Magazine - summer 03 - St. John's College

22
{Commencement}
COMMENCEMENT 2004
Inspired teachers always
leave their students with
something intriguing to
dwell on. The two commencement
speakers at
St. John’s last spring
shared that quality.
Annapolis tutor Chester
Burke (A74) spoke of the
value of genuine conversation, and
Danielle Allen of the University of
Chicago spoke to Santa Fe graduates of
the lasting gift of wonder that a liberal
education can impart. Both left students
with an assignment: Burke asked
students to ponder Pascal, and Allen
asked students to think deeply about a
Greek poem.
“Men and Women of the World”
Annapolis, May 16
As a student, Chester Burke thrived on
conversations in the classroom, the Coffee
Shop, and the gym; as a musician
studying in Paris, he found how much he
missed those conversations; and as a
tutor for the past two decades, he has
seen students discover themselves in
those conversations. In life outside the
college, real listening is rare, and “conversations
too often consist of isolated
outbursts of speech which rarely meet up
with one another, and even more rarely
build upon one another,” he told the
Class of 2004.
teri thomson randall
“Such speeches are lonely endeavors
which end when the participants have
run out of words,” Burke said, adding
that what happens at St. John’s is very
different.
“Your words, responding first to ours
and now your own questions, have grown
from tentative but honest beginnings,
nourished by the active listening of your
classmates, into vessels through which
the world may be displayed in its fullness.
During the past few months, I have been
watching not only your faces, but your
entire bodies come alive while you
strained to respond both to texts and to
Celebrating in Santa Fe.
one another.”
Some of the college’s veteran tutors,
Burke said, including himself, may sometimes
expect a conversation to take a certain
shape in seminar, but students at
their best will refuse to conform to it.
“Our words rebound from your stubborn
surfaces, and leave no indentations. You
punish us with your silence and your
glazed looks when we deliver beautiful
speeches, continually reminding us that
speech is not a rehearsed performance,
{ The College • John’s College • Fall 2004 }