ISLAND VOICES
Mid-Pac's dorm was a beacon of opportunity
By Leslie Ching
Leslie Ching is an alumna of Mid-Pacific Institute's class of 1999 and is from Hilo, Hawai'i. She recently graduated from the University of Chicago.
Why should you care about the closure of the Mid-Pacific Institute dorm?
Because it is the end of a long history of equal opportunity in the private schools before it became a fashion to say that. Because Hawai'i is divided into three parts, which are becoming more and more delineated as time passes: a Paradiso of the rich, a Purgatorio of the beleaguered middle class and an Inferno of the disenfranchised who are riddled with drug addiction and gang violence. Because the only way out of this trifurcation is education.
Historically, Mid-Pacific Institute has provided an opportunity for kids from the Neighbor Islands and rural O'ahu to get a private-school education when they weren't allowed into other private schools and whose parents wanted the best education for them anyway.
Nowadays, kids from rural O'ahu may be able to attend private schools, if they have the money and don't mind the commute, but this still leaves the kids on the Neighbor Islands without a good alternative to public schools if they are not part-Hawaiian.
True, Mid-Pac seems to focus more on international dormers now, with some kids from Hawai'i for good measure. But the two most likely reasons for this scarcity of Hawai'i kids in the dorm — lack of money on the part of the families and lack of awareness — are both easily remedied.
There has been a movement on the part of alumni to raise money, alleviating the former problem, and, concerning the latter, publicity is fairly easy to generate.
Hawai'i already has too many private schools fighting for the kids with money. Our future does not only lie with them but in the kids who want to make something of themselves and who lack the opportunity in the overcrowded and under-funded public schools.
Mid-Pac has always provided this opportunity, often made easier with the option of the dorm, and, in this light, the program should actually be expanded, not closed.
Dante may not have wanted to help those in the Inferno, but Mid-Pac and the state should.
