Feature Article
“We’d talk about it informally. And I said, ‘I really
don’t want to go,’”Sister Peg said. “My dad was
here and my mom had died… I could have killed
(Jeanne) one Christmas. We were going to buy
the law school and Jeanne said to my father, ‘I’ve
offered Peg the law school, and I think she should
take it.’ My father then gets all upset because he’s
feeling that I’m leaving town. So I said to him
afterwards, ‘Dad, don’t worry. I’m not going.’”
Sister Jeanne and her legendary way of persuasion
eventually won out.
“She said, ‘Well, I just think you’re the one to
go. You understand the mission. You understand
the culture,’”Sister Peg recalled. “So I said, ‘OK,
I’ll go.’”
Though it was just a couple hundred miles away,
Sister Peg considered running the law school
more of being sent on a mission rather than
a promotion.
“In the end, I prayed about what it was that I
was called to do, and God let me know that I was
the one who should be sent,”she said of the decision. “I felt my Dominican roots strongly during
this time of discernment. In the early days of the
Dominican Order, St. Dominic sent his followers
out two by two. I really had the experience of being called and sent and although it was difficult
to go, it felt right.”
When Sister Peg arrived in Orlando, the school
had an enrollment of less than 100 students and
was not accredited by the American Bar Association, a major stumbling block to its success.
“When I went up there, there were very good
people, but there were a few people who were not
in tune with the mission (of Barry),”she said. “And
the way that things operated were sort of in the
dark. There did not seem to be many reasonable
processes in place in order to get things accomplished. I announced one day that we were going
to operate in the light, that there were no secrets,
and that we had a great number of things to accomplish. I always stressed the Barry mission.”
There were some other, deeper problems to
confront.
“There were relationships and alliances that
were all crazy and convoluted,”Sister Peg said.
“I really had to sit down and talk with everybody
individually and work things out. I asked each
member of the community if they could live the
mission of Barry University. I gave them time
to assess whether they were able to do so. Most
embraced the mission enthusiastically but some
chose not to walk with us.”
Sister Jeanne was less diplomatic when discussing
the challenges the school faced from the outside.
14
Reflections Winter ’07—Be Bold. Think Higher.
“The battle was literally a prejudice towards
nuns, prejudice towards women, prejudice towards
the previous history of that institution,”she sa Y