We faculty members of Boston College write to request a masking mandate in classrooms. In response to the new known and unknown dangers that we now face from the Delta variant of COVID-19, most peer colleges and universities have classroom mask mandates—from Holy Cross to Harvard, Boston University, and many others. Brookline and Newton K-12…
Following the recent wave of racist incidents on Boston College’s campus and an insufficient administrative response, some BC students have raised a question: “Where are the faculty?” Many BC faculty work individually and in existing groups to challenge racism on campus. A newly formed Faculty for Justice project called Faculty Advancing Racial Equity (FARE) commits…
It is a distinct point of pride in my family that we are as Irish Catholic (and French Canadian!) as our names suggest: McCoy, O’Neil, Fealy, Ouellet. My mother frequently amused us with stories about how her parents attended separate Catholic parishes. Just a few blocks apart, one was Irish, the other was French, and…
As a Boston College nursing school graduate and as a former co-news editor (’65), as well as a fervent supporter of The Heights, I am writing to express my outrage at the leniency of token “sanctions” that the BC administration has given as its response to the students identified as the perpetrators of the racist,…
For sophomores, juniors, and seniors, last week was just another episode in the long Undergraduate Government of Boston College presidential election show. After last Monday’s kick-off event, social media feeds were flooded with campaign follow requests and hotlines to text for more information. In the days since, phones have been bombarded with policy after policy,…
It was a chilly Wednesday morning in February and I was walking up from the Beacon Street Garage as I have done for the past 20 years. It was after 8:30 a.m. and there were a bunch of students walking to their 9 a.m. classes. Most people had hats, masks, and kept their heads down,…
An anonymous faculty member questions why BC will not let faculty teach online amid a pandemic, and calls on others to ask BC to allow faculty to opt-out.
Every Friday for the past month, my father has driven down to Manhattan and delivered food with Catholic Charities to homebound senior citizens. When I first found out he was doing this, I was alarmed. As a 62-year-old cancer survivor, he’s not the best person to go in public during the coronavirus outbreak, let alone…
With the announcement of Harvard and Amherst College moving all courses online and ordering or encouraging students to stay home after Spring Break, my colleagues and I are eagerly awaiting an email from Boston College’s administration about what steps they are taking to respond to coronavirus. Moving courses online and encouraging those who can to…
