Two juniors expand horizons but plan to limit number of members of Philosophy Club

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Juniors Wells Santos (the first person to speak) and Aaron Schneider (the second person speaking) explain their reasons for founding Philosophy Club and their plans for the club’s future.

The thinking man is back. Or, shall we say, the thinking teenager.

Juniors Wells Santos and Aaron Schneider seek to spread a campaign of thought and understanding that will bring an entirely new mindset to MVHS. It will shake the foundations of everything students believe in, turning their perceptions of life as they know it upside down.

They call it Philosophy Club.

“I thought that the school really needed some philosophy in it, because nowadays, schools in general just don’t have that type of thinking,” Santos said. “They don’t really have morals or ethics classes, so I thought it was a really important role in society to have philosophy.”

Together, he and Schneider have been holding forum-like meetings on Mondays. Schneider, a former Lincoln-Douglas debater at MVHS, really liked the idea of Philosophy Club because people could speak their minds without the stress of a competition or using the dreaded evidence cards.

The club was founded on the assumption that everyone has a belief and that everyone has an opinion on everything, no matter how small. By creating Philosophy Club, Santos and Schneider hope to find people who are willing to express those beliefs. However, they have had a bit of an issue with membership.

Philosophy Club is still small because it is in its early stages. They have submitted the forms and an approval is still pending. According to Schneider, their online forum is a tad low on members as well. For all intents and purposes, though, they are a club. On top of those issues, they face a dilemma about the direction in which they will take this club.

“It would be great if we had a bunch of members in the club,” Santos said. “It’s just that with a topic like philosophy, the bigger your club gets, the harder [it becomes to have discussions]. When you have a smaller group, and you have such serious topics, you really get a good discussion going.”

It follows the saying—twenty’s a forum, seventy’s a lecture hall. Once Philosophy Club gains a steady following, Santos and Schneider plan to spread philosophy in different ways, such as inviting guest speakers or showing a movie.

“I thought it might be kind of interesting to do a philosophy movie,” Schneider said. “That would really get the word out. But there’s a lot of inherent problems with making a philosophy movie. For one, it has to be philosophical—which is always, always difficult in a movie.”

Schneider believes that what people commonly believe to be philosophical movies, such as “The Matrix” and “Inception,” are actually not. Though they make one think, they’re really imposing only one philosophy, not looking at a topic from all angles as a true philosopher would.

Philosophy is about turning something upside down, looking at it from all angles and all points of view. When one discovers the origins of their thought—why they have the opinions they do—and experience that epiphany, it’s priceless.

“Being able to bring other people in and see them have that moment of realization, where they hear something that completely changes how they think,” Santos said. “Having that moment occur so many times in a club like this is just my favorite part. Being able to talk about these things and opening people’s minds up to something new—that’s as good as teaching.”

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