In 1979, SI celebrated its 125-year anniversary with the coming of a new president, Fr. Anthony P. Sauer, SJ, who had taught at SI in the 1960s and early in the 1970s. In a report to the Board of Regents in his first year in office, Fr. Sauer noted that “our sense of community is…

The move represented a shift in attitude toward women at SI. Not surprisingly, that attitude changed along with the demographics of the faculty. In 1973, Anny Medina joined the faculty as a Spanish and French teacher, and in 1976, Carolyn Rocca came as a part-time Italian teacher. In 1978, three more women joined the faculty…

In the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, girls schools sent candidates to SI to compete to be Homecoming Queen. In the fall of 1973, Convent of the Sacred Heart decided not to send candidates to the three boys’ schools. “We felt as if it were a meat market,” said Lola Giusti, who…

A few of the Catholic girls’ schools in 1969 started sending students to SI to take physics from Fr. Spohn during the first period of the school day. The first class consisted of 32 girls and eight boys who gathered at the school’s new campus. Mame Campbell Salin (Mercy ’72) was among 19 girls to…

Tragedy struck the Bay Area twice in nine days in November 1978, first with the Jonestown holocaust and then the slayings of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. On November 18, Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple, ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink punch laced with cyanide shortly after…

Birth of the BSU Fr. Buckley, SI’s president, noted in the September 1972 Genesis that “today there is a strong emphasis in secondary education on areas of study outside the merely academic. This emphasis finds an echo in the traditional Jesuit philosophy of training graduates who have internalized attitudes of deep and universal compassion for…

Football Varsity football head coaches in the 1970s included Tom Kennedy ’63, Jim McDonald ’55 and Gil Haskell ’61. While their teams never won a league championship, they made their mark as exemplary and memorable coaches, especially Haskell, who coached from 1973 to 1977. “Anybody who played for him would tell you that his enthusiasm…

Fr. Richard McCurdy, SJ, who succeeded Fr. McFadden in 1976 as principal, attended high school in San Diego and had taught English and directed plays as a layman at SI between 1954 and 1956. He then entered the Society of Jesus and came back to teach at SI as a scholastic between 1962 and 1964.…

Br. Draper is perhaps the best-known dean of discipline in the U.S. For the past few years he’s also served as minister of the Jesuit community, assisting the rector in the day-to-day business matters affecting the residents of McGucken Hall. Beginning in 1969 when he took over as dean, students have known the power of…

For the first year at the new campus, SI held half-day sessions to let workers finish the building. The Jesuits also had to adjust their schedules, eating their meals at the Holy Name Parish Center, as workers still had not finished the kitchen in the Jesuit residence. “Each morning we would board a bus at…