The False Promise of All-Inclusive Love
Seven months ago, on February 23rd, Ahmaud Arbery went out for a jog. He was murdered by two white supremacists, a son and his father, a former police detective. Three weeks later, on March 13th, Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed. She was murdered by three white police officers during an illegal raid, all of whom have since been acquitted of her murder. Two months after, on May 25th, George Floyd allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill. He was murdered by four police officers, directly by a white officer and former co-worker, who knelt on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds.
The unapologetically inhumane violence and murder committed by the police, and specifically white police officers, against Black Americans, began with the inception of the police force. Over 150 years later, while under the siege of a global pandemic, the corruption and injustice of the police has been magnified. The American public can no longer conceal the rampant, institutionalized racism and police brutality inflicted upon Black Americans. Yet, their suffering continues to be silenced within our administrations, institutions, and communities.
The Mary Louis Academy (TMLA) is a Catholic high school in Queens, New York. TMLA has a diverse student body and is located in Jamaica, a neighborhood with a high population of Black residents. The school slogan is: Unity, Reconciliation, and All-Inclusive Love. In the wake of these most recent atrocities, students and alumni watched online as high schools in Queens released statements supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, ensuring the safety of their Black students, and promising to listen to the voices of the Black community.
On June 2nd, The Mary Louis Academy released its statement. Members of the administration denounced the murder of George Floyd and noted the pervasive racism embedded in American history. They explained that they decry all forms of discrimination and hatred, emphasizing their message of all-inclusive love. They even stated they have a dream, a dream for their graduates to have an abiding sense of justice and an awareness of racial discrimination.
Black graduates commented on the statement with accounts of racial discrimination they faced within the school. Fellow students and members of administration had carried out micro-aggressions and macro-aggressions against them, such as making inappropriate comments on their appearance to asking them personal questions about their home lives, among countless others. As more people recalled their memories, they began to share their trauma, and stated how they repressed their high school years in self-preservation.
Many alumni also questioned why the message ‘Black Lives Matter’ or any support for Black students specifically was not included in TMLA’s statement. Black students and alumni expressed their disappointment with the school, but not their surprise. Dozens of alum demanded that the school apologize and take accountability for their maltreatment of Black students. They wrote how they felt valueless during their time at the school and recounted instances when non-Black classmates, faculty, and administration discriminated against and harassed them. The Mary Louis Academy, after having boasted its message of ‘all-inclusive love,’ responded by deleting all comments.
Is it shocking, even with a promising school slogan, for a Catholic institution to respond this way? The Mary Louis Academy is one of many Catholic high schools in Queens to favor keeping the status quo over the safety of the student body. Although dismissing internal problems and quietly covering them up is a common practice within Catholic institutions, it is especially heinous for a school in a predominantly Black community, with a racially-diverse student body, that claims all students will feel included and loved.
After being silenced as teenagers and again as adults, many alumni took action. Over the next two days, teachers and guidance counselors invited alumni to the school, where they attended assembly and homeroom meetings with current students to hear their thoughts and concerns. Students shared their worries and disappointment with TMLA, listing the changes they would like to see within the school. Guidance counselor Heather O’Connor participated in these meetings as an outside advocate, and connected with Principal Ann Cordes to plan upcoming faculty meetings. While part of the meetings, they praised the sophomore class for their maturity in voicing their feelings and ideas.
However, on that second day, June 4th, another hollow statement was released. Principal Cordes expressed her embarrassment that so many students and graduates have had negative experiences at the school. She stated, “Change is necessary for us to grow,” and included bullet points of the changes students and alumni called for in the virtual meetings. Principal Cordes also stated, “Mary Louis is proud to be a family” and “I promise we will respond to the needs of our family.”
This is the second statement from the school that did not state “Black Lives Matter” or include any mention of bettering the experiences of Black students. Frustrated alum and students commented on this statement, pointing this out, citing more personal stories to bolster TMLA’s consistent neglect of Black students’ needs. Many alumni reiterated how the discrimination and harassment they faced caused them to repress their high school memories, and how recounting these memories resurrected feelings of powerlessness. None of these comments were addressed by the principal or by any other member of administration.
How can change happen if those with the power to make it happen don’t want to change? How can those who are abused by said ‘family’ be proud to be part of it? How can a promise be made to respond to the needs of family, if the person who promised to listen ignores those who express their needs?
Later this same day, a Black alum created a petition titled, “Action Plan for The Mary Louis Academy.” In it, she listed four key points that the school must address: creating a diversity, equity, and inclusion model; diversifying its staff (which is almost entirely white); semi-annual diversity training for staff members; and an apology for decades of discrimination. To date, this petition has received almost 4,700 signatures. To date, no one in the administration has addressed this petition. The 2020-2021 student handbook was also released mid-September, with no mention of a Diversity and Inclusion initiative.
As the petition first began to circulate, alumni began making social media groups to further plan. One of these groups is the TMLA Alumni for Justice private page on Facebook. In early June, alumni joined the closed page to talk next steps, and while doing so, began to remember the pain of their own high school experiences. Just like the comments on the TMLA statements, as more people shared their memories, the more obvious it became that the school environment was harmful to particular students.
Alumni who are Black, People of Color, queer, non-Catholic, and disabled told accounts of inappropriate and harmful interactions between them and members of faculty. Dozens of alumni shared their stories, spanning from the class of 1979 to the class of 2020. In 40 years, it seems little to no improvements have been made to improve the welfare of non-white, non-heterosexual students. This was especially evident given that the same handful of faculty members were the perpetrators across numerous stories, some of which are still employed by the school and even some who have been promoted.
Since many of these stories contained sensitive information, the page was advertised as a safe space. Members had to be approved by group moderators. A few weeks after the formation of the page, screenshots of one alum’s traumatic experience were found floating around. The group stopped admitting members and slowed posting. Further digging across the months showed that two members of the group are close not only with the administration of the school, but specifically with the current principal as well as former principal Sister Kathleen McKinney—who was the principal during my time as a student and had told two seniors to tell her which students were gay because the school was suffering from a “lesbian problem.”
With the safety of this space tarnished, members continued planning through emails and virtual meetings. A coalition of concerned BlPOC alumni and non-Black allies formed, worked independently and in tandem. Black alumni created plans and calls for action based on information from the virtual meetings with current students, the administration’s responses, experiences shared anonymously by alumni and students, and by drafting up a list of anti-racist literature for staff and administration. The working group scheduled a meeting for June 18th with Principal Ann Cordes, Vice Principal Jean Mauro, Director of Alumnae Relations Sean Belon, and Associate Director of Alumnae Relations Elizabeth Whalen.
During this meeting, the working group presented a slideshow with requests. These included providing feedback on the alumni’s 10 recommendations, scheduling a follow-up meeting in one month to track progress, and distributing the resource packet the alum created that would be sent out the following day. They requested that this packet be shared with the entire faculty. Within this packet are a Teacher Reflection form, a pre-written anti-racist policy, a list of resources for the faculty to utilize, and a recommendation letter of the 10 points.
These 10 points are changes to the school’s culture that would ameliorate the worries of their students and fix some of their decades-long issues. The points are as follows:
Commit to hiring 40% more counselors and educators of color
Revise the student handbook, include antiracist policy and hairstyling addendum
Provide implicit bias/cultural sensitivity training for all members of the TMLA community
Quarterly anonymous student-written evaluations
Modified curricula to include Black antiracist and feminist scholars/authors
Create permanent EDI department with physical office space
Host ongoing forums for current students to discuss issues without facing retaliation
Increased targeted outreach to graduates of color to build networking opportunities
Transparency on EDI metrics in future annual reports made available on TMLA’s website.
Conduct community service projects in the immediate neighborhoods around TMLA inhabited by BIPOC
In response to these 10 points and the other changes presented, Principal Cordes gave several excuses to not meet these requests. These included suggesting a “Black Alumnae Chapter” instead of “Black Alumni Chapter” although this would inherently exclude non-cis alumni, not implementing an anti-racist policy until the school year started [to date the school year has started and there was no announcement for implementing an anti-racist policy], and not agreeing to anonymous students evaluations for fear the students were immature and would use the opportunity to verbally insult faculty, despite praising students for their maturity two weeks earlier.
The next day, on June 19th, the alumni sent the administration the TMLA Diversity and Inclusion Packet, a Teacher Diversity and Inclusion Reflection Form, and a follow-up email re-stating the 10 points and the concerns they had with the principal’s responses from the previous day. They asked for a follow-up email by July 3rd, which did not actually come until three weeks later. The working group was notified to maintain Sean Belon as their point of contact, who would be the person to respond to the follow-up email. This same day, Black alumni contacted the non-Black allies for their support in co-signing the recommendation letter with the 10 points. Within one week, the allies group wrote up an addendum and collected more than 400 signatures from Black and non-Black alum to accompany the recommendation letter, which was sent to administration by June 26th.
Over the last three months, TMLA administration has proven their “promise to respond to the needs of [their] family” false. BIPOC alumni have had their emails either responded to weeks after being sent, or ignored altogether. The anti-racist policy was not uploaded for students to sign, included in the handbook, or uploaded to the official TMLA website. There is no notice that the Diversity and Inclusion Packet or Teacher Diversity and Inclusion Reflection Form were disseminated to faculty. The 10 recommendation points were critiqued and dissected by Principal Cordes, who has since not provided any updates on fulfilling them. The handful of meetings between the administration and alumni has shown that members of administration are not as willing to change as they claimed in their early June statements.
The summer passed without the administration providing a plan to execute the 10 points. On September 11th, alumni created images and graphics demanding that these points be met and posted them across social media, tagging TMLA accounts. Again, alumni called for change and received radio silence from administration.
However, two days later, alumni and possibly the entire TMLA community received an email titled TMLA Reopens Tomorrow! This new email contained updates taken from the alumni’s 10 points, without giving them credit.
In response, concerned alums asked that TMLA be transparent, since the administration announced changes to the school’s cultural climate. Alumni were dissatisfied with the vague commitments received in the September 13th email, just two days after the social media campaign calling for accountability. To date, the steering committee of Black alumni has not received a response from Principal Ann Cordes or Vice Principal Jean Mauro.
The Mary Louis Academy has a duty to protect and uplift its Black students. It has the obligation to repent for decades of racial discrimination and abuse at the hands of faculty and administration, and at the hands of fellow classmates. The administration must take accountability for their actions and inactions, which have been brought to them repeatedly by students and alumni. They need to amplify the voices of the Black students and commit to bettering their environment and experiences. A school cannot pride itself in “all-inclusive love” if it so many feel unsafe and unheard.
I encourage everyone to help the students attending their alma mater. It is unfathomable how after witnessing these violent injustices, Black voices are still silenced. Institutions fostered on unity and acceptance must do better. People within these administrations must do better. Catholic institutions have a moral responsibility to care for, listen to, and protect those in their communities. The Mary Louis Academy is no exception.
Stefania D'Andrea is a prose and comedy writer from Queens, NY. She is one of the original staff readers for the literary magazine Cagibi, where she edits and reviews works of fiction and non-fiction. Her first short story, In Her Head, is published in the 12th issue of Newtown Literary. Many of her comedy sketches have been performed at the People's Improv Theatre (PIT) in New York City in 2018 and 2019. Stefania received her B.A. in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing, from the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Hunter in 2017.
