The Philodemic Revived!

By Manuel A Miranda, F’82

(This is the fifth of five pieces that recount the revival of Georgetown University’s historic Philodemic Debate Society approaching its 200th?year.??Here you can find?Part 1?and?Part 2?and?Part 3.)

The revival?of the Philodemic Society, founded in 1830, began in the bicentennial year of 1989 but wasn’t truly complete until the Merrick Medal Debate in the Spring of 1995.??During the six revival years, the Philodemic’s leadership --?students, faculty and alumni -- had to overcome three obstacles.?I address two of these more fully in?my previous article.?

The first obstacle was the attempted leveling by a pre-woke administration overseer named Penny Rue, who headed what would now be the Center for Student Engagement. She attempted to eliminate just about everything that has made the Philodemic successful over the past three decades.??She certainly succeeded in destroying the great Philodemic tradition that was the Grand Semi Annual gathering at the end of each semester, reducing it to a navel-gazing student club meeting of the most petty kind.??Today the GSA, that once set the University’s development objectives, can be described as “infantile meets hazing.” An 8 hour business meeting in the middle of the end-of-semester study days is nothing but an act of malfeasance by the administrators who get paid to watch over such abuses to student welfare.?

The second obstacle came from the Office of the President, specifically Leo O’Donovan, who denied the Society the use of their endowed historic space for the purpose of?a secret and costly scheme?to “reimagine” it into an expensive multi-purpose conference room to serve the ever-expanding University President's office.??Instead, the great Hall lay mostly idle for four years and for a while was occupied by workstations with inhabitants who cluttered the historic gem with personal effects, including, I remember, a gym bag filled with dirty work-out clothes and filthy shoes.??The Philodemic had to go to great lengths to persevere and survive during this abuse.???

The third and final obstacle came in the form of the much-hated Student Activities Commission.??In fact, I can say with certainty that most of the successful reform efforts that came later, directed at?the Georgetown University Students Association, the funding boards system, and especially SAC, had its direct origin in the antipathy that was sown and harvested among student leaders who were members of the Philodemic in the 1990s.?

SAC had the leveling attitude of the university administrators that held the puppet strings.??They looked for excuses to hobble the aspiring Philodemic in ways large and small.??Unlike other student groups, the Philodemic had an Independent streak and resisted.??But then in the winter of 1995, the Philodemic made themselves vulnerable to a major SAC intervention, and this time it was deserved.

From the beginning of the revival, the Society had to fight SAC and its administration puppet masters on its membership practices.??Essentially, the Philodemic required that to become a member you had to speak twice from the floor in regular debates (later thrice) to qualify to be invited to be a keynote speaker. After keynoting, the Society would welcome you into membership and administer it's 19th century oath.??

SAC and its keepers wanted every club to have sign-on membership without any exclusionary requirements.??The fight had been waged by the Philodemic in the student press and we were winning.??

By 1995, despite being deprived of its historic room, the Philodemic was not lacking in members.??In fact, it collected many prominent student leaders of the time.??But it had gotten a little clubby.??What we had written as an objective set of steps to obtain membership in a debating society was being subjected to blackballing practices by irresponsible leaders.??

The confrontation started when an undergraduate, who had faithfully attended Thursday night debates and spoken a sufficient number of times, filed a complaint with SAC alleging that he was being denied membership in the Philodemic unfairly.???The incident was immediately splashed on the pages of?The Hoya.??The paper reported it as its?upper-right front page, lead news story, and then invited a point/counterpoint set of columns in its Viewpoint section.??

The short of it was that it was true.?

The earnest young man had long been eligible to become a member. He had completed his three speeches on the floor and dutifully attended debates beyond that. But under the rules existing at the time, the leadership of the Society had discretion and did not invite him to give his keynote and thereby take his membership oath.??Why? They simply didn't like him. It was not his views, or his race or his religion or any other protected aspect of who he was. They were merely using their discretion unfairly and in effect blackballing him.??It was the high school cafeteria.?

One can only imagine what would have happened had there been an allegation of discrimination based on race, sex, religion, ideology, or viewpoint.??Moreover, there was no allegation that the abuse was systemic or targeted others.??That would have given SAC the proof needed to open the Philodemic up and eliminate any membership requirements.?

The Philodemic was promptly put on probation.??A hearing was held and the Philodemic President admitted the allegations. The evidence was undeniable. The complainant had been eligible for months and had been put off in being invited to give his induction keynote for months.??But then something unforgivable happened.??The Society’s President went beyond admitting to the blackballing, he surrendered the Philodemic’s position that the Society needed membership requirements and bowed to the argument that membership requirements bred elitism and exclusion.??

Meeting later, the Society urged his resignation, and he and his vice-president both resigned.??

In the aftermath, new leadership defended the Society’s requirements but adopted bylaw amendments and promised to have a transparent and lockstep process without discriminatory discretion. Once eligible, the prospective member would now be assigned a mentor and their keynote would be scheduled within a fixed number of weeks.???The expectation was that the mentor would protect the prospective member’s interests and prepare him or her for membership.?

In the years that followed the 1995 amendments, other amendments were added so that a prospective member would also have to attend a “Speaker’s workshop” before their keynote.??The bylaws assured that they be inducted before attending 15 debates (!) after completing all requirements.??

{What could possibly go wrong with that? I will address that in a future article, because despite our good faith efforts in 1995, petty High School cafeteria people have taken the Philodemic terribly off the rails, and the University administration appears to have turned a blind eye to it.}???

The 1995 amendments were accepted by SAC and the administration, with the understanding that they would be applied objectively and fairly and without application of discriminatory discretion.??The Philodemic under its new leadership had stood firm to protect the use of requirements.??

Soon the University President’s office called in the new Society president and informed him that he was disposed to letting the Society debate in the Philodemic Hall again.??Moreover, thanks to the great University Curator, Professor Cliff Chieffo, we would receive the Room back with ceiling artwork restored and oil paintings rehung.??The oils had disappeared from the Room by 1989, as had the side benches and the library, and the Crucifix.??

The historic Hall looked wonderful.??The only regret was that during the restoration the President's desk, in which Philodemic presidents had carved their names since 1881, and in which Eric George had carved his name in 1989, had disappeared.??A student newspaper would later comment that it had last been seen in the dumpster area of Village C.???

With the Philodemic Hall now available for the rest of that spring semester each Thursday night, the Philodemic flourished.??Alumni and faculty and campus leaders would drop in for the weekly debates without any difficulty. The table was now set to have a great Merrick Medal Debate and bring to a close the revival??we started six years before.?

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It is difficult to convey the enormity of the excitement that rushed through all of us who crowded into the Philodemic Hall that late April night.??Students, faculty, alumni and parents arrived to a reception in the hallway of second Healy that spilled into the foyer outside the President's office. It was loud and boisterous.??Many of the men wore black tie and the women wore their finery.?

Inside the room the Society had prepared for maximum attendance. Three rows of chairs faced each other along the main walls and three rows were placed for the first time along the back wall. The newly restored room looked resplendent. On its walls were oil paintings from Georgetown’s large collection.??Along the walls, the historic photographs of “the old boys” greeted us as always, serving the singular purpose, unappreciated by the non-member or today’s wokesters, of reminding us, “This room is ours.”

Those of us who knew better moved into the room and secured seats, and there the conversations continued. When the rally sounded everyone else made their way into the room with many left to stand. In the middle, legs crisscrossed. There would be no strolling there that night, and the President reminded guests to keep the old house rule and speak standing at their seat when debate opened to the floor.

The Merrick Medal Debate had been restored by Eric George, C'90, L'93, in the Spring of 1989. He had recast the medal and presided over it in the Philodemic Hall. We had last debated there in 1990 when George was among the keynoters. Now, we were back.

As memorable as the 1995 Merrick Debate was, and I would say the best we have ever had, the most spectacular part of it was two of the keynoters. The four men wore tuxedos, as did the President. Two keynoters would be extraordinary that night.??Eric J. Larsen had won the Merrick Medal as a sophomore. As a freshman he had won the Hamilton debate. When he took the Merrick Medal in 1993 he had defeated the most riveting Philodemic debater I have ever known: Sean Keely, who was already a Merrick Medalist and also an extraordinary student leader, and whose mark on Georgetown?is still quite large. But sophomore Eric Larsen defeated the legendary senior.??Now two years later in 1995 history would repeat.?

Jeff Wall was a rambunctious personality and quite lovable freshman.??He altered Philodemic debate by introducing the stroll and rumination, something he could pull off and most students cannot. That night he defeated his senior friend, the skilled Eric Larsen. Wall would win the Medal a second time as a senior.

That night, a Philodemic alumnus saw Eric speak.??He would return to work on Monday to write a memo to his company’s recruiters that he had seen a young man with “the gift.”??They would recruit Eric and he would build a career that would make Eric one of the nation’s foremost health care industry thought leaders.??He is the President of that company today, as well as chairing the boards of the Kennedy Center and the Washington Ballet.??

Of course, the freshman that defeated Larsen, Jeff Wall, would go on to be Solicitor General of the United States.

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On Capitol Hill, politicians had adopted a gag order to forbid that slavery ever be debated on the floors of the House or Senate.??In defiance, the Philodemic Society held debates regarding slavery and was for decades the only place in the nation’s capital where young men could hone their arguments against the grave moral stain, until the final bloody reckoning.??

It was Philodemic alumni gathering for their Grand Semi Annual that founded Georgetown’s alumni association, took on the fundraising to build the Healy building, and established the Board of Regents to fund our sport teams, among much else. It was from the President’s old desk that Richard Alan Gordon had rallied a campus-wide student walk-out in 1950 to demand that the Jesuits desegregate Georgetown.??Dean Gordon was a Merrick judge in 1990, as he had been in the 60s, and now again in 1995.

It was all of it that we celebrated that night in April 1995. There, in that crowded Hall, that night, amidst the markers of its extraordinary past and its particularity around its walls and ceilings, the Philodemic Society was fully revived.??It would know only success for 25 years to come as a result of our artful revival effort, and until recently, ever mindful of its singular purpose "to cultivate eloquence in the defense of liberty."?

Manuel Miranda is the 1989 founder of the?Alumni Philodemica?and secretary of?The Sodality for the Historic Preservation of Philodemic Hall, an association of Philodemic students, alumni and supporters.?