You know when you have this friend who’s doing something that is potentially very embarrassing and you feel the need to nudge him back in the right direction for his own good? Like maybe he bought this Frank Sinatra-looking fedora and wants to wear it in public. You explain to him that it looks good on the skinny guy on “White Collar,” but it damn sure doesn’t look good on him.

It is in this spirit that I mention that the changing of the name of St. Gregory College Prep to The Gregory School was a really, really awful idea. In fact, The Gregory School is the New Coke of school name changes.

I have a certain fondness and respect for the place. A generation ago, I used to work basketball camps and leagues there. I ran the scoreboard at games when my friend, Brian Peabody, was the boys’ basketball coach there.

I have friends who coach there and teach there. Earlier this year, I wrote a column about a St. Gregory kid who won an international math contest. Some of my favorite memories from coaching basketball took place in The Aerie, or whatever they now call the gym. A couple years ago, I only had six kids on my team when we played there. Some of the home fans gave me a gentle ribbing about the size of our roster. (One of the cool things about having only six players is that when you get a 30-point lead and empty your bench, you still have four starters left on the floor, so the other team isn’t going to be able to make a run.)

The explanation for the name change was that the families of potential students were under the mistaken impression that the school was a religious institution. This is simply not true, nor has it ever been. The school was named for St. Gregory, the patron saint of education.

Somewhat oddly, the school also dropped “College Prep” from its name. I tried to read through the explanation for their having done so, but it degenerated into neo-hippie crapola about not every kid necessarily fulfilling him/herself by going off to college. Yeah, I want to spend 15 grand a year to send my kid to high school so that when he graduates, he can go off and find himself. For that kind of money, if he wants to find himself, he’d better start his search on an Ivy League campus.

I had the opportunity to speak to a few students from the school when I was coaching at a volleyball tournament. (I mention the coaching part mostly to piss off the whiners who hate sports and hate kids, or maybe hate kids who play sports, or maybe hate the fact that I coach kids who play sports. Of course, there is always the slim possibility that they simply hate the fact that I mention that I coach kids who play sports, but that’s probably not it.)

At the volleyball tournament, I talked to several kids on the Hawk team. Of those with whom I spoke, it was unanimous. The Gregory School is a stupid name. One sophomore kid said, “I go to St. Gregory. I entered high school at St. Gregory and three years from now, I’m going to graduate from St. Gregory.”

Some of the other kids were even stronger in their dissent. Nevertheless, the school administration has gone all-in on the name change. There’s a new sign in front of the school on Craycroft and the school vans have the new name. Somewhat sadly, the volleyball players all have the name “Gregory” across their shoulders on the back of their jerseys. If somebody walked in the gym and didn’t know any better, they’d conclude that the kids on the team all come from a Fundamentalist Mormon community.

I’m told that the administration polled some of the families who already had kids in the school, just to see how they would react to the name change. An insider told me that there was a wide range of reactions to the plan. About half of the respondents hated it, while another one-fourth actually despised it. The other one-fourth really didn’t care, since they were going to send their kids to another school, preferably one that doesn’t start with the word “The.”

Oddly enough, that word turns out to be a key to the name change. Someone did some research and allegedly found that exclusive private schools back East that have names that start with “The” make more money than schools that go the less-pretentious route. It’s like The Baird School to which Al Pacino was going to take a flamethrower in “Scent of a Woman.”

It’s going to take a long time for the name change to take hold. The AIA website has made the change and the daily newspaper is using it, but real people—among them just about everybody in the gym that day, including the Hawk players—will continue to use “St. Gregory” or the more common (and more popular) “St. Greg’s.”

It is said that when zealots form a firing squad, they assemble in a circle. So maybe in 20 years, they’ll conclude that “Gregory” is scaring people off and they’ll just shorten their name to The. That would say it all.

This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2014.

14 replies on “Danehy”

  1. Got to agree. Some people will do anything to hide from religion.

    Wasn’t the original team name the “Redskins?”

  4. Don’t know where to comment. Has Tucson done anything lately about the awful condition of the city streets? So many need repaving and there is no money? Don’t you know the home values go up when the streets look nice? And there is less crime. Keep it neat, people.

  7. Roads in good condition mean less crime? I agree the roads suck, but what exactly does this have to do with the name of a school? Time for your nap, Linda !

  9. I don’t know where to begin other than to say this is a great example of Tom’s general propensity for negativity and overstatement. To say that the school has “never” been mistaken for a religious institution is both an over application of the universal “never” and is simply untrue. I teach at The Gregory School and 90% of the time people ask me if it’s Catholic or wonder what it’s like to teach at a Christian school. TGS has been secular since 1987 when the school parted ways with the Episcopal church. So if we are hiding from religion as one of the commenters said we are, we have been doing so for 27 years. As for 100% of our community not liking the change or simply not engaging, again Tom has his facts wrong. Of course there will never be 100% agreement but the most progressive alum and students understand this as a necessary, well informed, and deeply considered marketing decision. The name Gregory is well known, well respected, and well loved in the community and we knew we wanted to keep that esteemed association in our name, but, in the competitive educational marketplace in Tucson, we just couldn’t afford to have potential families believe us to be anything other than what we are — THE best academic AND college preparatory high school AND whole child 5-8 middle school in Tucson. So THE Gregory School we have become. Same great teachers, students, coaches, and parents just a slightly, more accurate, name. I know Tom needs to critique or he’d be out of a job, but this time the critique is inaccurate, off-base, and inaccurate.

  13. The name change insults the intelligence of the residents of Tucson. It is, and has been known for well over twenty years that the school has no religious affiliation. The School has gone from a fine academic institution for the affluent to a dismal academic institution for the affluent. The college prep designation needed to be removed. The tuition continues to go up and the quality of education in the high school continues to deteriorate. The part of the mission statement mentioning educating the whole child is only there to make the school appear different from the public schools. Do they educate the whole child? Maybe, but only if the child fits into a set criteria. The amount of tuition paid is directly related to how much of the “whole child” is educated. The parade, in and out, of headmasters and faculty in the past ten years is indicative of the lack of direction of the school. Perhaps, the monies spent to change the letterheads, signs, vans, uniforms could have been spent better finding a new leader and an entire staff of teachers who want to work to educate the students.

  14. This article is a hoot! Thanks for your witty writing! When I read about the name change in the newspaper, my first reaction was that the “religion” thing (squirm, squirm) was making SOMEONE uncomfortable. Some super “progressive” types, no doubt. Great word, “progressive,’ derived from “progress,” which The Gregory School is not and Saint Gregory has not been in a VERY long time. My brother went to high school there in the 80s. When I told him I wanted to consider it for my own daughter way before she entered middle school, he suggested I take a look at the grounds and make a few wildly general assumptions from that–you know, the grounds and facilities that look about the same as they did in 1986?! And, speaking of things that actually shouldn’t change so much, how many headmasters have spun through that “Carousel of Progress” in the last 10 years? Even Walt himself couldn’t put the magic back into that school-now-without-the-saint—-with or without the “the!” But, “What’s in a name?” Not much when you take a candid look at Tucson, AZ high schools. The best of the public schools are still doing a superior job to any of these private schools filled with Tucson’s progressive thinkers, er, I mean, “name changers.” And, some of those schools have names so long, you wish they would take out a word or two! I think it really comes down to this: What do you “wanna be?” Someone who pays $17K/year for a mediocre education hoping to get mileage off from some old, elite school in New England or one of them common desert-dwelling cowboys who just want a good education for their kids? I’ll take “the” latter and take the $17,000.00/year right to “the” bank: The America Bank, The Fargo of Wells Bank, The Bank of Chase, The Bank Bank. . . .

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