Talk:Holy Spirit Preparatory School

I found the following image on the Holy Spirit Prep website: http://www.holyspiritprep.org/i/hspshome.jpg Is it acceptable? Hspstudent (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC) hspstudent 1/11/2009

Okay, I understand why the controversy section I added is, well, controversial. However, as I said on the comments on my edit, it is something very well known in the Catholic community of the city. It got extensive news coverage and even spawned a new school, the Atlanta Academy. In order for this article to be NPOV, which is required by Wikipedia, it can't gloss over its own history. It is not a lie; it is not libel. It happened. I don't know who has been reverting it back to the version I wrote, but I believe he or she is taking the right action. Whoever is taking it down, please discuss it here, because you need to give a good reason why this part of the school's history should be omitted. Thank you. Antisthenex 17:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC

Disputed controversy section

Though it was originally founded as an independent Catholic school, it later became acquired by the Legion of Christ in 1999. This became a source of controversy for many parents, as the Legion of Christ considered to be a conservative organization within the Catholic Church. The Legion's founder, Martial Maciel Degollado, was accused of sexual misconduct by former priests and seminarians in 1997.

Shortly after the acquisition, four staff members were fired for reasons that the Legion refused to disclosed. This led to many teachers formally complaining, but they were subsequently fired. Over a quarter of all students at the school were withdrawn that year, after a meeting where over 500 parents complained to the new Legion-appointed board.

It was later revealed that the original firings took place because the guidance counselor was asked to provide the Legion with weekly lists of meetings with students and tell him what they said, and the principal was asked to sign a contract that required her to resign at the end of the school year and to report to school officials anything negative said by employees or parents against the Legionaries.[1][2]

I cut the above from the article because it is a very one-sided presentation of the dispute. There are multiple points of view that need to be represented if this "controversy" is going to be described in a neutral way. There were lawsuits, motions for injunction filed against the school's accusers, and so on. I am also troubled by the guilt-by-association stuff going on here. Rather than rehash the salacious details of a scandal involving the legion founder, I think all that could be covered with a link to the article on the legion controversies. Compounding the one-sided presentation of the facts is the problem generally of dedicated "controversy" sections. In the context of this article, having a big section header labeled "controversy" is not particularly useful to the reader, and poses NPOV/Undue weight problems. As Jimbo said, "In many cases they [criticism sections] are necessary, and in many cases they are not necessary. And I agree with the view expressed by others that often, they are a symptom of bad writing. That is, it isn't that we should not include the criticisms, but that the information should be properly incorporated throughout the article rather than having a troll magnet section of random criticisms." We also need more specific citations for each controversial claim. If "it was later revealed" that someone was fired for X reason, we should be able to explain how this was revealed, or at least how we know it. The final problem that we are going to run into is that if we have a bunch of bickering back and forth between all the sides here, the coverage of this issue is likely to dominate the article, and that poses an undue weight problem (since it would make it appear that the controversy was the most important thing to discuss in an encyclopedia article about the school). My inclination would be to winnow this down to the following: (1) explain that there was a change in control involving the legion (internal link to legion; cite source noting change in control), (2) note that there were complaints/comment/whatever by parents, and (3) inform the reader that there was some sparring between faculty and administration that resulted in several lawsuits (cite source). I am very much opposed to involving the name of Marcial Maciel and bringing up sexual impropriety if there were no accusations of such here (I didn't see any accusations along those lines). DickClarkMises (talk) 09:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

You're right. Bringing up the school's troublesome history would be very inconvenient for us, so we should ignore it. Also, Marcial Maciel's history is pretty well accepted by those in the Catholic community. Even the Vatican is starting to take a stand (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pope-acts-against-incest-priests-group-2046517.html). Then again, this doesn't matter. Just because an organization openly praises and adores a person who molests children doesn't indicate that there might be something wrong with them, right? Antisthenex (talk) 21:39, 8 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.53.238.32 (talk)

Maciel is irrelevant in this article. That controversy is covered in several different articles, including the one on the Legion of Christ. It is inappropriate to rehash that material here unless we've got some sort of source that states that there was some controversy about Maciel in relation to Holy Spirit Prep. To go beyond what the sources say and synthesize new conclusions is a type of original research that is not permitted on Wikipedia. DickClarkMises (talk) 02:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Notable alumni

I removed the section because the only former student listed is still in high school, which, despite being a McDonalds All-American player, probably still fails WP:ATHLETE and WP:ANYBIO. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 05:32, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

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