Dear Georgetown Prep Community,
It is my privilege to welcome you to the 2020-2021 academic year, the 232nd of John Carroll's Academy on the Patowmack. We have to begin the academic year on our virtual campus, but we are working towards having our students, faculty, and staff return to campus this fall. As I said in my video message to the Prep community on 19 August, I share your disappointment deeply, but our work continues, and we will continue to do it well.
To that end we have invested a great deal in improving our technology and training our faculty and staff to use it to the best advantage of our students for as long as we have to. We finished the spring strong, adapting quickly to new exigencies. But we have no desire to sit on those proverbial laurels; we intend to begin the fall even stronger. Additionally, we have fortified our health and hygiene facilities extensively, creating an infirmary wing, installing hand sanitizing stations, and establishing new traffic patterns around campus to avoid crowding that would create vulnerabilities. While at this point we will not open for in-person instruction before Monday, 5 October, we know that the investment of time, energy, and resources has not been a waste; we are well-prepared to support our students' education for the duration of this health emergency.
To say that the pandemic has posed a new challenge for Prep is an understatement. But members of our community have also been affected, some losing loved ones, some thrown into the challenge of caring for sick family members, many living with the doubt and uncertainty that follows exposure. And some of our families are suffering substantial financial displacement. As our mission calls us to be men and women for-and-with others, we want you to know that we are here for all the members of our community. Please do not hesitate to reach out if we can offer support.
But the pandemic is not the only thing that has been on our minds these past several months. Like everyone else, we have been made keenly aware of the many incidents of violence against Black people and the systemic injustice many of our brothers and sisters face. As an institution that actively participated in the legacy of American slavery, we are also profoundly aware of our responsibility to address with particular care the concerns of the members of our community who come from minority populations. We pride ourselves on being a diverse community. Diversity is a great good that brings an enormous breadth of cultural and experiential richness to our campus, but it is equally important that all our students and their families, as well as our faculty and staff, know that they have access to all that Prep has to offer in concert with our Ignatian identity. Throughout the summer, I have been meeting regularly with several of our Black alumni to hear about both the triumphs and the obstacles they met in their time at Prep and after Prep. These conversations will continue, helping to inform me and ultimately our larger community with a sense of what we can do to make sure the Prep experience is truly good for all our students and their families. To quote the great American poet Maya Angelou, "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived; but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." This must be is our path forward. I am enormously grateful to Stephen "Skip" Davis '62, Frank Spellman '68, John McKnight '70, Gregory Dyson '76, Carnot Evans '87, Sheldon Gay '00, and Alexander Lee '13 for the invaluable counsel they have offered to me personally and to Prep in organizing and moderating this important conversation.
As you have heard a number of times throughout this strange year, this is not the first time Georgetown Prep has had to rise to the challenge in trying times. We were founded during the constitutional crisis, survived the War of 1812, and endured the Civil War and the panics and depressions that followed it. We weathered the Great Depression, the turmoil of the 60s and 70s, and the Great Recession. Our men served honorably and well in World War I and World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf and Afghanistan Wars. Through it all, our faculty and staff, our families and alumni, and many, many generous friends of Prep have helped us find our way through. And through generations of support from great families and friends, Prep has grown from a small boarding school for a few young scholars in a not-quite-existent capital to a national and international educational destination. So while I am deeply disappointed about the present as I wrote above, I am very confident about the future.
Finally, as announced last year, we continue as a community to explore the Jesuit Apostolic Priorities which were published in February, 2019. Last year we considered through a series of student, faculty and staff, and guest presentations the notion of our life and work here at Prep as apostolic. This year we will consider the first of the preferences: showing the way to God through the Spiritual Exercises and discernment. Given the many challenges we now face personally and institutionally, getting in touch with these foundational Jesuit practices seems particularly apt, and one which we hope will help us all, but particularly the young men entrusted to our care as they look toward the future.
Since 1789, Georgetown Prep has encouraged young men to strive for excellence in all things — to be men of competence, conscience, courage, and compassion; men of faith, men for others. These times make abundantly clear there is a great need for such people, and that is a wonderful reason to continue to the great apostolic work that Prep represents.
Today, as we embark on another school year, I ask that you pray for Georgetown Prep, for our health care workers and essential employees, for all those dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and for our students, faculty, and staff, and their families.
Sincerely in Christ,
Rev. James R. Van Dyke, S.J.
President