ARG! HONORIS CAUSA

PH.D., OF COURSE, MEANS Doctor of Philosophy. And adding the Latin phrase honoris causa, “for the sake of honor,” means that the degree is awarded in recognition of one’s life experience. These are unlike some Ph.D.s, facetiously called “bits of research done by a thesis advisor under extremely trying circumstances.”

But what of an ARG! honoris causa? 

This is my interpretation of MIT’s certificate in piracy, as described at the Interesting Facts website: “Earning the right to call yourself a pirate once meant living a rough-and-tumble life on the seas, robbing ships, and dodging naval law. However, modern swashbucklers enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a much easier go of it. Students who attend the esteemed university can earn a certificate in piracy by completing four classes—sailing, fencing, pistol shooting, and archery—and then taking the school’s secret pirate oath.”

In Lieu of P.E. Interesting Facts recounts, “MIT began offering the optional certificate in 2012 as a way for students to enjoy fulfilling the school’s physical education requirements, though the idea also stems from a decades-long joke…. (At one point during the program’s creation, receiving a commemorative eye patch was up for consideration in place of a formal certificate.)”

A Personal Note. I honestly don’t remember any Physical Education requirement at Worcester Poly. Maybe it was replaced by the required two-year Reserve Officer Training Corp participation? ROTC involved marching around our sports field periodically, regularly cleaning a rifle never fired, and once or twice even firing another one at a target.

God help us all. I am left-eyed with cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and other sightings, but fired a rifle from my right shoulder—thus generally missing my target but nailing the one to the right. 

When offered the responsibility of leading a squad through military drill, I recall performing “Change Step, March!” up and down the length of the field. Do it right and it resembles skipping; upper-class officers are not amused. 

On the other hand, I shudder at the thought of pistol shooting or archery (either, with my left-eye chaos) or fencing (I’d resemble the Michelin Man). Sailing would have been fine.

Not the First MIT Highjinks. As cited in “On the Smoot” here at SimanaitisSays, “Back in 1958 an MIT fraternity had the idea of initiating new members by making them measure a bridge over the Charles River connecting the Cambridge campus with Boston,” as described by Steven Shapin, London Review of Books, October 4, 2021. In doing so, the fraternity pledges invented a new unit of linear measure, the “smoot,” using fellow pledge Oliver R. Smoot.

Shapin wrote in LRB, “The other pledges laid Smoot out at one end of the bridge, marked his extent with chalk and paint, then picked him up and laid him down again, spelling out the full measurement every ten lengths, and inscribing the mid-point of the bridge with the words ‘halfway to Hell.'”

A reclining Oliver R. Smoot, standardized on the Harvard Bridge, October 1958. Image from London Review of Books. 

The span was 364.4 smoots long, “plus or minus one ear.” MIT students are precise, after all, and recognized inherent measurement uncertainty.

Back to Interesting Facts. Of the 26,914 first-time applicants to MIT in 2023, Interesting Facts recounts that only 4.8 percent were admitted. The website also offered a Fact or Fib: “Most pirates buried their treasure.” No, I suspect they blew most of the booty on eye patches, shoulder parrots, and lessons on how to utter “ARG!” ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023