Monday night, I had the opportunity to sit in on a town hall meeting here at Saint Louis University. Present was a panel consisting of SLU President Fr. Biondi, S.J., and nearly all the deans and vice presidents, as well as a few other administrators. At the most, there were perhaps 160 students, though considerably fewer than that remained the entire time. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss next year’s tuition increase. Obviously, whenever there is talk of increases, there is grumbling. Here was a good opportunity for people to come, and, regrettably, not all that many did as perhaps should have.
Of course, the schedule did stray a bit, and by the end, when the floor was opened to general discussion, there were many other questions raised. Many of them were directed at Fr. Biondi himself. This was the first opportunity I have had to “see him in action,” aside from the times he has presided over Mass at the College Church. Being a first-year law student, I feel, in some ways, removed from the University as a whole, but I do have a number of friends who are undergrads or grad students and participate in a number of activities on campus, so I am perhaps more familiar than some other, more cloistered, law students.
In my time here, I have heard a broad range of characterizations of Fr. Biondi. Some are positive-others, not so much. So, naturally, I was curious. After all, this is a man who was named Citizen of the Year not too long ago, and who had been trapped in Lebanon during the bombings by Israel last summer.
I could not help but think of some of the candidates who are currently vying for the presidential nominations. Personally, I feel that there are a few (including both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama) who are trying to be all things to all people. That is, they are going out of their way to try to appeal to nearly everybody. Fr.Biondi strikes me as someone who most certainly does not go about in this way, but I suppose not having to run for an election makes all the difference.
I say this because I think it is fair to say that in some of his responses, he was a little brusque-perhaps even sarcastic. It is entirely possible that there were some students who left not having a higher opinion of him. It is important to note, however, that most of these students probably did not have such a high regard of Fr. Biondi to begin with. Objectively speaking (again, I do not know him personally), several of the questions directed at Fr. Biondi personally were quite barbed.
Two examples: There was one student who asked why Fr. Biondi did not attend the Spike Lee event, and whether he thought this was insulting to the Black Student Alliance on campus; the other was involving the recent business concerning The Vagina Monologues. The first question, he did not have an answer to, saying he was unsure of what he was doing that evening; the latter was addressed by one of his associates. Bottom line, I believe both persons who asked the questions were upset with Fr. Biondi personally.
There is a quote from The West Wing that sprung to mind: “Presidents don’t make new friends, that’s why they got to keep the ones they got.” Of course, it was in reference to the president of the United States, but thinking about it prompted me to look up this quote by George B. McClellan: “I went to the White House shortly after tea, where I found ‘the original gorilla,’ about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!”
It was 1861, and he was talking about Abraham Lincoln. This is quite possibly one of the nicest things anyone said about Honest Abe, at the time-whatever negative opinions you read in the newspapers today about President Bush pale in comparison to what was written about Mr. Lincoln during his administration. Yet, if you take a poll anywhere in America, if he is not ranked as our No. 1 president, he is certainly No. 2.
Now, I am not trying to compare Fr. Biondi to President Lincoln-I could have picked anyone from Lincoln (the best) all the way down to … well, pick your favorite, ah, Federalist? I am simply drawing a comparison.
Returning to the two examples I cited, it is understandable that there were many who look favorably on Spike Lee, and who were offended by Fr. Biondi’s non-attendance. It is evident to most students here that many were clearly upset over The Vagina Monologues not being shown.
Consider the following, however: A very old friend of mine harbors resentment and anger toward Spike Lee. He considers Mr. Lee a “reverse-racist who is of the opinion that anyone who is white is, by nature, a bigot.” Another friend is a seminarian who talked about actively protesting The Vagina Monologues if it would have been shown because he or she found some of the individual acts repulsive (not, however, the overarching theme addressing violence against women).
There are two points I am trying to make here: Obviously, a hero to one group may be a villain to another. Alternatively, a group may support a person and some of his or her positions without supporting all of them. If Margaret Sanger was plucked out of time and deposited here and now, Planned Parenthood might call on her to come and speak about her position on birth control, of which she was the champion. Sanger helped found the American Birth Control League, the organization that transformed into PP. They probably would not ask her to share her thoughts on eugenics, however, as she was a staunch advocate of selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia to weed out the “genetically unfit.” Here are some of her own words: “A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”
Bottom line: It is impossible to please everyone. Even if there is only one student angry over Spike Lee coming, or two students angry about The Vagina Monologues playing on campus instead of down the street, those people are going to be angry, and they are going to focus their anger at authority, and so, naturally, Fr. Biondi. It is impossible for him to try and appease everyone-to be friends with everyone-and I think he knows that and is not bothered by it. He knows it is not his duty to make people like him, but rather to do what he believes is best for the University and its students.
The other point I had to make, and the deans covered it well, is that the administrators are busy people. Most of them do more in the hours before undergrads get out of bed than a lot of people do in an entire week. From a law student’s perspective, I know that, just here in this one school, there are more groups than I can probably count: the Federalist Society, ACS, SIPLA, BLSA, ALA, WLSA, PILG, OUTLaws, CLS, SBA, the law journals, St. Thomas More Society-and that’s just some of them. Can even their sponsors make it to everything? Of course not. Sometimes there really are just not enough hours in the day.
One final thought, which is something I feel strongly about, came up the other night at a dinner party. One of my friends, who harbors a negative view of Fr. Biondi, kept referring to him as “Larry,” and once called him something else that I won’t repeat (although it was not too bad). I did have to offer some fraternal criticism. I told him that no matter what he thinks of the man personally, or his politics, Fr. Biondi is still the president of SLU and a member of the clergy. I think that the office demands a certain respect, but I know most certainly that the holy orders do.
In the end, only history can be the real judge of a man’s accomplishments. Ask some random people, “Who ended slavery?” and then ask them, “Who caused a draft riot in New York?” The answers do give me hope that perhaps Mark Antony may not have always been correct, particularly when he said, “The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred within their bones …”
Tim Wright is a first-year student in the Saint Louis University School of Law.
