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...high-achieving urban students. But in Detroit, most Catholic schools either closed down or left the city decades ago, after the race riots in 1967, when white Catholics fled to the suburbs and the city's population dropped by half. Only the Jesuits stayed, maintaining U of D's imposing stone structure on the corner of 7 Mile and Cherrylawn. The Catholic order is known for its education systems and its missionary work. In Detroit, they have become one and the same. (Detroit Cristo Rey, a Catholic high school launched last year, aims to be a college-prep school like...
...tectonic shifts threw U of D into crisis. In less than a decade, the school's rolls plummeted from a high of about 1,100 students to no more than 500. In 1976 the Jesuits found themselves beset by parents, alumni and faculty arguing that the school should follow the lead of Detroit's other marquee Catholic institution, Catholic Central, and relocate to the suburbs. An intense internal debate was followed by consultation with Rome and finally a decision: not only would the school remain in Detroit, but it would also start investing its resources in the city and increase...
...students are city residents, with the rest spread across the inner and outer suburbs. The school allocated $1.4 million in financial aid this year to students who could not afford the $9,990 tuition. "We will not turn away any student who is qualified to come here," says U of D principal Gary Marando...
Jesuits tend to roll their eyes at portrayals of their order's missionary zeal. (Jeremy Irons' action Jesuit in The Mission, says Father Patrick Peppard, one of the school's theology teachers, was "a bit romanticized.") Still, by any measure, U of D's service to the city of Detroit since the Jesuits decided to remain has been remarkable. During a period in the late 1970s and early '80s, the school's president, Father Malcolm Carron, was even made a Detroit police commissioner. (See pictures of the remains of Detroit...
...U of D's continued presence in Detroit offers inner-city boys a way out. But it also gives affluent suburban students a way into a city that has long been neglected by its neighbors. For them, an education at U of D doesn't involve just driving across city lines to attend classes. Seniors are required to spend every Wednesday morning on a service project in the city. And students in all grades (7 through 12) volunteer their time for no credit. Last year they spent more than 3,500 hours in activities from tutoring public-school kids...