End of the Semester!

By Amanda Holmes

By the end of next week, I will have finished my last semester at SXU. I can’t help but feel a little nostalgic as I prepare to say goodbye to Chicago, to my friends here, and to SXU and move to Oxford, Ohio to begin my life as a grad student at the University of Miami Ohio. This blog post is going to be overly sentimental and cheesy. Deal with it.

In the past four years, I have studied Music, Political Science, Spanish, English, and Philosophy at SXU. I have studied abroad in Spain and traveled to India, Argentina and some of Eastern Europe. I have built a number of close friendships with other students and with my professors. And I cannot believe that my time here is ending.

SXU has provided me with a number of incredible opportunities like going to Washington D.C. to attend the Obama Inauguration Conference and going to Georgia to participate in the demonstration against the School of Americas. The best experiences though have been right on campus in the relationships I have made with people at SXU and in the friendships I have found here.

Both in my personal life and in my academic work, the SXU community has impacted me greatly. Last weekend, I presented my Senior Thesis Project on Spinoza’s political philosophy at the 8th Annual Honors Program Conference. This was the culmination of a year’s work and the final event that marked the completion of this project.

After the presentation I was both relieved and disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed in my project, the project and the presentation actually turned out pretty well. I won the Outstanding Senior Project Award along with Amy Pouhl, who did a project on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I was disappointed because finishing the project meant that I was really done. I came back to my apartment and stood in my room for a little while not knowing what I should do.

But then I remembered the Greek final I have next week and the final paper I have to write for my “Property, Race, and Imperialism” course. And then I felt normal again.
Anyway, I should get back to studying for my Greek final.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

One Senior Presentation Down and One Still to Go!

By Amanda Holmes

Last night the SXU Philosophy Department hosted its first Senior Colloquium. The event was very well attended and everyone seemed to have a nice time. In my last post I talked about the process leading up to last night’s presentation. It was a year long process but last night all the work we have done in the past year culminated with the colloquium.

If you didn’t come, here is what you missed:

Olivia Rossi’s paper was titled “When the Laws Fall Silent or What’s Cook’n in Melos”
With a commentary by Amanda Holmes

Marcella Russo
“Come On, Feel the Noise: Recognizing the Public Nature of Sentiment”
With a commentary by Jake Shorette

Jake Shorette
“Spinoza and the Responsibilities of the Free Man!”
With a commentary by Olivia Rossi

Amanda Holmes
“The Party’s on the Left Side: A Critical Analysis of (Some) Marxist Readings of the TTP”
With a commentary by Marcella Russo

Now that the philosophy department’s colloquium is over I can get ready for my next big presentation this Saturday at the Eighth Annual SXU Senior Honors Conference. The conference will take place on Saturday, April 24 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is open to the public. There will be a number of diverse presentations within the fields of biology, communication, communication sciences and disorders, education, English, music, nursing, philosophy political science and religious studies.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Philosophy Senior Colloquium

By Amanda Holmes

For the past year or so, I have been working on my senior thesis. The project has taught me a lot about writing, research, patience and, surprisingly, friendship. These first three things were expected in taking on a year long research project but the last was a pleasant surprise. While I have been working on this project, I have been privileged to work alongside three other philosophy seniors who are working on theses of their own.

First semester of this year we would all meet once a week to go over our research and share drafts of our papers. This helped me to be a better writer as I learned to critique the other seniors’ work and responded to and learned from their criticisms of my own writing. It also helped learn to engage in peer review. The input of the other seniors was helpful in developing my thesis because I had to explain my project to other students who were not familiar with the material and research I was focusing on. We all benefitted from this in two ways. We had to learn to be clear in our writing and we learned a lot about topics we weren’t researching just by reading the other students’ papers.

Our weekly meetings also taught me the importance of having a good community of peers when doing heavy academic work. We were able to talk about our papers in an unintimidating environment and have honest conversations about the work we were doing and the things we were interested in. And throughout this process we all became pretty close.

Now the product of all this work is finally done. We have all turned in our final drafts of our senior theses. We will be presenting our work to each other, to our friends, and to our professors at 5 p.m on Tuesday, April 20 in the Loftus Conference Room in Rubloff Hall.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Students and Teachers Fight Back! Stop the budget cuts to education.

By Amanda Holmes

According to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s 2011 budget proposal: Education will be cut by $1.3 billion, or 11%, devastating already underfunded school districts, forcing mass layoffs and increasing already unaffordable tuition at most community colleges and state universities. 20,000 Illinois public school employees, including 17,000 teachers, will be laid off; tuition at UIC will increase by 20%; 200,000 low-income seniors will have their medical prescription coverage slashed by 50%; 70,000 disabled people will be cut off assistance. 6,000 children will be denied childcare; Personal income tax, which affects the poorest communities the most, would be increased by a criminal 33%!

Next Saturday, April 17, ANSWER Chicago, an activist group in Chicago that seeks to end racism and stop war, will be hosting a Teach-in/Organization meeting to fight the budget cuts in education in Illinois and in Chicago.

This is an important issue for all of us. Not only should we be concerned about the quality of education in our communities but at SXU there are many teachers in training and these budget cuts will effect the quality of the education system and the job prospects for teachers-to-be.

I have attended several events that the ANSWER coalition has sponsored and they have all been helpful and I have learned a lot from participating in them.

Here's a link for students interested in promoting this event on facebook: Join Students and Teachers Fight Back! on facebook

The event has these goals in mind:

(1) A detailed educational discussion on the causes, scope and effects of the "budget crisis" in Illinois and Chicago

(2) A brainstorming and organizing session to help stop the budget cuts, layoffs, tuition hikes, racist school and clinic closures and more.
I urge the SXU community to join the group Students and Teachers Fight Back! in the struggle to stop the budget cuts, layoffs and essential service closures in Illinois. This group describes itself as “a group of students, teachers and progressive people who are taking action to stop the criminal budget cuts in Illinois. We Need Money for Jobs, Health Care, Schools, Housing and More, Not for War and Wall Street.”

Event information:
Saturday, April 17, 1 pm
3334 W. Lawrence #202
(Brown Line - Kimball Stop; 81 Bus)
Call 773-463-0311 for more info

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Campus Visits and Grad School

By Amanda Holmes

It’s been a while since my last blog post. I have had a busy few weeks traveling to two different universities for campus visits. I am trying to decide where I want to go to grad school and my decision has come down to a choice between two schools: SUNY Binghamton and the University of Miami - Ohio. I’m sad to be leaving SXU in a few short months but I am also excited to move on to a grad program in philosophy… I just have to decide which one.

The first school I went to was SUNY Binghamton in Binghamton, New York. I have to admit that one thing that attracts me to the university is the possibility of moving to New York.
When I went to visit the campus I was hoping to find out that New York City is just a train ride away but this is unfortunately not the case. It is a three hour drive from the city and there is only one bus a day that goes there.

Binghamton is a small town in Upstate New York that seemed to be pretty much dominated by the university. All of the activity in the town is generated by the university and its students. I went to a couple of pubs with some of the graduate students I met and everyone agreed that it was difficult to get into the city and that there really isn’t a whole lot going on around campus. But they also all agreed that this wasn’t that big of a deal because they are kept pretty busy in the grad program doing a lot of work.

The next school I went to was the University of Miami - Ohio in Oxford, Ohio. Oxford too is a small college town dominated by the university students. There is a big Greek life there so when I was there on a Friday night walking past the frat and sorority houses I was severely disoriented. Lots of beer pong. Lots of Lady Gaga. But there are some really nice things about the campus there too. Miami has a pretty campus with old stone buildings and lots of trees. And there are a number of woods and nature preserves within walking distance of the campus with hiking trails and nature walks.

Visiting these two campuses showed me the uniqueness of the small campus at SXU, which just an hour by public transit from downtown Chicago. SXU has the feel of a small town campus in some ways but is still close to the city and provides the opportunity to go to concerts, festivals, museums, etc. And, well, that’s pretty nice.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Eventful Week

By Amanda Holmes

This week is quite a busy one with a lot of interesting things going on around campus. Here is a list of all of the events I will be attending, which means that they are going to be awesome. Not only because I will be there but because I only do interesting and awesome things. So they will probably be of interest to some of you, too.

Wednesday, March 17: Talk on Haiti

So, I’ve tried to find out more about this event but I can’t find a lot about it on the SXU website. This is what I know: At 6pm in the Butler room in the Ward Academic Center there will be a lecture titled “Haiti: Before and After the Earthquake.” This will be a talk with William L. Balan-Gaubert, a Haitian-born activist and scholar. He'll discuss Haitian history, social thought, and culture.

Thursday, March 18:

The annual Philosophy Department's Ziegler Memorial Lecture with Professor Adriaan Peperzak will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in McGuire Hall and a student discussion with Professor Peperzak will take place from 3:30 to 4:30, in L206. The first meeting will be an informal discussion with Professor Peperzak in which students are encouraged to ask questions about the topic of his lecture, which is on Faith and Education. Initially, I was not as interested in this topic but I went to a prep discussion with some members of the philosophy department and I am now looking forward to this talk. My initial reaction was due to my aversion to lectures on faith but after a brief conversation about Peperzak’s approach, I think he will probably have some interesting things to say. Here is a summary of the topic he will be lecturing on:

“Education is a complicated form of life. It requires an ethos—a common language, similar customs, and certain shared ideological and ethical presuppositions. But if education is more than merely the transmission of tradition, if it is committed to a search for better ways, manners, customs and ideas, then it needs critique. Do we have standards or criteria for determining what are good or bad manners of living, acting, feeling, and speaking? Can we guard against the self aggrandizing tendency of critique through self-critique? And does or should faith play a role in the exercise of teaching and learning? An answer to this question presupposes that we distinguish a narrow meaning of faith, as adherence to an explicit religious conviction and practice, from a broader meaning, in which faith is still related to the basic stance that permeates each individual’s manner of realizing meaning.”

Friday, March 19:

There will be a showing of The Agronomist (2004) in McGuire Hall, 7 p.m. This is a documentary that provides insight into crucial developments in recent Haitian history. Jonathan Demme’s documentary covers the life and work of Jean Dominique, a social activist who was murdered in April 2000.

Cool. I hope to see you at some of these!

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Memphis Philosophy Conference

By Amanda Holmes

Over Spring Break, I went to Memphis, Tennessee to present a paper and attend an undergraduate philosophy conference at the University of Memphis. I went with two of the professors from the philosophy department and another undergraduate student, my friend Marcella Russo.

The conference was a lot of fun and I was able to attend several sessions of another philosophy conference that was going on at the University of Memphis where my professors were presenting their own work. Dr. Jason Aleksander presented a paper on Dante titled “Revelation’s Aporetic Authority in the Divine Comedy and Dante’s Defense of Philosophical Authority” and Dr. Arthur Morton presented a paper on Environmental Philosophy titled, “On Friendship and the Environment.” The opportunity to engage with my professors in discussions about their own work was helpful not only because it helped me to understand what kind of work they do but it helped me to see how philosophy papers are done at the professional level.

Presenting my own paper was a bit intimidating. I presented my thesis titled, “Subversive Spinoza?: Radical Democracy in Spinoza’s Political Thought.” There were roughly 20 people at my presentation. Public speaking has never been something I am very comfortable with but I was able to read my paper and respond to the questions at the end of my presentation with relative ease.

Spending the weekend in Memphis was also a lot of fun. We stayed in the heart of the downtown area and so at night we went to a few blues clubs with some other conference attendees.

I engaged in a personal endeavor to count the number of times we came across an image of Elvis because he is everywhere there. By the end of the trip, I counted at least 80.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Grad School

By Amanda Holmes

I spent a few blog posts last semester writing about my graduate school application endeavors. Last semester, I was consumed by the application process. When I wasn’t doing work for my classes, I was either studying for the GRE, writing my personal statement, working on my writing sample, or doing research on graduate programs. I was glad to put an end to this process a couple of weeks ago when I sent out my last application packet.

But these past few weeks while I have been waiting to hear back from the ten programs I applied to had been …um, strange. I didn’t know exactly what to do with myself. I was anxious to find out if and where I’ve been accepted and where I will be moving next fall. And this period of waiting was punctuated by a few rejection letters…until yesterday. Yesterday, I found out that I’ve been accepted to the Masters Program in Philosophy at the University of Miami Ohio! (exploding joy)

Miami’s graduate program in philosophy looks like it could be pretty great. The courses offered there seem interesting, the faculty is all working on cool projects, and I would be able to work as a teacher’s assistant, which would be great. The only real downside is that I would be moving to Ohio.

So, well, that’s great. I’m still waiting for the responses from some of the other grad programs but it feels really good to know that I will be headed off to grad school in the fall!

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Scholios

By Amanda Holmes

Today is a faculty development day! And that means that there is no class. Woot!!! NOOOOO CLAAAAAASSSSS. Get crazy! No. Seriously, these days are very important for students’ academic development.

There are several faculty development days each semester. These provide students with a full day off from classes. This gives students the opportunity to catch up on assignments and sleep, and, most importantly, to have some leisure time.

The Greeks understood the importance of leisure time within the context of education. In ancient Greek, the word “Scholios” (transliteration) is the where we get the words “scholastic” and “school” from and it literally means “leisure.” The Greeks understood that in order to have a decent education, one had to have leisure time. This is something that is overlooked in most college environments today and SXU is no exception. Most students at SXU have other obligations outside of class, they work, or do sports, or some have families. And these days off from class provide a kind of break from at least some of their obligations. This break can be utilized to do things that we can’t usually do on the weekends because of all of the other things that those are filled with.

I’ve spent the first half of my off day working on upcoming writing assignments and reading some things I’ve been meaning to but haven’t had the time. Granted, some students probably wont spend their day off working on things for class. Maybe they will watch a movie or spend some time with friends or sleep for most of it. But these things too are an important part of a healthy lifestyle that is conducive to real academic work.

So, anyway, my point is that in order to be able to learn in class and to make the most out of our time at SXU as students we need these breaks from class. Werd.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Honors Guest Lecture

By Amanda Holmes

I’ve been in the SXU Honors program for the past three and a half years. It has been one of the best resources for me during my undergraduate career here.

The Honors Program provides students with a more engaging academic environment by offering challenging courses and an interested community of peers.The Honors Program also offers funding for special projects and conference trips. It requires students to complete a Junior Fieldwork Project and a Senior Honors Project.

Though these requirements are a bit tedious and require a lot of extra work, they have both helped me to pursue my academic interests outside of the classroom and have taught me how to do self-directed projects. My own Junior year Fieldwork Requirement was satisfied during my sophomore year when I studied abroad in Alicante, Spain. And I am currently working on my Honors Senior Project, a paper on Spinoza’s political philosophy.

One of the other things the Honors Program offers is an Annual Honors Program Guest Lecture. This year's lecturer will be Justice Anne Burke, who serves on the Illinois Supreme Court. Her professional and civic career has been committed to protecting the rights of those least able to defend themselves, including children and the physically and mentally challenged. This event is one of the cultural activities scheduled to explore the current theme of our Honors Program seminars, “And Justice For All.” The lecture, which is part of the Squeaky Weal lecture series, will be held in the Butler Reception Room at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23.

Justice Burke’s lecture is titled “Public Servant/Private Catholic: A Jurist Reflects on Faith and Profession.” She will discuss the dynamic and sometimes stressful relationship between her personal beliefs and the obligations and pressures inherent in her public roles. Her reflections will speak to all who seek a balance between faith and profession in their own lives.” (I lifted this off of the notification e-mail I received about the lecture)

So, hey, come out for the Honors Program Lecture!

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Upcoming Academic Conferences

By Amanda Holmes

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog about going to a philosophy conference in Arkansas. Since I found out last week that my philosophy thesis paper was accepted at a conference in New Jersey, I thought it might be a good idea to spend this post talking about the benefits of going to undergraduate academic conferences.

For me, there is nothing more isolating and conducive to extended periods of self-loathing than writing philosophy papers. And I love studying philosophy. It’s just that I feel like I have a pretty good idea of some of the things I read in philosophy until I am forced to sit down put these ideas on paper.

One thing I learned at the conference in Arkansas last November was this is the case for almost everyone. However, it can be less painful if you think of writing a paper in order to convey your ideas to other students who probably have similar questions about the text.

This is the number one reason undergraduates should participate in conferences. They offer an opportunity to read papers in front of an interested and engaged audience of your peers who will see your paper as part of a conversation. This helps a lot because the feedback and questions after the reading indicate the parts of your paper that are unclear and need work.

I have been working on my philosophy senior thesis for about 6 months now and I was in a kind of rut before I went to the conference in Arkansas. I felt like I was just reiterating the same points over and over and over (for about 13 pages) but the questions from other conference participants sparked a renewed interest in my project.

Here are two upcoming undergraduate conferences worth looking into. They are really useful and also pretty fun. Submitting to a conference usually entails sending in an abstract of a paper you are working on and sometimes the paper itself.

• 4th Annual University of Chicago Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

• Undergraduate Conference at UNC Chapel Hill

Another option to do something similar is to present a paper at the THAT (philosophy) club colloquium. More information on this is forthcoming.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

THAT Club's Vegan Dinner Night!

By Amanda Holmes

Tonight, members of SXU’s THAT (Philosophy) Club are coming over to my apartment for our first meeting of the semester and it’s going to be a party... a vegan dinner party. I’m pumped. We are all bringing food that is not made from animal products.

Not everyone coming tonight is a vegan or even a vegetarian. I’m not a strict vegan but I try to avoid eating animal products. Here is a link to an article that explains why consuming animal products may not be the best thing to do for our bodies or our planet’s health. More on this later.

The philosophy club started about a year ago when a group of my philosophy student friends and I decided we should have a social outlet for all students to get together and talk about philosophy.

Some of our events are formal – we host student colloquiums where students read philosophy papers they are working on and we discuss their topic. Tonight, however, will not be formal… just fun. I’ve got to run now and start making the vegetable curry for tonight. Here’s the recipe I’ll be using.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Haiti

By Amanda Holmes

So, what’s happening in Haiti sucks. The Red Cross has reported that there might be up to 50,000 people dead and that more than one-third of Haiti’s population has been left homeless.

I am told that the SXU Student Government Association will be doing a fundraiser for disaster relief funds. More information on this is forthcoming.

If, in the mean time, students (or whoever is reading this) feel like contributing something, here are a number of sites you might want to check out:

Doctors Without Borders
Partners in Health
Oxfam
Unicef

Also, here is a link to an article that does a pretty good job of explaining why the Haitian government is in the situation it is, which is one of virtual helplessness in the face of the earthquake. It offers some insight on the problems with U.S. “aid” and “development” policies towards “developing” nations. Definitely worth a read in light of the recent crisis in Haiti.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Big Break Plans

By Amanda Holmes

Bah! It’s the end of the penultimate week of the semester. I have two papers to write, a presentation to prepare, and a final exam to study for. This would be manageable if it weren’t for the fact that all I can think about is the break. I have big plans.

Every year I look forward to the winter break and set impossible expectations for it. Everything that I don’t have time to do throughout the semester is added to my winter break ‘to do’ list.

My to-do list for this break involves mostly grad school applications and my senior project. Most of these are due in early January so I am hoping to get most everything done before going to visit my family in Texas for Christmas and then to Barcelona for New Years (Woot!).

I’m excited for all these things. I’m eager to get these applications out, excited to have some time to work on my senior project, I can’t wait to see my family, and Barcelona is going to be an awesome bomb.

The problem is that before I get to those things, I have to get through finals first. Eff.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Preparing for the GRE

By Amanda Holmes

A couple weeks ago I posted an interview with an SXU alumni on “life after SXU.” In that post I mentioned that this subject is something I have been thinking about a lot lately. I will be graduating at the end of next semester and my own post-graduation plans involve grad school in philosophy.

Preparing for and applying to grad school is daunting. I’ve spent the past couple months researching programs, working on a writing sample, writing a personal statement and studying for the dreaded Graduate Record Examination Test, the GRE.

The GRE is similar to the ACT or the SAT. It’s a general test with a verbal, a quantitative, and a writing portion. From what I’ve heard, it is weighed pretty heavily in the application to most grad programs in the humanities. I’ve been reviewing math formulas every morning and I’ve been carrying around vocabulary flash cards every day.

After months of studying, that fateful day is approaching all too quickly. I take the GRE this Monday. gulp.

The SXU library has a number of practice tests for the GRE, the LSAT, the MCAT, and the GMAT. This has been an invaluable resource for me. Not only are there practice tests but there are also quick quizzes, reviews for each section, and test taking tips.

Anyway, I should get back to studying for this. Wish me luck!

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Philosophy Conference at Henderson State University

By Amanda Holmes

So, I’ve packed a bag and I’m headed south to Arkansas for the weekend. I am going to be presenting a paper at the 2009 Arkansas Philosophy Conference at Henderson State University.

I’m excited about this for several reasons:

1- Two of my favorite people in the whole world will be there. I’ll be going to the conference with Marcella Russo, another SXU philosophy student and also one of my closest friends. Together, Marcella and I have a proclivity for excessive laughter. We are also both taking the GRE soon and studying vocabulary words a lot so we have the common propensity to use words like proclivity… and propensity, which basically mean the same thing. Anyway, we will be in the car for 13 hours together quizzing each other on GRE words and laughing a lot. Where. The. Party. At. Also, my friend Becky will be at the conference. Becky is an SXU alum and is in grad school in philosophy in Tennessee. I haven’t seen Becky in a year and a half so it is going to be great to see her again.

2- There are presumably lots of people who like philosophy at a philosophy conference. I like philosophy too so… that will be neat.

3- I am both excited and nervous to read my paper at the conference. I’ll be reading the first section of my senior thesis, a paper that I’ve been working on all semester. It will be helpful to get feedback on it, I just hope I don’t forget how to read or throw up or something.
Wish me luck!

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

THAT Club Student Colloquium

By Amanda Holmes

Last year, some of the other philosophy students and I started the SXU Philosophy Club. We hosted a forum on environmental philosophy and a film screening of Grizzly Man last semester.

We decided to rename our club at our first meeting this year. We are now called “THAT Club.” We were trying to come up with a name that represented the general idea of the club. Since our mission was kind of vague (to provide cool and intellectually stimulating things to do) we decided that the most appropriate name would be THAT Club. The ‘THAT’ of THAT Club is in all caps to give the illusion of an acronym. There is no acronym…yet. Anyway, our first big event is coming up this Monday.

THAT Club will be hosting a student colloquium from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Mon., Nov. 9 in the Fourth Floor Board Room. Marcella Russo and I will each be presenting parts of our senior thesis papers.

Marcella will be presenting her paper on the philosophy of language. Her paper is titled "Maintaining First Person Authority in David Finkelstein's 'Expression and the Inner': The Question of Intimacy."

I will be presenting my paper in political philosophy titled "Democracy as practice in Balibar's 'Spinoza and Politics': Radical Democracy in Spinoza's Political Thought."
Marcella and I are going to Henderson State University in Arkansas next weekend to present our papers at an undergraduate philosophy conference there. We are hoping to get some feedback on our papers from other students at SXU before going to the conference.

So, if you are not doing anything more interesting, which is highly unlikely because this is going to be super interesting, you should come to our colloquium. And if you are doing something else, you should cancel your plans and come to our colloquium instead.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

By Amanda Holmes

The philosophy department usually hosts a couple colloquiums every semester. At the colloquium, a professor reads a paper he or she has been working on and then other professors and students have a discussion about it. It’s usually pretty fun and always interesting. The first colloquium will be held from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mon., Nov. 2 in the Fourth Floor Board Room. Prof. Forrest Perry will be reading his paper on “The Class Dimension of Hip Rebellion.” He’ll be talking about hipsters:

“In his presentation Dr. Perry will try to make sense of tastes hipsters have for objects constitutive of the hipster aesthetic: Pabst beer, trucker hats, and second-hand work shirts. He will discuss two ways of interpreting the meaning of these objects: as markers of "cool" within status games played by hipsters and as an unacknowledged acknowledgement of a kind of solidarity between hipsters and the working class. His aim in the paper is to highlight the class dimension of hip practices and show that doing so might put us in a better position to transform such practices into the cross-class cooperation required to bring about non-capitalist societies.”

I encourage anyone to come. It’s going to be deck ("deck" is hipster speak for "cool").

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Vandana Shiva lecture

By Amanda Holmes

I spent two and a half months last summer in Northern India. While I was there, I worked on an organic farm in the northwest for a few weeks and spent the rest of my time backpacking in the rural areas of the northeast in the Himalayas.

Because I was there in the summer, I was there for the beginning of the monsoon season. The monsoons are so important to the Indian people. They cool down the deserts of the west and bring fertility to the plains of the Ganges River in the east. Throughout the month of June there was a real sense of anticipation for the monsoon. Unlike here in Chicago, everyone I met there looked forward to the rains. They were not an inconvenience and no one complained of a “gloomy day” when it rained. Instead, there was celebration of this annual event.

It began to rain in mid-July, but as the monsoon season went on it was clear it was not raining enough. Because of climate change and climate instability, parts of India have as high as a 64% rainfall deficit this year. The effects of this are devastating. Many parts of India are running out of water but not all of this is solely due to this year’s insufficient monsoon.

In the past 50 years or so, agriculture in India has gone from a system that entailed local production of food to using chemical fertilizers, genetically modified seeds and methods that demand intensive irrigation. The new intensive irrigation methods required massive amounts of water and have led to the depletion of the ground water throughout rural India.

Vandana Shiva is an environmental activist who deals with issues like this. She will be speaking just 20 minutes away from SXU at the University of St. Francis next Tuesday, October 27. I’m totally going.

My explanation of this problem is really just the tip of a whole slue of issues facing the agrarian community of India that have resulted from The Green Revolution in India. Here’s a story I heard recently on NPR about the effects of the Green Revolution.

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.

Life After SXU

By Amanda Holmes

As a senior, I cannot seem to escape the question, “What’s next?” As the year continues I’m sure I’ll spend a few blog posts answering that question as my own situation develops but I thought it might be interesting to see what someone else has done since graduating from SXU.

Gina Pantone is an SXU alum. She graduated in 2005, majored in English and minored in Communications. Gina is a gay rights activist and was generous enough to let me interview her about her current work and life after SXU:

1) What kinds of things did you do in your time at SXU?

I served as the Editor in Chief of The Xavierite (2003-2005), as well as the Features Editor. I was in band all 5 years, choir for 2 years, a DJ on WXAV (2001-2005), Sigma Tau Delta (International English Honor Society) and in drama club (2001-2004). I lived in Morris Hall for 2 years, commuted the rest. Ha, you're probably sorry you asked, I was Rushmore.

2) What is Join the Impact Chicago?

Join the Impact is a national grassroots GLBT equality group that was born when Proposition 8 passed on Election Day 2008 in California. The ballot proposition overturned the California State Supreme Court decision a mere six months earlier that granted GLBT citizens the constitutional right to marry. They put civil rights up to a popular vote and the measure passed, outraging millions and spawning a new generation of gay rights activists.

Join the Impact Chicago (JTIC) is its local chapter, conceived by a few frustrated co-workers (Corrine Mina, Nik Maciejewski and Missy Lorenzen). They wanted a Chicago response to the California election result, and planned a rally November 15th 2008 in Daley Plaza that would attract 5,000 predominately young protesters who took to the streets and marched for hours.

The Chicago Chapter had arrived, and continued to grow exponentially. JTIC has gone on to host teach-ins, multiple demonstrations, speaking events (most recently Cleve Jones at Victoria Gardens Theater), canvass, start conversations with elected Illinois officials, and most importantly, spread education on the issues at hand.

3) What do you do there?

I serve as one of the core leaders. I assist primarily in general organization, event planning (i.e. our roles in Pride, Day of Decision, The Great Nationwide Kiss-In, The National Equality March), canvassing, sign-making, fliering, photography and recruiting.

4) Why is this important?

I firmly believe this is the civil rights issue of our time. As a straight ally, I do not think anyone should stand for our fellow Americans being treated as second class citizens. People need to realize this is not an arbitrary matter only of the GLBT community, but rather a human issue that effects millions of family members, friends and co-workers in this country. It's not just about marriage; but discrimination in the workplace, taxes, health care benefits, retirement, immigration, adoption rights, power of attorney and hospital visitation. We must learn from the bigotry of history, and speak up on this. We need everyone.

5) Are there any events coming up?

We just returned from a very successful National Equality March in Washington, D.C. and were featured on the cover of the RedEye October 13th. We have a public meeting Tuesday, October 20th at the Lincoln Park Public Library (1150 W. Fullerton Ave.) from 7-8:30pm to discuss the next steps in the movement.

I also want to stress that the Illinois Senate just introduced the Equal Marriage Act, which would give full marriage rights (legally, not religiously) to two adults of the same sex in Illinois. To get more involved, call and write your local representatives and urge them to support this bill.

6) How has SXU prepared you for this kind of work?

I feel the intimate classroom size at SXU gave me more of an opportunity to realize my full potential as a leader. In a larger university setting it's easier to blend in with the masses, and many students aren't as easily given the chance to develop budding skills. More importantly, SXU's outstanding faculty really nourished my spirit and encouraged me to stand out and speak up (specifically Dr. Bonadonna, Dr. Kolich, Dr. Karim and Prof. Gerlach to name a few).

Amanda Holmes is a senior philosophy major from Atlanta, GA. She is vice president of the Philosophy Club. Consideration for the student bloggers is provided by Saint Xavier University.