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The leadership team toured one of San Salvador’s poorest districts during a retreat to El Salvador June 10-18.
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USF Leadership Learns About Third World Realities During Retreat
After eight days immersed in the realities of impoverished El Salvador, members of the University of San Francisco’s leadership team said they understand the importance of such a perspective in guiding a university intent on educating minds and hearts to change the world.
“The trip put into sharp relief the issue of what is the purpose of a university, what should our mission be, and how should we carry it out,” said Jeffrey Brand, dean of the School of Law. “Understanding the struggles of the Salvadoran people...sharpened the questions that we need to answer for ourselves here at home as we go about our work.”
Fifteen executives and deans, led by USF President Stephen A. Privett, S.J., listened to survivors of El Salvador’s brutal past recount their experiences during their country’s decade-long civil war. They also spoke with faculty from the Jesuit-founded Universidad Centro Americana in the capitol of San Salvador about how the two schools could best live out their educational missions.
“This trip really changed my perspective of things, and makes me realize how important it is that USF students also have this sort of experience in third world countries,” said Margaret Higgins, vice president of university life.
The retreat, paid for by a private gift to the university, was the first of its kind by a Jesuit university. The trip is similar in style to undergraduate immersion experiences currently offered by University Ministry in Mexico, El Salvador, and Cuba. As with those trips, the leadership retreat was an opportunity for participants to better understand the USF mission of fostering a global perspective, reported Fr. Privett in a letter to the university community.
“El Salvador was offered as a catalytic experience for the leadership team to promote fresh thinking and moral reflection on how well our leadership serves the University community and the world that we hope to change,” he wrote.
Prior to becoming USF’s president, Fr. Privett spent four months in El Salvador in 1988 working with Salvadoran refugees. The experience became the basis of one of his main concerns as USF’s president: to instill in students a sense of their humanity.
“I saw first hand the results of state sponsored repression against the poor...the startling realization that two-thirds of the world is poor leads to the unsettling insight that ‘our’ world is not ‘the’ world,” he said. “Maybe the world that needs to be changed is ‘our’ world so that ‘the’ world is more gracious and hospitable to all men and women.” 
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