The name is enough to send chills up my liberal artsy spine: the School of Management. "Why spend 45 grand per year to learn how to lay people off, maximize profit, outsource, market (read: brainwash), and otherwise perpetuate the rapacious consumerism, capitalism, and a host of other -isms that have seized the collective psyche and are dragging humanity to its irreversible and highly branded, packaged, and trademarked demise?"
And so, Fulton Hall remained the bane of my existence, along with its core's "one credit ethics course" and other attempts to counter corporate corruption and greed (stick with Sarbanes-Oxley). I didn't even allow myself to like the Bean Counter, cursing it under my breath as I wandered around the Carroll School of Money.
Yet something in me changed. No, I am not the new spokesperson for CSOM, nor did Dean Boynton offer me a bribe. Instead I met the people - students and faculty - and was changed.
I'm getting ahead of myself; perhaps I should start somewhere else. In 1966, a soup kitchen was born in the South End and named after Leo Haley, a Boston College grad student who died while acting as a Good Samaritan. The South End was not the site of trendy bistros and expensive parking, but a skid row neighborhood in need of help.
Haley House sought to meet whatever need it could, and meals were offered to homeless men. Rosie's Place soon followed, as did Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House, but Haley House remained as well - committed to giving a hot meal to the men, many of whom are veterans, that call the streets their home.
Yet Haley House changed; giving a hot meal every day is a noble deed, but hunger persists so long as the socioeconomic structure remains intact. Systemic changes were necessary, and so housing was offered. Haley House evolved still further to add a worker training program, committed to educating the formerly incarcerated, addicted, and uneducated in a trade - baking - that could lead to self-sustainability. "Give us this day our daily bread" no longer was the dictum for dependence-inducing benevolence, but an impetus for change that works in the space between the poor and the privileged.
A few years ago, Roxbury welcomed the Haley House Bakery Café to Dudley Square. Finally, fair trade is made affordable to one of Boston's poorest neighborhoods, and "organic" is the modus operandi: Haley House recognizes that quality nutrition is essential to solving the health care crisis, not just the rhetoric of change.
As an intern for Haley House, I fell in love with the people and the mission, finding their spirit imbued with the pulse of the God I longed to know again. The people at Haley I now call my friends, and the House will always remain a sort of home.
Last year I stumbled upon the idea that Haley House could vend for BC Dining, with a dollar for each purchase underwriting all of Haley House's operations. The project could only have been realized through the work of many people, from BC Dining to Fr. Jim Fleming to the Carroll School of Management's Honors Program, along with Dean Richard Keeley, Dean Amy LaCombe, and Tina Zamora. In the latter especially, I found not the demons of Wall Street but the humble workers of BC, committed to their students and to society alike.
Profit may be the stated goal of the operating models, but for the CSOM students and professors who have made Haley House a partner, their ethic is striving to be one with the common good.
My request is that you do the same: in this post-service trip week of photos, reflections, affirmations, and resolutions, and with "justice" appearing in conversations in newfound ways, consider the most audacious part of the message of Father Arrupe, and "let it decide everything." Find the "it," preferably while munching on a Haley House cookie.
Matt Hamilton is a Heights staff columnist. He welcomes comments at hamiltonm@bcheights.com.
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