Conroy’s trips paid from Walkathon fundraising

The inevitable task of raising money for a Walkathon has begun. There is a huge change now, though. The fundraising total has gone up to $100,000 instead of $85,000 because Mr. Brendan Conroy, Mt. Carmel President, has been traveling the world just for the fun of it.

Mr. Conroy has recently taken trips to Arizona, California, and probably many places students don’t even know about. Students have criticized him for going on all these trips while they are in school.  “I don’t want to donate anymore because my money is not going to go to a good cause,” said Jordan Whaley, a junior, who unsurprisingly has never raised $150 in his three years at Carmel. “Instead it’s just going to go to Mr. Conroy.”

These types of comments have made Mr. Conroy become fed up with students because he’s using the money from the fundraising for his trips. “I would never misuse money from Mt. Carmel,” he said. “If I ever had the opportunity to take a trip with the money, though, I would probably take a trip to Japan. That’s just a hypothetical situation though.”  After all, Mr. Conroy is the president so he can technically do anything with the money because he’s in charge, and he can just decide to send the whole school to a different country if he could. 

Furthermore, Mr. Conroy usually takes these trips to spread the message of Mt. Carmel to alumni to hopefully get them to donate to further the educational experience at MC. Some alumni have said that this is the message of Mt. Carmel is not the only reason. “I got a phone call from him one day, and he asked if I would donate" said Alek Thomas, center fielder for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Mt. Carmel grad. "When I asked why, he said he wanted to see me play in Miami, which seemed strange.” 

In response to Mr. Conroy using the money for trips, students have decided to boycott the mission collection during Studium and have refused to pay for dress down days. The reason they are not boycotting Walkathon donations is because they want all the incentives. Some teachers like Mr. Tim Baffoe are furious with Mr. Conroy. “I think I might lose the mission donations again to Ms. Norise," said the English teacher, "but it might be by a bigger margin. I hope Mr. Conroy can come to his senses and stop going on these trips.”

Some teachers believe that the increase in price is reasonable because of inflation and Mt. Carmel is such a great place and needs more money. “I’ve never seen this type of money being raised before because we never did this at Br. Rice,” said Mr. Jack Murphy, math teacher and Br. Rice grad. If Mt. Carmel keeps upping the mandatory Walkathon requirement, students might have to pay the same amount of money as St. Ignatius, and who wants to pay that much? 

"I hope students keep up the solid Walkathon fundraising so I can eventually spread the mission of Mt. Carmel to alumni in Jamaica, Singapore, and Corfu, but that's a maybe," said Mr. Conroy with a grin.