Conversations Spring 2018 On Jesuit Higher Education Number 53

University Engaging its Location Who We Are | Where We Are SPRING 2018 NUMBER 53 Conversations Members of the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education On Jesuit Higher Education Gerard A. Athaide Loyola University Maryland Heidi Barker Regis University Patrick J. Howell, S.J., chair University Engaging its Location Seattle University Timothy P. Kesicki, S.J. President, Jesuit Conference ex officio Molly Pepper Gonzaga University Jennifer Rinella Rockhurst University Stephen C. Rowntree, S.J. , sec 20 Holy Name of Jesus Church Sports in Schools, New Orleans Patrick Kelly, S.J. Julie Rubio St. Louis University Edward W. Schmidt, S.J. , editor America Magazine Michael Sheeran, S.J. President, AJCU ex officio features Clint J. Springer Saint Joseph’s University 2 Finding our Place , Thomas Lucas, S.J. Michael F. Tunney, S.J. 6 Thinking Like an Urban Planner at a Jesuit University, Jamie Kralovec Fairfield University 12 A Center Outside Itself Where the University Finds Itself , Jason Taylor Rachel Wifall Saint Peter’s University 14 Teaching and Learning in San Francisco’s Gentrification Tide , Rachel Brahinsky 17 The Dream of the Mountains’ Struggle, Jessica A. Wrobleski Conversations is published by the 23 Being a Neighbor in the Hood, Gilbert Sunghera, S.J. National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education, which is jointly sponsored 26 Walking the Crossroads of Campus and Community at Rockhurst, Alicia Douglas by the Jesuit Conference Board and 29 Empowering Communities in Worlds Apart, Elizabeth Grassi, Obdulia Castro, the Board of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Paul Burson, Rosa Burson The opinions stated herein are those 31 A Beautiful Thing, Melissa Quan and Bob Hannafin of the authors and not necessarily those of the JC or the AJCU. 34 Jesuit Universities Serving the Local Church , Tom Reynolds Comments and inquiries may be 37 Community Partnerships? Ask our Alumni , Jacob Dillabaugh addressed to the editor of Conversations Edward W. Schmidt, S.J. America Media 10 Photo essay: Images of Engagement, Rachael Steward 1212 6th Avenue, 11th Floor New York, NY 10036 phone: 212-581-4640 e-mail: [email protected] talking Back For information about subscriptions 45 The Quality of Mercy at the Heart of Sanctuary, Paul Lakeland to Conversations: Stephen C. Rowntree, S.J. 48 How Should Jesuit Universities Respond to the Repeal of DACA? Rachel Wifall Secretary to the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education Holy Name of Jesus Parish student Voices New Orleans 1575 Calhoun Street 41 Finding a Place on Campus, Samir Aslane New Orleans, LA 70118 42 Students Found a New Journal , Billy Ford Phone: 504-865-2781 e-mail: [email protected] 47 A Call for Prophetic Jesuit Leadership, Sarah Hansman Conversations back issues are available online at http://conversationsmagazine.org 38 an historical MoMent: Saint Louis University, Amelia Blanton Hibner Design and layout by Pauline Heaney. 50 Book notice: Emmaus: The Nature of the Way, Chris Yates Printed by Peacock Communications, 51 teaching the Mission: Doing Time, Redeeming Time, Daniel L. Smith Fairfield, N.J. Webmaster: Lucas S. Sharma, S.J. Cover Photo: University of Detroit Mercy, McNichols campus, early in the morning. Photo by Anthony Laszlo, a dental student at Detroit Mercy. froM the chair

Jesuit Schools – Good Neighbors

The bulletins posted regularly by the Association neighborhoods to be better for their being there. of Jesuit Colleges and Universities contain an And they work to make that happen. amazing range of stories. These stories often tell of The conflict between town and gown may new academic programs and degree programs. A have been true at one time; perhaps it still is in posting in early November told of the schools’ par - some locations. But at our 28 AJCU schools, that is ticipation in the Ignatian Heritage Month and the not the case. The stories of local involvement given Ignatian Family Teach-in in Washington. Another here are anything but exhaustive. They are a sim - noted that AJCU presidents had signed a letter to ple sampling of much, much more. We want the President Trump on climate change. November place where we are to be better for our being there. bulletins told of the Jesuit Basketball Spotlight and Involvement is part of teaching and learning. We noted that this was started by the AJCU in 2008 “to are involved. help share the message of Jesuit education through I have noted before that working with the Con - the more than 80 basketball games in which Jesuit versations seminar involves some great times. One institutions play each other every season.” of the great joys is welcoming new members to the A frequent motif is some new program in seminar. As of our fall 2017 meeting, we have three which the school is reaching out to its neighbor - new members. Gerard A. Athaide is a professor of hood, to its city. The schools are very much in - marketing at Loyola University Maryland. Michael vested in their locations. While they share a F. Tunney, S.J., is the rector of the Jesuit community common heritage, language, and spirit, they also and professor of fine arts and religious studies at reflect where they are – deep in the city or in a Fairfield University. Rachel Wifall is an associate smaller town. professor of English at Saint Peter’s University; These relationships are the topic of this issue of Rachel has an article about Saint Peter’s in this issue. Conversations . The lead article by Fr. Thomas Lucas, And, of course, this joy of welcoming new S.J., tells of how St. Ignatius Loyola deliberately members comes at the cost of saying good-bye to wanted his group to be in the cities and at the cross - colleagues who have worked with us for three roads where larger numbers of people gather. “From years. We must bid farewell to Mark G. Bosco, S.J., Rome to Messina and Manila, Goa to Gdansk, Vil - who just moved from Loyola University Chicago nius to Vienna,” he writes, “Jesuits built educational to Georgetown. And to Michael Serazio of Boston complexes of bewildering variety and sometimes College. And to Jessica Wrobleski of Wheeling Je - startling beauty. Besides classroom teaching, these suit University; Jessica has an article about Wheel - schools were “centers for scientific research and rich ing’s relationship to its region in this current issue. artistic and theatrical production.” Thanks to our new members for committing Stories follow that tell how the Jesuit schools themselves to this great project and to our retired deliberately reach out to their surroundings. They members for all they have given to us. involve their students with neighborhood schools. They involve their faculty and staff with local as - Edward W. Schmidt, S.J., editor sociations, even with prisons! They want their

1 For three years during the early built an immense college complex Finding 1980s, I walked past the Collegio in the 1580s, spending 4,100 kilos Romano every day on my way to of silver on the project. The Colle - our Place classes at the Pontifical Gregorian gio, whose Jesuit-designed façade University. Founded by St. Ig - is second only in scale to St. A Reflection natius in 1551 and originally Peter’s, housed aulas, courtyards, housed in rented rooms, the Col - music rooms, a botanical garden, legio grew quickly. An early alum - an observatory, a pharmacy, a mu - By Thomas Lucas, S.J. nus, Pope Gregory XIII, seum, residences for faculty and expropriated an entire neighbor - Jesuit students, and an immense hood in the heart of Rome and library. The six-square-block com -

2 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION plex was eventually completed with the construction these complex attributes and activities. Yet a book of the grandiose college chapel of Sant’Ignazio. With falling open to the right page in the back of the phi - the downtown Collegio and their headquarters at losophy stacks of the library, or a chance encounter the Jesuit mother church, the Chiesa del Gesù, just a in the quad that leads to coffee and an all-night con - block away, the early Jesuits and their papal spon - versation, or the sweet smell of a century of beeswax sors succeeded in creating a prototype, a pole, a in the chapel, or flying a kite off a forbidden class - landmark. In a word, in midst of the confusing jum - room rooftop in the moonlight, all create a place that ble of the city, they created a place. They wanted to remains within us long after our college days are be at the center of the action, in dialogue with the ended. We have inhabited a place, a place that mys - urban scene. Jesuit educational institutions have at - teriously travels with us even as we leave it. tempted to do so ever since. If we listen to the poetry of Genesis, humanity’s For two-thirds of my life, I’ve inhabited Jesuit first schoolroom was a garden, a laboratory in which places. Sacramento’s Jesuit High in the 60s, emerging our ancestors developed both taxonomy and their out of hop-fields, then the ancient gardens of Santa all-too-free wills, where they conversed with the Clara University, next to the Mission Church where Lord in the cool of the evening. Plato withdrew from 15 years later I would celebrate my first Mass. Ford - the Academy into a garden secluded yet in sight of ham’s Rose Hill in the late 70s, as the Bronx burned the city, there to ponder and to converse with his stu - around us. San José’s Bellarmine, then Rome and dents. For many, perhaps most of us, our first cam - then Berkeley. A stint in the nation’s capital was fol - pus for exploring the world was our mother’s or lowed by 18 years at USF and work in Shanghai. grandmother’s garden, and for me, at least, my first Now I find myself in Seattle University’s urban oasis remembered transgression was climbing over its low in the midst of hipster-riddled Seattle. Join the Je - fence to explore the greater green world beyond and suits, and you’ll live in interesting places and be in climbing back over before I got caught. It’s no acci - the middle of the mix. dent that medieval monasteries were arranged What is the formula that makes a place out of around ambulatory gardens, and that both St. Ig - space? Walter Brueggemann elegantly frames the natius and St. Peter Canisius, his most skillful college distinction in The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and founder and real estate developer, insisted that every Challenge in Biblical Faith (2002) : “Place is a space college should have its own urban garden and its which has historical meanings, where some things own house in the country where its students could have happened which are now remembered and escape the mal-aria of town. which provide continuity and identity across gener - This image of garden as a metaphor of place has ations. Place is space in which important words have ramifications when we apply it to an institution of been spoken which have established identity, de - higher education. In each, roots are set down, nour - fined vocation, and envisioned destiny. Place is ishment taken in, growth encouraged. A garden and space in which vows have been exchanged, promises a college are cultivated, ordered entities: a literal have been made, and demands have been issued. campus , a field with their own memory and history. Place is indeed a protest against the unpromising They are places that invite reflection, astonish us in pursuit of space. It is a declaration that our human - their diversity, open us up to beautiful forms of life, ness cannot be found in escape, detachment, absence provide quiet corners for conversation and bowers of commitment, and undefined freedom.” for young lovers. Both require immense hard work Meaning. Memory. Continuity across genera - and constant attention, pruning, weeding, and wa - tions. Echoing halls and yards where important tering, all in due season. words establish identity, define vocation, envision Yet the image of the medieval cloister or the Hor - destiny. Vows, promises, commitment, demands tus Conclusus , the walled enclosure entered into made and responded to. Rarely does an airline ter - through a locked postern gate and accessible only to minal or a fast food joint serve as a vessel to contain a few, is far removed from Ignatius’ notion of the

Left, the 16th century building of Collegio Romano (Roman College) founded by Saint Ignatius Loyola . Gobbler at wikivoyage shared GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)

3 The Garden of Eden, by Jan Brueghel the Elder. Circa 1655 and circa 1661. Izaak van Oosten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

place of the college in early modern culture. Having counseled to “take special care that you obtain a studied at Alcalà, Salamanca, and Paris, he evolved good and sufficiently large site, or one that can be from his hinterlands origins into a thoroughly urban enlarged with time, large enough for house and being. His Society and its institutions were to occupy church and if possible not too far removed from the the town square, not remote monastic mountaintops. conversation of the city, and having bought that, it Breaking with a religious tradition that went back to will be a good beginning for all that follows.” In that the fall of Rome, rather than fleeing from the city, he strategic decision, Ignatius definitively rejected the moved into its heart. In the Society’s Constitutions false dichotomy between “town” and “gown.” [622e] he lays out his mission strategy of place with With those marching orders in hand, Jesuits be - a calculating eye. The Jesuit targets were clearly de - came place-makers, conversation partners in the fined: “Preference ought to be shown to the aid great cities of the Catholic world and in the new which is given to great nations such as the Indies, to frontiers of the Spanish and Portuguese missions. important cities, or to universities, which are gener - From Rome to Messina and Manila, Goa to Gdansk, ally attended by numerous persons who by being Vilnius to Vienna, Jesuits built educational com - aided themselves can become laborers for the help plexes of bewildering variety and sometimes star - of others.” In a frequently copied letter that went out tling beauty. College buildings served not only the in the saddlebags of those sent to found new col - educational needs of their (male) students, but leges, Jesuits were reminded to look to “the edifica - served as centers for scientific research and rich artis - tion and spiritual development of the city” and tic and theatrical production. The non-parochial col -

4 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION lege churches opened their doors to all in the urban that meaning with the generations that follow us. scene, to rich and poor alike, and their sodalities Our campuses, at their best, are landmarks: not brought spiritual support and opportunities for par - just architecturally, but transformatively. In com - ticipation to men and women across many spectra puter and genetics labs and art and music studios, of class and culture. To recall Brueggemann’s defini - in seminar rooms and coffee shops, in campus min - tion, the Jesuit college-church complex became a istry offices and chapel, under spreading trees and place where important truths were spoken, where in sheltering inglenooks, I have experienced that significant, life-changing engagement could develop powerful words can still challenge and define, beau - and vocation be confirmed. tiful and true thoughts can be explored and then So how does this historical backdrop inform us ripen into action and even vocation. Those words, as educators and place-makers in the Jesuit institu - thoughts, and actions reach beyond the bounds of tions of the 21st century? Our North American cul - our campuses. In every one of our institutions, we ture is no longer a Judeo-Christian monolith, and the interact with our neighbors, inviting them in for diversity of our student, faculty, and staff back - shared reflection even as we reach out in service grounds makes some long for the “good old days” through programming, tutoring, and dialogue. This of an unambiguously Catholic milieu. When my has been our strategy from the beginning: to be in uncle first took me as a youngster to visit his alma “conversation with the city.” mater Santa Clara, the first place we visited was the Our core values and teachings that are grounded Mission Church. In our contemporary post-Christian in memory and hope still need places where they can culture, the chapel is now often interpreted as an ar - be given root room. Our humanistic tradition that chitectural curiosity, a relic of a world of yore. When grows out of the compassion of Christ and the Sages I was teaching at USF, I heard a student tour guide and from the passion of Ignatius and his colleagues blithely dismiss the campus’s grand St. Ignatius still makes its valid demands and calls for protest Church saying, “Oh, yeah, it’s pretty cool, but you against unpromising escapism. don’t have to go in there until graduation.” We are not angels; we live in a physical world of When I am discouraged by such indifference, I here and now, embodied not in random space but in take heart from a passage Karl Rahner, S.J., wrote in human and divine place. A virtual world is No- his Theological Investigations (vol. 14): place, no place for humans to inhabit. As educators in the Ignatian tradition, we inhabit a university, a One does not enter a temple, a shrine that en - little physical universe rich in possibilities that grow closes the holy and cuts it off from a godless out of the soil of memory and tradition. Weeding, and secular world that remains outside. In pruning, and watering, we commit ourselves to the free breadth of a divine world one erects these places, to create and recreate them anew, well a landmark, a sign of the fact that this entire aware of the hard challenges that await our students world belongs to God, a sign precisely of the and ourselves within, even as we reach outside our fact that God is adored, experienced, and ac - gates. Here we place ourselves in solidarity, in an cepted everywhere as one who, through age-old community of scholars, guides, and seekers grace, has set all things free to attain to him, in dialogue with each other and with our neighbors. and a sign that this adoration takes place not Here takes place the union of past, present, and to in Jerusalem alone, but everywhere, in spirit come, and from this place, perhaps, together we can and in truth. find our way home.

I take hope in the fact that the red thread that unites Fr. Thomas Lucas S.J,. is rector of the Arrupe House the 16th century Collegio Romano to the hop fields Jesuit Community and University Professor and of Sacramento to the glades of post-modern Seattle Curator at Seattle University. His book Landmarking: University is a lived conviction that it remains pos - City, Church, and Jesuit Urban Strategy (1997) won sible to discover meaning in this world and to share an AJCU national book award in 1999.

5 As an urban planner and a committed practitioner of Jesuit spirituality, I have found working for George - town University’s master’s program in Urban and Re - Thinking Like gional Planning to be an enriching opportunity to join my passions. I am a newcomer to higher education, an Urban having worked previously in government and non - profit roles, and my time at Georgetown has invited Planner at a me to reflect on how Jesuit colleges and universities incorporate urban planning into their work. Jesuit Jesuit University embrace of the city is nothing new, trickling down from the founding vision of St. Ignatius, whose com - mitment to the city remains at the heart of Jesuit By Jamie Kralovec higher education. Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., affirmed the contrasting appeals of the university-city relationship when he wrote in this magazine in 2000: “The con - temporary Jesuit university finds in the classroom of its urban community both resources that feed the mind and stretch the imagination, and human needs that summon us to service.”

6 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION In this article I will outline some of the ways that At its core, urban planning is a structured way of as - Jesuit universities can deepen their special relation - sisting communities as they solve their challenges ship with local place by thinking like urban planners, and shape their futures. To do this at various scales a discipline devoted to the study and practice of the of community, planners use different methods and built environment. tools. The “rational How do we put the dis - model” is one of the cipline of urban plan - most common ap - ning into practice in proaches followed in a our academic pro - traditional planning grams, community- process: 1) undertake a based learning and detailed survey of exist - research, and external ing conditions; 2) articu - engagement? What re - late goals; 3) identify sources does urban problems; 4) evaluate planning offer Jesuit and select alternatives to universities that are address the problems; striving to take advan - and 5) implement the re - tage of the incredible sulting plan. opportunities of city Skilled planners, re - life while addressing gardless of where they the challenges of justice work, tend to rely upon ever present in the con - technologically-enabled temporary city? data collection, stake - holder input, spatial vi - Background sualization of data and on Urban findings, and recommen - dations for policy and Planning Two schools in the heart of a city. Left, Fordham University development. Planning at Lincoln Center, NYC, and above, Saint Peter’s University is an indispensable tool What is urban planning in Jersey City. for collaborative deci - and what does it seek sion-making and vision - to influence? Broadly speaking, urban planning pro - ing of a community’s aspirations. Motivated by vides communities of varying sizes with the tools to social justice, contemporary planning practice in the guide and manage the orderly development of the United States strives to be attentive to issues of social built environment while ensuring human health and and economic equity. well-being. It is an interdisciplinary set of practices that rely on planning processes to address various What Is the Value of elements affecting communities, including environ - mental sustainability, affordable housing, public Urban Planning in Our health and safety, and transportation. Planners serve Jesuit Universities? society in many roles, ranging from more traditional responsibilities in local government to innovative The toolkit of urban planning methods can be de - positions in research institutions, universities, pri - ployed in many ways at the university. I will briefly vate sector firms, and community organizations. A share some of the ways that Jesuit universities are al - discipline with an ancient legacy, urban planning in ready using urban planning to advance mission, pro - the United States did not become an academic insti - viding a broad framework for how university tution until the late 1920s and 1930s following the administrators might leverage planning’s value in professionalization of planning at the national level. their internal and external engagement.

7 Research, Data Support Communities Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola While few Jesuit universities offer dedicated degrees University Chicago, the Center for Urban and Ap - in urban planning, many employ trained urban plied Research at Le Moyne College, and the Center planners on faculty and in research capacities to im - for Sustainability at St. Louis University. Accessible prove understanding of the social and economic and usable practical research provided by these cen - changes occurring in local places surrounding the ters supports Jesuit mission priorities around local university. The university can be a critical local part - efforts to advance economic, social, and environmen - ner by leveraging the intellectual capital of its faculty tal justice. to illuminate changing economic, social, and cultural dynamics. Informing community leaders and policy Planners in Service of Local Aspirations makers about deeper trends and social realities not As an inherently applied practice, urban planning immediately evident on the surface, the “gritty real - lends itself easily to community-engaged forms of ity of this world” described by former Superior Gen - collaborative service and capacity building. Urban eral Kolvenbach is a powerful use of research planners at the university can add needed capacity capacity for the common good. Several Jesuit univer - for community-based organizations and other local sities host research centers dedicated to the study of groups that cannot afford high-cost consultants and their cities. These include the Center for the Study of expensive technology. The university can serve as a Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, the partner in the development of community-driven

Photo courtesy of Chris Davis / Hive13.

The Community Building Institute at Xavier University ness. The Community Building Institute presents itself helps communities organize their own redevelop - as a partner for communities that are ready to grow ment by tapping into the passion of their residents into desirable and healthy places to live and work. and identifying the physical assets of their neighbor - CBI recently visited Hive13 on Spring Grove Av - hoods. The goal is to develop a coordinated plan of enue, a community of makers, engineers, and artists. improvement that incorporates all the major ele - They have equipment to burn and cut and attach, dis - ments a community needs to really thrive - housing, connect, and spin and electrify to make anything the schools, health care, transportation, jobs and busi - members of their community can imagine.

8 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION plans as well as a platform of ongoing technical as - come youth living in the attendance zone around sistance as plans are implemented and adapted to Bailey Gatzert Elementary School (see p. 10). changing conditions. In the wake of Laudato Si ’ and a growing aware - At Xavier University, the Community Building In - ness of the role played by cities in environmental stew - stitute (CBI), which houses a staff of planners and re - ardship, universities are using their community searchers, assists area nonprofit development engagement and development activities to address cli - organizations with technical resources, capacity-build - mate change. Campus master plans dedicated to sus - ing, and data-based planning to realize comprehe n- tainability goals and the creation of sustainability sive place-based redevelopment. CBI has provided offices celebrate the commitment of Jesuit universities technical assistance to organizations in several his - to the energy efficiency of the campus’s physical infra - torically disinvested Cincinnati neighborhoods that structure. Green efforts abound at Jesuit universities. have realized their aspirations, leading to the cre - In a particularly innovative example, the University of ation of work-training programs and community San Francisco created a community garden, with a theater projects among other accomplishments. greenhouse built by architecture students, which At Georgetown University, a cross-listed gradu - serves as a “living laboratory” for its urban agriculture ate urban planning studio between the planning pro - students as well as source of sustainable urban food gram and the law center is dedicated to studying the production for community dinners. impacts of remapping a flood-plain zone along the Anacostia River in the heart of a historic African- An Invitation American neighborhood on the east side of the city. Students produce technical reports, analysis, and In the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius invites the re - recommendations for future public investment and treatant to a composition of place, utilizing one’s new land use development controls that are inform - senses to imagine material settings in time and space ing the work of local residents, community organi - as the basis for interior contemplation. I see a thread zations, public officials, and other stakeholders. between Ignatius’ invitation to think deeply and con - cretely about place as the background for spiritual Physical Development and Sustainability growth and the Jesuit mission to fully and justly en - One of the most evident uses of urban planning is gage both the opportunities and challenges of the the facilitation of the university’s physical presence city by using the resources of urban planning. How that shapes and forms surrounding neighborhoods, do we imagine the Jesuit mission commitment of our including construction of campus facilities and the universities to the cities that surround the univer - location of community-serving amenities owned by sity? While urban planning and its many applica - the university. Fordham University’s development tions are already operating in many Jesuit colleges of its Lincoln Center campus in the 1960s as an urban and universities, I think there is more room for us to renewal project at the invitation of master city- individually and collectively marshal planning builder Robert Moses is one prominent example of methods in our work as faculty, administrators, and a large-scale campus expansion in the modern era community partners. with significant impact on its receiving neighbor - hood. In other cases, Jesuit universities intentionally Jamie Kralovec is an administrator and lecturer at locate community engagement offices, service-learn - Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, ing centers, and other university amenities in higher- where he teaches “Jesuit Values in Professional need urban neighborhoods to serve Practice,” a community-based learning elective community-identified needs more directly. Seattle introducing professional and liberal studies students to University, for example, through its Youth Initiative the applicability of Jesuit values to personal and has chosen to direct resources from the university’s professional life. Prior to Georgetown, Jamie served on educational programs in one particular neighbor - President Obama’s White House Council on Strong hood to improve the academic outcomes for low-in - Cities, Strong Communities.

9 The Seattle University Youth Initiative Images of Engagement (SUYI), launched in 2011, strives to strengthen education and support systems Seattle University Youth Initiative for 1,000 neighborhood youth and their families while enhancing the university by providing service learning and research ex - By Rachael Steward perience to students, faculty, and staff. The Youth Initiative works with schools, community-based programs, uni - versity students, faculty, and staff to offer academic and enrichment opportunities for youth living in a large geographic zone just south of the campus. Throughout the year, including summers, youth participate in events and programs, which include sup - port for children to ensure proficiency in core academic subjects in order to success - fully transition to the next grade levels and to develop a college-going identity. Using a collective impact model, the university engages partners who provide education, housing, health and employ - ment opportunities to support youth and their families. This approach arose from

10 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION 2016-2017 Youth Initiative Statistics

University student volunteers and service-learners 294 Hours of academic assistance and mentoring in K12 partner schools 4,285 hours

SU undergrads employed in K12 program 73 listening sessions with community edge in areas such as homelessness, Hours provided by K12 and campus stakeholders to develop a creative place-making, digital liter - student employees genuine, mutual partnership between acy, and several others. the community and the university. 7,946 hours The success of the Youth Initia - Rachael Steward is the deputy director tive is captured in the increased en - of Community Engagement. Number of SU students registered gagement of both campus and For more information, see for community engagement community (see statistics box). Aca - https://www.seattleu.edu/suyi/ positions in target area demic, social, and community-build - vision-and-goals/ ing programs are hosted in partner public school buildings, as well as on 756 the university campus. Washington Middle School students, for instance, Number of faculty instructors spend a day on campus learning engaged in initiative about college life. They visit dorms and participate in group discussions 191 led by campus staff. Each year the Jumpstart Pro - Number of courses with gram supports about 150 preschool service-learning component students with early literacy support, thereby increasing kindergarten 429 readiness. Ap proximately 125 elemen - tary school students participated in the Students who took a service Extended Learning Program at Bailey learning course in 2016-2017 Gatzert Elementary. In fall 2015, 74 Washington Middle School students were matched with academic mentors 59% who provided a total of 421 hours of Photos: Seattle University students work academic support. with Bailey Gatzert Elementary School SU students who graduate with students during the After School Campus engagement billows out a service-learning course program as part of the SUYI. to include faculty immersions as a Photos courtesy of Seattle University. 75% method to increase faculty knowl - Photographer: Yosef Kalinko 11 A Center Outside Itself Where the University Finds Itself

By Jason Taylor

Big universities in cities, so far as I can see, have given no thought or imagination to the unique establishments they are. Typically they either pretend to be cloistered or countrified places, nostalgically denying their transplantation, or else they pretend to be office buildings. Of course they are neither.

Sometimes a neighborhood, too small to function as a district, gets the benefit of power through possessing an exceptionally influential citizen or an important institution. But the citizens pay for their free gift of power when the day comes that their interests run counter to those of Papa Big - wheel or Papa Institution. They are helpless to defeat Papa in the government offices, up where the decisions are made, and therefore they are helpless also to teach or influence him . Citizens of neighborhoods that include a university, for example, are often in this helpless fix.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (350, 166-67)

If we are to think about our institutions in relation to The kind of place envisioned and actualized in our location, then Jane Jacobs calls our attention to two El Salvador by Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría and others – the common forms of thoughtlessness: 1) the failure to con - Central American University (UCA) – offers us im - sider well the kind of place we are; and 2) the failure to portant resources for responding to that question. El - consider well the places of which we are a part (indica - lacuría contended that the university is a social tive of a broader lack of social knowledge, awareness projection. This contention can be understood as of social ecology). Together, these form a single chal - both descriptive and normative. Factually speaking, lenge: to center our thinking on how the places we are the university, as a social force within a social reality, and the places we are in are co-constitutive, how they will shape that reality. Normatively speaking, the shape and are shaped by one another. university, as a social force within a social reality, Many of our institutions – including my own, ought to strive to shape that reality for the better, for Regis University – have made engaging in place- something always greater. based initiatives or becoming anchor institutions a This claim is consistent with another claim fre - part of our work and our identity. We often put for - quently attributed to Ellacuría, that a university has ward such work as a significant improvement upon its center outside itself, that the university is an ec- approaches to community engagement which are ge - centric institution. As an ec-centric institution, the ographically or functionally more disparate. What university discovers itself in a place beyond itself; might it mean, then, for our institutions to undertake the university must project itself beyond its bound - initiatives in the places where we are? aries – physical or otherwise – to find its true center.

12 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION The university discovers itself in a place beyond itself; the university must project itself beyond its bound - aries – physical or otherwise – to find its true center.

In an interview in America (Sept. 30, 2013), Pope In large part, the church was carried along Francis offers indirect confirmation of this line of in - by this reasoning: “right now I cannot terpreting Ellacuría. Speaking of the Jesuit order, carry out my mission, which is to proclaim Francis says, “The Society of Jesus is an institution the kingdom of God in accordance with the in tension, always fundamentally in tension. A Jesuit message of Jesus, because to do so would is a person who is not centered in himself. The Soci - put the ecclesial institution at risk, and that ety itself also looks to a center outside itself; its center must be avoided above all. When the time is Christ and his church.” The temptation, continues is right, I shall carry out my mission” Francis, is to settle for a false center that disposes of (Essays on History, Liberation and Salvation, this tension: “If it [the Jesuit order] looks too much Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 32). in upon itself, it puts itself at the center as a very solid, very well ‘armed’ structure, but then it runs From this perspective, place-based initiatives, in our the risk of feeling safe and self-sufficient. The Society context, can be instruments for managing the ever-pre - must always have before itself the Deus semper maior sent risk of reducing desire to the terms of safety and [God always Greater] .” Strikingly, Francis goes on to self-sufficiency. Besides helping us to avoid self-enclo - assert that the inward-turning examination of con - sure, they might very well help us to build capacity, sciousness helps the Jesuit order to avoid turning in before times of conflict, to avoid the unhappy discov - on itself: “This tension takes us out of ourselves con - ery that we are situated under a standard marked not tinuously. The tool that makes the Society of Jesus only by avarice and arrogance but also by the pusilla - not centered in itself, really strong, is, then, the ac - nimity of a Papa Bigwheel. count of conscience, which is at the same time pater - To conclude, what might it mean for the places nal and fraternal, because it helps the Society to that we are to undertake such initiatives in the places fulfill its mission better.” From this perspective, where we are? I think it means two things if we as - place-based initiatives, in our context, can be instru - sume that our institutions live lives of ethical drama ments of institutional examination, affording comparable to that described by Fr. Ellacuría and Pope thought and imagination about the uniqueness of Francis above. First, it means that a university must our establishments less vulnerable to the social pre - flee a false center where identity is constituted prima - tense criticized by Jacobs. rily in terms of self-preservation. The key question is Ellacuría himself gives us language to name the not, “How will we survive?” which expresses the so - poles of the tension that Francis describes. In cial projection negatively. Rather the key question Barcelona in 1989, 11 months before his execution, arises when the university seeks its true center in a Ellacuría weighs the significance of the quincente - place where identity is constituted by the question, nary of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. “Who and how are we in relation with others?” There, Ellacuría criticizes in the church the “subtle tendency to prefer and prioritize its ‘institutionality’ Jason Taylor is an associate professor of philosophy over its ‘mission’,” and subsequently locates and and director of the Office of the First Year Experience criticizes this same tendency in the Jesuit order and at Regis University. the UCA as a Jesuit university. They too are equally liable to prioritize institute over mission:

13

Teaching and Learning in San Francisco’s Gentrification Tide

By Rachel Brahinsky

Gentrification has taken the San Francisco region in housing. Many affordable pockets of the region have a big way. It came through the influx of tech wealth flipped in the last five years, with median home val - that has stacked the housing market against the mid - ues rising over a million dollars and median rents dle class. It came, too, through the rising use of soaring in new and shocking ways each month. home-sharing services like Airbnb, which convert So how do we handle this? It’s a challenge for houses into hotels and put pressure on the cost of faculty and staff, as much as for students. Housing residential life. It came through a nationwide shift, costs were central to recent union negotiations and where more and more of us are seeking out urban - always present in hiring conversations. We collec - ism, whether cities are ready or not. tively engage with the same challenge all San Fran - My students at the University of San Francisco ciscans face: how to contribute to the region; how to would call the situation quite real , and it is pervasive find a sense of home in a context of a rising cost of in our conversations. When prospective students living; and how to participate in the growth and ex - come to visit and get a sense of the campus, faculty pansion of the creativity of the region without threat - gather with them and share stories about the classes ening its history. It is indeed an urgent task. we teach and the experiences they may have, should Yet, as my students show me in each urban his - they enroll. We can’t help but talk about the chal - tory seminar: history teaches us that there is a way lenge of housing and the role that our students will to walk lightly in a city, to share in its development, play in the region as they move from dorm to apart - and to contribute rather than only take and consume. ment and beyond. Each semester I am inspired by their optimism, and I can imagine a recruitment offi - cer urging me to turn the dialogue elsewhere, but we all know that this conversation cannot be avoided. Newspapers and blogs discuss the high cost of living in San Francisco on a regular basis, and the local and na - tional conversations about changing cities are often focused on the role of the Bay Area in exemplifying the good and the bad of urbanism. On the one hand, the region is stunningly beautiful and has been a cultural hearth for so many communi - ties, attracting waves of immigrants, artists, and people interested in mak - ing a better world in various ways. This diversity is one of the region’s greatest strengths, generating both beauty and jobs. On the other hand, Above, Loyola Village residence halls at University of San Francisco. this same diversity has been under Left, Lone Mountain North residence hall delivers spectacular views of the threat by the rapid rise in the cost of Marin headlands, San Francisco Bay, and Richmond neighborhood.

15 I am hopeful about the role that they can play as Over time, with coordinated efforts across the long-term residents of the region after college. city, the Big Five inserted themselves into the urban My own research has also been a guide for me. planning process that sought to reshape their neigh - I’m currently working on a book that looks at how borhood. Through persistence, collective education racism and property have shaped our urban past around the rules of urban planning, and direct action and how the activism of communities on these issues – in which they staged a successful sit-in in govern - has offered us stories that can help us re-imagine ment offices to demand funding for affordable hous - how we work through the challenges of contempo - ing – the Big Five slowly pushed the wheels of urban rary urbanism like gentrification. justice in their favor. One of the histories that I have focused on is a When I had the privilege to interview one of the social movement led by a group of African American leaders of the Big Five in her Fillmore District apart - women in San Francisco’s southeast sector. The story ment years ago, she recounted stories of tenacity and begins right next door to USF in the Fillmore District, bravery, where poor women with little social capital

where residents faced dramatic urban change in the forced open a political space in the city and created 1950s and ’60s. City leaders, as part of a national ef - a place for themselves. These days, the hills of fort to remake cities, identified that neighborhood as Hunter’s Point once again face economic challenges, a key site for urban redevelopment. The notion of but the streets are seeded with the names of the Big urban renewal, as the program was called at the Five women and their collaborators. The legend of time, sounded upbeat. But it quickly became clear the Big Five is not well known outside of Bayview, that one of the primary effects of the program was but the story sustains people there today who are the displacement of a majority African-American still working to redirect urban planning towards and Japanese-American community. community needs. The redevelopment program pushed residents The lessons of the Big Five are relevant across from their homes and bulldozed 20 square blocks, the city, and indeed in any urban neighborhood. As including many Victorian structures that were not the USF community engages with gentrification and yet viewed as special. Community pressure was ul - its impacts, we can learn from these histories. It is timately successful in forcing the city to replace the not an easy process. These kinds of stories, however, old neighborhood with subsidized housing, but this offer a roadmap for challenging the urban status quo was a devastating time and the area still struggles to and a way through which the USF community can remake home and a sense of place. The writer James imagine and work for an urban future that includes Baldwin, in assessing the impact of the program in us all. the Fillmore and places like it across the country, It’s a matter of everyday practice. Most of our noted that what had been called urban renewal was students spend time doing community work as part in fact a strategy for “negro removal.” of their degree expectations. As our students blend Meanwhile, the redevelopment program moved ideas and theories about challenges like urban dis - on to other parts of the city. Across town, Bayview- placement with hands-on action that can reshape Hunter’s Point has been home to an important and cities in more equitable ways, they further embed instructive social movement. It’s a neighborhood themselves–and the university itself–as good neigh - that has long been cut off geographically from the bors and long-term caretakers of San Francisco. The rest of San Francisco in spite of the city’s tiny size more they can learn to truly listen and engage with (it’s only about 7 miles by 7 miles, after all). longtime residents like the women of the Big Five, In the 1960s, while the Fillmore was facing those the better our students can design equitable policy bulldozers, a group of African American women in and programming for the broader community. Bayview organized. The group, which was called the “Big Five,” pushed for community participation in Rachel Brahinsky is an assistant professor of urban the redevelopment process in their neighborhood. affairs and urban studies and the faculty director of the Some of them had lost their homes in the Fillmore; Urban & Public Affairs MA program at the University they all had friends and family impacted by the up - of San Francisco. heaval there.

16 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION The Dream of the Moun tains’

SThte rCliuff orgd Mg. Lle we is Appalachian Institute of Wheelin g Jesuit U ni versity

By J ess ica A. W robles ki Founded as Wheeling College in 1954, Wheeling Je - Institute is a concrete expression of Wheeling Jesuit suit University has always seen its mission as deeply University’s half-century commitment toward the connected to its place in the hills of Appalachia and people of the diocese and the region.” the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia. In its 15-year history, the Appalachian Institute It was at the invitation of the local bishop, John J. has offered a wide array of programs and opportu - Swint, in 1951 that the Maryland Province of the So - nities which promote its mission of research, advo - ciety of Jesus initiated the establishment of a college cacy, and education around the region. In in West Virginia for the purpose of offering a partnership with over 70 community organizations Catholic liberal arts education to the people of the and other university programs, the institute has region. At the time – and in sponsored events such as many ways, to this day – a conference on the de - Appalachia was a “fron - clining steel industry or, tier” for Jesuit education: more recently, the opioid not only does the region crisis; photographic ex - have a relatively small hibits featuring images Catholic population and from coal mining commu - few parochial schools, but nities and those affected rates of post-secondary ed - by the natural gas indus - ucation are significantly try; and films or discus - lower than in the nation as sions of issues ranging a whole. The region has from food insecurity to long been shaped by an ex - health care and energy perience of struggle, and policy. The Appalachian the mission of Wheeling Institute has also spon - Jesuit University has been, sored research on a vari - and continues to be, ety of issues affecting the shaped by the region, often natural environment and sharing in its struggles. human health, such as in - Nearly 50 years after vestigating the impact of its founding, in 2002 the slurry pond impound - university established the ments or the relationship Clifford M. Lewis, S.J., Ap - between fracking and palachian Institute, named water quality, and rou - for the first Jesuit priest to tinely trains students to come to the area for the advocate to legislators purpose of starting a col - (both in Charleston, lege there. Inspired in large W.Va., and Washington, part by the vision articu - D.C.) for issues contribut - lated in the 1975 Ap - ing to justice and health in palachian Bishops’ Pastoral, the region. This Land is Home to Me , Since 2004, a signifi - which called for social and cant part of the educa - church institutions to share tional work of the in “the dream of the mountains’ struggle,” the institute Appalachian Institute has been through running im - has a m ission of promoting research, service, and ad - mersion trips around the region, not only for WJU vocacy for and with the people of Appalachia to students but also for students from high schools and build healthier, stronger, and more sustainable com - colleges – including many Jesuit schools – across the munities. At the time the Appalachian Institute was country. The institute offers educational immersion founded, Bishop Bernard Schmitt of the Diocese of trips that focus on energy policy and its conse - Wheeling-Charleston stated that “The Appalachian quences in Appalachia, on issues related to health

18 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION care and food justice, as well as direct-service fo - cused trips. Elizabeth Collins, who served as director for the institute from 2012 to 2017, explained that the institute strives to cultivate not only concern but con - nections, and ultimately a sense of commitment to the region through these trips, both for WJU students and for those who come from outside the area. “We are trying to fight the ‘globalization of superficial - ity,’” in such trips, she explained, “so that students leave feeling a burden [of love] for the region, rather than [feeling] warm and fuzzy because they helped some poor people in Appalachia.” Collins empha - sized the importance of education through en - counter with the people and places of Appalachia in these trips and explained that fighting stereotypes about the region is an important part of the insti - tute’s work. While much of the institute’s programming fo - cuses on the complex challenges that the region faces, another important part of its mission is fulfilled through celebration of the region’s culture, history, and All photos show Wheeling Jesuit University students helping natural beauty through events such as poetry read - community members prepare for winter with wood ings, community meals, films, and other events. chopping services. Collins, a native West Virginian, explained that both a critical and a celebratory framework are necessary for the past year at Wheeling Jesuit University has been an adequate view of the region. For students who marked by challenge and transition. In May 2017, the come from the region as well as for those from outside, Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston reaffirmed its orig - offering opportunities to understand and fall in love inal commitment to WJU by purchasing the school’s with this place and its people – finding reasons for re - long-term debt. Bishop Michael Bransfield stated, silience in brokenness and hope in struggle – is a vital “The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has acted to part of the institute’s mission. help stabilize the financial operations of the Univer - For several years, Wheeling Jesuit students have sity to ensure they continue their mission here in the helped to lead immersion trips for outside groups – Mountain State. As West Virginia’s only Catholic in - an experience that many have found deeply trans - stitution of higher learning, Wheeling Jesuit Univer - formative. Nic Cochran (’15) was both a participant sity has a special responsibility to offer a Jesuit and a student leader in numerous immersion trips education in the state and the region, which is en - during his time as a WJU student. While Cochran hanced through the beautiful work of the Ap - had felt a call to religious life for some time, in large palachian Institute.” Through this partnership and measure it was his experiences with the Appalachian relationships with those in and beyond the region, Institute that played a decisive role in his decision to the Appalachian Institute will continue in its mission become a priest of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese. both to celebrate and to share in the struggles of the “The Appalachian Institute provided the opportu - mountains and the people of Appalachia. nity for encounters with people and places I would not have otherwise known,” Cochran said, citing his Jessica Wrobleski is associate professor of theology at experience with the people of West Virginia – their Wheeling Jesuit University and a native of West creativity and sense of community despite many Virginia. She served as a member of the editorial board challenges and negative stereotypes – and the beauty of Conversations from 2014 to 2017. of the land itself as reasons he is committing his life to this place and its people. Appalachian Institute website: No less than in the nation and region as a whole, http://www.wju.edu/ai/default.asp

19 Sports have had a “place” in Je - In this matter, Ignatius and Sports in suit schools from the very begin - the Jesuits were influenced by ning. The first school buildings the Christian understanding of the Jesuits built in France and the human person as a unity of Schools elsewhere typically had an open body, mind, and spirit. They courty ard in the middle so that were also influenced by Thomas Beyond Winning students could play sports. And Aquinas’s conception of virtue time was scheduled into the as having to do with modera - and Losing school day and school year for tion. According to Thomas, a vir - sporting activities. In addition to tuous person should not be By Patrick Kelly, S.J. feast days, every Thursday was working or studying all the time, a recreation day. It was common but also needed to take time for for students to walk on these play and recreation. Indeed, days with the fathers to the Je - Thomas had a high estimation of suit villa to engage in recreation play, even saying it was like con - and sport. When Jesuits started templation because both activi - schools in the 19th century in ties were enjoyable and done for the United States they continued their own sake. to provide time and space for Of course, sports also have a play and sport. “place” in Jesuit universities in

20 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION the United States today. Students, faculty, and staff to the internal goods or intrinsic rewards of sports. routinely participate in pickup games of various Retrieving insights about play from earlier periods kinds. Students compete in many intramural sports. can help our reflections. After all, as Thomas pointed These sports provide the clearest and most uncom - out, play is engaged in for its own sake. As he put it, plicated link to our Jesuit heritage and its emphasis “Nothing further is sought in play than the soul’s de - on moderation in studies and the need for play and light.” In response to the objection that play cannot recreation for a fully human life. be virtuous because it is not directed to something Students at Jesuit schools also compete in inter - else, Thomas says that it is true that play activities collegiate athletics at Division I, II, and III levels. Our themselves are not directed to external goods. He location in the United States has led to the prolifera - points out, however, that the enjoyment experienced tion of such intercollegiate athletic programs. Only in at play is directed to an end: the refreshment or this country is there such a highly developed intercol - restoration of the soul. In our language today we legiate athletic system connected to higher education. might say that enjoyment in play leads to the well- Sports in all U.S. universities also take place in being or flourishing of the person. Our students and the “location” shaped by modernity and its after - coaches, that is, practitioners, understand these in - math. In some ways this location negatively influ - trinsic rewards of sport very well. Jim Hayford, our ences intercollegiate athletics. new basketball coach at Seattle University, pointed in their direction, for example, when he said he The Place of Sport in U.S. coaches a style of basketball that is “fun to play, fun Universities Today to coach, and fun to watch.” As mentioned earlier, from a Jesuit perspective, the human person is a unity of body, mind, and For example, although Cartesian mind-body dual - spirit. Thus the bodily activities that young people ism has been widely criticized and surpassed by engage in, such as sport, impact their minds and philosophers, its effective history as well as new spirits. From this perspective, it is important to invite postmodern expressions of dualism are very much students to reflect on their experiences in sport, not present in American universities. Consider that in just who won, how to win, and so forth, and to con - many American universities the academic (mind) sider how such experiences impact them in their in - and athletic (body) sections have little, if anything, terior lives and their making of meaning. The to do with one another. We rarely, if ever, ask stu - dents to reflect on the embodied experiences they are having in sports in the academic context. Of course, we do pay a lot of attention to sports. ...the attention tends to be But the attention tends to be directed primarily to directed primarily to who is who is winning and losing, how to win, and how winning and losing, how to much money a person or institution gets for win - ning. The emphasis on money is related to what win, and how much money Michael Sandel has called the move from having a a person or institution gets market economy to being a market society. In a mar - for winning. ket society, the activities we engage in are increas - ingly valued only in monetary terms, and we lose the ability to recognize their intrinsic meaning or element of joy, which is so basic to play, is particu - value. In such a context, leaders of universities easily larly important. While playing a team sport, students begin to view sports only as a means to external experience joy as they put their talents at the service goods, such as money and prestige. of something greater than themselves. They learn Rather than paying so much attention to sports that they become persons as they give of themselves as a means to external goods, the focus needs to shift

21 to others. At the heart of what Jesuit universities do For St. Ignatius, everything in our lives should is to help students discover what gives them joy–in be directed ad majorem dei gloriam – toward the their studies, and as they engage in service or con - greater glory of God. But how can this be true of sider work of various kinds. They also help students play, which is done for its own sake? With Thomas to identify their talents and to come to understand Aquinas’s insight that the enjoyment in play is di - how they are going to use them to be of service to rected to the recreation and restoration of the soul others. In this sense, joy can become the “pivot” we have the beginnings of a response to this ques - point for our students, from their play and games to tion. Jesus says, after all, that he came that “we the rest of their lives. might have life and have it to the full.” And St. Ire - This approach is grounded in Jesuit spirituality. naeus famously taught that “the glory of God is a In a meditation called the Two Standards in the Spir - human being fully alive.” Thomas helps us to un - itual Exercises, St. Ignatius has the retreatant con - derstand that play gives glory to God indirectly, then, to the extent that it helps us to be fully human and fully alive. Of course, whether play is doing this or not in concrete situations is something that needs to be studied and dis - cerned. But to the extent we are paying attention to young peo - ple’s experiences and asking how these are related to their growth and flourishing, we are on the right track. While we engage in play for its own sake, the joy associ - ated with it points beyond itself. As Pope Francis has said, “Play reminds us of joy, the joy of the Lord.” For St. Ignatius, joy is one of the important character - istics of spiritual consolation. Ignatius himself learned this only after he was injured in bat - tle and had time to step back sider how persons and societies are led off track from the pursuit of his own glory and began to pay when they are “ensnared” by riches, which leads to attention to his interior life. There he discovered God the honor of this world and then to surging pride. speaking to him in the depths of his joy. In his rules He says this is a temptation of “the enemy of our for discernment Ignatius counsels that our major de - human nature,” a traditional way of referring to the cisions in life should be related to and building on devil or Satan. Whatever one’s views are on the on - such experiences of joy, which he said “point out and tological status of the devil, the phrase Ignatius uses open up the way we are to go.” highlights that when persons or societies are driven only by money, their humanity is undermined. Fr. Pat Kelly, S.J., associate professor at Seattle When we focus only on money we take our eyes off University, has authored Catholic Perspectives on of our students’ experiences in sports and so are un - Sports: From Medieval to Modern Times (2012) able to know whether they are related to their and edited Youth Sport and Spirituality: Catholic growth and flourishing. Perspectives (2015).

22 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION Being a Neighbor in the Hood Difficult conversations to envision a new neighborhood

By Gilbert Sunghera, S.J.

The University of Detroit Mercy lies at the intersec - The Fitzgerald neighborhood, which lies behind tion of two great corridors, Livernois Avenue and 6- the commercial activity of Livernois, has modest Mile Road, also known as McNichols Road in honor homes, many made of wood; and again, like most of of the Jesuit university president who moved the Detroit, these homes did not fair well in the white main campus to this location. To the north, across flight that occurred in full speed after the riots/rebel - McNichols Road, is one of Detroit’s most stable lion. Over 100 lots in the immediate neighborhood are neighborhoods, featuring well-built brick structures either vacant or have burned shells of homes. The res - along streets with manicured lawns. It is a diverse idential neighborhoods to the south and east of the middle to upper-middle class neighborhood with campus are similar to this Fitzgerald neighborhood. relatively low levels of unemployment. As the student population dropped at the university, To the west (across Livernois Ave.) is a very dif - mirroring the city’s population drop, the university ferent set of neighborhoods. Livernois was the main slowly began to close off streets and eventually fenced conduit of destruction during the ’67 riots, which left itself off from surrounding danger. in their wake abandoned and burned storefronts and The university has done more than its fair share businesses. In the intervening 50 years, most of these of providing services to the city. It operates 21 aca - businesses never returned, and like most of the city, demic-based clinics, serving over 30,000 people an - the shells of burned-out establishments dot this once nually with free or reduced cost for medical, dental, proud thoroughfare. law, and counseling services; it even has a nonprofit

23 architectural firm. In addition, students provide di - is unemployed. The university attracts an under - rect service to those in need through a variety of served population of students in the region, and service-learning courses, and many clubs and organ - roughly one third of the students are first-genera - izations provide direct service to the city in creative tion immigrants. ways. However, many of those services leap-frogged In the fall of 2015, the university and The Kresge the immediate neighborhood to reach more desper - Foundation established the Live6 Alliance (Livernois ate parts of the city. Avenue and 6Mile Road), as a non-profit economic A notable exception is our Campus Kitchen pro - development organization chaired by university gram, which repackages food not used in our cafe - president, Dr. Antoine Garibaldi. There had been teria for folks in our immediate neighborhood. This earlier attempts at stabilizing the area; however, this past year over 10,000 pounds of food was given to current effort is proving to be the most interesting. three community partners in the immediate neigh - Lauren Hood, the first interim director of Live6, borhood. Roughly 54 percent of the children in the is an alumna of a newly established Master of Com - surrounding neighborhood live below the poverty munity Development program, housed in the school level, and 40 percent of the working age population of architecture. Unlike traditional planning pro - grams, MCD roots community development in service, social justice, and sustainability. It is an interdisciplinary approach integrating human, organizational, physical, and eco - nomic aspects to guide residents in reimagin - ing their neighborhood. The Live6 revitalization efforts hosted lis - tening sessions with community stakeholders. These sessions, labeled “speakeasy,” have fo - cused on everything from security, arts and culture, business, youth, and so forth. The lively discussions pit diverse constituents with different visions against each other to help find common cause. A major sticking point has been the fence that surrounds the campus. The symbolic na - ture and burden of the fence remind neighbors how difficult it is to attract parents to a campus that is not quickly perceived as safe. In one dis - cussion, I found myself burdened by defending the fence, especially now that I oversee an aging Jesuit community, and as I mentioned at one of these speakeasies, aging Jesuits don’t move fast. Many of the local neighbors nodded their heads in agreement, citing similar concerns about their own aging parents. At another speakeasy, a neighbor asked, “Why is the university even here? It doesn’t make any business sense.” I explained that as a Catholic institution, we are more than just about training future doctors, lawyers, The University of Detroit Mercy is deeply engaged with its neighbors. philosophers, poets; we are concerned with

24 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION bringing about the Kingdom. That Kingdom has not strategies to minimize the displacement of long-time yet arrived. I also mentioned that what we can do residents and to amplify the charism of local com - best for the neighborhood is to get suburban stu - munities that have survived. But it is highly unlikely dents into the city so they can learn from those who that Detroit will ever repopulate its 1950 peak of 1.85 have survived, so they can learn to love the city. million residents. These are difficult conversations, and solutions One initiative that reflects this new thinking is have yet to find solid footing, but small interventions being launched in the Fitzgerald neighborhood west are occurring. A farmers market featuring locally of the campus, which has over 100 vacant lots. Pro - grown vegetables from a group of residents and the ductive landscape techniques are being employed Detroit Public School children is providing fresh pro - (small truck farms, tree lots, wildflower fields) to duce in this food desert. Light up Livernois, a pro - knit the community together and to provide employ - gram that started prior to Live6, is helping small ment opportunities for the local residents. This pro - businesses repopulate the Avenue of Fashion, a once gram is one of five national demonstration projects thriving boutique shopping destination in the city. funded by the Knight Foundation for innovative ap - The conversations also point out some of the proaches in shrinking cities. Our students during struggles concerning what people want in their their freshman orientation will spend half a day neighborhood. Those at the university and the upper preparing the Fitzgerald neighborhood for the first middle class neighborhood to our north would love phase of implementation of this aggressive scheme. a resurgence of small businesses, while some of the A university can be a catalyst for successful other neighbors want an Applebee’s restaurant to neighborhood stabilization and growth if it can em - prove to the rest of the city that “we have made it.” power the community to articulate goals and values Expectations are difficult to manage in diverse and can align the university community’s values neighborhoods, so this approach of neighborhood (students, faculty, staff, alumni, and future parents) conversations is proving useful. with those of the local community. Detroit has made national news for its innova - tive rehabilitation programs, focused primarily in Gilbert Sunghera, S.J., is associate professor of midtown and downtown neighborhoods. The city’s architecture and rector of the Jesuit community at the planning department is currently employing other University of Detroit Mercy.

25 During the development of hood that has been in transition Walking the Rockhurst University’s campus for the past few decades. The master plan a few years ago, we neighborhood has struggled with Crossroads of learned we were considered an aging housing stock. It has sur - “introverted campus.” It seems vived racist blockbusting tactics Campus and like a strange thought – introver - and white flight by creating the sion is a concept we usually 49/63 Neighborhood Coalition Community at apply to people, not to university made up of resident volunteers. campuses. But reflecting on that That coalition stood up and Rockhurst designation, it becomes abun - cleaned house – literally – when dantly clear how being intro - the neighborhood became in - verted has guided relationships fested with drug houses. As By Alicia Douglas with our community members, those changes were happening, partners, and stakeholders. Rockhurst remained anchored Rockhurst Unive rsity sits in a and attentive. Rockhurst is social and geographic crossroads, blessed to be in Kansas City, a an intersection of lifestyles, eco - place that nurtures volunteerism nomic realities, lived experiences, and grassroots community ac - types of housing stock, and busi - tivism so residents can tackle so - ness and institutional endeavors. cial justice issues on the home Our university is one of the major front. This culture of service also institutions that serves as a com - runs through the veins of Rock - munity anchor to a neighbor - hurst itself.

26 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION Rockhurst University Community Center.

Let us walk down a different di - rection of our crossroads. We have a beautiful 55-acre campus in the urban center of Kansas City. We have a very active neighborhood coalition and a good relationship with the Kansas City Police Department. Minutes from us there are neighborhoods suffering from random acts of gun violence. Rockhurst, the neighborhood coali - tion, and the Southtown Council, our business association, are work - ing together to regularly communi - cate with our patrol division about how our residents and institutions can better work together to make our neighborhoods safer. In addi - tion, we continue conversations about what community policing means and how that translates onto the university campus with univer - The neighborhood coalition go into the wee hours of the night sity security and police. What can sometimes finds it necessary to chal - next door to folks who have to go to we do to help bridge the gap and lenge the university as a way of pro - work in the morning or have young convene opportunities for positive tecting the community. Plans for children to put to sleep. The current interactions with police? building construction or issues of group of students may learn the ap - Being that introverted campus, student behavior can interfere with propriate norms and behaviors for it is natural for us to look inward; let what long-term residents consider the neighborhood, but then there is us stop at the center of the intersec - the natural order of things. Reflect - a re peat cycle with each new class. tion for a moment. Our university ing on our relationship-building ex - How can we work together to help has intentionally convened discus - periences, we have learned that the students and neighbors find sions about diversity and inclusion neighbors like to know what’s going peaceful reconciliation? The univer - for all members of our university on. New construction without an - sity has chosen to step outside its cul - community for the past few years. nouncement, discussion, or commu - tural communication habitat and Meanwhile, the NAACP has issued nity input causes anxiety and adapt new styles of communicating a travel advisory for people of color uncertainty. What will happen to with neighbors. By creating the Rock - passing through our state, Missouri, their homes, property values, to the hurst University Neighborhood to be mindful of their safety and neighborhood in general? Committee, which includes neigh - surroundings. Just across the state Tensions can rise and communi - borhood leaders and university rep - line in Kansas, a man was recently cation gets tougher when dealing resentatives, we can address concerns killed in a hate crime that attracted with student behavior issues. This is of our neighbors face-to-face and national attention. How do we help tough when there are repeat of - work alongside them to make our anyone visiting our city and our fenses of litter or loud parties that community better for everyone. university understand that we at

27 The campus bell tower. Photos courtesy of Rockhurst University.

Rockhurst have intentionally created an inclusive scholarship fund in his memory. Humanizing each place for them? How do we work united with our other and keeping open lines of communication is community to demonstrate that our campus culture our best way of keeping our neighborhood relation - is one of peace, love, dignity, and inclusion? What ships moving in a positive direction. can we do to share within our community and our Being an introverted campus does not mean we surrounding community that we hold dear the Jesuit accept whatever fate comes our way. It means we values and tradition that make Rockhurst special – contemplate and act accordingly after giving the that have held us accountable for being that commu - conversation the time it needs. We account for the nity anchor for more than a century? lives that intersect in the crossroads: the ebullient Building and maintaining trusting relationships hope of new students and professionals, reserved between Rockhurst and the Coalition is imperative. wisdom of long-term residents, cultivation of young Convening the RU Neighborhood Committee has families, struggles and triumphs of new businesses, provided opportunities to sit down and talk about and folks getting back on their feet. Reflecting on the our shared goals and concerns in an environment of words of our university president, our place is “to trust and honesty. The committee worked to create make God’s good world better.” a strategic plan to address shared community goals. Coming together in this way transitioned our rela - Alicia Douglas is director of community relations and tionship from contentious to trusting, even when outreach at Rockhurst University and has been with the faced with tragedy. When a local high school student university since 1999. She directs the Rockhurst Uni - was murdered while walking home near our cam - versity Community Center, facilitates the university’s pus, our community pulled together to grieve and Neighborhood Committee, and co-facilitates campuswide to inspire hope; we held a vigil, developed back-to- community service projects. She enjoys engaging in school events, and continue to host an annual stu - civic leadership activities in Kansas City. dent-led neighborhood 5K run/walk to support a

28 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION Empowering Communities in Worlds Apart Regis University Studying ‘Abroad’ in the Neighborhood

By Elizabeth Grassi, Obdulia Castro, Paul Burson, Rosa Burson

Regis University is located on a beautifully kept “Coming from a foreign country campus, an island in the middle of the urban sprawl experience where you are the for - of northwest Denver, Colorado. It is surrounded by eigner, you realize how big that is. a growing immigrant Hispanic community that has And now being back in the States at times been invisible. True to its Jesuit mission, you realize that no matter where Regis fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and pro - you are in the US there are thou - vides numerous opportunities for community-based sands of people going through the and service learning. Taking advantage of these re - same experience. They live down sources, two faculty members from the education the street from my university. and languages departments joined the Center for They are everywhere. It’s awesome Service Learning to develop a program that would how diverse Denver is.” close the gap between our students and the immi - – Student participant, interview grant Hispanic community, with the overarching goal of making our students and our Hispanic neigh - “ Participation in this program has allowed our bors “real” to each other. students to establish unique relationships with Both departments wanted to change the existing neighbors they would not have met were it not for power paradigm to create a community-based pro - this project. “Finding the unfamiliar in familiar gram where the families provided service to our stu - places” is what students encounter every week. The dents and our students became the receivers and the families “adopt” our students as their own and read - learners. Inspired by a program developed by Ethel ily share the struggles they experience as immigrants Jorge at Pitzer College in California, we developed living in the U.S. the Spanish-English Exchange Program (SEEP). This program, informally known as the “study abroad in “My relationship with my family the neighborhood,” brings Regis students into the homes of local immigrant Hispanic families for a se - has developed from initial awk - mester. The families decide the agenda; students par - ward greeting of trying to use the ticipate in daily family activities, explore the proper cultural norms, to letting neighborhood, shops, and churches with the fami - myself help A. set the table for din - lies, learn how to cook, dance, and speak the lan - ner. After only two months of guage. Regis students practice Spanish in a natural weekly visits I have connected environment, learn about the family’s culture and with this family because we both how the particular family navigates the challenges have openly welcomed each other. of U.S. society and school systems. “I have learned more about their 29 printed at Kinkos. They did not have access to these because of their language and their eco - nomic status, and his grade could have suffered in the class.” – Student reflective essay

The families also rely on our students to bring cultural capital to the homes. And when students bring the families on campus to eat or watch sport - ing events, the families gain access to a space that was next door but where they did not feel invited be - fore. Much to our delight, in the last two years this program has come full circle and the original chil - dren from the host families now attend Regis Uni - versity and visit other families in the program through their classes. We greatly value the knowl - edge our neighbors have imparted to our students, and, in exchange, our neighbors readily invite our students into their homes year after year.

“I derive great self-satisfaction from this process because I gen - history, values, and personalities uinely love the experience, not in our relaxed setting than I ever particularly because it is a “ser - would have through a formal and vice”, but more on the basis of instructional method.” the great relationships you estab - – Student reflective essay lish. … This summer I am going to help my Spanish brother apply As a result of this honest and candid relation - to college. What a privilege! To ship, our students experience the reality of immi - pass on knowledge I have ac - grant life: the trauma of deportation and quired through my time here, discrimination, economic difficulties, lack of health and in turn, to learn from an insurance or basic needs, and school issues the fam - amazing group of people.” ilies experience regularly. “ – Student participant, “For a school project, one of the program evaluation kids in the family needed to gather information and images Elizabeth Grassi is director of assessment for Regis to present with. He needed to University and professor and chairperson in the Depart - have access to a local library and ment of Education. Obdulia Castro is a professor of be able to use the Internet. His modern and classical languages. Melissa Nix is the family didn’t know where the director of Curriculum & Intercultural Programming, nearest library was, and didn’t and Paul Burson is the director of Student Development know how to use the Internet, & Community Partnerships, both in the Center for print pictures, or have pictures Service Learning at Regis University.

3“0 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION A Beautiful Thing Traversing a Deep Divide through Partnership and Hope

By Melissa Quan and Bob Hannafin

Connecticut’s Fairfield County is a tale of two cities izations and other entities that don’t pay taxes, and It has the wealthiest residents in the country, on a much of the remaining two-thirds is blighted with per-capita basis, and also the poorest. A recent Busi - shuttered mills, factories, and warehouses, once the ness Insider ranking rated Bridgeport-Stamford-Nor - pride of a thriving pre-war economy. Finally, county walk the single most unequal metro area in America, governments in Connecticut lack taxing authority; with the top 5 percent of earners making almost 30 this further exacerbates the city’s plight. Although percent of total income and the bottom 20 percent ac - the city is located in the state’s wealthiest county, cumulating a mere 2 percent share. “The Nation’s there is no mechanism for the county to contribute Report Card” – a U.S. Department of Education test to city needs. given to students in every state – recently showed It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Bridge - that Connecticut had the largest achievement gap be - port Public Schools (BPS) experience deficits and tween its minority students and their peers across shortages that are uniquely acute. Furthermore, BPS five of the 12 indicators. Connecticut also has the du - serve one of the most diverse student populations in bious distinction of one of the highest incarceration the state with Hispanic (49 percent) and black (36 rates for Hispanic and African-American males. percent) children comprising the largest subgroups. That aforementioned income-based achieve - They rightfully celebrate that diversity, but it pres - ment – or opportunity – gap takes an obvious toll on ents challenges as well. students, their families, and communities, but it also Students of color lag behind their white counter - creates an unsustainable economic drag on the state parts on almost every achievement measure. The and country, as evidenced by the fact that long-term Bridgeport Public Schools also have an unacceptably job growth prospects in Connecticut lag behind the high dropout rate and a low percentage of students national average. Addressing inequality is not just a who pursue higher education. moral and social-justice imperative. It is an economic As a Jesuit institution situated at the nexus of necessity as well. these national crises of inequity, we have felt called Bridgeport, the state’s largest city, faces several to respond. Fairfield University’s partnership with political and economic challenges. The city has a Cesar Batalla Elementary School (CBES), one of chronic revenue problem. Nearly a quarter of the BPS’s largest and most diverse schools, has been em - city’s residents live in poverty – paying little or no blematic of that effort. income tax and requiring a host of support services CBES is an elementary school where all of its that the city struggles to provide. In addition, over a students qualify for free or reduced-price meals and third of the city’s land is owned by nonprofit organ - 40 percent are English-language learners. As at many

31 The campus of Fairfield University (photos courtesy of the university).

large schools in high-poverty urban districts, CBES family engagement, particularly through a place- students struggle to meet grade-level goals as meas - based community engagement model. ured by standardized tests (just 11 percent in lan - Place-based community engagement focuses re - guage arts and only 4 percent in math). Amidst these sources and partnership activities in a specific neigh - struggles, CBES nonetheless remains a vibrant com - borhood or other geographically defined place – in munity of dedicated teachers, learners, and families. our case, a school – to impact defined, measurable By contrast, Fairfield University’s 5,000 students outcomes. Together, we identified goals focused on are predominantly white and from mid-to-upper class literacy development in grades K-5 and worked with backgrounds. A mere four miles apart, CBES and Fair - middle school students to foster long-term aspira - field represent, in many ways, the stark inequity that tions for higher education. plagues the county and nation as a whole. Over the past six years, nearly 700 Fairfield stu - In an effort to bridge this gap, some six years ago dents enrolled in 35 service-learning sections have CBES and Fairfield entered into a partnership focused engaged with that partnership through courses on raising literacy levels of CBES students. The part - across a variety of disciplines; hundreds more CBES nership began with a few service-learning courses and students have visited Fairfield’s campus through the the commitment of Fairfield’s Center for Faith and support of athletics, modern languages, and other Public Life and Graduate School of Education and Al - departments; and CBES teachers have benefited lied Professions. In 2015, we began to explore an even from intensive professional development trainings more holistic approach that would include support for led by our education school faculty. The Fairfield the students, teachers, and parents and address aca - and CBES communities have become increasingly demic achievement, social-emotional wellness, and interconnected with CBES teachers taking graduate

32 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION classes and Fairfield alumni being hired by CBES as to see the dial move – to gain evidence of real, lasting the partnership became integrated in hiring deci - change before we can consider this as a model worth sions at both schools. replicating. We are not interested in simply placing Evidence points to modest gains in academic per - hundreds of bodies into struggling schools in hopes formance, particularly among participating second of having a positive impact. Too much is at stake; the graders and middle schoolers. CBES teachers also re - crises are too urgent. As Jesuit schools, educators, port that partnership activities impact student enthu - and students, in the spirit of magis , we are called to siasm for school overall and that professional do more and to do better. For the time being, then, development helps them improve instruction. In turn, we are “all in” with our partners at CBES. Fairfield students report that the experience helps We fully expect that the road will be long, some - them better understand issues related to diversity, times frustrating, and rife with political obstacles. We even as they struggle to make sense of the complex are living the challenge of bridging different worlds social justice issues at play. For some, it has affirmed and trying to apply a place-based method to this sub - their desire to teach in an urban district while others urban-urban partnership. With our partners, we re - feel called toward policy work. There is much more main optimistic and hopeful in what CBES principal to uncover here as the work moves forward. Hector Sanchez has labelled, “A Beautiful Thing.” As leaders of this initiative, we are occasionally asked to justify the decision to invest so much in one Melissa Quan is the director of the Center for Faith & school, especially when there are 32 other elemen - Public Life at Fairfield University. Bob Hannafin is tary schools in the district facing challenges as severe dean of the Graduate School of Education and Allied as or worse than CBES. Our response is that we need Professions at Fairfield University . Jesuit Universities Serving the Local Church

By Tom Reynolds

As Jesuit colleges and universities increase their en - omy from traditional church institutions, including gagement with their surrounding neighborhoods dioceses and religious orders. and communities, they have been drawn into deeper The “Land of Lakes” statement of 1967 essentially relationships with the network of schools, non-profit clarified this movement, which was less a declaration organizations, neighborhood associations, health of independence from the Catholic Church or aban - care providers, and local governments. In more re - donment of Catholic identity, as charged by some crit - cent years, the 28 Jesuit, Catholic colleges and uni - ics, and more a description of the new reality Catholic versities have embarked on a joint effort to reflect on institutions needed to acknowledge in order to remain their Jesuit, Catholic identities through the Institu - relevant in the evolving American educational land - tional Examen process, which includes an examina - scape. The powerful impetus of the 32nd General Con - tion of the oldest and most central set of gregation of the Society of Jesus, with its emphasis on relationships with Catholic parishes, dioceses, “a faith that does justice,” also encouraged new initia - schools, and other organizations of the local church. tives to align university service programs with inter - national immersion experiences and local projects with Historical Context marginalized communities.

These relationships have long historical roots. Many The Institutional Examen Jesuit institutions trace their founding to the initia - Process tive of local bishops to serve their growing Catholic populations. In fact, bishops were involved with the In 2010, in concert with the 20th anniversary of Ex founding of all the Jesuit universities established be - Corde Ecclesiae, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and fore the Civil War. These schools served almost ex - Universities (AJCU) issued The Jesuit Catholic Mission clusively the needs of the Catholic community. Jesuit of U.S. Jesuit Colleges and Universities , noting the role schools in the U.S., notably described as streetcar col - of Catholic universities as “important ministries of leges in Jencks and Riesman’s The Academic Revolu - the Catholic Church.” Two years later, the AJCU and tion (1968), provided educational opportunities for the Jesuit Conference (U.S. Jesuit provincials) jointly generations of urban Catholic immigrant students. approved Some Characteristics of Jesuit Colleges and Phillip Gleason, in his history of Catholic higher Universities: A Self-Evaluation Instrument, intended to education, Contending with Modernity (1995), docu - provide a framework for reviewing and affirming mented the close connections between Catholic col - the Jesuit and Catholic identity of the 28 AJCU mem - leges and their sponsoring dioceses for much of their ber schools. Three universities, Xavier, John Carroll, histories, as well as the growing pressures on these and the University of San Francisco, became the pilot schools to modernize their curricula, faculty, and ad - schools for this self-study/peer review process in ministrative practices using norms common to the spring 2016, with five subsequent schools participat - rest of American higher education This gradual ing the following year and eight more in 2017-18. movement toward professionalization of Catholic In addition to characteristics that focus on Lead - schools was accompanied by an increasing auton - ership, Academic Life, Campus Culture, Service,

34 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION Integrity, and Jesuit Presence, the Examen process asks institutions to reflect on their Service to the Local Church, (Characteristic 5), with at - tention to “educational and forma - tional programs and resources that build up the local Church; in union with the local Church, it also pro - vides a locus where people of faith can wrestle with difficult questions facing the Church and the world.”

Engaging and Serving the Local Church

Obviously graduate programs in the - ology or pastoral ministry, which pre - pare “the next generation of Catholic intellectual leaders,” are a profound service to the Catholic community. Jesuit institutions also offer pro - grams in adult faith formation for Catholic laity, addressing a gap in Catholic literacy in the U.S. and pro - viding a forum to address difficult challenges within the church and be - tween the church and the wider cul - ture. Some examples of such initiatives include: The Church in the 21st Century program at Boston Designed by Jeremy Leichman and Joan Benefiel, “Examen” is a two-part College; the Bannan Institute at sculpture of St. Ignatius at Fairfield University. Santa Clara University; the Curran Center at Fordham University; The Hanks Center at Loyola University Serving the local church can often center on the Chicago; the Loyola Institute of Ministry at Loyola relationship between the local bishop and the uni - University New Orleans; and Spring Hill College’s versity. The “Challenge” section in Characteristic 5 graduate theology programs taught in Mobile and of “Some Characteristics” notes diplomatically, Atlanta and on line. “There is, at times, mutual misunderstanding be - In addition, other related institutes and centers tween some bishops and some universities on what (for example, the Institute for Christian-Jewish Re - academic freedom rightly requires of Jesuit, Catholic lations at St. Joseph’s University, the Institute for universities. How successfully has this institution Catholic Thought and Culture at Seattle University, managed to build bridges and foster mutual under - and the Institute on the Common Good at Regis) standing in this realm?” Such misunderstandings offer the opportunity for interreligious dialogue be - have included disagreements over the rights of fac - tween different faith traditions, another missing ulty members to disagree publicly with church piece in the formation of many American Catholics. teachings, particularly around “hot-button” issues;

35 the presence of LGBTQ student organizations on campus; and commencement speakers or performances of plays such as The Vagina Monologues. resources - the examen The relationship depends largely on the personality of indi - a collection of websites from some Jesuit vidual bishops and individual Jesuit university presidents, and sources addressing the issue of the daily how they work together. More fundamental is how each partner examen, referenced in some of our articles. understands the role of a Catholic university, not only as a univer - sity, but as a ministry of the Catholic Church distinct from other ministries. Universities are not parishes, serving only Catholics, This website provides information on how to make the Examen part of your day, variations on the Exa - nor are they seminaries preparing students for the priesthood or men, reflections on praying the Examen, and a catechetical programs giving basic doctrinal instruction. handout (found on many AJCU school websites.) Instead of focusing on these inherent sources of potential con - http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian- flict, Jesuit schools participating in the Examen have found pro - prayer/the-examen . ductive conversations around partnerships that bring university resources to bear on shared projects with the local church. Among This PDF provides a concise explanation of each of the eight participating schools that have completed their self- the five steps in the Examen. study reports and visits, examples have included: https://www.gonzaga.edu/student-life/ccP/inc/ • Tuition support or discounts for clergy and other dioce - resilience/the%20examen%20infographic.pdf . san employees to further their professional education; • Support for local Catholic K-12 schools, particularly This document provides different versions of the Daily Examen including an annual Examen and an those serving the urban poor, such as the Cristo Rey net - Examen for Managers and Parents. work high schools and the Nativity-San Miguel middle https://www.xavier.edu/jesuitresource/news- schools; events/daily-examen-resources.cfm . • Financial support for Catholic school teachers and ad - ministrators completing licensure requirements and These documents provide examples of simple questions training programs for new teachers modeled after the you can ask yourself during each step of the Examen. Notre Dame ACE program; http://president.loyno.edu/chaplain/examen . • Joint programs with local Hispanic Catholic ministry programs; http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/collaborative • Continuing education, opportunities for Catholic health Ministry/audioretreat/kroll-01-2010/kroll-t11- care facilities, Catholic Charities, and other Catholic non- 01.pdf . profit groups. This short reflection on the Examen with a student focus includes 3 videos at the end to help guide in - A Way Forward? dividuals through the practice. https://www.creighton.edu/creighton - By shifting the conversation to how the school can support magazine/2015fallunewsexamen/ . and build up the Catholic community, instead of dwelling on frustrating disagreements on the proper nature of a Catholic Each document presents questions to the reader, college/university, both groups may come to see themselves guiding them to the “why” behind incorporating the Examen into their daily life as partners rather than rivals. Such collaborative efforts make http://www.marquette.edu/faith/examen-of- both more aware of their shared faith commitments. consciousness.php . Jesuit schools have significant resources and expertise that the https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/top/churc Catholic community needs. They emerged “from the heart of h21/pdf/c-%5cfakepath%5cthe%20ignatian% the Church” in the past 200+ years in the United States, and 20examen_scala.pdf . they have much to offer and much to learn from the lives of “the people of God.” Includes the My Examen Prayer to be said during the daily Examen Tom Reynolds is the provincial assistant for higher education for https://www.gonzaga.edu/about/Mission/ the Central and Southern Province of the Jesuits. He recently libraryonMission.asp . retired as vice president for mission at Regis University.

36 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION Community Partnerships? Ask our Alumni

By Jacob Dillabaugh

It was only a matter of time when I graduated from St. alumni are strategically placed to be directly involved in the Joseph’s University that my friends and I began receiving establishment or further development of university commu - numerous calls from the university development office and nity partnerships with the neighborhoods and communities a legion of well meaning undergraduates armed with tele - around them. phones. These calls for donation give little consideration to Examples of this dynamic are borne out in a study, cur - the tuition spent, the debt accrued, or even the variety career rently underway, of the partnerships between service-oriented paths chosen by graduates. The meager contributions that programming at a Jesuit university in the Northeast and their are given have little relative impact on the operation of the community partner organizations. The preliminary findings university and are one of the least effective ways of engag - of this research have shown that a significant number of the ing young alumni in making greater the impact of univer - directors, volunteer coordinators, or even general staff at the sities. Instead, we should be utilizing the gifts our alumni community partner organizations are tied to the university, possess in their new positions and networks to create and typically as alumni, with which they are partnered. Their sta - cultivate more dynamic partnerships with the cities, com - tus as both alumni and, now, professional staff allows them munities, and organizations around us, especially when so to act as bridges between their organization and the university. many of them end up right in our backyard. As an alumna/us they understand the institutional capacities The supposed aim of Jesuit Higher Education touted by of the university, and as nonprofit professionals they under - admissions offices, print materials, and presidential ad - stand the abilities and needs of their organization. This dual- dresses is always toward some form of educating “women sided understanding allows for the better construction and and men to be with and for others.” If we indeed do pro - development of partnerships. duce graduates that seek to be so oriented within our soci - A positive experience of an alumna/us with the univer - ety, then why not utilize them? Regardless of their chosen sity-based programs leads them to re-engage with the uni - major or career path, each graduate represents a possible versity and offer a meaningful way of expanding the impact connector to untapped opportunity of partnership for uni - that our universities have on neighborhood and community versities to actually have substantial impact on the sur - partnerships. If viewed as in-kind gifts, these partnerships rounding community. Take, for example, those who pursue offer far more to the expansion of a Jesuit university’s mis - their career or vocation in the world of nonprofit service or - sion than small sums of money ever could. If we instead ganizations. I admit that it is possible and desirable for all turn back to our mission and recognize that we have, in - graduates, regardless of field, to act in ways that are ori - deed, educated women and men for others we can actually ented towards a state of being with and for others. However, propel that mission by engaging alumni well beyond the those in the nonprofit sector represent an alumni cohort de - scope of a phone call and a credit card transaction. If I were cidedly committed to that ideal. to, instead, receive a phone call asking about how I might Many alumni who find work in the nonprofit sector facilitate a university-community partnership, I would ab - after graduation often times are continuing experiences that solutely be more invested and give more of myself. they had during undergrad in community service or serv - ice-learning programs. Through a service placement or an Jacob Dillabaugh is a candidate for master’s degree in sociology internship they find full-time employment at the same or - at Boston College, ’18. He is conducting research on the rela - ganization or within the same field. Because of their age and tionships between service-based campus organizations, such as experience, these young alumni often fill roles that have BC’s PULSE Program for Service Learning, and the community some direct supervision over incoming volunteers or part - partners where students are sent to serve during the year. nership management. Given their positions these recent

37 an historical MoMent Left: The first building constructed by the Jesuits in 1829 to house Saint Louis College Below: Saint Louis University downtown campus, 1890. Inset: Peter Verhaegen, S.J., the college’s first president.

All photos courtesy of Saint Louis University Libraries Digital Collections.

Saint Louis University 200th Anniversary of Saint Louis University

By Amelia Blanton Hibner

Founding journey to St. Louis and with two more firsts west of the took control of the college mighty river, opening medical and law In 1818, on the banks of the three years later. schools in 1836 and 1843. Mississippi River, Bishop Under the leadership Louis DuBourg founded of the college’s first presi - Race Relations Saint Louis Academy. After dent, 29-year-old Fr. Peter it expanded to a college in Verhaegen, S.J., the college Though not often remembered, six Jesuit- 1820, DuBourg realized the began its history of “firsts.” owned slaves traveled west with the Je - college was more than he In 1832 it changed its name suits from Baltimore in 1823 and worked could manage and ap - to Saint Louis University on a farm in Florissant, Missouri. These pealed to the Belgian Jesuits at George - and received its formal charter from same slaves, or others hired, likely con - town College for assistance. In 1823, Missouri, making it the first university tributed to the construction of the col - twelve Jesuits made the treacherous west of the Mississippi. It followed lege’s new building in 1826. Sadly, the

38 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION Left: Philosophy students with Tom Sherman, S.J., circa 1880s. Middle: Students lining up to register, 1951. Bottom: A woman accepting her graduation award, 1956.

Beyond the Society

As the university expanded, it wres - tled with the equally expanding roles of women and lay people. In 1908 the university admitted five women to the Law School, marking the beginning of women’s history at SLU as students. In 1929 the university Jesuits in St. Louis continued conferred its first their history with slavery, pur - PhD, in physics, to a chasing a slave as late as 1862 woman, Mother before Missouri abolished Marie Kernaghan, slavery in 1865. R.S.C.J. However, it The university’s history wasn’t until Fr. Paul with race took a turn in 1944, Reinert, S.J., became when Fr. Claude Heithaus, president in 1949 that S.J., delivered a sermon women and men where he lambasted SLU for were allowed to sit its failure to racially integrate side-by-side in class. and called upon students and Fr. Reinert’s university officials to act. vision for expansion While it resulted in his ban - continued with the ishment from Saint Louis, the establishment of a lay sermon also moved the uni - board of trustees in versity to admit its first five 1967, the first of its students of color, making kind at any Catholic Saint Louis the first univer - college or university in the United sity in any of the former slave states to States. When the new board met for the establish an official policy of integration. first time, ten Jesuits, nine Catholic lay - Challenges over race were brought men, and nine men of other faiths were to the forefront of the university’s con - in the room. In 2014, the university cel - sciousness with the recent occupation ebrated another milestone with the in - of campus by student protestors in auguration of its first lay president, Dr. 2014. These protests were eerily similar Fred P. Pestello. Under his leadership to the 1969 occupation of an office by the university has seen new strategic the Association of Black Collegians, and master building plans. which resulted in a list of ten demands from the students. The peaceful occu - Amelia Blanton Hibner, MTS, is an pation in 2014 resulted in a thirteen- alumna of Saint Louis University and is point agreement between the currently a doctoral student in higher ed - protesters and the university that com - ucation administration and works in the mit SLU to enhance diversity, equity, School of Social Work at the University. and inclusion.

39 reection, Tfore Cno n Qtinuuein sgt tihoen Cson v ersa tion In the Does gentrication play a r ole spirit of How ar e invitations to campus extended to in the way your university we pose these community members? Does interacts with the community? the community invite the What r ole do government questions as university to participate in conversation. or community or ganizations community events? an opportunity play in university decisions? (mayors, governors, city What vocabulary is used to to extend the planners, neighbor hood discuss r elationships with the associations) these ideas, neighbor hood, community , or ganizations? What do How ar e Jesuit communities Wthe dhiospceu sthsiaotn those wor ds say about the using their spaces to relationships? respond to the needs of their bcoyn otfifneuriensg o n community? your campus— What is the r ole of your university in the place it sits? How do our universities reconcile campus safety while with colleagues, maintaining openness with the How does faith drive local community? with students, relationships between the university and the local Does the physical space community? of the university pr omote community . connections with the Wher e does mission of the surr ounding community? university drive r elationships What barriers or welcome and with your with the local community? signs exist?

40 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION student Voices

religion, and culture. I have been Finding a Place immersed in those contrasting Moroccan and Irish cultures my on Campus whole life and saw this as an op - portunity to continue to learn about myself and from others. As By Samir Aslane a community, we grew closer than just floor mates; we became brothers in experience and expec - I have found that when it comes community: being half-Moroccan tations. This brotherhood was piv - to the question of finding a com - and half-Irish; being a person of fortable space to call your own, color at a predominately white in - otal in helping me find my footing my first year at BC. people have plenty to say about stitution; and being a Muslim at a how they found theirs. “Go join a Catholic, Jesuit institution. In addition, I became in - bunch of clubs that interest you,” It is not that I have felt un - volved in the “FACES Council,”

“Talk to everyone you can,” “ Just comfortable or unwelcome in my an antiracist organization com - be yourself, ” they say. life or in my communities, but mitted to promoting dialogue on

However, my experiences are spaces for biracial students are issues of race and systems of not like theirs, just as your experi - often paradoxical: welcoming, but power and privilege. Through the ences are not like mine. We all have hard to fully assimilate and feel group, I committed myself to helping others find their voices in our own story. My story is not one totally connected. Nonetheless, I this ongoing discussion of racial about finding an existing space to entered Boston College fully com - fit in; it is about carving out a new mitted to be my most authentic justice just as I found my own space that I can call my own. self and to shed the mask that I voice as a biracial man. I have often struggled with often wore in high school. Finally, last spring, I accom - finding a space where I feel com - I applied for the “Multicul - panied 20 other students to Kingston, Jamaica, as part of the fortable. My life is constantly tural Living Experience,” a lived somewhere in the middle, unique opportunity to live on a Jamaica Magis Service Immersion never fully immersing or being floor that emphasizes conversa - Trip. In Kingston, we worked at the Holy Family Primary School accepted into a single circle or tion on the intersections of race, with the students and others in the community. Through our commitment to justice and pro - viding a voice for the voiceless in Kingston and beyond, I connected with a true community. Overall, finding a comfort zone here at Boston College is not a linear or finite process: I am still searching for comfortable spaces. But I have found that it is much more liberating and meaningful to carve out those spaces for yourself.

Samir Aslane is a member of Boston College’s class of 2019.

41 student Voices

Students Found a New Journal Sharing Ideas on Campus

By Billy Ford

America has reached a critical juncture in its history. In response to this gaping void in campus dis - Across our country, men and women, politicians and course, and to the growing inability of both students pundits seem incapable of engaging in civil dis - and adults to disagree without being disagreeable, I course. Instead they lambaste their ideological op - began to think about creating a new journal of opin - ponents, and strict ideological labels like Democrat ion at Holy Cross, one that championed civil dis - and Republican prevent individuals on both sides of course and committed us unequivocally to serving the aisle from coming together to craft the policies the common good. we need to improve our healthcare system, our econ - It began in my dorm room, on the second floor omy, our immigration system, and our foreign pol - of Wheeler Hall. My friend Connor Hennessey and icy. Now more than ever – as populism and I sat down and started thinking about how we might xenophobia rear their ugly heads, as the global structure this hypothetical journal. Opening a refugee crisis continues to fester, as climate change Google doc and exchanging our ideas with increas - uproots homes and upends lives – it becomes impor - ing rapidity and excitement, we spoke about what tant for people in America and across the world to we hoped to accomplish. Soon all speech stopped, think critically about the problems that we face. It replaced only by the rhythmic beating of fingers on becomes necessary to discern our duty to others. It computer keys as we sought to get down on paper becomes necessary to reject this status quo of divi - those thoughts racing through our heads. sive politics and ineffective policy-making, repair the We wanted a vigorous exchange of ideas. We sundered bonds between ideological opposites that wanted animated prose that communicated the hope cleave our communities into hostile factions, and of young minds. We wanted people of different ideo - forge a new path forward. logical backgrounds to come together and in a single When I came to the College of the Holy Cross in forum both to contend fiercely and to listen closely. the late summer of 2015, I hoped to discern this path Acutely aware of our own shortcomings and our lim - forward through my coursework; I hoped to deepen ited knowledge and experience, we sought not to ex - this discernment through an outside outlet, through clude from this dialogue any individual who could which I could author opinion pieces on those issues express his or her thoughts clearly, forcefully, and about which I am particularly passionate. civilly. We knew that this journal must be open to peo - When I arrived to campus, however, the existing ple of all faith and ideological backgrounds. student publications were not discussing in any After sharing my idea with Connor, I began to meaningful way the problems we face as a world, as approach other students. It wasn’t a difficult sell. An - a country, as a local community, and as individuals. drew Smith, a bright conservative from my macro - Moreover, these outlets did not publish or highlight economics class, jumped at the idea. Mithra student research, nor did they contain the space nec - Salmassi, a writer and researcher in Holy Cross’s essary to publish the long-form pieces required to Digital Transgender Archive, signed on immediately address the critical issues before us. after I shared my proposal. Our staff began to grow.

42 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION As I thought about this idea more throughout community. We took the summer of 2016, the purpose of this project be - our name from Presi - came clearer to me. It was, it is, about harnessing the dent Barak Obama’s electrifying hopes of young people and encouraging speech to the 2016 them to make these hopes concrete in such a way Democratic National that rejects both the venom and visceral political bi - Convention. Ideas do nary of this discursive moment. By doing so, I hoped struggle with each to reclaim – if only on Holy Cross’s campus – the other, even as they complement each other. now radical notion that my ideological opponents We at ACI acknowledge that our impact will and I are engaged in a common enterprise. Be one likely be small, and we shall ever seek to expand it. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or none of the But change starts small. above, we all seek a more perfect union; stronger, If we truly seek to reduce inequality, to serve the more loving communities; and a brighter future for poor and the marginalized, to better the country, the our children and our children’s children. We all economy, the environment, or the future of our know that we have more work to do. world in some other way – if we hope to have any We will always have more work to do. impact on this world – we must rehabilitate our bro - But if we can reclaim the notion that we share ken discourse. We must respect, engage civilly with, similar, if not the same, goals, and simply disagree and learn from those with whom we disagree. over the proper way to get there, the deafening con - We must start this work now. tempt and useless noise of our current politics will fade away. What will be left after that is what should Billy Ford, assistant editor in chief of A Contest of have been there all along: productive discussion, Ideas , is in junior year at the College of the Holy Cross; aimed at maximizing our common good. he spent the first semester in Amman, Jordan, and is to This is the type of discussion that this journal, A spend the second in an internship in Washington. Contest of Ideas , hopes to model for the Holy Cross See www.acontestideas.com.

Wheeler Hall, College of the Holy Cross

43 The Parable of the Good Samaritan by Jan Wijnants (1670) talking Back

The Quality of Mercy at the Heart of Sanctuary

By Paul Lakeland

Looking at the spectacular issue of Conversations (Fall second kind of mercy, we encounter what Miranda 2017, “Sanctuary for Truth and Justice”) I reflected on Richard in her Conversations article (Becoming “Us” all the wonderful initiatives talked about in those in a Polarized Age) called “the Jesuit tradition of pages. Something, I thought, has to link all that we compassion, empathy, and service” (26-27). do with all that we are, something that connects the Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan in re - bonds that tie us together with the bonds we try loose sponse to the question, “Who is my neighbor?” The among those to whom we reach out. I want to sug - Samaritan is a stranger and an outcast – a heretic gest that this something is the virtue of mercy. whom the good people of first century Judaea de - Mercy helps us see what to do with our critical spised. He comes to the aid of someone who has and sophisticated grasp of what our world is really been robbed and left for dead. Respectable religious like. Mercy, in fact, can be two related, but quite dis - leaders have “passed by on the other side.” But the tinct, things. First, mercy can mean withholding or Samaritan, who has no responsibility for this person, easing up on the punishment or suffering someone goes out of his way to help, providing aid and fi - actually deserves. When a judge imposes only a light nances to assure the other’s recovery. The man left sentence on a person convicted of a crime with ex - for dead does not deserve the suffering, and the tenuating circumstances, we call it mercy. And when Samaritan has no responsibility to help him. The we go easy on a friend who has deeply offended us, Samaritan acts in this compassionate way because, this is also the same kind of mercy. This is mercy as well, because this is the kind of person he is. He leniency . But there is another and perhaps more im - would have done the same for someone else, and portant understanding of mercy, closer certainly to perhaps had done so many times before. So this sin - the mind of Pope Francis and to St. Ignatius’ call to gle act of mercy displays not simply a merciful act a generous life. When we do something to alleviate but the practice of someone who is consistently mer - the suffering of another person who has done no ciful. It shows one instance of how the virtue of wrong and doesn’t deserve the suffering he or she is mercy could be at work in healing the world. undergoing, we are practicing mercy. This is mercy This understanding of mercy needs to saturate as healing , and it works in surprising ways. In this the culture of our universities. We get a hint about

45 its importance from the treatment of the parable in President Barak Obama’s DACA program for so- the writings of the great French philosopher Simone called Dreamers, at least for now. Some of us are peo - Weil. When Weil analyzes the parable, she sees that ple suffering from addiction. And some of us are ill, the bleeding victim needs something to restore him physically or mentally. But as the story of the Good to his full humanity, namely, the care and concern of Samaritan shows, the practice of mercy transcends another. The Samaritan divests himself, if only of all these differences. money, but by doing so he grows into a richer hu - I am reminded of some words of Rainer Maria manity. Now of course we rarely if ever encounter Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet , where he wrote: someone on our campus who is in anything like the Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are man in dire need whom the Samaritan encounters. princesses who are only waiting to see us But if we keep our eyes and our hearts open, there act, just once, with beauty and courage. Per - will be many calls upon us on some days, and some haps everything that frightens us is, in its calls upon us almost every day. Explicitly or not, we deepest essence, something helpless that are constantly asked to give of ourselves. The de - wants our love. mands that are made upon us by living in commu - Mercy requires the courage to be vulnerable, the nity do cost us, our time or energy if not money. But kind of courage that carried Dorothy Day through a the costs are returned to us many times over in the lifetime of engagement with the urban poor. She saw rich growth of our human capacities to be vulnerable the connections between desperate poverty and in face of the needs of the other. homelessness on the one hand and a society driven Jesuit universities are called to model the kind by greed on the other. You may find it shocking of society in which we would all like to live. This is when she says, “Our problems stem from our accept - the sanctuary that Howard Gray talks about (“Sanc - ance of this filthy, rotten system.” But I hope you see tuary for the Heart,” 8-10), though it should be our the wisdom of her conviction that “the greatest chal - wish for such sanctuary to be unnecessary. Sanctuary lenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution should be the air the whole world breathes. As we of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each struggle to be sanctuary, we recognize that we are far one of us?” from perfect. But we know that the direction in I have suggested that at this stage of life, here in which we must move is towards recognizing the full the incubator of a college education, our way is to humanity of all those around us. So, the way we treat study hard so as to truly know the world and to prac - one another, the way we speak of one another, espe - tice the virtue of mercy towards one another, espe - cially of those who are somehow different from us, cially to the dragons in our lives. It’s a simple is either a building block towards a better world or equation: learning + virtue = wisdom. Our world and a vote for destruction. Transfer the lesson of the gift- our lives may be full of what appear to us as dragons. exchange to our campuses today: the person of color Our national and global leaders certainly give most has much to teach the possessor of white privilege, of us pause for thought. But a little more love and and sometimes the opposite is true. In the exchange mercy can turn at least some of them into princesses. between the two, perhaps understanding and, yes, even love may begin to flourish. We are gay and Paul Lakeland is director of the Center for Catholic straight, black and brown and yellow and white, rich Studies at Fairfield University. His most recent book is and poor, men and women. We have transgendered The Wounded Angel: Fiction and Religious Imagi - people in our community. We are Christians and nation (Liturgical Press, 2017). He explains, “The book Buddhists and Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and people explores the relationship between the act of faith and the of no religion at all. Some of us are beneficiaries of act of reading. Really.”

46 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION student Voices

A Call for Prophetic Jesuit Leadership

By Sarah Hansman

For two decades, Fr. Michael Himes has welcomed genera - tions of incoming freshmen at orientation with his explana - “The real measure of our tion of what makes Boston College and their impending Jesuit universities lies in who Jesuit education so meaningful. “The measure of the success of your education,” Himes intones with conviction, “is the our students become.” measure to which people who never got to come to Boston -Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J. College lead richer, fuller, and more genuinely human lives because you did go to Boston College.” Father Himes em - phasizes the importance of giving away one’s education – and speak out on behalf of the marginalized. For example, the critical-thinking skills, the acquired talents, the lived ex - there is a lack of space to facilitate and hold conversations or periences – to those who were not privileged with such an rallies around pressing social issues. Often, it isn’t what the opportunity. Former Superior General of the Jesuits Peter- university says and does, but rather what the university fails Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., argues that at the heart of the Society to say, fails to do. It is the silence that hurts the most. And in of Jesus, and subsequently of every Jesuit institution, is “the historically divisive times like the one we are living through service of faith” and “the promotion of justice.” Jesuit now, that silence is resounding. schools at their best produce dynamic students equipped This is not to oversimplify; before condemning admin - with both the skills to excel and the conscience to do so eth - istrative silence as cold, students must recognize the in - ically. More important, they produce students who are eager tensely competitive, ever-changing world of higher to share their education with those in need. Jesuit graduates education. Running a top tier university is incredibly diffi - are commissioned to use their education to create a more cult and involves a number of moving pieces and unique just, more compassionate society. goals. But if money, prestige, and reputation are taking But shaping men and women to enact positive change precedence over combatting injustice in all its forms, I urge once they leave campus is not enough. In a position of such our Jesuit universities to reconsider their priorities. immense power and influence, the Jesuit university, specifi - Father Kolvenbach writes, “The real measure of our Je - cally university officials, has the task to speak prophetically suit universities lies in who our students become.” If BC ex - on issues of social justice. This duty emerges from the core of pects its students to work for a more just and compassionate the Catholic faith, from St. Ignatius’ founding of an order that society, university leadership must first model that passion actively promotes justice, and further back from the gospel for justice. Boston College is a place we come from; and I itself and the call by Jesus to care for the least among us. Jesuit hope that when my class graduates this spring, we leave leadership must model and practice the values they preach. with a greater call to strike through the silence and speak In such a divisive time, this is difficult to do. But for the same out against injustice and, as St. Ignatius said, to set the reason that it is difficult, it is equally important. world aflame. As a senior at BC, there are areas in which I am proud of the administration’s commitment to the “promotion of jus - Originally from Duxbury, Mass, Sarah Hansman is a senior at tice.” Service-learning courses such as PULSE and immersion Boston College studying theology and higher education. With a trips both domestic and international reflect the heart of this passion the Jesuit education, Sarah plans to do a post-grad year mission. However, there have been moments in which I felt of service and then get an M.A. in theology and ministry. that the university fell short in opportunities to reject inequity

47 How Should Jesuit Universities Respond to the Repeal of DACA?

By Rachel Wifall

In a 2017 study con - ducted for the finance website WalletHub.com, Jersey City, N.J., was de - clared the nation’s most diverse city, based on ethnoracial, linguistic, and birthplace data. Ac - cording to Mayor Steven Fulop, “Jersey City has always been a welcom - ing home for new groups seeking a better life, bringing a diversity of cultures, religions, and languages here, which is truly the embodiment of the promise of America.” Accordingly, Saint Peter’s University in Jer - sey City appears on the U.S. News and World Re - port “Best Colleges” list for diversity (2016-17), Jennifer Ayala, director of The Center for Undocumented Students, TCUS, is pictured here with 42 percent of its stu - in a meeting with staff and volunteers for the center. dents of Hispanic origin. Photo courtesy of Corey W. McDonald, The Jersey Journal In order to serve these students, Saint Peter’s has created sued a statement inspired by the and financial-aid process, will both an Office of Diversity, Equity words of Pope Francis: “The never inquire about a student’s and Inclusion and The Center for Church without frontiers, Mother immigration status, and will not Undocumented Students (TCUS), to all, spreads throughout the share any personal data with any - housed in the King-Kairos Social world a culture of acceptance and one without a warrant or a Justice House. solidarity, in which no one is seen subpoena. The volunteer-driven When the Trump administra - as useless, out of place or dispos - Center for Undocumented Stu - tion ended the Deferred Action able. ” Dr. Cornacchia assured the dents and the social justice pro - for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) university community that Saint gram, often in conjunction with program, Saint Peter’s University Peter’s will not consider immi - the Office of Campus Ministry President Eugene J. Cornacchia is - gration status in the admission and community organizations, in -

48 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION The King-Kairos Social Justice House at Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City. creased their efforts on behalf of the protections that came with solidarity, and create a culture of the immigrant student popula - being a ‘dreamer’ student would encounter” and ask ourselves one tion, hosting licensed profession - not apply anymore; I would be - of the oldest of all questions: als who provided pro-bono come an undocumented adult.” Li “Where is your brother?” In the counseling sessions and immigra - asserts that we need to find a way August 2017 issue of Conversa - tion lawyers who offered free to provide real sanctuary for un - tions , John McKay encourages all “Know Your Rights” workshops. documented people beyond the Jesuit universities to declare their The groups have also provided “Dreamers.” Jennifer Ayala, pro - campuses sanctuaries for their staff and faculty training regard - fessor of education and director of students and “send a powerful ing the special needs of undocu - TCUS, agrees that we must also message of support when [it] is mented students, as well as reach out to nonstudent members most needed.” As for further student-led vigils, marches, and of our community, perhaps in measures, perhaps we should fol - phone-banking marathons. conjunction with local churches. low the example of Vince While undocumented stu - Anna Brown, associate pro - Boudreau, interim president of dents cannot obtain federal loans fessor of political science and di - City College of New York, who or grants, “Li” – an immigrant rector of the social justice called for action including from Mexico and a 2017 graduate program, warns against “resting demonstrations, pressuring – was able to attend Saint Peter’s on our Jesuit laurels,” assuming elected officials, and learning the through the generosity of anony - that because we are Jesuit institu - “rules of engagement with immi - mous donors who set up a tions we are automatically on the gration officials.” Dreamer Scholarship Fund. He side of the oppressed and need felt protected by the Saint Peter’s not take strong measures to con - Rachel Wifall is an associate community and his DACA status. firm our commitment to justice. professor of English at Saint Peter’s However, “After Trump was Like Dr. Cornacchia, she cites University; she is also a member of elected, it sunk in that I was living Pope Francis, who encourages us the Conversations seminar. my last year as a student and that to “honor human dignity, build

49 Book notice

suits that I met, but what I also found Emmaus: The Nature of the Way changed my life forever: friendship. I wanted to find a way to express to the By Chris Yates world the friendship and humanity that these Jesuits so humbly shared with me. About a year into creating Em - maus: The Nature of the Way , it became (Note: The previous issue of Conversations and I had a realization. Historically, blatantly clear that for the majority of ran a notice about a new book about the there has not been a lot of overlap be - people, there was a disconnect be - Jesuits at Loyola Marymount University, tween the entertainment industry and tween a priest and a human being. and we noted that the author Chris Yates faith, so I took that same mentality. And And because of this, there were barri - would have some words for us later about it took me four years to realize that they ers that made these men unapproach - the background. Here is Chris’s story.) did not have to be separated. able and not relatable. Ever since Many people ask me what I am – stepping onto LMU’s campus, my per - They told us that the NBCUniversal photographer, filmmaker, director – but sonal experience has been nothing but Campus 2 Career Internship Program at my core I am a storyteller. I find sto - the opposite and therefore heavily in - had a more exclusive acceptance rate ries that need to be told, and in this case, spired the creation of this book. than Harvard, but it took an entire year Emmaus: The Nature of the Way proved to This book’s existence is lived expe - for me to realize that even this could not me that faith and art go hand and hand. rience and is a dynamic piece of art that fill the God-shaped hole that was in my I completed my undergraduate ed - changes as much as the person who heart. I remember sitting at my desk on ucation at Loyola Marymount Univer - views it. Whether you know all 22 Je - the top floor of the Comcast NBCUni - sity and was very involved in Campus suits photographed or know zero, what versal building, reading a script for a Ministry as a student. I had found a you will come to know is a narrative of show that would air eight months later, treasure trove of spiritual tools in the Je - collective experiences that extends a hand out to you, as a friend. You will read word-for-word stories about a Je - suit’s mother’s first Alzheimer’s episode, a Jesuit’s fight with addiction, and how a second grade class helped a Jesuit overcome his stroke. The Nature of the Way as defined here is not an adjective, but a verb. It is a way of relating in which you view your personal journey to Emmaus with the understanding that no matter what your destination or your path is, you are not alone.

Chris Yates graduated from Loyola Marymount in 2016; after spending a volunteer year in campus ministry at the University of Illinois Chicago, he returned to LMU to manage their photog - raphy labs. His collaborator, photographer Robert Macaisa, graduated from LMU in Chris Yates (left) and his collaborator, photographer Robert Macaisa (right, seen from behind), 2014 and works as a professional set up a shot for Emmaus, the Nature of the Way. photographer in Los Angeles.

50 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION teaching the Mission

Doing Time, Redeeming Time Teaching in the Saint Louis University Prison Program

By Daniel L. Smith

“I was a stranger and you did not take me in, naked I appreciated the chance to and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and breathe and recharge. Yet the nico - tine-free would grumble, disap - you did not visit me…” (Matt 25:43) pointed to lose these precious minutes. This class was the high - light of the men’s week. Many of In Jesus’ parable of the sheep and So, having agreed in the the incarcerated students pre - the goats, found only in Matthew’s spring to teach in the fall, I spent pared for class by working Gospel (25:31–46), the Son of Man the summer attending training, through assignments multiple sits on a glorious throne and undergoing mandatory tuberculo - times. Their comments revealed judges the nations. The work in - sis testing, and finally achieving that they had not only read thor - volves sorting out the sheep from certification as a Missouri Volun - oughly and repeatedly, but some the goats, the former for salvation, teer in Corrections. On August 12, took time to look up every paren - the latter for condemnation. The 2013, I was on my way into the thetical biblical citation in the damning rebuke of Matt 25:43 Eastern Recep tion, Diagnostic, readings! I could ask a question, highlights the goats’ failure to and Correctional Center any question, and hands would show hospitality to strangers, their (ERDCC) in Bonne Terre, Mo, fly up around the room. refusal to care for the poor, and armed with syllabi, hand-outs, Physically, Monday mornings their indifference to the plight of and a lesson plan for day one. were challenging, but the reward the sick...and of prisoners. After resolving a paperwork came in the form of a pedagogical As a first-year assistant pro - problem that left me stuck on the nirvana, where students over-pre - fessor at Saint Louis University, I outside while my students waited pared for every class, engaged en - had never given much thought to inside, I reached the visitor room thusiastically in class discussions, the plight of prisoners until I was where my class awaited. We and eagerly sought out additional asked if I might be interested in would meet only nine times – readings and feedback. Though teaching for the SLU Prison Pro - four hours every Monday morn - stripped of many freedoms, the gram. As a pedagogue, my curios - ing for nine weeks, so I had to incarcerated do possess one good ity was piqued, and as a New squeeze the equivalent of approx - that the rest of us crave: time. I am Testament professor, I was excited imately four normal classes into reminded that our word “school” to have the opportunity to fulfill a each meeting. ultimately derives from a Greek gospel imperative – an imperative It was exhausting. The begin - word ( scholē ) meaning “leisure” – embraced by the SLU Mission ning-of-class adrenaline boost these men with “leisure” time and Statement, with its call for the could only carry me so far. At the unfettered minds took delight in “promotion of faith and justice in request of the nicotine users, we their “schooling.” the spirit of the Gospels.” took breaks every 60 minutes, and

51 teaching the Mission

I taught the incarcerated class, the “insiders,” experience. And, of course, they did all their home - from 8am to noon. Then I would head for the public work, too. Thanks to the selfless efforts of a staff library to decompress (and grade), before complet - member in my outsider class, they were even able to ing the marathon Mondays that dominated my se - submit their work in timely fashion while in solitary mester: I taught the “outsiders” class – composed of confinement! corrections officers and other ERDCC staff – from Teaching in the correctional setting brought me 5pm to 9pm. Obviously, this class was even more face-to-face with many of the complexities of our na - challenging for an embodied creature like me. But tion’s prison system – a system that affects the lives these students were no less inspiring. Most of them of millions of our fellow human beings. The need for were piling an intensive nine-week course onto a reform has gained momentum in recent years, but full-time job, in addition to any other family respon - the task of reforming such a massive institution can sibilities they might have. There was no question of be incredibly daunting. The SLU Prison Program doing the reading three times under those circum - works with the Missouri Department of Corrections stances, but the desire for learning and growth re - to provide educational opportunities that can trans - mained powerfully present. form not only the lives of “outsiders” and “insiders” They say that corrections staff are doing time, but also the outlook of even more outsiderly out - too – they just do time “in shifts.” Yet all of us were siders like me. My nine weeks reconfigured the way working to redeem the time. For example, one staff I hear the New Testament, the way I read the New member used a final writing assignment to bring the Testament, the way I teach the New Testament, and story of the crucifixion fresh into all of our ears, the way I try to live out the New Testament, includ - drawing from his own experience with executions to ing its call to visit the prisoner. retell the passion narrative in a 21st-century context. Another time, two of my incarcerated students failed Daniel L. Smith started as an assistant professor of New to come to class when we started our unit on Paul. Testament at Saint Louis University in fall 2012. He As the rest of us read Paul’s letters from prison, these used an early draft of his second book, Into the World two remained in administrative segregation, reading of the New Testament: Greco-Roman and Jewish Paul for weeks in isolation. Then they returned, hav - Texts and Contexts (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), ing been cleared of any wrongdoing. I honestly be - while teaching for the SLU Prison Program. lieve their faces were glowing as they spoke of their

Jonathan Sawday discusses William Blake as part of the Inside Out Speaker Series

52 CONVERSATIONS ON JESUIT HIGHER EDUCATION university of scranton

the national seMinar on Jesuit higher education The goal of the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education feature articles, forums, book reviews, and reports – we want to and its publication Conversations is to strengthen the Jesuit keep the conversation going to build on the progress we have identity of our 28 colleges and universities. First, each issue is made. Our members, representing various institutions and dis - written to stimulate the campus dialogue – through depart - ciplines, visit three colleges and universities a year and listen to mental discussions or faculty symposiums – on the pursuit of groups of faculty and students in order to decide the themes various ideals. Second, through our various departments – for each issue.

Members of the seminar gerard a. athaide is a professor of mar - Jennifer rinella is the director of non - Michael sheeran, s.J., is President of keting at Loyola University Maryland. profit leadership studies and an assistant the Association of Jesuit Colleges and professor at Rockhurst University . Universities. heidi Barker is an associate professor in the department of education at stephen c. rowntree, s.J., an associate clint J. springer is an associate professor Regis University. pastor at the Holy Name of Jesus Church in of biology at Saint Joseph’s University. New Orleans, is the secretary of the Na - timothy P. kesicki, s.J., is President of tional Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education. Michael f. tunney, s.J., is the rector of the Jesuit Conference. the Jesuit community and professor of Julie rubio is a professor of Christian fine arts and religious studies at Fairfield Patrick J. howell, s.J., executive director ethics in the department of theology at University. ad interim of the Loyola Institute for St. Louis University. Spirituality, Orange, California, is on a rachel Wifall is an associate professor of one-year leave from Seattle University. edward W. schmidt, s.J., editor of English at Saint Peter’s University. Conversations, is senior editor of Molly Pepper is the associate dean of the America magazine. undergraduate program and a professor of management at Gonzaga University.

Writing for Conversations

Most of the articles are commissioned ac - • Do not include footnotes. Incorpo - Permission is granted to reprint articles cording to a certain theme for each issue, rate any needed references into from Conversations for any educational but we welcome unsolicited manuscripts. the text. purpose, provided credit is given. Ideally they should explore an idea that will • The Conversations style sheet is avail - generate discussion. Try to avoid articles able on request. Previous issues of that simply describe a worthy local project. • We welcome photographs, Conversations are available at Guidelines. fully captioned, preferably of action http://conversationsmagazine.org • Please keep unsolicited rather than posed shots. submissions to 1000-1200 words. We • Send the manuscript as a Microsoft COMING UP Issue # 54 (Fall 2018) may ask for reductions depending Word attachment to Mental Health & Illness on the topic. [email protected] Gasson Rotunda. Boston College, Massachusetts.

georgetown university santa clara university university of detroit Mercy seattle university Washington, DC, 1789 Santa Clara, 1851 Detroit, 1877 Seattle, 1891 saint louis university loyola university Maryland regis university rockhurst university Saint Louis, 1818 Baltimore, 1852 Denver, 1877 Kansas City, 1910 spring hill college university of san francisco creighton university loyola Marymount university Mobile, 1830 San Francisco, 1855 Omaha, 1878 Los Angeles, 1911 Xavier university Boston college Marquette university loyola university new orleans Cincinnati, 1831 Boston, 1863 Milwaukee, 1881 New Orleans, 1912 fordham university canisius college John carroll university fairfield university New York, 1841 Buffalo, 1870 Cleveland, 1886 Fairfield, 1942 college of the holy cross loyola university chicago gonzaga university le Moyne college Worcester, 1843 Chicago, 1870 Spokane, 1887 Syracuse, 1946 saint Joseph’s university saint Peter’s university university of scranton Wheeling Jesuit university Philadelphia, 1851 Jersey City, 1872 Scranton, 1888 Wheeling, 1954

coMing in fall 2018: folloW us on social Media #54 Mental health & illness @conversationsmagazine @conversations89