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BC High Responds to Racism and Inequality
Making strides to combat racism and inequality
Prioritizing the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) with the first order of business to ratify the DEI mission statement that was proposed by students and faculty/staff this year under the leadership of our DEI Director;
Engage external expertise and commit to an intensive study of diversity, equity, and inclusion, with a particular emphasis on the recruitment and retention of faculty and staff of color;
Whole school reads and a program of speakers on racial justice, prioritizing post community discussions and activities;
The establishment of a mentor program for our current students of color in conjunction with our alumni;
Clearly articulated opportunities and programs for all students, parents, and faculty / staff, to engage in the community work of anti-racism, building on the work of student affinity groups and parent groups, including CASA (Cultural Alliance Supporting All);
Hosting the second annual National Anti-Racism Teach-In this August, and; instituting the Courageous Conversations Curriculum for the community;
Re-evaluation of the four-year old curriculum review and assess using anti-racism criteria, committing to changing current curriculum content to be more representative and anti-racist;
Re-commitment to anti-bias and Cultural Competence training for all of our employees;
The formation of an Institutional DEI Council containing a strong student voice and members from across all areas of our community, to apply a holistic lens at making our community more inclusive. This includes inside and outside the classroom and will result in clear, actionable outcomes.
BC High and Boston Who is my
Neighbor?
SToday, BC High’s Office of Service and Justice Initiatives, led by Amanda Adamczyk P’21 and Rev. Ron Perry, SJ, offers a guided and transformative program of community ervice to the City of Boston is built into the very foundation of the BC High experience. Though charitable clubs had been popular since the time of the school’s founding, Students participating in the Local Service Immersion pause to reflect in Loyola Chapel. a formalized program did not come into service over a student’s four or six years on being until the spring of 1972 as the Field Morrissey Boulevard. Rather than simply Education Program under the direction of tracking hours, these experiences emphasize Jesuit scholastics. That year, eighty students authentic and reflective solidarity with those worked at least 25 hours a week during the on the margins. fourth quarter of their senior year in hospitals, Beginning in the Arrupe Division, students elementary schools, government offices, experience service days with their advisory and political campaigns. groups. Grade 7 travels to local parks, beaches As the decade wore on, Rev. Richard and non-profit organizations to learn stewardGross, SJ, would shift the program’s philosship of the Earth while Grade 8 visits nearby ophy toward strictly service organizations – assisted living facilities, nursing homes and seeking personal development of the student rehabilitation hospitals to engage with the and not possible career development. Fr. residents and patients performing the ministry Gross would eventually propose that this of presence. voluntary program be made a requirement, Freshman service focuses on student engagetransforming into the Community Service ment within the school community, forming Program of the past several decades. the bonds that will serve as the foundation
(L-R) St. Louis Project co-founders David Coletti ’13, Paul Howard ’13, and Trevor Schramm '13 prepare lunches in 2012.
of their BC High experience. They also perform ten hours of service for an organization to which they already belong in their home community and begin to reflect.
Sophomores and juniors learn to act as men for and with others through service at nearly one hundred local community non-profit organizations from various Boys and Girls Clubs to Veterans Affairs Hospitals. Through dozens of hours of service, students also participate in reflection groups and journal about their experiences.
One of the most formative initiatives is the Local Service Immersion where students spend February vacation lodging at BC High and venturing out each day to work with different service partners, advocates for economic and racial justice, and State Legislators. Participants ask themselves, “Who is my neighbor?” – the same question asked of Jesus in the Gospels – as they visit, listen to, learn from, and advocate with and for people in the neighborhoods of Boston experiencing poverty.
Through its service programs, BC High seeks not only to serve our local community but to educate young men by exposing them to unfamiliar situations and demonstrating how to live justly. As students leave their comfort zones, they come to see all people as brothers and sisters. They are confronted with injustice and come to know the individuals, families and communities that are directly affected. The relationships they form lead to a more profound understanding of the meaning of discipleship.
By senior year, there is no formal requirement or expectation of hours, but many of the young men nearing the end of their transformation into Graduates at Graduation choose to continue the service that has been so central to their BC High experience. And in the past decade, there has never been greater co-curricular focus
Patrick Dooley ’21 spends time with new friends at the Towards Independent Living and Learning (TILL) Program.
or intensity toward service. Almost everywhere you look, clubs and teams are devoting themselves to the community. From the yearly Eagle Christian Athlete charity rake-a-thon, to the thousands raised for the Ellie Fund by BC High Athletics teams each year, to the perpetual efforts of the Green Eagles to raise awareness and effect change for recycling, conservation, and gardening within BC High and beyond.
One of the most prolific co-curriculars devoted to service is the St. Louis Project, in which students and adults serve those struggling with homelessness, poverty and hunger in our Boston community. Every Thursday, these Eagles and adult volunteers meet after school and prepare meals to share as well as socks, hats, gloves and other necessities. At Downtown Crossing students practice the ministry of presence by entering conversations with these men and women, building meaningful relationships with them, and affirming their shared dignity and the value of community.
In the St. Louis Project, the threads of BC High’s devoted history to service – and its future – are beautifully entwined. One of the Project’s cofounders, David Coletti ’13, is the grandson of dearly departed alumnus and devoted advocate Bob Walsh ’59, GP’13 who helped to establish the Pine Street Inn. A full obituary for Walsh can be found in our In Memoriam section beginning on page 32 alongside fellow titans including Joseph Corcoran '53, P’80, ’82, ’90, GP’11, ’14, ’17, ’19, whose work in the field of affordable housing has benefited thousands in Boston and throughout the country.
As these alumni begin to pass their torches after lifetimes of service to the Greater Boston community, the younger generation of Eagles is passionate to carry on that legacy. Just as Walsh’s spirit lives on in the hundreds of students who have and will continue to volunteer at Pine Street Inn over the years – the St. Louis Project has inspired several other service-oriented co-curriculars.
The Lazarus Ministry is a partnership with St. Anthony’s Shrine to serve those who die with no one to care for their burial needs. Juniors and seniors serve as pallbearers at these funeral services and bear witness to the dignity that the deceased have as human beings. The Mother Teresa Project is a new accompaniment program started by Campus Ministry this year to
BOSTON
*Location points are a general representation of service areas. See below for a complete listing of BC High service locations.
BC High students serve nearly 70 organizations throughout Boston and Beyond.
ABCD East Boston Head Start, East Boston All Dorchester Sports League, Dorchester BCYF Leahy Halloran Community Center, Boston BCYF Tynan Community Center, Boston Boys & Girls Club, Waltham Boys & Girls Club, Arlington Boys & Girls Club, Boston Boys & Girls Club, Brockton Boys & Girls Club, Charlestown Boys & Girls Club, Dorchester Boys & Girls Club, Marshfield Boys & Girls Club, Plymouth Boys & Girls Club, Greater New Bedford/Wareham Boys & Girls Club, South Boston Boys & Girls Club, Walter Denney, Dorchester BPS: Mather Elementary School, Dorchester Camp Shriver, Stonehill, Easton Camp Shriver, UMass, Dorchester Cardinal Cushing, Hanover Catholic Charities Laboure Center: Youth Tutoring Youth, South Boston Catholic Charities, Sunset Point Camp, Hull City Growers, Dorchester Community Family, Everett Community Servings, Boston Department of Conversation and Recreation, Boston Dorchester Park, Dorchester Dorchester Street Hockey, Dorchester Excel Academy Charter School, East Boston Father Bills & Mainspring, Quincy Friendship Home, Norwell Gallivan Community Center, Mattapan Germantown Neighborhood Center, Quincy Greater Boston Chinese Community Services, Inc., Boston Haley House, Boston Immigrant Family Services Institute (IFSI-USA), Roslindale Interfaith Social Services, Quincy Lazarus House Ministr, Lawrence Little Sisters of the Poor, Somerville Marian Manor, South Boston Martin Richard Foundation, Boston Mass Eye and Ear, Boston Mass General Hospital, Boston My Brother’s Keeper, Easton Nativity, Jamaica Plain Nazzaro Center, North End Boston Oak Square YMCA, Brighton Paraclete, South Boston Parkway YMCA, West Roxbury Paulist Center, Boston Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown Pine Street Inn, Boston Pope JP II Summer Camp, Dorchester Project DEEP, Dorchester Rosie’s Place, Boston S. Boston Neighborhood House, South Boston Salesain’s Boys and Girls Club, East Boston Sanger Center for Compassion, Quincy St. Stephen’s Youth Program, Boston Trustees of Reservation City Natives, Mattapan Trustees of Reservation, Nightingale Community Garden, Dorchester Urban Farming Inst. Glenway St. Farm, Dorchester VA Medical Center, Brockton VA Medical Center, Jamaica Plain
develop friendships with intellectually impaired students at the Towards Independent Living and Learning (TILL) Program. Eagles travel to the center in Charlestown each week to make crafts, do activities, and befriend TILL afterschool participants ages 12-21. In January, more than a hundred students in AP U.S. History classes signed up to partner with St. Mark’s Parish on their Community Education Program (CEP). CEP offers 12-week semester citizenship classes every Saturday morning at Boston Public Library to immigrants living in Dorchester. These initiatives are the result of BC High’s constant efforts to bring students to the margins, building kinship and challenging preconceived worldviews.
And as a longstanding community hub in Dorchester, BC High’s commitment to our neighbors has only increased amid the COVID-19 crisis. Every year our campus is host to church services, fundraisers, and summer programs for local residents. But in May, the parking lot outside McNeice Pavilion, normally full of cars belonging to our students and faculty, transformed into something else entirely. Orange cones and staging tents, and gigantic milk trucks filled the pavement as BC High partnered
with State Representative Shawn Dooley P’24, ‘26, Dairy Farmers of America, Vanguard Renewables and HP Hood LLC in the Farmers Feeding Families to distribute 8,600 gallons of milk to our brothers and sisters in Boston.
The challenges ahead are uncertain, unforeseen, and unprecedented. But the BC High community stands ready to serve as it does in all things ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
STEVE HUGHES: A LIFE OF SERVICE A Reflection A Reflection
“If I have played any role at all in this place becoming more caring and kind – I’ll be happy. That’s a good way to spend your life.” — Steve Hughes ’73
[ BY STEVEN ROCHE ’21 — Originally published in BC High’s newspaper The Eagle ]
Steve Hughes ’73, P’98 grew up near BC High for most of his life, and finally attended with his six brothers in 1969. As a student, he worked in the BC High kitchen and played football for Coach Jim Cotter ’55. He met hundreds of Jesuits during his service in the kitchen, and he formed countless friendships with fellow student volunteers. Little did he know that service – a small aspect of his life – would transform into his life’s mission.
It began when Father Tom Gibbons offered him a position teaching history at BC High, an opportunity that would shape the next twenty-two years. He fondly remembers the joy of seeing students make a discovery or make well-natured jokes each period. However, he became concerned with intelligent individuals who struggled in class. To understand and implement better teaching techniques to accommodate such students, he started learning about school leadership at Boston College. After completing many courses there, he got a unique opportunity to utilize his knowledge: Mr. Bill Kemeza appointed him the Vice Principal of Student Affairs for two years. Then, he was appointed as Principal, where he worked for seventeen years.
Throughout his tenure, Mr. Hughes has reinforced and expanded a culture of hard work, caring, and kindness. This mission has been achieved through events such as Ignatian Values Day, programs such as the Madden Scholars, and the example of servant leaders.
After seventeen years of service to the BC High community as principal, Mr. Hughes has announced that he will be taking a sabbatical. After touching up on new teaching techniques, he hopes to return to teaching for one last time before he hangs up the ruler.
Boston and Beyond Our GLOBAL Outreach
BY MATT BEDUGNIS ʹ’13
EDITOR'S NOTE: In the time since this piece was first outlined and drafted, our world has changed immeasurably. When we initially set out to mark an important milestone in the history of global education at BC High, no one could have guessed what was on the horizon. But, in the Jesuit context, there is perhaps no better time than challenge and uncertainty to reflect. The spirit of this piece – and the spirit of global education at BC High – has never been about travel, but rather the connectivity which unites all of us around the world.
he roots of global education at BC High are long and winding, but ultimately anchored in the Society of Jesus’s founding mission to spread the message of Christ around the world. In 1863, a new school was founded to educate the children of Irish Catholic immigrants. Many of the Jesuit faculty were immigrants – and almost all of them had been called to serve around the world.
In the 150 years that followed, generations of BC High students engaged with global citizenship in their own ways. Most recently, alumni from the early 2000s have experiences grounded in
service trips to El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. But for so many others, global education at BC High conjures memories of the French exchange program of the 60s and 70s.
Even the mite box has global origins nearly a century old. As early as 1924, Rev. Henry J. Wessling, SJ organized a weekly collection, passing a cardboard box around each classroom and raising $681 for missions in Jamaica, India, China, Korea, New Mexico and the Philippines.
Perhaps most fascinatingly, the roots – and ultimate fate – of global education at BC High stretch back to a darkened office in Ecuador. There, former Vice
President for Global Mission and Identity, Dan Carmody,
sat across from
Rev. José Mesa, SJ, the International Secretary of
Jesuit Education, and pleaded BC High’s case for a global gathering of Jesuit secondary schools – the first
Fr. José Mesa, SJ’s
visit to BC High to help
plan the International
Colloquium on Jesuit
Secondary Education.
of its kind in half a millennium.
“There was no electricity,” Carmody recalled, “but José asked me to meet with him that evening. He had invited me down to a gathering of all the Presidents and Rectors of Jesuit schools in South America. Originally, he hadn’t promised me the opportunity to speak before the congregation. But after that meeting –he said I had 10 minutes to convince everyone… and I had to do it in Spanish.”
The Jesuit leaders took a leap of faith after hearing the proposal. They committed to holding their own annual gathering in Boston the following year, regardless of whether the rest of the world joined or not. “It gave us something concrete,” he said. “We didn’t have outcomes – we didn’t have much to put behind this conference. But Bill Kemeza told me, ‘Just being together… something good will happen.’ So that’s what I pitched. And if the South American leaders didn't commit – the International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education (ICJSE) probably never happens.”
And, if the ICJSE never happens, the history of global education at BC High looks a lot different. Though the Hyde Center and ICJSE were developed separately, they are inextricably linked as the twin geneses of what Carmody has termed
ARGENTINA
➤ AUSTRALIA ➤ BELIZE
➤ CANADA ➤ CHINA
➤ COSTA RICA ➤ DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
➤ ECUADOR ➤ ENGLAND
In partnership with Trustee Dr. Martin J. Dunn, DMD ’53, Kemeza dispatched dispatched Carmody to unite Jesuit leadership across the globe, carrying with him news of the South American commitment. First to Rwanda to meet with the African delegation – then to Europe. The continent-spanning mission intrigued Lawrence Hyde ’42, a firm believer in the transformative impact of global experiences. The Colloquium’s message of collaboration, and the potential for a world-wide network of opportunities deeply resonated with Hyde and Kemeza – who jointly announced the founding of the Hyde Center at the Colloquium’s closing.
The Hyde Center’s first partnerships after opening in 2013 were born from connections made at the Colloquium. At a time when all Jesuit secondary schools were 10 asking themselves how to embrace a newly strengthened global network, Director of Campus Ministry John Mark pointed BC High toward Africa. He, Carmody, Academic Vice Principal Kim Smith, and social studies teacher Mike Clancy ’03 traveled to Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia to create programs with the potential to change students’ lives. Tanzania became the site of BC High’s first international Kairos retreat – taking the beloved tradition global.
An explosion of growth came in the following years. Families were so eager to have their sons undertake a global experience that they didn’t want to wait until high school. To meet that need, the Hyde Center designed a 9-day journey to Costa Rica for students in grades seven and eight exposing them to the country’s ecological wonders.
Later, the Hyde Center’s suite of programs was found to be too weighted toward juniors and seniors. A partnership was established with St. Aloysius College, a K-12 co-ed Jesuit school in Glasgow, Scotland, that allows a joint group of sophomores from BC High and Notre Dame Academy to experience global education early in their high school career.
But the Hyde Center for Global Education isn’t solely defined by its extensive catalogue of nineteen destinations. Two initiatives, the Peretti Scholars and Hyde Global Scholars programs, have allowed students to engage with global topics in a deeper and more consistent basis during their time on Morrissey Boulevard.
Peretti Scholars commit to studying Spanish in a conversational cohort for three academic years, beginning with the summer prior to their freshman year. They seek to exhibit advanced proficiency and heightened cultural awareness by the time they begin senior year by speaking only
Headmaster Gerry Foley of Belvedere College welcomed President Regan this year to celebrate the ten year anniversary of the schools’ partnership.
➤ FRANCE ➤ GREECE ➤ GUATAMALA ➤ INDIA ➤ IRELAND ➤ ITALY ➤ RWANDA ➤ SCOTLAND ➤ TANZANIA ➤ ZIMBABWE
Spanish during twice weekly meetings of the cohort and practicing conversation skills one-on-one, meeting weekly with a Spanish-speaking mentor. These adult mentors comprise every corner of the BC High community, from faculty, to the Advancement Office, and the Facilities staff. Peretti Scholars build their language skills while fostering a deeper sense of community involvement in student formation.
Hyde Global Scholars strive to become citizens of the world through international travel, a commitment to learning a second language, and expanding concrete knowledge on global issues. Upon successful completion of a cohort research project, on-campus and community events, and an independent portfolio of reflections and projects, they receive additional Honors credit and a distinction on their transcript.
Our world has changed at a time when the Hyde Center has never been stronger, offering students a wider range of opportunities than ever before. When asked how the transformational program will continue to grow in the years to come, President Grace Regan P’12 responded, “Our international community is facing the most uncertain time in nearly a century. As our world continues to adjust to the risks and challenges posed by COVID-19, student safety and wellbeing remains our top priority.”
She continued, “This spring was quite a bit different for our school – particularly the Hyde Center. But the Jesuit mission remains global, as does our commitment to offering students opportunities with the power to change their lives. In the coming years I imagine we will focus on our current partnerships that are deemed to be safe. Our expansion, for the time being, will more likely include offerings that bring the world to our students through virtual and distance learning than physical travel.”
There’s no question that the global community faces an unprecedented period of fear and doubt. The Hyde Center may function differently for the next few years – and will look different, not just from the effects of COVID, but from the departure of Carmody in January to serve as Head of School at Cathedral High School in Boston’s South End.
However, as sure as there are challenges ahead – the effect of global citizenship at BC High has never been more certain. Summing up his thirteen years at BC High, Carmody had a poignant reflection: “You know, one of the things that will never leave me is seeing Jesuits from India crying at the Colloquium. I can only imagine they were overwhelmed by that once in a lifetime experience – seeing their global impact firsthand. I’ll never forget it.” 11
