Anniversaries
hold a cherished place on the calendar. They provide us with an opportunity to
share memories of the past, anticipate the future, and ponder the changes that
have occurred in the interim. They are times for celebration and reflection.
Yet, as I observe the ten year mark since I graduated from St. Joseph’s
Preparatory School, I feel the occasion demands much more of the latter than
the former.
While
I look forward to reconnecting and reminiscing with my former classmates, I
cannot shake the feeling that our reunion will devolve into a wake, for we are
celebrating a St. Joseph’s Prep that might no longer exist. Indeed, our alma
mater has been fundamentally altered since we departed its hallowed halls.
Before
I begin, allow me to clarify: I do not intend to engage in an exercise of
arrogant nostalgia. I loathe the “back in my day” malarkey that spews forth
from predecessors who seek the comfortable blanket of self-righteousness to
shield them from their fears of aging and irrelevance. Furthermore, I bear no
animosity toward the current generation of Prep students, nor do I entirely
blame the current administration for a situation that they have inherited as a
result of short-sighted decisions from previous school leaders. Nevertheless,
the Prep has a problem.
The
tuition is too damn high.
When
I commenced my studies at the Prep in September 2000, the tuition rate stood at
$10,000. For the recently concluded academic year, the Prep charged a
staggering $19,900. If the Prep had imposed the same rate in 2013-14 as it had
in 2000-01, adjusting only for inflation, the school would have issued a much
more reasonable fee of $13,528. So
what accounts for the $6,372 difference?
Perhaps
an analysis of the Prep’s expenditures in recent years might provide us with
some guidance. In the autumn of 2000, the Kelly Fieldhouse was completed at a
cost of $7.3 million;
the christening of the gymnasium culminated a twelve-year, $25 million capital campaign. By
September 2008, the school unveiled a brand new cafeteria, dubbed the Sauter
Dining Hall, and 16 new classrooms in the renovated rectory, which was re-named
Jesuit Hall. The renovation and expansion cost the school an astonishing $21
million.
Aside
from their state-of-the-art aura, the newer edifices on campus can be
distinguished from the old building by the window design. The Kelly Fieldhouse,
the Sauter Dining Hall, and Jesuit Hall each feature large windows that provide
an unobscured view of the North Philadelphia community that surrounds the
school. By contrast, the older Villiger Hall, built shortly after a devastating
and destructive race riot on nearby Columbia Avenue in 1964, was constructed
with very small windows designed undoubtedly to mitigate potential property
damage. In explaining his design choice, the architect of the Kelly Fieldhouse,
John Blatteau, affirmed: “‘we were trying to bring back the connection to the
neighborhood.’”
The
larger windows are nice, but what Philadelphians really need from St. Joe’s
Prep are open doors. In a city in which the median income sits at $37,016 and
the poverty rate from 2008-12 was measured at 26.2%, a
$20,000 annual tuition constitutes a cost-prohibitive investment. Although the Prep
provides financial aid to 35% of its student body with an average package of
$7,000,
$13,000 still seems unattainable for a significant number of Philadelphia
families. Even though the school obviously offers more lucrative aid packages
to families that demonstrate a higher need, one wonders whether the “sticker
shock” wards off parents of talented students from North Philadelphia and the
increasingly destitute Northeast.
Whereas
this observation is merely hypothetical, the stagnancy of the Prep’s
demographics are indisputable. In 2000, 19% of the student body hailed from
Philadelphia; 18% resided in New Jersey while 63% were culled from the
Philadelphia suburbs.
Today, the breakdown falls in this way: Philadelphia (20.67%), Philadelphia suburbs
(58.35%), and New Jersey (20.98%).
Over the past fourteen years, I have attended, taught, and visited the school
and thus feel very comfortable making the following generalization: the school
remains disproportionately affluent and overwhelmingly white. Racial diversity
has emerged as one of Philadelphia’s greatest features, yet the Prep has failed
to tap into this asset in a meaningful way.
As
the Prep’s coffers swell from the exorbitant tuition it imposes on its
students, investments have been made in projects that provide the campus with
incredible aesthetic value to the detriment of an aggressive urban recruitment
campaign. The school has followed a trajectory that mirrors the path pursued by
many colleges and universities, which have focused on beautifying their grounds
and devoting capital to amenities that provide little educational benefit as
they pass the buck (literally) onto the student.
***
The mission of Saint Joseph’s Prep
as a Catholic, Jesuit, urban, college preparatory school is to develop the minds,
hearts, souls, and characters of young men in their pursuit of becoming men for
and with others.
-St. Joseph’s Prep, Mission Statement
Besides the physical changes at 17th and Girard that have
occurred over the past decade, the Prep has also given itself a cultural
makeover. The stewards of the school have embraced an Ignatian identity that
was frankly nonexistent during my years as a student. While the motto “men for
and with others” remains, other Jesuit vernacular, like cura personalis, has been added to the Prep’s
philosophical dictionary. Moreover, the Prep has taken great pains to mark its
physical space with an Ignatian stamp. The dining hall features a walkway with
twelve bronze plaques that commemorate St. Ignatius’ physical and spiritual
journey. Draped along the walls are the names of Ignatius’ original companions,
the cohort that formed the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The walkway leads to the
Ignatian Room, which houses a bronze statue of the founder of the Jesuit order.
The opulence of the place is trumped only by the irony of dedicating such a
building to a religious order that takes a vow of poverty and to a saint who
abandoned a comfortable existence in Spain for an ascetic life served in
obedience to the Pope.
In
charting a new cultural course, it appears the Prep has lost its way.
In truth, no one would quibble with the decision to steer the school toward
Ignatian principles. Yet the Prep would have been better served if it
simultaneously recommitted itself to the values that led to its foundation in
the first place. St. Joseph’s Prep opened its doors in 1851 to educate
immigrant Catholics escaping the persecution of nativist elements in the city.
Anti-Irish Catholic sentiment in Philadelphia had engendered a riot in 1844
that resulted in the destruction of two Catholic churches in the city. As late
as 1889, the Prep did not charge a tuition fee.
Philadelphia
has certainly changed in the past 160 years. Although there are fewer Catholics
in the city, as evidenced by the Archdiocese’s increasing divestment from
Philadelphia, intractable poverty continues to pose a major challenge. After a
devastating fire in 1966 destroyed the school building, the Prep’s decision
makers could have joined in the white exodus to the more comfortable environs
of the suburbs. Instead, the Prep remained in the city and courageously committed
itself to North Philadelphia. However, the boldness of this decision has been
diminished somewhat by the school’s inability to educate the young men of this
city in more substantial numbers.
By
catering to a majority of wealthy students, the Prep can only exacerbate the tremendous
socioeconomic inequality that defines the Delaware Valley. While it is
certainly important to offer privileged young men an opportunity to experience
an impoverished environment and cultivate in them a social consciousness, it is
arguably more important to provide students mired in poverty with an
opportunity for social mobility that only a stellar education and superior
networking can supply. This does not mean that the Prep should diminish its academic
standards in order to accommodate poorer students (just as it should not lower
the academic bar for students whose parents can pay the full tuition rate);
instead, the school ought to identify and recruit the best and the brightest of
Philadelphia’s pupils and provide them with an outstanding education that they
might then use to ameliorate the destitute condition they inherited by
accident of birth.
An
intensive urban recruitment campaign will also inject some much-needed diversity
into the student body. Such a strategy emerges as the best way to create the
empathy required to develop men “for and with”
others. Students left unexposed to poor and/or minority peers are more
susceptible to fall into a pattern of “othering” folks mired in poverty. If the
status quo is maintained, the Prep runs the risk of perpetuating a culture of
paternalism and patronization. Poverty would remain an abstract force exerted
outside the walls of the school, something to which one is temporarily exposed
during a brief service trip or a community service initiative. I doubt such a
culture is Ignatian. It is certainly not Christian.
***
It is quite likely that no one in any position
of power at St. Joseph’s Prep will read this essay (or, more to the point,
gives a darn what I think about the state of the school), though I can anticipate the
criticism that might be directed toward me if it is issued. “You don’t know
what you’re talking about!” It’s true. I do not have access to the financial
ledgers of the school; even if I did, I lack the expertise to offer a
constructive criticism of the school’s expenditures. However, I do know what it
is like to grow up in a large, middle-class Philadelphia family. I know what it
is like to struggle to meet the financial demands of an unreasonable tuition
fee. I know what it is like to sacrifice in order to gain access to the elite
academic institutions in this city. I know not to be fooled by the
sleight-of-hand trick being played when a lavish building is dressed in the
humble garb of Jesuit history. And I know this: the financial path that the
Prep has taken, if uncorrected, will price out the Philadelphia students most
in need of a Prep education.
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