St. Paul Academy in Saint Paul is my high school alma mater. In the annals of wokery and false bravado, the security measures it announced to protect those attending the upper school Winter Dance from ICE deserve some kind of recognition. I did my best in “SPA joins the resistance.”
What exactly was the threat against which those attending the dance had to be protected? Upper school assistant principal for student life Stacy Tepp was the author of the message to parents that had been forwarded to Liz Collin and posted on X (embedded in the linked post). I sent emails asking her. She didn’t respond.
I was referred to director of communications Megan O’Rourke. I wrote her:
Dear Ms. O’Rourke: I’m an alumnus and contributor to the site Power Line (powerlineblog.com), the site for which I have written over the past 24 years. I have been reporting on the local resistance to ICE and related matters on Power Line. When I read the message sent out to parents by Stacy Tepp (on Liz Collin’s X account), I sought an explanation of the perceived threat of ICE to the safety of St. Paul Academy students attending the Winter Dance or elsewhere. What is or was the perceived threat requiring the “security at the event” provided by the venue’s “ICE protocol” set forth in the message and attachment? Are there illegal aliens among the students, staff, or faculty? Did the event go off as planned? If not, were any changes made, and what were they?
I had asked [assistant director of alumni engagement] Kate Bogdan to forward my questions to Ms. Tepp. Kate has now directed me to you. Will you please respond to my questions by the end of business tomorrow?
“Tomorrow” was yesterday. Ms. O’Rourke called me yesterday afternoon. She said she was calling me because I am an alumnus. I asked if she would respond to my questions in writing so I could quote her verbatim. She said there would be no response: “We would prefer not to be mentioned.” I told her I would be writing this up. She said in that case the school had no comment.
What a circus.
