I have been a member of St. Louis U. High’s delegation for the annual Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice conference since freshman year. It was one of the first events that I participated in as a freshman at SLUH, and it continues to be a highlight for me each year. I have been involved in the Teach-In for even longer, though, helping my dad, a professor at Saint Louis University, work with college students to prepare for it.

The Teach-In was originally meant to memorialize the six Jesuit martyrs and their two companions, who were assassinated by U.S.-sponsored El Salvadoran death squads at the University of Central America in El Salvador in 1989. Over the last 20 years, however, it has become a conference meant to educate and inspire young people to work for justice on a variety of social justice issues, such as the death penalty, immigration, the environment, and racism.

I have learned a lot from the Teach-In, and my faith life has been shaped and deepened because of the event. The Teach-In has made me a better leader and a more effective advocate and has shown me that it is my responsibility as a Christian to stand on the margins and speak out against injustice. Each speaker that I have heard at the Teach-In has filled me with hope and given me profound insights. Keynote speakers like Fordham professor Fr. Massingale and executive director of Pax Christi USA Sr. Patrcia Chappell have taught me the importance of listening to people's stories, and breakout room speakers like Joanna Williams from the Kino Border Initiative and the artistic-justice group called the Peace Poets have encouraged me to advocate and accompany the marginalized.

When I learned that the Teach-In would kick off of the Grande Project—the replacement for Senior Project—and that the senior theology classes would feature videos of some of the Teach-In’s presentations, I was excited that my classmates would be able to participate in an event that has been so critical in my spiritual and moral formation process. I was hopeful that the Teach-In would be as influential on my classmates as it was for me and that it would have the power to change the minds and hearts.

Yet, watching and listening to the reactions of my classmates left me disheartened. One student remarked after watching the video on the Death Penalty that it was stupid and that Campus Ministry was just trying force its liberal agenda upon the senior class. Another student stuck up his middle figure on Zoom as we were wrapping up the class with the assigned prayer that the Teach-In had provided us for the day. After school, I heard some students turn the presentations into a joke as they left school, mocking some of the speakers, one of whom was a gay woman.

The Teach-In is not a partisan event; it is a Catholic, Jesuit event. It is an event that is supposed to ignite people’s hearts with the fire of love and justice, and it should not be a joke. Some speakers of the Teach-In shared vulnerable stories of themselves, and all of them had important truths to tell.  I thought that the Teach-in was a great way to provide a classwide, shared experience from the Jesuit network that fit nicely with the Grande Project.

SLUH has taught us many important lessons and has tried to instill us with the values of a Jesuit and Jr. Billiken Education. This includes the pillars of the Grad at Grad: religious, intellectually competent, loving, committed to doing justice, and open to growth. This includes the many Jesuit mantras, such as magis, ad majorem dei gloriam, cura personalis, and men for and with others. This includes the ideals of generosity, sacrifice, and kindness, drawn out in prayers taught to us freshman year: the Prayer of Generosity, the Suscipe, and the First Principle and Foundation prayer. For me, these incidents demonstrated a close-mindedness to the issues at hand and an insensitivity to personal testaments made. They undermined these lessons taught to us at SLUH and contradicted the three founding principles of the Senior Project: implement Christian ideals taught at the school, disturb a self-centered aura of its students, and enable seniors to become more aware of lives different than their own.

I understand that at this time of heightened political division it is very difficult to open oneself to the stories and ideas of others and even more stand alone in one’s beliefs.  I also understand that the timing was not ideal. With a jam-packed schedule of college applications, sports events, and extracurricular activities, it makes sense why any senior would be on edge. But, I know we are better than this. I know SLUH has taught us to be better than this.

I recognize that the negative reactions to these videos are not representative of the entire senior class, and I am grateful to those that watched the videos with open hearts and minds and were respectful to the speakers and the effort that Ignatian Solidarity Network put into organizing the Teach-In. Hopefully, the experience was as powerful and insightful as it was for me, and for those referred to above, I pray that your attitudes will change to reflect the spirit of being a Jr. Bill as we go into a new phase of the Grande Project.