendum about our club, telling them whether they would like to vote yes, no, or abstain. Right now, there are about 13 yes votes and 13 no votes, along with a few abstains...there are 50 people or so in that building. I don't find this fair, considering the article in the Gadfly this week which I haven't publicly responded to yet. But people can change their votes if they like.

10/8 - The Delegate Council is the most dishonest, manipulative, disgraceful group of people I have ever laid eyes on.

I published an article in this week's Gadfly in which I concluded: "The DC's job is not to ensure that clubs study philosophically sound ideas, but to provide for whatver clubs students find valuable. Ought the DC be controlling the ideology of the campus by supporting clubs with which it agrees and hindering clubs with which it disagrees? That is the central question of this controversy."

The President of the DC, Sam Spalding, wants to respond to my article in next week's Gadfly, just before the DC's vote on the Objectivist Club charter. One problem: there isn't supposed to be an issue of the Gadfly next week. So three Gadfly editors, who also happen to be in the DC, got together and decided they would now have a 4-page issue of the Gadfly (though they refused to admit what would dominate those 4 pages). But the editor in chief of the Gadfly is a good friend and a wonderful person. I had a conversation with her during lunch which reminded me of Roark talking to Wynand. I urged her to use her power so that these bastards cannot get away with their manipulation of the campus opinion. And, in a happy ending, she listened to me and confronted the other Gadfly editors. Now there will NOT be a Gadfly next week, yet these DC members are so committed that they are going to get together and use their own money to put out their own paper anyway, but at least it will not be the Gadfly and will not be printed with the sanction of any good people.

Now that I have made the DC look like hypocrites for their unfair treatment of the Objectivist Club, they are pissed. They are threatening to revoke the environmental club charter in order to cover their asses (since that club is affiliated with an outside organization...but it wouldn't help their case much, since the Objectivist Club isn't affiliated with ARI in any case). They also want to claim I attacked Sam Spalding and gave misinformation in my article when I claimed that his sole reason for rejecting the charter was that he doesn't approve of Objectivism. He is wrong. I gave a fact about him followed by my evaluation of the fact. Apparently, he wants to deny the fact, but the editor-in-chief of the Gadfly was also present at the DC meeting in which he admitted his reasons for rejecting the charter very openly.

Additionally, people in the DC are making all sorts of claims to people that the Dean and Assistant Dean are very concerned about this issue and are siding with the DC. I don't want to believe the DC can be this dishonest, but a large amount of evidence indicates they are completely making this up, that the Dean knows very little about the issue, and that they just want to claim the support of the administration in order to support their own case. Or, if the Dean really is concerned, which is possible, then the only thing that changes is that they are lying to hiim--about our club and their reasons for opposing it--rather than to students.

---------------------------------

My article in the Gadfly: In Defense of the Objectivist Club

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions over facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as a middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

The above was written by Ayn Rand, who, according to Mr. Brockett’s article in last week’s Gadfly, espoused a philosophy, which she called Objectivism, that is contrary to the spirit of the St. John’s Program. This is just one claim by a Delegate Council member that demands some thought. For, at stake in the current Objectivist Club controversy is not just the role of the DC in supporting clubs, but also the purpose and meaning of a St. John’s education.

Early last year, I drafted a charter for an Objectivist Club and presented it to the Delegate Council for approval. This did not have to be a big deal. I did not want it to be one. But the Delegate Council rejected the charter, so the Objectivist Club continued its activities as an unchartered club.

This year, in response to the increased interest in and correspondingly increased scope of activities of the club, we are again seeking approval of our charter. Once again, the Delegate Council is giving us trouble. They have raised numerous objections to our club, some of which I will now address.

Firstly, in response to Mr. Green’s letter to the editor, his letter is just false. There is no way to search for college chapters of the Ayn Rand Institute, because there is no such thing as a college chapter of the Ayn Rand Institute. Rather, the Ayn Rand Institute website offers, in order to help independently run college clubs and students seeking to find them, a database of those clubs.

The Objectivist Club at this college is run entirely by the members of the club. We are not affiliated with any outside organizations. The current version of our charter makes no mention of the Ayn Rand Institute, and even states explicitly that the club may not make donations to any outside organization. (Meanwhile, the Environmental Club is affiliated with the Sierra Student Coalition, and the Christian Fellowship’s current budget request does include spending non-DC money on missions in Africa. Make up your own mind about whether there is any hypocrisy here.)

Mr. Brockett asks: “Ought a St. John’s club be a mouthpiece for an external ideological organization?” But the Objectivist club is no such thing. Its purpose is to provide interested students with the means to learn something about Objectivism, just as an Aristotle club would be of immense importance if he were neglected.

And what is meant by calling us an active club, as some in the DC have objected? The Objectivist Club provides a valuable service to the community by educating people about a rarely spoken about philosophy. Nobody, after all, complains about the active “evangelizing” of Plato in the Springtime. Have we ever disrupted ordinary campus life? No. We have showed videos and invited the community to attend. We did not drag people to our videos. We have planned to invite speakers to the college and to invite the community to attend. We do not plan to drag people into the Great Hall to see the lecture. As with any lecture at this college, if they want to learn what the speaker has to say, they can come. If not, not. Either way, the suggestion that anyone can be legitimately disturbed by any activities of our club is false, and backwards. We provide a service, not a disservice.

(Incidentally, On Tuesday, October 21, Dr. Edwin Locke of the Ayn Rand Institute will present his talk: Reason and Emotion: Ayn Rand's Solution to a 2,000-Year-Old Problem. The talk will take place in the Great Hall at 7:30 PM. Everyone is welcome.)

Now, I will address Mr. Brockett’s claim that Objectivism runs contrary to the spirit of the program. This claim is false. Consider this quote by Ayn Rand:

Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality—not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute.

Objectivism regards virtue as the will to think, and independence, a specific virtue, as being in charge of one’s own mind. Are these contrary to the spirit of St. John’s? I will leave that for you to answer.

I further ask Mr. Brockett where he gets the idea that the spirit of the St. John’s program is to refrain from advocating any permanent truths. For I, on the contrary, claim the two above quotes from Ayn Rand portray more accurately the spirit of the Program. For if it is wrong to accept any permanent truths, making it wrong to have a club which studies permanent truths, why do we study Newton, Aristotle, and Descartes? Does Aristotle not put forth permanent truths? Surely, if Aristotle were here, and I told him that there were no Unmoved Mover, he would disagree with me, asserting as a permanent truth its existence. Every philosopher puts forth permanent truths, even skeptics such as Mr. Brockett. For to claim that it is good to avoid permanent truths is itself to claim as a permanent truth that avoiding permanent truths is good.

That the acceptance of permanent truths is bad is merely Mr. Brockett’s opinion; that opinion in no way represents the spirit of the Program. In the Program, we study ideas and debate them rationally; we are free to accept the ones we find to be good and reject the ones we find to be bad. Students reading Plato are free to agree or disagree with him. Students are free to accept permanent truths, whether that means God, forms, or Objectivism, or to reject them, with the understanding that the acceptance of those truths should be based on careful thought.

Mr. Brockett asks: “Ought a St. John’s club be founded on the acceptance of the absolute truth of a specific idea?” But the Objectivist club is not founded on such acceptance. The Objectivist club is founded on the idea that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is worth studying. Whether particular members want to accept that philosophy is open to them, just as whether particular students want to accept the ideas of anyone in our program is open to them.

Students, whatever their opinion of Objectivism, ought not let the DC get away with their hypocrisy in this issue. The fact is that if the DC scrutinized other clubs as they scrutinize this one, they would have to revoke a number of club charters. Ultimately, the reason for the DC’s scrutiny is that they hate Objectivism (even though they seem not to know anything about it).

Indeed, DC President Sam Spalding admits that his sole reason for rejecting our charter is that his conscience will not allow him to support a philosophy that promotes selfishness. I might respond to Mr. Spalding by pointing out that selfishness, according to Objectivism, demands the virtues of rationality, integrity, justice, and honesty, amongst others. I might respond to Mr. Spalding that selfishness does not mean one acts like a brute and destroys the lives of others. I might respond to Mr. Spalding that other people, according to Objectivism, can be of immense selfish value. But all of this would be irrelevant, for the DC’s job is not to ensure that clubs study philosophically sound ideas, but to provide for whatever clubs students find valuable.

Ought the DC be controlling the ideology of the campus by supporting clubs with which it agrees and hindering clubs with which it disagrees? That is the central question of this controversy.

[Atlas51184]

You've got quite a battle on your hands! It seems that your DC has made itself look rather foolish; you are so obviously in the right. Good luck! Have any faculty members come out on your side?

Question for anyone else who was involved in the founding of an Objectivist club: Is this non-sense common?

[danielshrugged]

Have any faculty members come out on your side?

The faculty is keeping quiet, and I think the administration wants to stay out of this and hope the students can resolve it themselves.

[MinorityOfOne]

The DC is clearly a bunch of jackasses. Don't give up on this. Even if you don't need the funding, you've got an opportunity here to influence the administration toward better policies while also getting good publicity for your club. Most of the publicity I got for the club I used to run, I got through letters to the editor and op-eds which I submitted to the campus newspaper.

The approach you took in the LTE was right on the mark, too. You appealed to the best elements of the school, presumably the elements which were the major draw cause for most of the students & faculty, and used those to back up your argument. My only criticisms would about some of the style. For one thing, some parts of it could have been more concise. For example, "For to claim that it is good to avoid permanent truths is itself to claim as a permanent truth that avoiding permanent truths is good" is a crow-buster. Better just to say "For the claim that it is good to avoid permanent truths is itself a claim to permanent truth." Also, the ending could have used some more punch. Rather than point out the question, *answer* it, as a summary and conclusion of the whole article -- and do so with as much force as possible. There were other things, but as you said, you were pressed for time, and you'd probably have caught them if you'd had a chance to take a few days off before reviewing it. (I know this, because I've seen some of your other writing, and you're very good.)

Anyway, I offer those suggestions just because I'd like to see you succeed in this. St. John's is a school with fantastic potential, and your club could be a powerful influence. Good luck, Daniel.

[DavidV]

You've got quite a battle on your hands! It seems that your DC has made itself look rather foolish; you are so obviously in the right. Good luck! Have any faculty members come out on your side?

Question for anyone else who was involved in the founding of an Objectivist club: Is this non-sense common?

From my own experience and from talking to other student leaders, I think this kind of protest is rare. Torn down fliers and disruptive speakers at meetings seem to be the most common problems.

The biggest problem I find is finding people that care about any abstract ideas other than religion. My school has 45000 students, and from random surveys, I’m pretty sure that a good chunk of them see my fliers, yet very few come to meetings on any abstract topics. However, we have no problem at all getting a crowd for meetings on political topics like abortion, Iraq, and multiculturalism, but very few of those that do come to those are open to our ideas.

[MinorityOfOne]

In my experience, it's easier to get a mob than a crowd.

[danielshrugged]

This is certainly good publicity for me. My article was on the front page of the newspaper here...I think I can be pretty sure all 470 students at this school know about our club. And accompanying my article was an advertisement for Dr. Locke's lecture which he will deliver here in a couple of weeks.

By the way, in the same issue of the Gadfly there was an article, by an environmentalist, also in support of the Objectivist Club.

[DavidV]

This is certainly good publicity for me. My article was on the front page of the newspaper here...I think I can be pretty sure all 470 students at this school know about our club. And accompanying my article was an advertisement for Dr. Locke's lecture which he will deliver here in a couple of weeks.

By the way, in the same issue of the Gadfly there was an article, by an environmentalist, also in support of the Objectivist Club.

I really have no point other than to brag, but our school paper had a lenghy editorial by the VP of the Objectivist Club and a letter from the treasurer yesterday, and a letter from me today.

[AshRyan]

Question for anyone else who was involved in the founding of an Objectivist club: Is this non-sense common?

First of all, good luck Daniel, I hope everything turns out well for your club.

Now in response to this question, I didn't have too much of a problem establishing a club at my university this semester. Most of the people in the ASUU (Associated Students of the University of Utah, the student government group that pretty much runs the show around here and deals with clubs and such) had no idea what Objectivism is or who Ayn Rand was, but they liked some of the ideas they saw on our advertisements. Those who had heard of Rand but disagreed were pretty apathetic. There was only one guy who was very much against our club at the beginning, and now he is an actively participating member!

[AshRyan]

Also, the ending could have used some more punch.  Rather than point out the question, *answer* it, as a summary and conclusion of the whole article -- and do so with as much force as possible.

I agree that endings should always have punch...but sometimes the paper won't print it that way.

I had a letter printed in our school paper a couple of weeks ago that I wrote in response to a staff writer's opinion column about "the battle between altruism and egoism" (I'll give you one guess as to which side he came down on). I ended my article with a very strong conclusion, morally condemning altruism as a "monstrous evil"--and they cut it and replaced it with something weak ("I am among those who disagree"). I made a post about it at our club website, so you can go there and read the three articles (the one to which I was responding, the version of mine that was printed, and my original version) if you're interested.

[danielshrugged]

All right, this club thing is giving me a headache. There are now TWO Objectivist Clubs up for approval by the DC on Wednesday, mine and another by a freshman who supports The Objectivist Center. I expect mine to be rejected, but this Objectivist Center kid is willing to say exactly what the DC wants to hear ("Oh yes, members of the DC, I agree that Objectivism is a cult, but I assure you that our club won't be like that...we'll read Branden's Benefits and Hazards of Objectivism so you can't claim we're cultish...") and he might have some friendships that will work to his advantage, and part of me is afraid that he might succeed, if you can call sacrificing one's honesty and integrity a success. That would leave me with the problem of having competing Objectivist Clubs on campus. (This kid, by the way, is a wonderul concretization of the destructiveness of The Objectivist Center...he gets drunk every other night, he is fat and out of shape, he has mindless sex, and he rationalizes it all with Ayn Rand quotes that he doesn't understand. And what bothers me especially is that if I hadn't read Ayn Rand and came across this kid spouting Objectivist slogans, I would assume that Ayn Rand had a horrible philosophy, since it led to him as a result.)

I could actually use some advice on this if any of you have experience dealing with committed Kelleyites who want to compete with your club.

[DavidV]

I could actually use some advice on this if any of you have experience dealing with committed Kelleyites who want to compete with your club.

I doubt that this Kelleyite will pose any kind of competition to your group (other than on paper.) If he's anything like the Kelleyites at my school, he's probably a hippie who is too “tolerant” to present any kind of serious intellectual argument, be serious enough about ideas to organize a speaker who can, or dedicated enough to keep running the club after the DC mess is over. The DC obviously has no more legitimacy in choosing which group is truer to Objectivism than which political group is closer to a particular party, which is the only point I would make in regard to his group.

[MinorityOfOne]

Normally, I'd advise you to see if you could get him to support your club without compromising on it: I had some Kelley fans as members of my club, and it was never a hassle. In fact, it made for some interesting discussions. However, the guy sounds like an utter dink... and if the DC is so anti-Objectivism, they might support him precisely *because* he will make it look bad.

There might actually be an upside to the whole thing, though. Regardless of whether the DC approves your club, it will go on. And if his gets approved, and somehow survives, it'll be a very efficient garbage collector. It'll make dealing with the campus as a whole more difficult, because you'll have more hurdles in educating people about what Objectivism actually stands for... but it'll make your own meetings that much easier, because the wankers will be elsewhere.

[danielshrugged]

Normally, I'd advise you to see if you could get him to support your club without compromising on it: I had some Kelley fans as members of my club, and it was never a hassle.

He actually came to a couple of my meetings, and of course everyone, including Kelley fans, is welcome to participate in the club. But he insists on having his own club, because he wants not to invite speakers from ARI, and instead invite speakers of his own choosing.

Some of his potential members refused to participate in my club in the first place, but I think I will talk to one or two of them.

[AshRyan]

Of course, if the DC approves his club and not yours, that will make them look like huge hypocrites. So if his club gets approved, you might actually be able to use that as leverage to get your own approved as well.

And like Matt said, it's fine if you have to compete with him. All that will do is make sure that you get the better minds interested in Objectivism, while the ones who want to misuse it as an excuse for their moral subjectivism will go elsewhere.

To change the subject a bit, I think the scariest thing about all of this is the skeptical tone some people are taking (that there's no absolute truth, and one shouldn't support anything that claims to be, etc.). But that too could turn out to be to your advantage. The students who see through that b.s. (and I think many of them will) will then have a reason to check out your club.

[nemethnm]

Wow, I had no idea what a hassle it could be to get a club going. Here at Purdue we just had to have a faculty member sponsor us... that wasn't hard we just found a dummy sponsor to sign stuff (they had at least heard of Objectivism) and best of all she stays out of club affairs.

I hope to one day read that your club has been succesfully chartered.

[Scott_Connery]

I don't really have a lot to add, other than I have a girlfriend that goes to St. John's Santa Fe. Small world.....

[Capleton]

This kid, by the way, is a wonderul concretization of the destructiveness of The Objectivist Center...he gets drunk every other night, he is fat and out of shape, he has mindless sex, and he rationalizes it all with Ayn Rand quotes that he doesn't understand. And what bothers me especially is that if I hadn't read Ayn Rand and came across this kid spouting Objectivist slogans, I would assume that Ayn Rand had a horrible philosophy, since it led to him as a result.

I must object to the vitriolic generalizations that are presented above. I have visited TOC's Website and I found nothing that lends credence to the claim the so-called "Kelleyites" endorse mindless indulgence. Another issue is that you made a comment about the chap's weight; I quite frankly fail to see how this is morally significant. Do you have to have a six pack to be an Objectivist now? Anyhow, I hope your club is the winner in this whole thing because the chap you described seems to be rather irrational. This said, I think one would be cuddling the fallacy of composition to say that just because he "supports" TOC all TOC sympathizers (or the organization) indulges in his irrationality.

Note: I am an advocate of reason and not necessarily a supporter of TOC.

[danielshrugged]

And you are engaging in a strawman. I said he was an example of the TOC's destructiveness, not that he proved that all TOC supporters are irrational. I think the TOC is destructive for other reasons beyond my experience with this person or any others I may have encountered. And I do not think that all TOC supporters are irrational.

Bad health, insofar as it is subject to volition, is morally significant.

[Capleton]

And you are engaging in a strawman. I said he was an example of the TOC's destructiveness, not that he proved that all TOC supporters are irrational.

To me you made a sweeping statement. If TOC is destructive as you say then that brings into question the judgment of all those who support said organization. If religion is claimed to be destructive by person A then one would conclude that person A is in essence saying that religionists have destructive mindsets.

Bad health, insofar as it is subject to volition, is morally significant.

It can be observed that you never mentioned what bad health is in this case. Oh yeah, you said that the dude was out of shape and we are to believe that he is immoral for being out of shape? Many Objectivists smoke are they then to be considered immoral? Why is he fat: did you try to seek out this information? I think not! Does he think obesity is a good state to be in?

Note: In an effort to avoid being accused of going off topic I will not continue discussing the issue at hand.

[danielshrugged]

I do not think that someone who gets drunk every night is doing everything within his volition to stay in shape. I'm confused as to your snap "I think not!" in response to your rhetorical question whether I sought more information. Why do you assume that I take judging people so lightly? I was friendly with this person for a long time and got to know him fairly well. And I did indeed discuss his drinking, his weight, and his smoking with him.

Also, you are engaging in the fallacy of division when you say that, just because a group as a whole is destructive, each member of that group must be destructive. I do think religion is destructive, to go with your example; but I do not think that every religious person is evading or morally at fault.