Intolerance is not part of the culture at Jesuit

Almost as shocking as the video of University of Oklahoma students leading their fraternity brothers in a racist chant was news that one of them had graduated from the prestigious Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas.

Parker Rice, who was a freshman at OU when his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity was kicked off campus last month, is a 2014 graduate of Jesuit, a 73-year-old all-boys’ institution with a stellar academic reputation and a long history of inclusion.

One person who was particularly disturbed by Rice’s involvement in the racial incident is Steve Hollern, a former chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party and a Jesuit alumnus.

Hollern called me for lunch the other day after I’d written a column calling for forgiveness for Rice and his fellow student, Levi Pettit, both of whom have left the university.

He wanted me to know that Rice didn’t get that attitude at his high school, where the motto is “Men for Others.”

I already knew something about Jesuit’s culture, just as I knew of its efforts over the years to improve diversity and teach tolerance while building a stronger “community” on its campus.

Hollern brought with him a copy of a 2012 edition of Jesuit Today, a publication for alumni and friends of the school. He said he “fortuitously” picked it up recently as this controversy unfolded.

“I don’t know why I had kept it, or why I picked it up,” he said, turning some of the pages of the magazine.

He pointed to a photograph of a man he had mentioned before. It was of one of his classmates, Charles Edmond, who in 1958 was the first black student to graduate from the school.

Hollern had told me about Charles Edmond and Arthur Allen being the first two black students at Jesuit. He was there when they came in 1955, making it the first high school in Dallas to integrate — at least 10 years before most area public schools desegregated.

Both of the African-American boys were on the track team with Hollern, and he recalled a trip to a meet in Brownwood when they stopped at a fast-food restaurant around Stephenville.

When the restaurant personnel said Edmond and Allen wouldn’t be served there, the rest of the team said, “If they can’t eat here, none of us will eat here,” Hollern said.

Hollern pointed to another page in the magazine featuring a “Message from the President,” Michael A. Earsing, who mentioned the excitement of the upcoming May graduation. He also wrote, more pointedly, about an activity he said “may actually be more important” for a senior: the Senior Mass and Breakfast, an annual Mother’s Day celebration.

He described emotions of mothers dropping their sons off at school to begin their important preparation and work, and wondered if the Mother Mary “had similar feelings when she knew Jesus was about to embark on his Father’s work.”

In another message from Earsing on hearing that a former student was involved in the OU incident, he spoke of being appalled and “extremely hurt by the pain this has caused our community.”

He added, “All of us at Jesuit Dallas are deeply committed to create a culture of justice and equality for all. This was certainly true when the School became the first in Dallas to integrate and it is true today.”

The school’s admissions criteria say it “is open to qualified young men of all faiths and denominations, without regard to race or national origin.”

We now know that OU members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon learned the chant while at a leadership event sponsored by the group’s national organization.

As I said earlier, anyone who knows Jesuit already knew that its former student wasn’t taught intolerance there.

This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 8:47 PM with the headline "Intolerance is not part of the culture at Jesuit."