Talk:St. Joseph's Preparatory School

Alexander Haig

both lower merion hs and st joes has Alexander Haig listed as an alum. you need a citation. or you need to fight it out with lower merion. until this happens i am removing Alexander Haig.

Fair Enough, Discuss away...

I believe Haig is listed as having attended SJP and graduated Lower Merion. Simple attendance meets the qualification of being an Alum. Ar-wiki 21:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Ginn Incident

I added two paragraphs: one on the Ginn incident, and one about Clifford's departure and Gomez's arrival. If you plan on deleting and/or modifying either section, please mention it here in the discussion section. --John 01:27, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

uh nice job deleting the super-important ginn stuff. gg

The "Ginn incident" absolutely does NOT belong on this summary page about St. Joseph's Prep. If we listed every scandal OR accomplishment on each school's page, the pages would be neverending. The point of this article is to give people a general idea of the school. The same goes for the information about Clifford.

The Ginn Incident is relevant for two reasons 1. It is a sexual abuse scandal. Faculty Members lost their jobs over it. Kids were sexually molested (arguably). Thats really relevant to the history of the school. if you think its too long then shorten it, but dont delete it. The point is, its not a minor incident like the changing of a dress code or instituting a morning prayer. Its kids that were sexually molested 2. The event has sources and citatins, it is not unfactual or coming out of the blue. it really did happen and there is factual sources to cooroborate that.Brett 21:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no reason to include Father Clifford's stepping down. It has no relevance to this article, and especially no relevance to the "Sex Abuse Scandal" section where it is located.

1. Fair ENough, I changed it to just include Father Clifford stepping down, but cut the rest of the paragraph out. It doesnt make conclusions or anything like that. Also, please sign your comments are per wikipedias policy Brett 00:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
   1. Why does everyone keep changing the article? You all have not responded here even once, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Resolving_disputes for more info Brett 05:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Mr. Ginn was not accused of "sexually molesting" anyone -- there were accusations of "inappropriate hugging." Again, this does NOT belong on a summary page of a school. And Father Clifford's resignation had absolutely nothing to do with that incident.

1. He left because of it, how is that not relevant?
2. Furthermore, get your facts straight, it was not "hugging," it was "kissing," as you can see from the news article you removed, "A beloved teacher has resigned in a sex abuse scandal rocking a North Philadelphia school....Ginn was reprimanded then for allegedly kissing two boys."
3. Even then, it passes the litmus test for an encyclopedic section - it includes the history, which is verifiable, of a school that had a major nationally known issue. Anytime something like that happens, where a teacher is accused of kissing a student, it is worthy of being featured on a schools website. Are you saying that inappropriate contact between teachers and students is unencyclopedic?Brett 05:41, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't touch another school's page unless you are an expert in that school's dealings. You have no formal connections with the school, except for what you read on some website. And we all know everything we read in the media is absolutely 100% accurate, right?

1. Do I not have the right to edit public domain?

I would consider specific allegations on anything to be "unencyclopedic." An encyclopedia, by definition, is a collection of GENERAL information about various topics. If we were writing an exhaustive history of St. Joseph's Prep here, this "incident" would be relevant. However, because it is an "encyclopedia" entry, this information is IRRELEVANT to the general summary about St. Joseph's Prep.

Furthermore, you can edit all you want, but other people -- particularly those who have real connections with the school -- reserve the right to reverse your edits.

1. Again, recent events that are of interest to the public (and again i would argue a sexual abuse scandal is of relevance to the public) also pass Wikipedia's litmus test for an encyclopediac entry

Is there evidence that indicates that this issue was "nationally known"? The only reference given is to a local news station. I think it's fair to say the issue of abuse in general was national news at that time, but not specifically this incident. Ar-wiki 21:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Someone replaced the Ginn section with a hate message, which I deleted. However, I don't think the Ginn incident should be mentioned at all there because (goes with some stuff stated here before, but): 1) Not national news 2) This page should only have general information about the school. 3) This page should not have every event in its history included on this page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Njgatto (talk • contribs) 13:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC).

I tend to agree that the issue does not necessarily belong in article. Certainly this was not national news, but the article does not need to be limited to a description for the school. A somewhat analogous case is where Penn has a controversy section. These events are no doubt embarrassing for the school, but since they garnered significant attention, they have found a place on that page. Those also involved actual charges and possible court cases. In this case, the only cited information is that a teacher resigned over a decade old claim, and subsequently an audit was ordered. A somewhat troubling feeling I have with this issue is that some of the edits seems based in a school rivalry. Fish114 is/was a student at La Salle College High School which has a well known rivalry with SJP. Comments such as "Would you send your kids to a school that employed a teacher accused of kissing children?" , don't strike me as being of a neutral POV. Ar-wiki 21:56, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That is terrible that this school would hire someone like this, just terrible.Freewilly2009 00:11, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

More Stuff

Considering that this is a Jesuit institution and that only a small handful of students actually go to Ivy League schools every year (except the constant Penn crowd) I think that Fordham and Penn State (two huge matriculant schools) should be added.

I agree and have added these schools. I don't believe there is any harm in this change as both institutions are well known on the national level and do accept a good deal of SJP students. Bmurphy (talk) 13:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Alumni

Please mention

Al Haig

Jim McKay

And I believe that there are seven current Bishops from the PREP

Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D., was appointed Acting Commissioner of the FDA, in September 2005.

JLG '76

Alexander Haig went to Lower Merion.

Cleanup and other issues

From the talk page here, I see some previous attempts to claim ownership of the article. Anyone may edit any page here, please do not attempt to tell any editor otherwise. That being said, this "Ginn incident" is sourced and most certainly is relevant to the school's article as a major event in its history. The introduction also needs some ad cleanup, I'll work on that as I have time to do so, right now it's written like a promo piece. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 01:25, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Seraphimblade, Thank you for your guidance. You make some very good points here. It is not uncommon for alumni to be passionately proud and defensive of their alma mater. Many alumni of this school are naturally inclined to take exception to inclusion of the "Ginn incident" as a "major event" to the history of the school. But you are correct that, like it or not, it is a verifiable fact and a part of its history. Conflicting opinions of its inclusion will likely persist until those in discord pass on or give up. I think the lesson here is not to fight such facts with an eraser but with the pen to depict the event accurately. In addition, readers are encouraged to bring forth other major events of the history of the school. The article as it is today, is relatively barren of the many positive contributions the school and its alumni have made to the world. As long as contributors keep their personal agenda and biases in check and focus on sharing verifiable facts, a more complete and balanced encyclopaedic article will emerge. And you are correct that the Introduction as it exists today, has been over-editted and is now sloppy. Maybe a Prep freshman English scholar will help all of us "Rockheads" out here. --YouRockhead 06:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Please don't misunderstand me, those with personal knowledge of a subject are highly welcome to edit it! It's just important to remember to stay to sourced information, since our own personal knowledge of something can easily lead to original research. If you can find reliable sources with great things to say, by all means, add them in! It's to no one's benefit to exclude well-sourced information or to have a piece that's more negative than warranted based on source coverage. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 20:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Recently Added

I just added a fair amount of information on the Prep. Everything was taken from the SJP website and is therefore verifiable and true. I agreed that there was not enough positive information on the page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Myerscw (talk • contribs) 04:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC).

Ad cleanup/NPOV

I've just removed quite a bit of puff/advertising tone material from the article. Please remember that material should be written in a neutral tone, and any direct quotes should be placed in quotation marks and attributed. It is plagiarism to directly copy a quote without quoting and attributing it. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 22:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I just added a source for academics. -myerscw

Campaign

Something should be added about the campaign. http://campaign.sjprep.org/

added campaign info, feel free to edit it a bit

Njgatto 02:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protection

Due to continuous vandalism by anon editors, this article has been temporarily semi-protected. If you have questions, reasons why this should be lifted earlier, please contact me. — ERcheck (talk) 00:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

This semi-protection status should either be in place permanently or have an expiration date further in the future. You can see that within 10 days of its expiration the vandalism began again. Bmurphy (talk) 14:07, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Re-opening discussion of Ginn content

I'd like to (re)start some discussion on the relevance of the "Sexual Abuse Scandal" section of the article. Consider the relative age of the events in question, the actual allegations being 11 years old and the dismissal being 2 years old. Does this section of the article begin to fall under WP:Notability#TEMP? Considering no charges were ever filed and these events occurred in the wake of the larger Roman Catholic sex abuse cases, do these events still meet the criteria for notability, specifically in this article? Did these specific events ever actually meet criteria for "Significant Coverage" and # of "Sources" under WP:Notability#General_notability_guideline? Note that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia has no section dealing with abuse, even though there are far more sources dealing with similar cases in that instance. Is it time to remove this section? Ar-wiki (talk) 22:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)