One Catholic college made the U. S. News & World Report lists of “most popular” among applicants and “most loved” by alumni and it is none of the ones the media like to cover—those institutions that could be called Catholic in Name Only (CINO).
“For several years, Thomas Aquinas College has ranked near the top of U. S. News & World Report’s annual measure of ‘yield’—the percentage of applicants who, upon being admitted to a college, choose to enroll there,” TAC proudly announced in its Spring 2011 newsletter. “Although heartening, these findings have told only half of the story.”
Additionally, “the College has also earned a ‘Top 10’ ranking for alumni satisfaction,” the TAC newsletter reports. “Thomas Aquinas is the only Catholic college to make this top tier in both categories.”
Graduating senior John Haggard gave the TAC board of governors some idea of why this is the case in its February 11, 2011 meeting: “We have Mass four times a day and confession on demand.”
Moreover, the TAC grads go forth and take their uniquely Catholic character to, among other places, Catholic schools that may not be on the Georgetown feeder line. For example, Brenna Scanlon (’06), is the “principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish School in Oxnard, Calif., where she oversees a staff of 23 and more than 300 students, from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.”
“We started a program here this year where each month, the kids have a different prayer to memorize, and once they have memorized that prayer they get to come say it for me for a piece of candy,” she told reporters at the TAC newsletter. “That has really helped, because then they come to my office for a positive reason.”
“They are excited that they have learned this new prayer and they promise that they will bring it home to their families.” Maybe Brenna should try this approach on some bigger kids.
“It is at the third-tier bush-league schools where you really need double body guard duty,” conservative author Ann Coulter has said of the often incendiary treatment given her campus appearances by students unacquainted with the norms of civil society. “Weirdly, the Jesuit schools – very bad, very, very, very, bad.”
“My bodyguard is now the bodyguard for all the conservatives on college campuses. Though I must say, I don’t think I need one at Harvard,” Coulter said.
“In one particular instance at the Jesuit, Loyola University Chicago, students were chanting about ‘Linda Blair and the exorcist and … about what she is shouting in that movie,’” Alexa Williams reported in The Daily Caller. “Coulter found the chants to be so shockingly vulgar that she would not even tell her friends what was said.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
