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At the End of the Day, Interests Outweigh Values in Foreign Policy

By Terry McCafferty

About a week ago, President Joe Biden made two important and revealing foreign policy decisions. First, he refused to give Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (M.B.S.) of Saudi Arabia any significant punishment for the killing of journalist and United States resident Jamal Khashoggi. Then he bombed Syria without congressional approval. 

As a candidate, Biden said that he would make Saudi Arabia “pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are” for actions like the murder of Khashoggi. He even went as far as to say that he saw “very little social[ly] redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” and a key component of his campaign was to restore American leadership abroad. On the campaign trail, Biden said, President “Trump’s erratic policies and failure to uphold basic democratic principles have surrendered our position in the world.”

Unfortunately, by following in his predecessor’s steps of doing next to nothing to punish M.B.S., Biden also surrendered our values. Nicholas Kristof, in a scathing piece titled “President Biden Lets a Saudi Murder Walk”, wrote, “this is a betrayal of my friend Jamal Khashoggi and of his values and ours.” Kristof articulated perfectly the danger of abandoning American values in the situation of Saudi Arabia saying, “in this great balancing of values and interests, the towering risk is that M.B.S., who is just 35, will become king upon the death of his aging father and rule recklessly for many years, creating chaos in the Gulf and a rupture in Saudi-American relations that would last decades.”

But this was not the only decision Biden made recently that deserted our values, that is if we value a more free, democratic, peaceful, and safer world. He also bombed Syria without any approval from Congress. 

In 2017, Jen Psaki, before she was Biden’s Press Secretary, asked, “What is the legal authority for strikes? Assad is a brutal dictator. But Syria is a sovereign country.” In 2018, Kamala Harris, before she was Biden’s Vice President said “I am deeply concerned about the legal rationale of last night’s strikes. The president needs to lay out a comprehensive strategy in Syria in consultation with Congress.” In 2019, Biden himself said, “Donald Trump’s recent actions in Syria and how his erratic, impulsive decisions endanger our troops and make us all less safe.” 

But now that Biden is president, he seems to be continuing down the same destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy path in the Middle East. Acts like these will only make it more difficult to reenter the Iran Nuclear Deal (which the United States pulled out of) and to take other measures to bring about peace in that part of the world. 

But the Middle East is not the only part of the globe where we trod on our own values on behalf of our interests. Perhaps the most obvious other example is China. In its effort to crackdown systematically on any dissent within the country, China continues to violate basic standards of human rights. Most notably among their human rights abuses is the fact that they are using over one million Uighurs there as forced labor and large numbers of women are being forcibly sterilized. Yet no consequential action has been taken to incentivize China to stop because such action could put the economic interests of the United States in jeopardy. 

I am not saying that our leaders should leave American interests unconsidered when making foreign policy decisions. I am not even saying that every decision that prioritizes our interests over our values is wrong. But the degree to which both Democratic and Republican Administrations have been willing to turn a blind eye toward advancing human rights, protecting peace, and spreading democracy abroad in favor of evanescent economic and fleeting militaristic gains is not right.

At the end of the day, it is in America’s best interest to restore our values to the forefront of our foreign policy decision-making because the cost of continuing to turn a blind eye toward the injustices of our world makes us complicit. In a world with far too much oppression and injustice, that is the last thing we should allow our country to become. 

 

– No. 6 –

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‘At the End of the Day’ is a weekly column written by Terry McCafferty ‘22. Each week focuses on a different topic often related to politics, faith, culture, or society at large.

Schedule for Full Return Released as Specifics Become Clearer

By Peter Karim ‘23

After it was announced that Saint Ignatius High School was returning full time in-person, many in the community wondered what schedule would be adopted for the rest of the year. While the school waited for its answer, speculation about the return schedule grew and anticipation around it built.  On Wednesday, March 3rd, it was finally released and it is not what many were expecting.  

There were various options for the March 15 schedule. The process of narrowing these various options and choosing a final schedule, according to a letter sent by Principal Dr. Anthony Fior ‘02, “was not an easy [decision] to make nor immediately clear.” Other than the one that was ultimately chosen and released to the school, the other schedule options included one, according to several teachers, that would have been a modified, 9 period schedule. The 9 period schedule would have been a normal schedule except the common period would have been completely removed.  Lunch would have been eaten during a student’s free period or, if the free period was too early or late to reasonably eat lunch, during a student’s 4th or 6th period class. This schedule would have also ended earlier and maybe would have started later.  

At their first glance of the schedule that was chosen, many students objected with comments like, ”I don’t want to sit through 70 minutes of class time,” and, “I’d rather just have the normal 9 period schedule.”  Not many students seemed to like the new schedule that would be inplace on March 15, but they might not have gotten the whole picture.

According to several teachers who would prefer to remain unidentified, this schedule was made for students.  This schedule was picked in part because of interviews with other Jesuit schools and their students.  Other Jesuit schools with this schedule reported that at first, their students, just like Ignatius students, disliked the idea of the schedule, but after having it for a while, the students came to appreciate it.  According to teachers, the schedule is designed to lower stress, decrease student’s homework load, and have other benefits for students.  The 70 minute classes are not intended to be 70 minutes of lecture time. It often, instead, will be broken into parts.  For example, maybe 35 minutes of learning, 20 minutes of group work, and 15 minutes to do homework. Teachers are also supposed to only give around 30 minutes of homework to their students per class, not per night.  With 35 minutes of free period between 2 and 3 periods or 7 and 8 periods plus 70 minutes of free time during free periods, students can hope to finish a reasonable amount of their homework at school.  

Another reason that this schedule might have been picked is because of lunch.  Getting around the issue of lunch has been tough for the school and is what probably caused the initial A and B half-day schedule we have had for the majority of this school year.  Eating is the only time students have masks for an extended amount of time which highly increases the risk of spreading COVID.  Splitting the lunch period into two groups will make lunch most likely more safe for students.  

But will the implicated benefits of this new schedule be fully recognized by students once it is implemented? That remains to be seen. Until then it is likely that trepidations of the student body will persist. Regardless, on March 15th, the use of the released schedule is all but inevitable.

End the Costly Policy of Supplying Limitless Plastic Bottled Water

By Conor McGuire ’22

The COVID-19 pandemic brought many problems to the Saint Ignatius community. The school had to figure out how to properly have in person classes, effectively switch to online streaming, and keep track of any students who got the virus. One of the problems the school dealt with was preventing the spread of COVID through water fountains. In order to do this all water fountains were shut down at the beginning of the school year, and in order to provide water to students single use plastic water bottles were made accessible throughout the school.

The issues with providing single use water bottles are the environmental and financial impacts that it has on the school and the city of Cleveland. The costs to the planet and to the school from production to purchasing to disposal far outweigh the alternative of having reusable water bottles and easily available filling stations.

According to Ban the Bottle, an organization dedicated to spreading awareness about the negative impacts of bottled water, to produce one plastic bottled water, it takes three times the amount of water that is actually in the bottle, 2000 times more energy than the production of tap water, and around a quarter of a bottle’s worth of oil. 

Furthermore, after all of those negative impacts in the stages of production, the disposal of plastic bottles is also costly to the plant. According to the Villanovan, the official student newspaper of Villanova University, “citizens in the U.S. throw away 35 billion empty water bottles annually. Of those, just 12% are recycled.” A water bottle in a landfill could take around 1000 years to decompose creating an environmental crisis from the large amount of toxic chemicals they leak into the ground.

The claim could be made that most students would recycle their plastic water bottles after using them which should put the issue to rest. However, Cleveland’s recycling program has had issues with contamination for many years. As of October 2020, according to Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District Executive Director Diane Bickett, 65% of the city’s recycling was contaminated meaning it had been thrown in a landfill rather than properly recycled. Therefore, having faith that simply recycling single use plastic bottles solves the problem only enables it.

Additionally, according to Beyond Plastics, a project aimed at ending plastic waste, the cost of bottled water is far greater than that of tap water, so the school is paying more to distribute bottled water. Furthermore, a study found “microplastics contamination in 93% of the globally source bottled waters tested”. Attempting to help the environment by reusing a single use bottle could cause unwanted microplastics contamination.

One solution to this issue is to provide students with reusable water bottles that they can  carry with them throughout the day. Saint Ignatius already has water fountains that function as bottle filling stations, and most of them have not been shut down since they do not add to the spread of coronavirus. This proposal is environmentally friendly, cost effective, and healthy. Whether or not the school decides to provide students with an alternative to single use plastic water bottles, the excessive use needs to be controlled.

Are the Bricks on the Mall Cracking?

By Samuel Eldridge ’22

Short answer: A little.

Longer (and more interesting, so stick around) answer: The bricks on the mall are quite old, with many being used from the original cobblestones in the street that once ran through the school between the Main Building and Loyola Hall. The bricks are unmortared, so they simply sit in place in the ground, with nothing between them. This allows water to get between the bricks in the winter, freezing and possibly damaging the bricks.

Despite this, an inspection of the mall yields a few chipped bricks, no more. After decades in the rain and snow, why are the bricks in such good shape? The answer lies in building material. Cobblestone bricks are more resilient than concrete or asphalt, so these bricks will hold up for far longer than a normal sidewalk would.

This allows for bricks to remain undamaged by environmental conditions, although they can still be dislodged or broken by sudden force or warped by changes in the ground they are set into (or if a person, say, picks one up and drops it).

Hence, while a few of the bricks on the mall may appear to be cracked, they still provide a beautiful walkway between the buildings on campus, contributing to the overall aesthetic of Saint Ignatius students all know and love.

 

Meet a Furry Friend for Others on Campus

By Danny Becker ‘22

If you have ever taken a stroll through the 3rd floor hallway in the main building, there is a very good chance that you have encountered a small fluffy little friend. It is none other than Georgia, a 4 year old Affenpinscher, who is cared for by Señora Barnes. Georgia is a black, furry, and energetic dog who walks the halls like a Saint Ignatius student. A fun fact about Georgia is that she is a descendent of Banana Joe, who won the 137th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Her prestigious legacy made obtaining Georgia very difficult for Señora Barnes who had to sign numerous documents swearing that she would not breed Georgia. 

Around 4 years ago, when Señora Barnes was thinking about getting a dog, Mr. Bradesca (the principal at the time) talked with Señora Barnes about the possibility of training her dog to be an emotional support dog on campus. They ultimately decided it would be a great idea that would benefit all students, and Señora Barnes went ahead with getting Georgia trained. Soon after, Georgia joined the Saint Ignatius staff at the young age of 6 months old (the youngest Saint. Ignatius staff member in history). Even more impressive is the fact that since she is taught alongside Señora Barnes’ students, Georgia is semi-bilingual.

When Georgia is not learning Spanish III in room 316, she likes to play hide and seek and will often win. In addition to her many talents, she cheers up Saint Ignatius students daily with her mere existence in the classroom.

With such busy days ahead of her, Georgia needs good food for energy; her regular diet consists of Fromm Dog Food which she eats daily. But as most students who have had either Señora Barnes or Señor Torres know, Fromm is not the only food in her diet. When Georgia takes her daily stroll down the hallway into Señor Torres’ classroom, she is met with a plethora of snacks and treats. Señor Torres has been seen spoiling Georgia with dog treats, small snacks, bites of a hotdog, and even bites of a hamburger. It is no secret why Georgia likes to stop into Señor Torres’ classroom just down the hall.

The State of the Christian Action Team During the Pandemic

By Bryce Whittier ‘24

It is a tradition of the Christian Action Team (CAT), Saint Ignatius High School’s community service organization to hold an annual State of the CAT meeting around the time of the State of the Union, with upwards of one hundred attendees to review the last year of service, recognize seniors for their work, and celebrate both with pizza and a mystery drink. 

This year the State of the Union, and hence the State of the CAT both did not happen because a new president was just inaugurated, but in a year that has been challenging for many extracurricular groups, members of the community may be wondering what state the group is in. Mr. Connor Walters ‘09, who works at Saint Ignatius in communications, knows from his first-hand experience helping to run CAT.

In terms of the CAT programs, Mr. Walters shares information about how they have fared with COVID restrictions saying, “Arrupe programs have continued over Zoom. Labre has not missed a week. Pallbearers have been able to serve funerals.” Mr. Walters said, “The Gonzaga Society continues to pray for the sick every week. The Christmas Food Drive delivered to 700 families–even while we were operating in Distance Learning! Spring Into Action is right around the corner. CAT has remained strong.”

But despite Mr. Walter’s optimistic outlook on the overall work of the group, he does recognize that COVID has prevented student participation in several service initiatives from taking place as it did before the pandemic affirming that, “COVID restrictions have lessened the number of students allowed for some initiatives, like Labre and Pallbearers.” Mr. Walters said, “Because of the health concerns of our Friends with L’Arche brothers and sisters, we have not been able to do our monthly visits. Furthermore, the West Side Catholic Center has not been open for sit-down meals, and so our St. Monica Monday Night Meal has not been able to happen each month.”

This year’s A/B schedule has made it tough for some students to be able to participate in extracurriculars. When asked about student participation, Mr. Walters detailed how he felt participation has fared due to the A/B schedule. “Sometimes, at weekly CAT meetings, it has felt like fewer students are attending–but when I remember that only half the student body is on campus at any given time, the total numbers in attendance seems pretty close to normal,” Mr. Walters said.

With the end of the year rapidly approaching and the change to the new schedule starting March 15th, Mr. Walter shared how he felt the CAT would fare in this new schedule. “I expect that more students will gradually be allowed to participate in Labre and Pallbearers,” Mr. Walters said. “The Arrupe Summer Program will happen in-person again–and we will have more opportunities for students to participate, especially students who missed out on in-person service during Sophomore Service this year. We will also return to one CAT meeting a week, on the traditional Thursday afternoons.”

With an end to the pandemic in sight, the state of the CAT will undoubtedly grow stronger as they increasingly become able to continue, resume and increase the great work they do for the community.

New Head Cross Country Coach, Mr. Wolf, to Lead the Pack

By Brian Keim ‘22

In November 2020, Dr. Michael Gallagher ‘71 announced he would end his 17-year reign as head cross country coach. On February 26, it was announced that his position will be taken over by the current cross country assistant coach Mr. Bob Wolf ‘08.

Mr. Wolf began his Ignatius career as a student running cross country and track. He went on to run at Kenyon College before returning to Ignatius as a science teacher as well as an assistant coach in cross country and track, where he works with sprinters.

In taking over the cross country program, Mr. Wolf wants to preserve the “fantastic family atmosphere” established by Dr. Gallagher, saying many of the cross country runners “are basically each others’ best friends.” Wolf wants to keep those close bonds between runners, and even wants to “keep the parents close.”

Wolf plans to “carry on the faith tradition that Doc [Gallagher] brought in”, praying at every event and “always being able to center and refocus our minds and hearts back to God after every practice.” He said Dr. Gallagher excelled at finding talented coaches, saying, “I would like … not only to be able to do that as well, but also I am blessed that most of those coaches are still sticking around.”

As an Ignatius student, Wolf had no plans to become a coach. Instead he thought he “was gonna be a doctor.’’ But as he got closer to graduation at Kenyon, his thoughts began to change.

“It wasn’t really until my senior year in college where I really didn’t want to give up the sport and I wanted to continue running through coaching,’’ he said, “I wanted to give off what I had learned over the years and give it back to young men. … It’s a blessing to be here, it’s a blessing to be at Ignatius, and obviously it’s a blessing to be coaching.”

When asked which coaches had the greatest impact on him, Wolf immediately responded with “Doctor Gallagher and Mr. [Chuck] Kyle [’69].’’ Wolf admired not only Gallagher’s desire to learn about running, but also “his ability to adapt to change and go from one thing to the other.” He also remembered coach Kyle once saying in a speech “just outwork ’em”. This quote resonated with Wolf, who took to heart the message that, regardless of a person’s skills, “as long as you put forth your best effort, then at the end of the day you can’t necessarily have any doubt or concern about anything. No regrets”.

Wolf said the switch to head coach is “gonna be a lot of work”, but he is “blessed to have a fantastic coaching staff” to help him make the switch. He also stated that, since he has experience with most of the current runners, he will rely on that familiarity in his first year as head coach.

Wolf’s primary strategy will be to get input from the runners and “build a training program around the individual athlete.” As an example, he mentioned that some runners are “a little bit more distance-oriented” while others will “benefit from shorter interval workouts.” This will allow each runner to play to his individual strengths and challenges. He also wants to focus on improving running technique to improve speed.

When asked his expectations for the 2021 season, he simply said, “winning, and just being confident.”

Details Behind the Main Building Fire Are Revealed

THE EYE SPECIAL REPORT | PART ONE

By Terry McCafferty ’22

On the morning of Thursday, February 25th, a small fire in a basement closet of the Saint Ignatius High School Main Building was contained and extinguished before it could grow out of control. Its effects were limited due to the quick and momentous action of the school’s Campus Security and maintenance staff. While it did cause classes to move online for the day, as acknowledged by Principal Dr. Anthony Fior ‘02, the school is “incredibly fortunate [as] the situation could have been much worse.” No injuries were reported.

Photo Credit: Melissa Murphy

The Eye has confirmed key details about the incident and the effort to extinguish the fire.

At around 6:30 am when Plant Services Staff Member Mr. Ed Sass was completing his morning checks, he discovered the fire in a storage closet in the lowest level of the Main Building. Taking quick and pivotal action, he shut the door of the closet temporarily containing the fire, and pulled the fire alarm. The Public Information Officer of the Cleveland Fire Department, Lt. Michael Norman, said Sass’ “actions effectively contained the damage to that one room. We encourage people to close the door to their bedrooms when they sleep at night. We call that ‘compartmentalizing’ and it is effective at containing the fire, smoke, and heat.”

Photo Credit: Freddy Diaz

At the time, Security Officers John Nypaver and Andre Marti were on campus. Nypaver, who was interviewed for this report, has worked at Saint Ignatius for 18 years, since August 2003, and thoroughly enjoys his job here. His last job working for Pinkerton Security had him supervising the second shift at General Motor, and he gained experience in fire, police, and medical and he received fire brigade training. Nypaver’s years of experience and wealth of knowledge served the team well during events that followed.

Photo Credit: Melissa Murphy

After Sass shut the door, he notified Campus Security on his radio, shouting, “We have a fire!” Marti dialed 9-1-1 informing the Fire Department while Nypaver headed over the Main Building basement. As he approached, he says he “could smell smoke halfway down the hallway.” When Nypaver arrived at the storage closet door behind which the fire raged, he “could see the flames under the door.” He shared, “I felt the door frame was hot on one side and the wall was hot on one side. That told me that the fire was going pretty good.” While he waited for the firefighters to arrive, Nypaver says, “I kept an eye on the wall though because I didn’t want it to go through the wall.”

Photo Credit: Cleveland Fire Dept.

When the Fire Department arrived on campus, according to Norman, “Crews laid out a line but were able to extinguish the flames with a pump tank, which is a small portable water fire extinguisher all companies carry for small fires. We will use the pump tanks to get water on the fire quickly and to minimize water damage.”

Lt. Norman also remarked that “Naturally, there were members on scene who graduated from both St. Ignatius and your beloved rival St. Edward. The Assistant Chief on scene was Patrick Mangan, who went to St. Ignatius with your School President.”

Photo Credit: Freddy Diaz

At 6:58 am, Dr. Fior notified the school saying, “Due to a small but contained fire on campus in the Main Building, on campus classes are cancelled.” Around that time, according to a later email sent by Fior, BMS Cat arrived on campus to address the smell of smoke. According to Nypaver, “once they extinguished the fire, it was like London in the building. Smoke was just… [everywhere] in the building.”

Photo Credit: Freddy Diaz

It soon became evident that several important factors contributed to the successful extinguishing of fire with limited damage. Perhaps the most important of all was the timing which was almost perfect because there were people on campus to discover the fire, contain it, and call the fire department, but the campus was also not full of students, faculty, and staff which could have created other hazards, chaos, and barriers along with the monumental task of clearing out the entire school.

Photo Credit: Freddy Diaz

Yet the cause of the fire remained unknown early that morning. The Fire Department’s Investigators sought to determine the actual cause. Until they could make a determination, the Campus Security team faced one of its biggest challenges of the day: keeping people away from the scene.

Photo Credit: Cleveland Fire Dept.

School Resource Officer Freddy Diaz said that his team could not “allow anyone into the area until various factors are ruled out, for example, was this an intentional fire or are there other dangers evolving secondary to the first fire.” This task proved itself to be difficult because, as Diaz observed, “it is human nature to want to know what is going on immediately.”

Later that day, however, the cause of the fire was determined to be electrical and accidental. Norman revealed that the “Fire Investigators believe that when the air handlers turned on at 6 am, a faulty relay switch on the wall in that closet sparked and ignited paper and cardboard being stored below.”

Photo Credit: Freddy Diaz

Almost immediately after the first email from Fior was sent notifying students and parents, students began receiving emails from their teachers with Zoom links and further instructions. To some students, who had not been scheduled to attend class in person until after 11:50 am, this news of class beginning online at 8:30 am was less than an exciting development. Within that group, some students, unaware that they were supposed to be in class until they saw the updates when they woke up, missed the beginning of their day, asleep.

Photo Credit: Freddy Diaz

Additionally, some teachers, planning to come into school, found themselves without their chargers and others without their computers. Adapting, they found other ways to persevere with some even resorting to teaching on Zoom from their phones.

The story about the fire has not reached its conclusion. Repairs and restoration to the impacted part of the building are ongoing, questions about what the school will do to prevent further electrical problems remain, and how the fire will live on in Saint Ignatius history is still undetermined.

But to some of these further questions, answers are coming soon. As for how the fire will be remembered in Saint Ignatius’s history, it can be said that it will be remembered in a better light than if the situation had been worse. Thanks to the timing, the quick action by Campus Security and the school’s maintenance team, and the work of the firefighters, this story turned out to be a story of the successful combined efforts of diligent, dedicated, hard-working people, efforts which saved the Saint Ignatius High School Main Building from going up in flames.

All Photos Acquired By The Eye: 

Timeline Of Events on February 25th: 

~6:30 am – Fire Discovered, Fire Alarm Pulled

6:30-6:58 am – Firefighters are on scene, contain the fire, and get the situation under control

6:58 am – The first email sent by Principal Dr. Fior notifying the school and canceling on-campus classes

7:04 am – The Eye picks up the story and begins collecting all known information

7:20 am – The second email sent by Dr. Fior

Before 8:00 am – BMS Cat arrived on campus to address the smell of smoke

~8:00 am – The process of cleaning out the building began

8:30 am – Classes begin online

2:30 pm – The school day is over

3:13 pm – Dr. Fior updates Students, Parents, and Teachers with more information

Editor’s Note: 

Special thanks to Officer Freddy Diaz, Officer John Nypaver, and Lt. Michael Norman for their contributions to this article. 

The Eye is also in the process of setting up interviews with key campus personnel and is documenting the repair and restoration process. 

This article will be updated with more quotes, pictures, and any other documentation of the fire that The Eye can acquire in the days and weeks ahead. 

If you have anything that could contribute to the documentation of the 2021 Saint Ignatius fire, please contact The Eye at the email address eye@ignatius.edu. Thank you.

At the End of the Day, the Most Important Lenten Pillar Is…

By Terry McCafferty

Over the past three weeks, this column has focused on each of the three pillars of Lent. The focuses of the last two weeks were fasting and then prayer. This week will conclude with almsgiving. 

When his disciples told him to turn the masses away so that they could feed themselves, Jesus refused and instead fed the crowd that was said to be around 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fish. After everyone was full, there were twelve baskets of food left. 

Yet what Jesus did was not a supernatural phenomenon as you might be led to believe. Instead, what actually happened is that when Jesus shared the food that he had, enough other people in the crowd were compelled to share their food until no mouth was unfed. This story serves as an example of the immense power of sharing what we have with one another. 

While we care for our relationships with ourselves and God through fasting and prayer, almsgiving is about caring for the people around us and particularly the people most in need of our love and care. We care by sharing what we have with them. There are many amazing things that we can all do to fulfill this pillar of Lent, which is arguably the most important of the three. 

The first, and perhaps most obvious way, is to donate money. When deciding which charity or organization you would like to contribute to, making sure that you support the mission of the group and that the group is using the money effectively for its mission are both important. Websites such as Charity Navigator can help you do that.  

But if you are looking for charities to give to, here are three local ones worth checking out: 

Catholic Charities Diocese of Cleveland: Right now Catholic Charities is having its annual appeal, and every dollar we give will be matched. If you are looking for a charity with a broad impact, this charity does an incredible amount of good for Northeast Ohio serving 400,000+ people who are hungry, homeless, without employment, facing addictions, elderly and alone, and those with mental and physical disabilities each year. You can read hundreds of stories of the people served through this organization on their website. 

The Metanoia Project: The Metanoia Project provides overnight respite to and care for our brothers and sisters without homes who would otherwise be staying in tents, doorways, alleyways, abandoned buildings, and other precarious environments during Cleveland’s treacherous winter months. If you are looking for a more targeted way to directly help those struggling the most among us, this could be the perfect charity for you to support. You can read about the history of The Metanoia Project here. 

The West Side Catholic Center: Since 1977, the West Side Catholic Center (which is right across the street from Saint Ignatius) has offered hot meals, hospitality, clothing, and household goods, emergency services, advocacy, a family shelter, housing solutions, and workforce development training to those in need at no charge, regardless of religious affiliation. One part of the WSCC’s work is the Moriah House which gives a place to live to homeless female veterans and families facing economic hardship, physical and emotional trauma, chemical dependency, mental illness, physical illness, lack of education, or lack of employment. 

There are countless other charities you can look into and give to. UNICEF‘s life-saving interventions and programs around the world have helped reduce the number of deaths among children under the age of 5 by more than 50% since 1990. WFP feeds starving children and families. Refugee Response helps refugee families right here in Northeast Ohio and the Malachi House helps those struggling financially at the end of their lives to die with dignity and comfort in a loving place. The Clean Air Task Force is a US-based charity that works to reduce air pollution and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations has stopped the equivalent of 8,628,471,593 tons of CO2 from going into the atmosphere. Just by giving them money, you can make a difference in the world, and that difference can be one that you want to see. 

But we can do more than give money! We can also give our time and care to people who need it. Now more than ever, people are in need of that type of sharing. So a lot of good can come from sharing our time, care, and love with those in need. Even the smallest acts of kindness and generosity can go a very long way.

In our world today, there is plenty of food, shelter, wealth, and love to go around, just as there were plenty of loaves and fishes in the possession of members of Jesus’s crowd. But unlike in the story of the loaves and fish, so many people in our world go unfed, unhoused, poor, and unloved. 

This Lent, through the pillar of almsgiving, we can work to change that through our own small miracles of sharing. Giving of what we own and giving of ourselves may not be easy. But at the end of the day, we must remember Jesus as our example, the man who not only shared his loaves and fish but gave the ultimate sacrifice of his life for each and every one of us. 

– No. 5 –

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‘At the End of the Day’ is a weekly column written by Terry McCafferty ‘22. Each week focuses on a different topic often related to politics, faith, culture, or society at large.

Prom Highly Likely, if Not Certain, To Happen This Year

At Saint Ignatius, incoming freshmen form the letter "I" but are reminded that the "I", in turn, forms them.

By Patrick O’Neill ‘23

On March 12, 2020, Governor Mike Dewine officially announced that all K-12 schools in Ohio would shift to virtual learning. Beginning on March 16, 2020, the virtual learning switch was only supposed to last until April 3, 2020. Yet, as we all know, this aspiration did not go according to plan. Spring sports and Prom were canceled. Meanwhile, other events, such as graduation, Chariot Races, and the spring musical, were restructured, rescheduled, or both. Students and teachers had to finish the school year on Zoom and pray that they could safely return to campus the following year.

Now, almost a full year later, teachers, students, and faculty are preparing for the return of a full-day schedule and the entire student body due to the administration of COVID. As more vaccines are distributed throughout the Saint Ignatius community, a sense of normalcy seems to be on the horizon. Yet, even with a regained sense of normalcy, questions remain. Will a full student body allow for some social events, such as Prom, to be planned and executed?

In an interview, Senior Class President, Jackson Sonnhalter revealed that “Prom will happen and masks will be worn. We have secured a location and a back-up location.” Sonnhalter continued by stating, “We are awaiting the governor’s directions next week to determine the best location to best follow required protocols and give our seniors a deserved special event to celebrate their four years. We have not chosen a theme, yet, but that is also on the agenda for March.” Although it appears to still be in the early stages of development, rest assured that Prom is an imminent, central focus for Sonnhalter and the rest of the Student Senate.

Similarly, Mr. Yandek, one of the moderators for the senior class, said this when asked if Senior Prom was slowly coming together: “As of this moment, the administration and senior class moderators are committed to hosting a prom in some form for the Class of 2021. We are examining our options to host a prom that is both safe and inclusive for all members of the Class of 2021 who want to attend.” Mr. Yandek went on to state, “I can’t see us hosting an event at which masks would not be worn. We are still in the midst of a global pandemic. We are awaiting a formal announcement from Governor DeWine, who indicated last week that information regarding proms was imminent.”

After a year full of cancellations and reorganization, the upcoming Prom will provide a well-deserved celebration for this year’s senior class. For all of the seniors worrying whether or not they will get to take part in this once-in-a-lifetime event, fear no longer because Prom will happen.

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About The Eye

The Eye is the student-led publication of Saint Ignatius High School.

Editors-in-Chief: Kelly Coleman '23, Young Kim '23 & Aidan Oliss '23