The Journal

Issue date: 9/20/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Jamie Ford Jacqueline Grennen Wexler accepts her honorary Doctorate of Laws from Webster University, the university's highest honor, Sept. 12 during the convocation ceremony in the Community Music School's Concert Hall.

Jacqueline Grennan Wexler started a revolution. As the president of what was then Webster College, Wexler used her power and connections to remove Webster from control of the Catholic church in 1967. As a celebration of her work and a tribute to the 40th anniversary of the annexation, President Richard Meyers held a convocation to give her an honorary Doctorate of Laws.

The Sept. 12 event brought nearly 400 family, friends, students, faculty and staff to the Community Music School's Concert Hall. People who have known Wexler throughout her lifetime attended the convocation, which is a gathering of people who assemble for a common purpose. Some of those attending included many Sisters of Loretto, which is the sect Wexler belonged to for much of her lifetime. Wexler was known to her peers and students as 'Sister J' as Webster changed from a religious to a secular institution.

Anna Barbara Sakurai, a professor at Webster and a former Sister of Loretto, worked with Wexler during this time. She said the sisters referred to this era as their Camelot.

"We (the Webster administration) were hiring lay people and had taken on boys as students during this time and we were under the scrutiny of Cardinal Ritter," Sakurai said. "Jacqueline thought in order to keep doing these things, we had to get away from the archdiocese."

Before the change, Webster only admitted women and many of the professors were sisters or priests. Wexler said though she has always been a devout Catholic, she knew she had to leave the sisters in order for a change to occur.

"I don't think an institution committed to free inquiry should adhere to orders from outside," Wexler said. "(The archdiocese) meant well, but we didn't want to have to follow its orders."

Wexler said anything worth doing is difficult, and Webster gained a frontier spirit from the sisters, meaning they were doing something no one else was trying to do at the time.

"Webster is a very different place; we can do many innovative things internally and can affect change easier than bigger institutions," Wexler said.

Continued...

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