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To Our Readers

By John Flanagan

Saturday, November 20, 1999


The courting
of public opinion

I saw the film "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" just two days before the ax fell at St. Louis School.

You'll remember Joan. She rallied the French army and drove the English from Orleans and Rouen. Eventually she was captured and sold to the same English she'd humiliated militarily. They arranged an ecclesiastic trial with a preordained verdict. She was burned at the stake as a heretic.

I hate to belabor a metaphor, but the part of Joan's story that resonated with me was the preordained verdict. Unfortunately, the Rev. Mario Pariante's firing by the St. Louis board of trustees emits the same scent of prejudgment.

After last year's Las Vegas hotel bust-up Pariante courageously decided to forfeit a football game and dock the coaching staff's pay. Then, last summer, the board canvassed more than a thousand alumni and parents to gather their opinion of Pariante. Armed with the results, they pronounced Wednesday night that he ''has not lived up to the standards of leadership and administrative skills as set by the board.''

They didn't disclose what those standards are or any specific lapses. Nor have they shared the results of their survey. Judging from the letters and calls we received about the incident, however, the school president's corrective action didn't win favor among the most outspoken of the St. Louis ohana. Some reportedly even threatened to sue the priest.

Pariante has well-documented skills as an innovative educator and has outspokenly insisted on academic excellence. He's also kept his own counsel and refused to make any public statement about the board's action.

Announcing the decapitation, the chairs of the board of trustees and its evaluation committee insisted three times that ''our decision had nothing to do with athletics or football.'' Perhaps they object too much.

St. Joan was executed in 1431 and canonized in 1920. Let's hope it doesn't take 489 years for St. Louis to restore its credibility as an institution of learning, not just hard-ball politics and football jingoism.



John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.




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