Why Campion Closed

With 50 years of hindsight, the following may not be the definitive reason Campion closed, but it's the best rational explanation I've read or heard.  John Hoag

Changing Visions for Jesuit High Schools in America:
The Case of Campion Jesuit High School, 1965-1975

Casey C. Beaumier

One cannot examine concepts of separation and equality within American education without considering the situation of Catholic schooling. The Catholic Church in America is remarkable in that it established an enormous educational system based on its perception and experience of unequal treatment for Catholics in the common school system that existed early in the nation’s beginning. The massive expansion of the Catholic school movement emerged in the United States as a response to religious bias in the New York City schools against Roman Catholics, particularly toward the nation’s new poor Catholic immigrants. John Hughes, New York’s archbishop, addressed the tension on August 10, 1840. Hughes criticized the Public School Society of New York for its promotion of anti—Catholic sentiment within public school classrooms. With the large number of newly arrived immigrants crowding the city and negative reaction to their settlement in the city, many immigrant families decided to keep their Catholic children away from what they perceived to be hostile, antiCatholic public school classrooms. For example, Hughes objected to the forced reading of the King Iames Version of the Bible, and the use of books that contained "false (as we believe) historical statements respecting the men and things of past times calculated to fill the minds of our children with errors of fact, and at the same time to excite in them prejudice against the religion of their parents and guardians”1 Hughes longed for public schools that had been established ”on a principle which would have secured a perfect NEUTRALITY of influence on the subject of religion, then we should have no reason to complain. But this has not been done, and we respectfully submit that it is impossible"2 With the advocacy of then-N ew York Governor William Seward, Hughes would prove instrumental in the 1841 state legislature elections that led to the defeat of the Public School Society. Yet in the eyes of the Catholic hierarchy, there remained tremendous challenges for Catholic children in the public school classroom as they continued to negotiate the tensions between American and Catholic identities. As the Catholic Church expanded in the United States, its bishops prepared greater organizational structures to help its rapidly growing membership. At the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1852, these bishops began to investigate the promotion of a Catholic school system. The hope to educate young Catholics within church structures remained strong so that by the bishops’ Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884 they firmly declared a desire for "every Catholic child in the land" to have "the benefit of a Catholic school”3 Parishes across the country sought to establish schools, and thousands of these parochial institutions did develop, although by far the majority of Catholic youth continued to be educated in the public school system. For new parishes, the school building was often erected before the actual church structure was even established, so highly regarded and prioritized was the education of the church’s youngest members. This system expanded and succeeded rapidly and effectively because of its dependence upon the generous service of thousands of dedicated religious women. Catholic nuns served as both teachersand administrators in most of the parish—based primary schools. Students would then move onto secondary schools that were sponsored by Catholic religious orders and dioceses. Some would eventually move into the growing system of Catholic higher education. What emerged was an entire educational system based on separation. The original intention behind this educational division was to facilitate the opportunity for Catholic American youth to receive an education equal to that of their American counterparts while at the same time being formed within the Catholic religious community. One of the Catholic religious orders that contributed greatly on both secondary and higher education levels was the Society of Jesus. In almost every major urban center in the United States there was a Jesuit high school and college. The high schools provided single—sex education for boys, the .same for the colleges and universities, although they would eventually become coeducational. One of the secondary schools operated by the Society of Iesus was Campion Jesuit High School. This chapter considers Campion as one example of Catholic education in the United States, arguing that Catholic schools like Campion desired to separate Catholic Americans in order to provide them with an educational and religious context that the public education system would not. Eventually, these schools became very successful and then, in the midst of the volatile 1960s, faced pressure to inclusively embrace those in America who, though not necessarily Catholic, were treated in an unequal way within American culture, similar to the exclusion faced by earlier Catholic generations. However, within school populations of faculty, students, and alumni, there was fierce resistance to this pressure to adapt, motivated by a fear that comprising Catholic elitism in the name of inclusivity, would cause some of the schools, including Campion, to collapse. In the mid 1960s they came from all over the United States, as well as Canada, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Korea, and the Philippines, hoping to benefit from an excellent Jesuit education. In August, with a year' s worth of clothing and supplies packed in suitcases and trunks, boys flocked to Campion Jesuit High School, centrally located 178 miles west of Milwaukee, 240 miles northwest of Chicago, and 200 miles southeast of Minneapolis. Campion was nestled in beautiful Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, a small town surrounded by verdant bluffs at the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, a perfectly peaceful environment for the serious intellectual and character formation of boys. Parents would bring their sons by car, or the boys would arrive easily by Burlington Vista-Dome Zephyr passenger trains, which had a special stop right at the 108-acre campus. The impressive boarding school consisted of buildings both historic——the original Lawler Hall served as a hospital for Civil War veterans-—and new—the Hoffman Athletic Center boasted an indoor pool. Upon their arrival the boys were greeted by the large community of 40 Jesuits, dressed in black cassocks, many of whom were assigned to one of several dorms where some of the Jesuits lived in order to be readily available for the students. At this moment in the school’s history, Campion was at its high point. The total enrollment of 590 students for 1965 was as impressive as the previous year’s all-time school record of 598. Administrators were enthusiastic as they pondered future grand plans in anticipation of Campion’s 1980 centennial celebration. However, the hopeful vision for Campion’s second century grew to become obscure and cloudy with the advance of time. No one could have foreseen the effects upon Campion that accompanied unprecedented historical events like the Society of Jesus’ 31st General Congregation, the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council, and the social upheaval that took place in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly with regard to racial equality and the role of authority figures. Each of these ecclesial and national landmarks created ripple effects that required rapid adaptation at a place like Campion in order to meet the changing cultural and religious landscapes that emerged. Campion's administration adopted significant, sweeping changes for the school that contributed to its becoming entangled in a complex web of institutional challenges. However, the sheer amount of change, along with the style and pace of its implementation, had the unforeseen and unintended consequence of dismantling the school’s culture and reputation in a very short period of time, leading to its complete demise in 1975.Yet for students at Campion in 1965, the new academic year revealed myriad opportunities to learn and live together, and to shed their boyhood and morph into Campion men. For decades, trusting parents agreed to "Give Campion a Boy and Get Back a Man," as the school’s slogan assured. They were not disappointed with the resulting outcome, and the school prided itself both on the lofty goals of its student formation plan and the success of its alumni over the years—like sportsman Charles Comiskey, actor George Wendt (the character, Norm, from the television series, Cheers), historian Garry Wills, and Mexico’s President Vicente Fox. The students passed their time on a campus that more resembled a college than a high school; it was simply fabulous. There was abundant space; and plenty of activity to keep a young man interested and occupied for the four years he was in residence at Campion. The facilities were quite impressive, along with the academic and athletic programs. Everything about Campion——environmental beauty, intense discipline, rigorous academics, and successful athletics—was at the service of its Catholic identity. The Campion of 1965 was content with both its academic reputation and its religious identity. It anticipated smooth, predictable growth a future that would be a continuation of its proud and confident past of educating Catholic boys with the aim of forming them into generous, successful Catholic gentlemen who would live their lives for both God and country. The desire for earlier generations of Catholics to separate themselves in order to provide an intellectual formation for their children that va1ued the place of religion seemed to have borne tremendous fruit when one considered a thriving institution like Campion. The school had an intellectual, cultural, religious, and social depth to it that was quite attractive. At the same time, the very separation that produced success also produced challenging consequences for the later generations of Campion students, parents, and faculty. The negative side effect of separation was the risk of becoming insular in one’s outlook and experience of the world. Yet, in order to protect its unique identity and established success, Campion administrators felt the need to maintain separation. This division moved beyond the religious dimension of the school and seemed to intersect with other social dimensions, including race. For example, on September 21, 1945, Mrs. Samuel Byron Milton, a Catholic African American woman from River Rouge, Michigan, wrote to Campion administrators requesting an application for her son Byron, who would soon finish grade school at Our Lady of Lourdes, the local parochial school. Although Byron Milton would not graduate from the eighth grade until 1946, Mrs. Milton was already anticipating her son’s future and believed he would benefit from a more rigorous Catholic boarding school educational experience and hoped that he might be admitted to Campion in the fall of 1946. Mrs. Milton had a Jesuit advocate in Detroit, Father J.E. Coogan, who was working with the Detroit Catholic Women’s Interracial Council. It was he who suggested she find a Jesuit boarding school for her son. On October 16, 1945, Father Coogan wrote to Father Thomas Stemper, S.J., Campion’s rector-president, and recommended Byron Milton for admission. In this letter, Coogan informed Stemper of the boy’s race, which until this moment was unknown by Campion.4 Twelve days after Coogan wrote to the school, Father Thomas E. Kelly, 8.J., Campion’s director of registration, wrote to Mrs. Milton and advised Byron remain at Our Lady of Lourdes for high school. Kelly noted that ”a private school such as ours obtains its enrollment from families whose fathers, sons, and other relatives have traditionally sought their education here. Our first obligations are to these”5 After graduating from the Lourdes Elementary in 1946, Byron Milton did begin his high school studies at Lourdes. Mrs. Milton again wrote to Campion, on February 5, 1947. In her letter she noted that even though Byron had applied earlier and was rejected, it was her hope that he might be admitted as a transfer student. On February 13, 1947, Father J. P. Kramper, S.J., the new director of admissions, wrote that he would not be able to respond immediately to her request but that she would receive a response soon.6 It was not until April 11, 1947 that he wrote, rejecting Byron a second time, noting that the arrival at this decision was difficult for the board of admission. The principal reason for the rejection was that Campion simply was not ready to admit an African American student. "If we changeour traditional policy too soon, the opportunity to open the door to lads of Byron’s race will be set back many, many years. Be assured, Mrs. Milton, that this decision was arrived at only after many prayers had been said for guidance." 7 On May 22, 1965 a Spaniard named Pedro Arrupe was elected by the Jesuits’ 31 st General Congregation to lead the Society of Jesus as its 29th Superior General, the priest who was charged with the governance of the religious order throughout the entire world. In addition to electing a new general, the Congregation issued several decrees, including one concerning "The Better Choice and Promotion of Ministries." This document addressed Jesuit institutions like Campion that were perceived as having resisted cultural adaptation over the years and therefore, in need of change, an echo of the Second Vatican Council’s call for aggiormzmento, or "updating." That the 31 st General Congregation occurred within the time of Vatican II was coincidental. Pope John XXIII called the Vatican Council, which opened on October 11, 1962. Arrupe’s predecessor, Jesuit General John Baptist Janssens, died on October 5, 1965 and the Society had to call a congregation in order to elect a new general. The congregation was especially influenced by the timing of the Vatican Council’s December 1965 decree, Gaudium et Spes, ”The Church in the Modern World," which envisioned a Catholic Church that "always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the time and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel." The church was to "recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanation, its longings, and its often dramatic characteristics”8 The receptivity to and the affirmation of the world in Gaudium et Spes influenced the Society’s work as it formulated its own decrees. With regard to Jesuit schools, the congregation recommended ”new forms of this [educationalJ apostolate, particularly adapted to the present age, and we should energetically investigate or fashion these new forms.”9 As a charismatic leader responding to the directives of the Second Vatican Council on the renewal of religious life within the Catholic Church, Arrupe aimed to update the Society of Jesus, urging Jesuits not to be "dismayed or discouraged at our own deep need for revitalization . . . where we have been relying excessively on external supports—detailed rules, rigidly fixed daily schedules, special kinds of dress, and the like——we may now feel exposed to and shivering in the wind of freedom and bewildered by calls for authenticity and personal decision—making.”10 A renewed Society, free from the past external supports of detailed regulation, would encounter youthful vigor as itprogressed along a new path, guided by the Spirit as it progressed in time. Regarded by many Jesuits as a second founder of the Society of Iesus, Arrupe’s vision seemed to suggest among some Jesuits that preference for the poor outweighed outreach to the elite, a ministerial strategy articulated by Ignatius Loyola, the Spaniard who founded the Jesuits in 1540. Ignatius believed that spiritual aid which was given to important and public persons ought to be regarded as of great importance for the Society’s ministries. Arrupe reminded his Jesuits that they were founded for the service of God through the service of humanity, a faith that does justice with a preferential option for the poor, and that ultimately the Society was called to ”discover, at each instant of time, each new encounter with the changing world, how it can best adapt and harness itself to man’s needs.”11 Adaptation, then, was the key to his understanding of the world and its impact upon the Society. The kind of encounter with the world that Arrupe was envisioning for Jesuit schools required a scrutiny of elite separation from the world that many of them employed in their foundations. It was with this new leadership within the Jesuits that Campion administrators began to transform the school. The banner headline of the Campio'ette, the student newspaper, likely caught the eyes of students arriving on campus in the fall of 1966. It proclaimed "The Big Change," which was actually a collection of changes that when taken as a whole, seemed to have had the effect of radically transforming the school’s student culture in a single moment. In addition to introducing the new rectorpresident, Father Robert Hilbert, S.J., the article noted with enthusiasm and wonder that "the biggest surprise upon the students’ arrival was the number of rule changes. There were to be voluntary Mass, Bermuda shorts, and no censorship of mail"12 Jesuit Larry Gillick observed how likely it was that "many a Jesuit turned in his grave when he heard of the new Campion. lf these changes weren’tintroduced, Campion too would be dead, and forever turning in its grave."13 Besides Hilbert and Gillick, eleven other new Jesuits joined the Campion faculty and staff in the fall of 1966. This was a substantial change in the Jesuit community membership, meant to assist in the implementation of the many transitions on campus. Hilbert articulated the difference he hoped Campion students would experience. "If people are concentrating too much on a regulation just as a regulation, it can interfere in achieving what the rule is supposed to do."14 Simply put, the big change was that freedom, not discipline, was now the lens through which the school envisioned the formation of the Campion man. Perhaps the greatest change, however, did not involve any aspect of the school already in place but was found instead in new student recruitment. For the very first time Campion began to recruit and admit African American boys to its student body, a twofold response to the Civil Rights Movement and the Jesuit mandate that Campion update itself. Pedro Arrupe had voiced his desire for the Jesuits to become more accountable to interracial ministry, and he instructed schools to "make increased efforts to encourage the enrollment of qualified Negroes, and the establishment of special programs to assist disadvantaged Negroes to meet admission standards; special scholarship funds and other financial assistance should be solicited for this purpose."15 One of the four African Americans who began studies that year was a junior transfer student from Saint Louis named Hal Brooks. He became known for the controversial poem he published in the Campi0n'ette, "To Pig With Love," concerning the December 4, 1969 shooting deaths in Chicago of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. At issue was the poem’s content, which many deemed to be both threatening and obscene as it called for black revolution against whites, especially the police.16 The December 22, 1969 headline in the Dubuque Telegraph—Herald proclaimed "Black’s Poem Brings Racial Tension to Campion." Alumni, parents, and friends subscribed to the Campion'ette, so word of the controversial poem spread quickly and passionately. For many of them, the poem took on a symbolic role of everything that was going wrong with the school. Most shocking in their eyes was that President Hilbert defended Brooks' poem in the same Dubuque Telegraph-Herald article as a ”dignified, honest piece of literature," and observed that the style was an accepted literary form in African American culture. He defended all of the African American students at Campion, which he described as ”a white racist school in a white racist society." Five days after the poem was published, Hilbert sent a five—page letter to Campion parents., originally intended to serve as the school’s annual Christmas greeting, but instead focused on the difficulties and challenges of those recent days after the publication of "To Pig With Love." In his letter he revealed that numerous fights and threats had occurred on campus and that significant divisions had developed among the students. Several anonymous threatening notes were placed under the bedroom doors of African American students or posted on common bulletin boards in the residence halls, presumably by white students. Sensing the escalating polarization, Hilbert appealed to Christian reconciliation, reminding those affiliated with Campion of the basic Christian teaching of love of neighbor, an understanding that he believed had failed because of the tensions at the school. He observed how "the racial situation brings out very sharply that we here at Campion . . . have failed for years to get across the most basic tenet of Christianity, that we absolutely must learn to love other men, even our enemies, as brothers."17 Throughout the ordeal there was tremendous pressure placed upon Hilbert, who struggled to maintain his leadership while at the same time telling the Telegraph Herald, 7’If my position closes the school, it closes the school." He eventually stepped down from the presidency at Campion in 1970 but remained the rector of the Jesuit community until 1973. Campion alumnus Father Greg Lucey, from the class of 1951, was named president in 1970 at the young age of thirty-eight. . The poem was simply an indicator of a much greater tension developing within Campion. In a December 13, 1971 memo written to the school’s teachers, Lucey addressed a faculty that had become fundamentally and irreconcilably divided. Some were advocating even greater change to the school’s identity; opining that Campion had not gone far enough in its transformation from an insular Catholic boarding school into one that was more inclusive and diverse. What they perceived to be a rigiddiscipline system and exclusive boarding school identity was out of touch with the changing world, and no longer served the greater good. These faculty members wanted to de-school Campion, and seemed to echo the conclusions of contemporary writers of education like Ivan Illich and A.S. Neill. In his 1970 Deschooling Society, Illich criticized religious schools as being socially divisive. In his view of education, "the institutionalization of values leads inevitably to physical pollution, social polarization, and psychological impotence."18 Tremendously influential for these teachers was the boarding school model of the Summerhill School in England. They valued the insights of Summerhill’s founder, A. S. Neill, who believed that "the discipline of an army is aimed at making for efficiency infighting. All such discipline subordinates the individual to the cause in a happy family, discipline usually looks after itself. Life is pleasant give and take. Parents and children are chums, coworkers.19 In the words of one of Campion’s Jesuit faculty members: "Some of us want to turn out radical Christians here at Campion. We want to have courage to become such ourselves. Others want to turn out well and nicely mannered Catholic gentlemen."20 This position was in sharp contrast to others who held that Campion was losing its identity as a school where parents could send their sons to a place removed from the distractions of the wider world where they could receive a traditional, excellent Catholic education. Lucey found himself in the challenging if not impossible position of trying to articulate a vision for Campion that everyone could support. He questioned whether there was “sufficient commitment to Campion and the people who make it up to enable us to hammer out a philosophy that all will agree to live by.”21 Of great concern to him was the need for Campion to have a “philosophy” of education. The past years of experimentation brought to the school many styles of teaching with many different outcomes, to the point that there was growing confusion about the kind of young man Campion aspired to form. Some in the school community looked to the president to clarify the educational direction in which Campion was to move; others longed for even greater decentralization of the school’s vision in order to serve better the diverse formational needs of each individual student at Campion. These competing and conflicting desires among the faculty produced the tension Lucey longed to resolve. It was no easy time to be a leader, for leadership was viewed with suspicion, yet he recognized that the task of articulating a vision for the school fell upon the president. ”I feel there are so many areas needing attention, I find it impossible to cover all at this time. I do not feel my position is perfectly clear even to me.”22 The problem of articulating a ”philosophy” for the school had been an ongoing tension dating back to 1966, when Campion began to experiment with its curriculum and institutional identity. Thenpresident Hilbert wondered whether to plan for Campion to continue as “a good college prep school of a fairly traditional and conservative approach,” or “to change radically our operational self-concept - that is, that we attempt to do a bit of pioneering instead of waiting for others to do the initial experimentation and testing. Such a course would require a great deal of imagination and courage, and would run great risk of failure.”23 Hilbert considered the 31st General Congregation’s request to investigate new forms of the educational apostolate, and thus enabled individual faculty members to conduct experiments in the residence hall system, the classroom-s, and the chapel. This freedom to try different approaches produced a certain ethos within the Campion faculty where each teacher and each prefect felt entitled to autonomous jurisdiction over his own area. Interestingly, in his early years as principal, Lucey encouraged the continuation of Hilbert’ s vision. He described for parents how Campion was ”attempting to individualize instruction and to develop teaching techniques to help us cope with the explosion of knowledge. We are guiding your idealistic young sons as they challenge the values of yesterday and seek valid, Christian priorities for tomorrow.”24 . Campion students became confused and disillusioned with the school,likely because of the palpable tensions they witnessed among their teachers and administration. Some faculty members expressed concern with “boys who drift off, not seeing any adult for long periods of time.”25 In s 1968 Campion,along with other Jesuit high schools, participated in the Fichter Survey, a study of Christian formation of American Jesuit high school freshmen and seniors administered by Jesuit Joseph H. Fichter, the Stillman Professor at Harvard Divinity School and commissioned by the Jesuit Education Association. One of the survey’s findings revealed that as they grew at Campion, by far the majority-of seniors believed that Campion did very little or nothing at all to help them foster a greater love of God. Seventy-one percent said they received Holy Communion much less than before they arrived at the school and almost a quarter felt that teachers had taken very little interest in them as students.26 In his concluding generalizations and speculations, Fichter wondered whether “perhaps the time has come to demythologize the religious ideology of Jesuit education and to re-assess the whole concept of the impact of religion on character training.”27 In academic year 1974-1975 there were only 293 students at Campion, a fifty percent drop in enrollment from 1965: 76 freshmen, 85 sophomores, 72 juniors, and 60 seniors. Of that total, 30 were African Americans, a very new population for the school. Notably, the upperclassmen were fewest in number, suggesting a very high rate of attrition, for the longer a young man attended Campion, the more likely it was that he would withdraw. Different factors contributed to the decline in Campion’s enrollment. One of the more obvious was that it simply was no longer easy to get to Prairie du Chien. Gone were the Burlington Zephyrs that made special stops on the campus. The shift in national transportation away from trains meant that the school was now dependent upon chartered buses to move students to and from campus, an organizational task often burdensome and complex for the school. One of the more complex factors contributing to enrollment decline was the tremendous loss of confidence among the school's alumni and parents. While some supported the changes at Campion, many were very unhappy with the Campion’s direction. Major questions about the school's religious commitment and elite identity surfaced, as did criticism of the academic program. Not only were the numbers of students down, but so too was the total membership of the Jesuit community-—-and significantly so. This decline contributed to the overall decrease in adult presence at the school. In the fall semester of 1975 a Jesuit faculty of only eight scholastics and nine priests, assisted by twelve laymen, met the students as they arrived. The smaller numbers of both Jesuits had a dramatic effect upon the school culture, especially the residential program. For example, students no longer lived in Marquette Hall: it was an empty building used on occasion by groups of young women who would come to the school as guests for weekend visits. Generally speaking, the campus was simply too large to support such few people, and the decreased number of Jesuits meant fewer Jesuit prefects in the halls, which meant less supervision and formation of the students. C Additionally, there continued to be considerable confusion and dis- agreement regarding the identity of the school, which was obvious from the lack of promotional literature on Campion and its purpose. Without a clear aim, students were at a loss as they strove to recognize the traditional goal of their high school formation: becoming Campion men. The large billboard outside the school grounds near the highway had been vandalized by graffiti to read, ”Give Campion a Boy, Get Back a Maniac,” and there was truth to the altered slogan, given the sheer amount of change and the chaos and confusion that accompanied it. The tensions among the faculty members regarding the competing and conflicting formational goals of the Campion gentleman and the Campion radical Christian were not easily borne by the school. A study of the daily announcements from the final two years reveals a deterioration of community spirit and cohesion. Vandalism, thefts, and fighting harmed morale of both students and teachers and occurred with greater and alarming frequency. Discipline came to be seen as a major restriction of one’s freedom, and regulations continued to soften, given the belief that free students would be respectful of the community and that mutual respect would prevent inappropriate behavior from ruling the community.Practically all structures from the past were removed in order to facilitate best this freedom. Archived notes from an evening gathering of conversation among Jesuit faculty members reveal growing tensions regarding the lack of discipline in the school, both for students and for faculty. Teacher stated that Campion had “so decentralized authority that we a school without a personality. We don’t feel that we can show our feelings in making demands, stating our reasons and insisting that stud act accordingly. We don’t come out strong enough for what we think.”28 Perhaps most telling of a lost and wandering Campion was its football program, which ended the 1974-1975 season with a record of zero and eight losses. Father Karl Voelker of Campion's theology department explained Jesuits and lay faculty members were leaving because of disillusionment He stated that “in the hearts of our faculty, let us face it, Campion has future. Unless our hearts are changed.” In his mind, the administration needed to declare the school dead, and from there would be two remaining options for the school, the first being to ”give Campion a dignified funeral and to declare 1976 Campion's final year.” The other was to ”create a new vision that will rekindle hope and desire in the remaining faculty and attract new people.”29 In December of 1974 in Milwaukee, a Jesuit-appointed task force gathered to evaluate the school. It concluded that the philosophy of the “must be clearly stated as much for holding and attracting manpower for raising funds.” In order to survive, it recommended Campion attract Jesuits from other provinces, as well as religious men and women from ` other Catholic communities.30 The Task Force's recommendations were fruitless and four months later it recommended to the Jesuit provincial that Campion close its doors forever. Back in Prairie du Chien, the Jesuit community gathered on March 28th and learned of the provincial’s decision to close Campion. It was Good Friday. Y The reaction to Campion's demise was mixed. For some the decision ” brought relief while for others, there was much resentment and anger. In his letter to the Jesuits of the Wisconsin Province, Provincial Bruce Biever, S.J., encouraged his men to recall the good that Campion did for the Church and Society over the years and that in God’s plans, “our work there has been completed. Heartwrenching as that realization is, I, as you, must accept that fact as His will.”31 In an April 10, 1975 letter announcing the closure to fellow alumni, President Lucey cited a lack of demand for residential secondary education, a decline in Jesuit manpower, and financial hardship as reasons for the school’s closure. After Campion's final commencement in May, the property was put on the market, where it remained for three years for lack of a buyer. It finally it sold in 1978 for $2.8 million to the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, when it became Martin Luther Preparatory, a coeducational boarding school. The funds from the sale of Campion were invested and a Campion Endowment Fund was established. Interest from the principle continues to be given each year for scholarships among the three Jesuit high schools in the Upper Midwest. The WELS operated the school until 1995 when it was closed and then sold to the state of Wisconsin in order to become the Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution, a juvenile prison for teenage boys. In his study of the intersection of Catholics and race in the urban northern United States, historian John McGreevy summarizes American Catholic parish life in the twentieth century. “The language with which Catholics spoke of ’races’ within the church, the persistent vision of the world as a series of geographical and racial enclaves, and the scale of the enormous churches, schools, convents, and rectories testified to a Catholic sensibility at odds with the population movements of twentieth-century America.”32 Two views of Catholic reality emerged from this vision: tightly—knit homogenous versus widely diverse Catholic communities.33 The tightly-knit communal experience speaks to the absolute value that Catholics placed upon separation within parishes and, in the same way, Catholic schools. This separation originally came from the need to protect and promote the identity of a persecutedminority Catholic population within a hostile majority. However, as Catholics established themselves among the elite in the United States, the strong institutions they created transformed the in- equality experienced among earlier generations. This included the many schools that provided a superb education for the church’s future generations. Such positive development called into question the legitimacy the legacy of the need for absolute religious separation. This is clearly the case with a school like Campion. In his concluding commentary on the survey he facilitated for the Jesuit Education Association,Joseph Fichter observed that most of the students in a Jesuit high school were coming from ”well advantaged families, decidedly above the American average and representing what might be called the Catholic bourgeoisie. What we have clearly demonstrated in these surveys is that attendance at a Jesuit high school promotes and reinforces the social attitudes of this class of people.” 34 In response, Campion’s leadership implemented the decrees of Vatican II and the 31 st General Congregation. The resulting resistance to the changes to the student body and the school’s identity might suggest the school’s incompatibility with the future of Jesuit education. Yet there was no consideration of the need to contextualize the implementation of these new norms for a rural boarding school. Perhaps the administration’s abrupt change of vision made Campion a casualty of change. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER 1) What was the initial purpose of a parochial education at a Catholic secondary school like Campion? How does this differ from other educational institutions covered in previous chapters? 2) Using the documents provided, discuss the assumptions that guided the Jesuits' mission. 3) What assumptions do educators make about society, the economy, politics, race, and ethnicity? 4) Compare the rise and popularity of Roman Catholic schools to other religious institutions over the last two centuries. What patterns can be identified? What generalizations can be made about American society during times of growth in parochial education? What contributes to a decline in popularity of these schools? Does this change over time? § IN THEIR WORDS Austin Flannery, Editor. Vatican Council II. Northport, NY: Constello Publishing Co., 1988. Vatican II Document on Christian Education, Gravissimum Edeucationis. October 28, 1965 Methods of education and instruction are being developed by new experiments,‘and great efforts are being made to provide these services for all men, although many children and young people are still without even elementary education, and many others are deprived of a suitable education—one inculcating simultaneously truth and charity" (Preface, 726).Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations ofthe Society of jesus. St. Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977. Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Jesus Decree 21: The Better Choice and Promotion of Ministries While the 31st General Congregation recognized the hard work that our Society puts into its apostolic ministries, at the same time it notes that our labors have not produced all the results that we could rightly expect, if one considers the proportion between the efforts and the results achieved. Part of the reason for this is our failure at times continually to renew our apos- tolic or missionary spirit and to maintain the union which the instrument should have with God, or our neglect of “moderation in labors of soul and body' or a too great scattering of our forces; but the principal reason is our failure adequately to adapt our ministries to the changed conditions of our times”


(Paragraph 1, 191). § NOTES 1. John Hughes, Bishop of New York. ”Address of the Catholics to their Fellow Citizens of the City and State of New York,” 10 August 1840. Public Voices: Catholics in the American Context. Steve M. Avella and Elizabeth McKeown, editors. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 27-28. 2. Ibid., 28. 3. James Hennessey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 109. 4. Black Student Not Accepted Correspondence 1945-1947, Box 9, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives, Saint Louis, MO. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Austin Flannery, O.P., ”Gaudium et Spes," Vatican Council II, (Northport, NY: Costolleo Publishing Co., Inc., 1987), 905. 9. ”Decree 21: The Better Choice and Promotion of Ministries," Documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations of the Society of Iesus, (Saint Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1977), 191. 10. Pedro Arrupe, ”Jesuits and Education," A Planet to Heal, (Rome: International Center for Jesuit Education, 1977), 245-246. 11. Pedro Arrupe, "The Challenge of the World and the Mission of the Society." A Planet to Heal, (Rome: International Center for Jesuit Education, 1977), 306. 12. The Campion’ette, vol. 52, no. 1, October 1, 1966, page 1, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid.15. Pedro Arrupe, "A Letter on the Interracial Apostolate to the Fathers, Scholastics, and Brothers of the American Assistancy." (Rome: November 1, 1967), 15. 16The Campion’ette, vol. 55, no. 5, December, 13, 1969, page 1, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 17 The Poem Controversy Correspondence 1969, Box 9, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 18. Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd., 1970), 1. 19. A. S. Neill, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, (New York: Hart Publishing Company, 1960), 156-157. 20. James "5arge" O’Connor, 5.J., to Provincial, February 19, 1971, Campion V} Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 21. ’Greg Lucey, 5.J., The Dilemma Memo, 13 December 1971, School Policy Committee 1971, Box 7, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 22. Greg Lucey, 5.J., Statement of the President, January 4, 1972, School Policy Committee 1972 Folder, Box 7, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 23. Robert Hilbert, 5.J., Our Philosophy of Education 1966, School Policy Committee 1966 Folder, Box 7, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 24. Greg Lucey to Parents, December 1969, History ’T he Poem' Controversy Correspondence 1969, Box 9, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 25. Notes from Faculty Meeting Before Christmas, 1971, School Policy Committee Meetings and Minutes 1972, Box 7, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 26. Fichter Survey Results, 1968, Box 7, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 27. Joseph H. Fichter, Jesuit High Schools Revisited, (Washington, D.C.: Jesuit Educational Association, 1969), 182. 28. Saturday Night on the Hill, 11 March 1972, The Future of Campion+Various Opinions Collected by Sylvester Staber, S.J., Box 9, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 29. Karl Voelker, S.J. The Emperor Has No Clothes, 17 February 1975, William Leahy, S.J., Campion Correspondence Varia Incomplete, Box 3, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 30. Campion Task Force Meeting, 23 December 1974, William Leahy, 5.J., Campion Correspondence Varia Incomplete, Box 3, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 31. Bruce Biever, S.J. to the Province Announcing the Closing of Campion, 8 May 1975, William Leahy, S.J., Campion Correspondence Varia Incomplete, Box 3, Campion Collection, Midwest Jesuit Archives. 32. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the TwentiethCentury Urban North (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 260. 33. Ibid. 34. Joseph H. Fichter, Jesuit High Schools Revisited (Washington, D.C.: Jesuit Educationa