St. Ignatius alumni demand answers on 2017 firing of gay teacher ‘outed’ by student

A group of alumni of St. Ignatius College Prep is demanding answers from the Near West Side high school after the story of a 2017 firing of a gay teacher resurfaced last month.

The teacher, Matt Tedeschi, wrote an essay in March sharing new details from his controversial firing, which he claimed at the time was because he was “outed” by a student as a gay man. In the essay published on Medium, Tedeschi revealed he had also been criticized by administrators when he forwarded a report of a student’s sexual assault to the school leadership.

A letter sent to the selective Jesuit high school Tuesday was signed by 27 alumni of St. Ignatius who wrote they were “outraged and disappointed” when they learned of Tedeschi’s treatment.

“It is shocking to learn that a gay teacher at St. Ignatius was subjected to harassment and bullying by a small group of students, and that the administration not only failed to defend Mr. Tedeschi, but instead turned around and protected his harassers, and then fired him,” the group wrote.

The alumni proposed a long list of changes and protections for LGBTQ faculty and students, including promoting LGBTQ student groups; adding sexual orientation and gender identity to its non-discrimination policy; allowing faculty to unionize; and removing and replacing the school’s president, vice president and principal.

St. Ignatius spokesman Ryan Bergin wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun-Times that “the school is unable to publicly comment on the status of employees, former employees or students.”

“We can say that there were many facts omitted in the letter released by some of our alumni, but again, we are unable to discuss personnel and student matters,” Bergin continued. He declined to answer further questions.

Bergin claimed in a statement to DNAInfo Chicago in 2017 that Tedeschi “was not fired for his sexual orientation.”

Tedeschi, who is now a legal assistant at a Chicago employment-discrimination law firm, told the Sun-Times on Tuesday that he appreciated the alumni support and denied that there were other reasons for his firing.

“I have been consistently just grateful and humbled that there are these students who are standing in solidarity with me and really living these Jesuit values day to day,” Tedeschi said.

In Tedeschi’s essay last month, he revealed that he had been dismissed a few weeks after he told administrators of a situation in his class where a student publicly told him of the sexual assault of a girl by a fellow student.

Students in Tedeschi’s class were upset about the firing of another teacher who was gay and felt there was a lack of transparency and accountability by school leaders, he wrote. That’s when one student told Tedeschi about the sexual assault and said it had been reported to administrators and nothing had been done about it.

Tedeschi brought the report to the school principal, who said it was good he relayed the information quickly but became upset the teacher “allowed the discussion to go on at all,” he wrote.

Tedeschi was fired days later with his handling of the report and his “poor judgment” in making a dating profile given as the official reasons. Tedeschi, though, said he found out from an administrator that there were plans to terminate him solely because of the dating profile before the sexual assault was even reported. His firing came despite there being no written record of charges against him in his personnel file, which only contained positive performance reviews, he said.

Tedeschi’s trouble at St. Ignatius started in spring 2016 when a student found the teacher’s profile on the dating site OkCupid and learned he was gay, Tedeschi wrote in his essay. Photos from the dating profile were passed around the school, and Tedeschi’s students started mocking and harassing him both in class and on social media, he said.

Tedeschi pointed to one instance in which, after he told a student to stop speaking in class, the student wrote on social media that the teacher was a “lowly vermin excuse for a teacher” and added “let’s not forget I have screenshots that could end you.” That student received “light” punishment and others were never disciplined, Tedeschi said.