My name is Harry Gooding and I am Freshman at Gonzaga University. I attended St. Ignatius College Prep, the school at which you are president. I graduated last year and still miss many aspects of it to this day. However, there is one thing in particular that I noticed during my time at SI and is a problem that exists in many schools across the nation. This is an issue of diversity and segregation.
The immediate assumption that people have when I tell them I went to a prep school is that it was predominantly white and full of rich people. I noticed, while at SI, that this was very true. We had people from the peninsula, from the city, and from Marin County, all places where money can be found by the millions. I found that people who don't necessarily have that kind of money, which is a lot of people, feel like they don't belong at a school like SI and feel as though they are lesser people and not as worthy of the education that SI provides. You and I both know that the Jesuits are all about being men and women with and for others and making people feel like they are a community. This diversity gap, both racially and economically, made me question whether or not SI was taking the mission statement to heart.
The ethnic diversity at SI also surprised me. I saw that SI is 60% White, 15% Asian American, 13% Multiracial, 6% Latino, 4% African American, 2% other. I was astonished. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like this ratio is pretty bad. I feel like the efforts that SI made were a good start, but from what I remember, they didn't do enough. In my opinion, some of the things that you did to try and make SI more diverse and inclusive only made it more exclusive. The Magis program, an effort to give low income minorities the chance at a fantastic education sounded like a great idea and, for the most part, it was. However, you made a dedicated hang out room for them that they end up gathering in with each other instead of mixing with the rest of the school. To me, this defeated the purpose of the program. We want them to mix into the community and seem like the were meant to be there when, in reality, they became their own exclusive group within an exclusive group.
I personally befriended many of the kids in the Magis program and some of them became some of my bed friends. It is worth it to be inclusive and try to broaden your horizons. I challenge you to find a much more effective way of making the community at SI one that follows the mission statement to every end. I don't know what kind of power you have in this area, but I know that your word is powerful in the community at SI due to the fact that you are a Jesuit yourself. Take what you will from this, but I hope that you see the evident flaws in the past efforts and see that inclusion is beneficial in every way.
Sincerely,
Harry Gooding