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A scholarly summit of Johnnies and Mids
Breaking their social impasse, students at neighboring St. John’s College and the Naval Academy come together for seminars to discuss literary works
by Daniel de Vise
The two schools sit blocks apart in downtown Annapolis. Yet stu- dents from the Naval Academy and St. John’s College seldom mix. “Johnnies” lead an insular life,
devouring great books. Midship- men follow a regimented sched- ule that affords few liberties and little free time. Preconceptions of Mids as crew-cut hawks and Johnnies as tie-dyed doves leave each side vaguely uneasy with the other. The social impasse cried out for
a diplomatic solution. And so be- gan the annual Johnnie-Mid Seminar, a sort of scholarly sum- mit. Students from both schools gather in one place to discuss a lit- erary work, carefully chosen to appeal to the young philosophers on one side of the room and the future officers on the other. It’s a chance for Johnnies to meet the midshipmen beneath the caps, and for Mids to glimpse the John- nies behind the books.
“Being a midshipman is not their entire identity — it’s just a piece of it,” said Sarah Pearlman, 19, a St. John’s sophomore from Teaneck, N.J. “And I like to find out what the other pieces are.” St. John’s is the Great Books school, chartered in 1784, where students work their way from Ho-
mer to Heidegger in the original text but sometimes forget to wear shoes. Navy is the elite service academy, founded in 1845, a cam- pus of 4,000 future leaders where beds are made with hospital cor- ners and uniforms are crisply pressed. As colleges go, they couldn’t be more different. A group of about 60 midship- men and three dozen Johnnies turned out for the latest seminar, held recently at historic McDow- ell Hall on the St. John’s campus. The St. John’s contingent
lurked timidly in a side room as midshipmen crowded into the re- ception room. “There’s a whole lot of people in uniform,” one Johnnie said, peer- ing around a corner. “You’ll be fine,” a classmate re- assured her.
Not so different
The two student populations
aren’t as different as one might think. They are mostly young, in- telligent, well-educated products of the middle class, although stu- dents at the government-subsi- dized academy are somewhat less likely to be affluent or white and more apt to be male. Occasionally, cross-campus ro- mances blossom, and midship- men sometimes show up at St. John’s for weekend waltz parties. (Johnnies, for their part, are not a
ROBERT McCARTNEY
Compromise with teachers delivers for D.C. schools
mccartney from C1
union leaders insisted that they were willing to make substantial changes for the sake of improving schools. Now WTU President George Parker and American Fed- eration of Teachers President Randi Weingarten have signed a contract that delivers on those promises. “This contract is a big deal. Peo- ple can point to it and say lots of the individual reform parts in it are present elsewhere. But there’s not another contract that has all of them together,” said Andrew Rotherham, co-founder of Bell- wether Education, a national non- profit group that supports school reform. I’m happy to see it partly be- cause I’ve been annoyed since Rhee arrived in 2007 that she was reaping so much glory before she’d actually accomplished much. Time magazine put her on the cover, and an education publi- cation portrayed her in knightly armor as “D.C.’s Braveheart.” What had she done to deserve
this? Largely, it was talk. Tough, rude, often self-righteous talk about the need to do whatever was necessary to improve educa- tion. It drew attention nation- wide, even before actual change occurred.
Since then, Rhee has closed some schools with declining en- rollment, a move that was long overdue. Test scores have risen, al- beit from a very low base. The city has opened a batch of gleaming new schools, though much of the credit for that goes to Allen Y. Lew, the little-heralded executive director of the District’s school modernization office. Now Rhee and the union lead-
ers have produced an agreement that raises realistic hopes for more far-reaching transforma- tion. That could lift the District’s public schools out of the bog of low achievement, where they’ve been mired for years. The deal isn’t final yet. But it seems likely to obtain needed en- dorsements from the city’s finan-
cial office, the union rank and file, and the D.C. Council. In one of the most important
changes, principals can use per- formance rather than seniority in deciding which teachers to bring to their schools, or which to let go in case of a budget cut or falling enrollment.
Rhee is also pleased about add- ing a pay-for-performance pro- gram, funded by donations from private foundations. It’s voluntary and available to teachers willing to forgo tenure protections. A teacher who delivers top test scores in a low-income neighbor- hood in a needed subject area such as math or special education can earn as much as $146,000 a year. The top salary available now is $87,000. The result is less ambitious than her original pay proposal. However, Rhee said that “what was important was that we were able to differentiate pay based on performance of individuals.” What do teachers get in return? First, there’s the across-the-board pay increase, raising the average salary from $67,000 to $81,000 by 2012. Also, teachers rated “effec- tive” or better are protected against being put on the street im- mediately if they lose their posi- tions. One safeguard allows them to stay on the payroll with ben- efits for up to a year while they look for another job. Looking at the long term, AFT
President Weingarten saw an- other advantage. “For years, everybody was try- ing to change the D.C. schools from outside the system — with charters, vouchers, governance or divesting teachers legislatively of their rights. What this has done, through collective bargaining, is try to change the system from within,” she said. That’s another way of saying
that the union is taking a leap by joining the reform process rather than resisting it. The District’s students will be better for it, and I’ll say, “Way to go,” the next time I see Rhee on a magazine cover.
mccartneyr@washpost.com
common sight on the academy grounds.)
But students on both sides say
that they seldom stop to speak, let alone socialize, in their daily trav- els around the Maryland capital. Navy whites give the midshipmen an air of adult authority that seems to intimidate Johnnies. Students sometimes think of the neighboring campus as enemy
chief meeting of Johnnies and Mids until the 2002-03 academic year, when a group of faculty and students arranged the first John- nie-Mid Seminar. David Garren, an associate pro- fessor of philosophy at the acad- emy, suggested the idea to an old classmate who taught at St. John’s. Garren had started a phi- losophy club for midshipmen who
“Johnnies, they have rumors about us; we have rumors about them. Some are true; some are false.”
— Ryan Clifford, 25, third-year midshipman
territory. “Johnnies, they have rumors about us; we have rumors about them,” said Ryan Clifford, 25, a third-year midshipman. “Some are true; some are false.” The Annapolis Cup, an annual
croquet match between St. John’s and the academy, celebrates those contrasts. The midshipmen turn out in full uniform; the Johnnies in the most outlandish costumes they can muster. Croquet is said to be the one sport at which a Johnnie can reasonably expect to beat a Mid. The 28th Cup is set for Saturday. The Annapolis Cup was the
yearned for a taste of the great books. He thought a joint seminar might help the students get to know each other. The first student organizer was Rachel Hall, a Johnnie who was dating a midshipman. She told a Washington Post interviewer in 2005 that she wanted to show her classmates “that the Mids are philosophical, and they can have a discussion, and they’re not just guys in uniform.”
‘The Art of War’
The first seminar covered Sun
Tzu’s “The Art of War.” The meet- ings have continued more-or-less
annually, with readings such as a John Stuart Mill essay on military intervention and a Nietzsche piece on the importance of com- petition. The schools take turns playing host. Faculty from both sides join the discussion. Ethan Brooks, a 22-year-old St.
John’s senior from Lancaster, Pa., led the delegation of Johnnies at this year’s seminar. A Marine re- servist with close-cropped hair, Brooks put the Mids at ease. “I know there aren’t too many
of you,” he told the assembled Johnnies, dressed in an eclectic array of vintage T-shirts and tweeds. “Try to intersperse your- selves. Try not to choose a class with too many Johnnies in it.” Students scattered to four class- rooms to discuss Anton Chekhov’s “Gooseberries,” a meditation on happiness and fulfillment. The seminar followed the house rules at St. John’s, where professors are known as tutors and students are treated as equals. It was unfamiliar territory for some of the midshipmen, who tend to major in science and math and to defer to their professors. “There’s no need to raise your hand, or anything like that,” Mi- chael Comenetz, a St. John’s tutor, said at the start of the session. The 90-minute discussion re- vealed as much about the stu- dents as about the text.
St. John’s students offered care- ful, scholarly observations, draw- ing on references to classic litera- ture and art, sounding very much like young professors. One female Johnnie offered,
“Animals feel the wax and wane of contentment, just like humans do.”
Midshipmen spoke more plain-
ly, summarizing the text in sim- pler terms.
“I was thinking, how do we know happiness is happiness?” said one female midshipman. “Be- cause when you have a smile on your face, you know that’s happi- ness. But that feeling doesn’t last.” A Johnnie warned his group not to broach the topic of un- happiness unless they were pre- pared to catalogue the full com- pendium of human sufferings. A midshipman joked that the reading struck him as the exact opposite of the movie “Avatar”: well-written but boring.
And there were moments of
genuine connection, as when a male Johnnie asked a female Mid about her cap. “We saw four of you going to So-
fi’s Crepes,” he said. “They all took their hats off the exact same way at the exact same time.”
She smiled and replied,
“There’s only so many ways you can take your hat off.”
devised@washpost.com
SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 2010
SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Supporter Rebecca Fishman Harris of Ward 2 cheers the mayor on at his campaign headquarters on Georgia Avenue NW.
Fenty defends management style as he begins campaign for a second term as D.C. mayor
fenty from C1
down as illegal. Fenty did not apologize for any of those deci- sions.
And he praised the decision of Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to close several schools de- spite the backlash she received. “I say: Hallelujah! Keep it up. And I think it’s a breath of fresh air,” he said. Throughout the speech, Fenty
returned to this mantra: “We did it because it was the right thing to do.” He was joined on a small stage by his wife, Michelle, baby daugh- ter Aerin and parents, Jan and Phil Fenty. (Twin sons Matthew and Andrew were playing in a baseball game, he said.)
Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4), the successor to his council seat, had a lighter take on Fenty’s theme be- fore introducing him to the crowd. “It ain’t easy being green, is it?” she asked, referring to Fenty’s campaign color and the “Green Team,” the nickname for his sup- porters. Volunteers waved campaign
signs at nearby Georgia and Mis- souri avenues and in front of the headquarters, which used to house Curtis Chevrolet. The event drew three protest- ers, who argued with Fenty volun- teers outside the headquarters and held handwritten posters that read “RECALL FENTY.” Keith Lomax, a friend of Fenty’s since high school, confronted
them. “I’m going to do something to you,” he told protester Randy Brown. “People are trying to get into the building.” Brown said in an interview that he lives in Capitol Hill and oppos- es the changes in the school sys- tem under Rhee. Volunteers tried to drown out Brown, who had a microphone and hand-held speaker, with a call-and-response of “Give me an F-E-N-T-Y.” Inside the headquar- ters, music ranged from McFad- den and Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” a favorite of po- litical rallies, to Kanye West’s “Stronger.” The crowd was filled with fa- miliar faces: government work- ers, Fenty appointees to boards and commissions, fraternity
LOCAL DIGEST
MARYLAND
ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG
Chancellor Rhee was lionized before actual change occurred.
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Lawmakers approve cellphone restriction
Maryland became the seventh
state in the nation to ban the use of handheld cellphones behind the wheel when the legislature gave final approval to the prohi- bition Friday. The state joins the District, California, Connecticut, New Jer- sey, New York, Oregon and Wash- ington in requiring that drivers use hands-free devices. If signed by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), the law will take effect Oct. 1. Maryland’s ban is weaker than
that of any other jurisdiction be- cause it makes using a handheld phone a secondary offense, re- quiring that a police officer have another reason for stopping a driver before issuing a cellphone citation.
— Ashley Halsey III
THE DISTRICT
Vehicle strikes, kills man in wheelchair
A man using a wheelchair was struck by a vehicle Thursday in Northeast Washington and later died at a hospital, D.C. police said.
The victim, whose name was being withheld Saturday as police continued searching for his rela- tives, apparently was crossing Eastern Avenue NE near Sheriff Road in his wheelchair when he was hit about 9:30 p.m. Thursday, authorities said. They said he was struck by a
1997 Chevrolet Tahoe traveling on Eastern Avenue. He was pro- nounced dead Friday at Prince George’s Hospital Center. The incident is under investi-
gation by the D.C. police major- crash unit.
— Paul Duggan
Man fatally shot in Southeast
D.C. police said a 27-year-old man was found shot to death in Southeast Washington early Sat- urday. The victim, identified as Mel- vin White, who had no fixed ad- dress, suffered several bullet wounds, police said. They said of- ficers found his body on the side- walk shortly before 2:30 a.m. in the 600 block of 49th Place SE. The case was under investiga- tion by homicide detectives.
— Paul Duggan
brothers and Ward 4 residents who have supported him since he defeated Charlene Drew Jarvis for her Ward 4 council seat in 2000.
Some of Fenty’s staunchest sup-
porters said he is giving residents what they asked for. “People want change,” said Jean Harris, a re- tired financial analyst who lives in the Chillum neighborhood. “They want to see change happen. Then when he’s implementing what he feels is needed, they go into culture shock.” Another supporter, Page Cros- land, a consultant who lives in Chevy Chase, offered advice: “There are people who are op- posed to change no matter what. He’s got to improve his message.”
stewartn@washpost.com
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