Letter to the Editor: Fight Regis East Plan

Dear Editor:

In his 1836 satirical novel, Sartor Resartus (“The Tailor re-tailored”), Thomas Carlyle parodied German philosophical Idealism with predictably hilarious Anglo Saxon practical results. This book was published in Boston through the sponsorship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and influenced works as diverse as Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and John Le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama, itself a redo of Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana. More duality than Twin Peaks!

Now the Mass. Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) has produced a similar poioumenon, or meta-story about the process of recreation, by returning to the Land Court the Weston Zoning Board’s objections to Regis East for a new trial on the facts, as opposed to summary judgment on the law. F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong when he declaimed “there are no second acts in American lives.” So, as Robert Redford’s The Candidate said: “What do we do now”? Peter Boyle’s campaign manager answers: “Do whatever you want to do!”

Six-plus years ago, Regis College was facing declining all-female enrollment and cash flow shortfalls as an indirect result of Cardinal Bernard Law’s attempted cover up of pedophile priests and cowardly flight to Vatican City to avoid civil lawsuits.

Since then, Regis has undergone a systematic “re-tailoring” involving:

• 1) overhauling its outdated curriculum and course offerings, with less Latin and ancient Church history, and more computer and biological science that will help its hard working students get good paying jobs and careers,
• 2) going coed with male students, and
• 3) becoming a University with multiple graduate degree programs.

As a result, Regis has emerged as a more open, diverse, vibrant and enlightened institution, the recent horrible, late-night murder by an out of town hoodlum in one of its parking lots notwithstanding. Not coincidentally, its finances have become more secure and sustainable.

Now, Regis does not need to act as a for-profit landlord, charging around $1 million per elderly assisted care resident, with the fig-leaf of non-graded, short-term courses, that are best offered for free by Weston’s Council on Aging. Will Regis evict a truant 80-year-old?

Regis should spare the trees and stop testing our secular and civic patience. Meanwhile, the Weston Zoning Board should prepare to charge “once more” into the Land Court, this time with a basketball full court press and fact-based case that can be affirmed on any appeal.

As Hans Solo once said to Luke Skywalker at the end of the first Star Wars: “Go get ‘em, kid!”

William C. Crum,
Hobbs Brook Road