By Mo Juenger | Staff Writer
In honor of the upcoming spooky season, the Newswire has chosen to highlight some of the underrepresented voices: those of the campus ghosts.
This week, I interviewed some of Xavier’s most outspoken spirits in order to shed some light on the issues our ghosts are experiencing. I saw first-hand the problems these prominent figures of our past are facing and asked them how we can make our school more ghost-inclusive.
I met with Sister S. Kelly Tonne on Sunday morning at 3:03 a.m. in Edgecliff Hall. Her story is similar to that of many ghosts I’ve spoken to in this process; she was a former teacher, and with ungraded papers and midterms coming up at her passing, she left Xavier with unfinished business.
“I’ve heard a really troubling amount of anti-ghost rhetoric growing on campus the past few years,” Tonne noted at the beginning of her interview. “There’s just so much media out there designed to spirit-shame, and it’s festering into this toxic culture. SAC is even putting up those Dent Schoolhouse gravestones — how is that supposed to make us feel? People are openly using words like ‘ghoul’ and ‘banshee’, and the administration really isn’t making an effort to combat it. Back in my day, we were a lot more supernaturally correct.”
In McDonald Library, I spoke to former English major Barry DeLive about his thoughts on the current state of campus accessibility.
“This is awful. Yeah, ghosts can pass through walls, but you still need your ALL Card to get into the Alter Honors Lounge. No one tells you you’re supposed to die with your ALL Card, and now I have to spend eternity reading in the library,” DeLive said. “The honors program elitism doesn’t even pass with you to the ethereal plane. How dumb is that?”
Former ethics professor Dr. Rick Armortis noted the administrative struggles still present for non-tenured and non-living professors.
“I’ve been teaching here for years, and I’ve been pushing for a Paranormal Studies program for the past decade,” he said, “but at faculty meetings, they don’t even listen to me. It’s like they can’t see or hear a thing I say.”
Ghosts on campus are responding to their lack of equity by planning a strike: There will be no more on campus haunting after Oct. 30. Protest leader Clara Voyant had this message for the administration: “We’re moving all of our hauntings out of Xavier next Thursday. We’ll be moving our ghostly activities to Cleneay, Hudson, Jonathan and Dana. We’re taking our boos off campus for Halloweekend.”