A contributor and volunteer fund-raiser for Wheeling Jesuit University has withdrawn his promised support amounting to $650,000 in cash and property bequests in protest of the firing in August of Rev. Julio Giulietti, SJ, as president.
The firing was “the most cowardly, deceitful and morally perverse action that I have ever witnessed,” said Stephen E. Haid in an Oct. 18 letter to interim President J. Davitt McAteer. Blithe Spirit has obtained a copy of the letter.
Haid, a 1963 graduate of Wheeling Jesuit and longtime teacher at West Virginia University until becoming a teachers union lobbyist and then campaign chairman and later cabinet member in Gov. Gaston Caperton’s administration, blames the firing on three people or groups:
* Bishop Michael Bransfield of Wheeling, who “wanted to slap [Giulietti] down” because Giulietti “sought to acquire the [adjacent] Mount de Chantal property for Wheeling Jesuit.”
* “An element on the Board of Directors . . . who want to micromanage the University, who want any president to be an errand boy.”
* The three Jesuit trustees who “in an irregular night session” voted to fire Giulietti.
Haid was named last March by Giulietti as one of two Special Assistants to the President for Advancement to work on planned giving, endowment development and alumni partnerships, with an office on campus.
It was a continuation of his working “very closely” with Giulietti “for at least a year,” he said in his letter.
Among Haid’s other activities is to serve with Bishop Bransfield on the board of the West Virginia KIDS COUNT Fund, founded in 1989 by Gov. Caperton, who later became president of The College Board.
Haid has also served on the board of governors of Marshall University, in Huntington, WV — at one time as a member of its executive committee.
Blithe Spirit 
I live inside the Washington, DC Belt Way and I’m a good friend of two couples whose children attend Wheeling Jesuit. I’ve been curious to know of the visit of the Provincial Superior of the Province of Maryland, Fr. Shea, to Wheeling earlier this week. I hear that Fr. Provincial Shea did not say anything about the crisis at Wheeling Jesuit nor of the ridiculous innuendos imposed on Fr. Giulietti.
Fr. Shea’s visit came after Fr. Charles Currie and some interim leaders at Wheeling said after Mass in a Washington alumni get together which I quietly attended. Fr. Currie, to his credit, stated publicly that Fr. Giulietti was not involved in anything improper, unethical or immoral while at Wheeling Jesuit! Did not Fr. Shea know of Fr. Currie’s public comments? And is not Fr. Currie’s statement not contrary to what others, notably board member Miss Friday and board chair Mr. Fisher, have been saying for months: that they are not free to disclose what information they know about Fr. Julio. What a ludicrous statement in view of the public comments by Fr. Currie exonerating Fr. Giulietti from any wrong doing. Such a negative statement is aimed at ruining a good man’s reputation by innuendo. Is such behavior warranted because board members do not know how else to cover up their personal hatred for a Jesuit who is of superior intellect and moral character?
Wheeling students are not stupid. Do not Mr. Fisher and Miss Friday realize that their behavior and statements, and those of other board of directors, trustees and those now “leading” Wheeling Jesuit are speaking with forked tongs? Were not Mr. Fisher and Miss Friday told of what Fr. Currie said to friends of Wheeling in Washington? Certainly my friends’ children are not unaware and that knowledge will result in changes. Is Wheeling Jesuit prepared for a significant number of students planning to transfer to other colleges in January followed by an even greater number in June? Will parents want to send their children to a college where trashing the reputation of good people is seen as standard behavior of board members?
Larry Catraro
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