https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/another-prestigious-school-pummeled-by-critical-race-theory/
Regis High School seems ashamed of its legacy and purpose.
There is a lot of trouble afoot at my alma mater, and it seems worth sharing.
Maybe that should be “more trouble,” because prestigious Regis High School has been in the news of late, with its president being fired over charges of sexual misconduct.
A Jesuit-run institution, and yes, the high school of one Anthony Fauci, Regis is not “prestigious” because of my particular alumnus status (nor that of my colleague, Daniel Tenreiro), nor because of cost (actually, it’s tuition-free per its founding in 1914). Simply, it is regularly ranked as the best Catholic high school in America.
It got that status because it was a determined fire hose of classical education that graduated young men who were put to many a test so they could think and analyze as adults, for God and country, as the blunt school motto stated.
But now, Regis — like many a school — seems ashamed of its legacy and purpose, maybe even of Deo et patria, and has become quick to genuflect and lie prostrate before the gods of Critical Race Theory. More on that shortly.
Back in the day, when Abe Beame was still mayor: Every year, Regis took around 120 Catholic boys (parochial-schoolers from classes low to high, and having a silver spoon in your mouth at birth was not a condition of acceptance) from New York and the surrounding area — through competitive exam and ensuing interview — into the freshman class. A goodly amount fell away through the ensuing four years (a grade of 75 was failing) of grueling and unrelenting work (learning Latin, self-taught physics among the heavier stones to push uphill). There was many a big brain among my classmates, but how I survived to graduate with the remaining 100 remains a mystery.
All being in this together, close quarters for four years, you could not help but notice the black classmate was black, the Puerto Rican senior was Puerto Rican, the gay freshman was gay. (We noticed the musical one was musical too, the artistic one artistic too — but such things are of no use in our times of pigmentary politics and cultural ethics.) My experience and perception was that we were all young guys who regarded each other as comrades. We were caught up in some worthwhile academic marathon. Ours was a brotherhood that transcended the facts of the Sharks vs. Jets neighborhood characteristics that still held forth. Able to walk in only my own shoes, I look back and find Regis to have been a place of e pluribus unum, of sanctuary, a haven, of true camaraderie — a thing set against the backdrop of a New York choked by unrelenting racial tensions. I feel blessed to have gone there, to have run the race, to have crossed the finish line, no matter how distant from most of my classmates.