As a graduating senior, I often reflect on my time at Georgetown. I have mused on how a chance encounter led to my breaking a campus news story, how arriving early to a capture the flag game on Cooper Field helped me land my first internship and how my friends and I honed our hand-eye coordination battling armies of cockroaches in Darnall Hall. But most of all, I have thought about my time in the Philodemic Society, Georgetown’s student debate society, and the oldest secular student organization on campus.
When I heard there was an effort by some misguided Philodemicians to partner with the Georgetown administration to alter the Philodemic Hall — the physical representation of almost 200 years of enriching, inspiring, and civil student discourse — I was heartbroken. I also knew that a vital part of being a Philodemician is taking a stand. So, during my final semester, I have decided to demonstrate my gratitude to the Philodemic Society by joining in solidarity with students and graduates to speak out in support of its history and traditions. I invite you to join me.
During my first semester, when I was still getting used to life on the Hilltop, I sat in on Philodemic debates with no intentions of speaking. I was captivated by the confidence, eloquence and boldness of the speakers, and spent most of my time taking notes on how to emulate them. In my second semester I was called on. Even though I stumbled, I was hooked. A year-and-a-half later, despite the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, I became a member.
Eventually, I took for granted the grandeur of Philodemic Hall and our long history of student discourse. Great minds were formed and strengthened in the crucible of debate that is the Philodemic Hall. From its start, the society debated the most glaring issues at the time — abolition and slavery — and from the Philodemic president’s chair came the rallying cry for a campus-wide student walk-out to demand that the Jesuit priests desegregate Georgetown College.
The University President’s Office has taken it upon itself to reimagine the interior decor, design, woodcraft, artistry and historic content of Philodemic Hall. The administration has convinced a donor to give a few million dollars and now they are off, degrading an endowed historic space into a multipurpose meeting room with a completely different style of decor.
Like Gaston Hall and Riggs Library, the Hall is classified as a protected interior room of Healy Hall, a designated National Historic Landmark. For this reason, I have joined with students and alumni to establish “The Sodality for the Historic Preservation of Philodemic Hall.”
Some students advocated for the removal of just a few portraits from the room (mostly of people related to Georgetown University or the Philodemic Society who either fought for the Confederacy, or had family ties to it), but the university has taken advantage of this activism. It has instead removed all portraits and pitched an expensive alteration of Philodemic Hall, as if that is what students requested. No matter — the Sodality does not need to engage with the years-long debate about the portrait removals. Its sole purpose will be the preservation of Philodemic Hall. To borrow the words of William F. Buckley Jr., it simply “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
I prefer to leave Philodemic Hall unaltered, and now set off to restore it. But, one could install portraits of a few key members of the Philodemic from the 20th century on the long-standing and historic wall of portraits. One could also replace just a very few others, chosen for whatever reason, all without altering the Hall’s “Victorian” decor and design (a gem of the university), or changing its historic, endowed purpose as stated in official documents: “Debate.” Philodemic Hall embodies the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum’s place of privilege for Rhetoric. It honors Georgetown’s heritage perhaps better than any other space, and it deserves — even demands — to be protected. We cannot ensure success in preventing the execution of the university’s plans, but we pledge that we will do everything in our power to prevent the destruction of this sacred space.
If you would like to join our effort, please reach out at: [email protected]
Justin Drewer is a senior in the College.
Maura McCarthy Haney • Apr 24, 2023 at 7:28 pm
Dear all .. what ended up happening? Is there anything we can do at this point?
thank you,
– A Concerned 2001 Philodemician
Manuel Miranda • Feb 19, 2022 at 9:33 am
First, what were the Veruca Salt students doing to act as if they owned what belongs to 192 years of Philodemicians and is at he heart of Georgetown’s history. Second, to do what hey have done in getting a poor schmuck to donate money and then use it to reimagine a room in any way other way than what Philodemic endowed and Jesuit Br. Schroen designed, shows a remarkable disconnection between the President’s Office and the heart and fiber of Georgetown’s particularity and ethos. If they want a virtue- signaling display for either their ego or guilt, they should reimagine the Carroll Parlor just down the stairs, or the Hall of Cardinals next door. Perverting Philodemic Hall is not to be forgiven.
Manuel A. Miranda, SFS 82
Concerned Scholar • Feb 18, 2022 at 11:38 am
As an alumni of Georgetown who is now a university instructor, I’m concerned by the willingness of The Hoya to publish articles so committed to obfuscating the full breadth of the truth. Although this is, of course, an editorial and not a proper news story, I would think fact-checking would still be a regular step in the publication process. What goes unmentioned here is the fact that the portraits that the current membership requested to have taken down were of Confederate officers (which earns a glancing acknowledgment here), slaveholders, and KKK members. The op-ed author’s stated preference to leave the room wholly “unaltered” or to, at most, “replace just a very few other[ portraits], chosen for whatever reason,” masks the rationale behind the push from current members to make these changes in the first place. As a room that is, as the writer notes, located in a place of prominence outside of the President’s Office in Healy Hall, and one whose design evokes a certain degree of historical veneration, leaving such portraits on display would send a decisive message to all visitors and guests of the room. At a Jesuit university committed to Cura Personalis, I have to wonder at the op-ed author’s grave misreading of such an ideal. Exactly which people are being cared for and supported when being asked to stand and speak in a room surrounded by portraits of slaveholders, white supremacists, and KKK members? Just who is being valued by a sodality that holds up William F. Buckley Jr.’s commitment to stopping progress as its mantra? Then again, as someone who would have been interpellated by Buckley’s “you queer” invective, perhaps I was simply never the intended audience for such an op-ed…
Cheers to the current members fighting for a more inclusive and accessible space for all. I appreciate your efforts!
MultiHoya • Feb 18, 2022 at 11:14 am
Thank you, Mr. Drewer, for taking on this project. The Philodemic Room (i.e., Hall) has always been one of my favorite spots on campus since I arrived three decades ago, and it is outrageous that the administration would even think about gutting such an extraordinarily beautiful and historic space. They have had their eye on it for years, though, and finally found the right dupes to provide cover and seize what has always been student space, more specifically the Philodemic Society’s space. With the historic portraits and photographs already having been removed, the room has already been marred, and what remains is a grotesque reminder of its grandeur.
The rationale for this endeavor is as flimsy as the administration’s purported effort to solicit input about it, as if the conclusion were not foregone. Let’s hope your efforts will ensure that it is not. In any event, this assault on Georgetown’s history and traditions is disgusting. If the administration proceeds with this project, I will tear up my bequest to the university and withhold any future gifts for the rest of my life. Perhaps the administration doesn’t care, but I likewise don’t care to support an institution run by mealy-mouthed administrators set on (illegally) destroying one of the most historically significant parts of campus. What a gut punch.
NOPEster • Feb 18, 2022 at 9:21 am
OK, that does it. DeGioia has got to go. If our endowment were not puny, if the administration were not tone deaf, if the basketball team won more than they lose, and if the campus facilities were not a miserable experience of flooding, mice, rats, and mold, but the dude is breaking stuff. I say NOPE. Not. One. Penny. Ever. Save Philodemic Hall!