TO THE EDITOR:

I find some fault in the conclusions Brendan Roach reaches in his article (“Curriculum Should Reflect the Times and the Diversity of GU Students,” THE HOYA, Dec. 7, 2007, A3). He claims that requiring a Catholic theology course seems “a waste of a course for non-Catholic Hoyas”, however I beg to differ. It is not a waste for non-Catholics: If anything, it broadens students’ horizons by exposing them to a religion that is not their own. For Catholics, it may give them a greater understanding of their faith. Whether or not one chose Georgetown because it is a Catholic university, the Catholic tradition still makes up a large part of its institutional identity, and studying Catholicism fosters a greater understanding of the values and tradition that make up the identity of our university.

Roach thinks studying the classics in philosophy is “unnecessary veneration of long-dead thinkers.” I direct him to the Alfred North Whitehead quotation that European philosophy “consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” How would we be able to understand the proper context of philosophers like Nietzsche and Foucault if we did not know the philosophical tradition out of which they developed? Ethics, philosophically posed questions and solutions to problems of human experience are still valid regardless of when they were written or how old they are.

Finally, Brendan “warns against the complacency of isolation,” yet without a core curriculum, there is no shared lineage and academic background among students. What does this mean for discourse if no one shares in the same pool of common knowledge? Is it good for a person to stay on his own isolated individual island of knowledge? Surely, allowing diversity in study without common requirements will create a fragmentation of the college experience and paradoxically create isolation among people. It will be a sad day when two educated individuals find they cannot discuss the issues because they have no common frame of reference to anchor themselves to.

Jared Pilosio (SFS ’09)
Dec. 8, 2007