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…
Reconciling Feminism Within Catholicism
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…
Expulsion: The Only Acceptable Consequence
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,…
2021 UGBC Election: Big Titles and Empty Promises
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,…
A Moment Of Shared Humanity Amid A Pandemic
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,…
BC’s Laundry List of Problems
Opinion: As a Faculty Member, I’m Afraid to Return to the Classroom. BC Says I Don’t Have a Choice.
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.
Shame Comes from the Archbishop
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…
Be People for Others in the Time of Coronavirus
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…
There’s a Better Way to Do Woods College Registration for Undergrads
As a jaded senior, I thought I had experienced every obstacle that class registration had to offer: waking up for the early pick times, getting none of my classes because of the late pick times, forgetting to save my schedule in UIS and losing TKM’s Capstone class, everything. Monday, January 13 showed me I was…