“Life in a Jesuit community does not ask us to erase conflict, but to welcome it as an opportunity to grow together—even without resolution.”
by Mairead Sullivan, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Director of the Core Curriculum
As an undergraduate at The College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Massachusetts, I was part of a group of students working to bring The Vagina Monologues to campus. At the time, 2001, it felt radical to stage a play that centered women’s voices and the politics of embodiment in a Catholic university setting. Alumni and fellow students, however, organized to block us, claiming the play threatened our Catholic identity. Like most student groups, the organizers typically met late at night in campus classrooms to strategize. One evening, as we fretted over whether we would be allowed to go forward with the play, the president of the college—a Jesuit—walked through the building. One of my peers ran after him and invited him into the room.
We pressed him to take a stand. We wanted him to protect us from the protests and to lend his voice to our cause. He listened carefully and then said something I have never forgotten (though am admittedly paraphrasing): “I will not protect you, but I will not stand in your way. My role is not to tell you what to think or do, but to give you the space to test your convictions—so long as you act with respect and integrity.”
At the time, I was disappointed. I wanted his endorsement. I wanted his shield. Only later did I recognize the deeper lesson in his words. His refusal was not indifference; it was an invitation. He was modeling a Jesuit way of engaging students. He trusted us to discern our commitments, to act with freedom, and to bear the responsibility of how we carried ourselves in the midst of controversy. In a sense, he was practicing what Ignatian spirituality so often emphasizes: the importance of discernment, freedom, and accountability in the pursuit of truth.
We did go forward. The performances sold out three nights in a row. The play became an annual tradition that lasted for years. Along the way we learned how to build coalitions across campus, to strengthen our collective voice, and to engage those who opposed us not by silencing them or dismissing them but by holding firm to our own values. In many ways, the protests became an unexpected benefit. They drew more people into the conversation, filling the theater and sharpening the questions on everyone’s minds. We came to see that the value was not in reaching agreement but in continuing to talk across deep differences. Over time, the opposition quieted, not because we had won, but because the dialogue had taken root. In this way, we learned that life in a Jesuit community does not ask us to erase conflict, but to welcome it as an opportunity to practice respect, to engage one another honestly, and to grow together even without resolution.
That experience brought me into a lifelong practice of dialogue and activism, teaching me that a Jesuit campus is not meant to be a place free from conflict but a place where conflict can be held, tested, and transformed. Jesuit education does not promise protection from dissent. To the contrary, it calls us to engage difference with respect, courage, and integrity. What we were given in that moment was not permission alone, but an example of what it means to act boldly within a community committed to inquiry, conscience, and justice.