Boston College High School is a Jesuit secondary school, and was founded as part of Boston College in 1863. The school included both secondary and post-secondary education, and the first 22 students, arriving in 1864, were all secondary students. The first official use of the term “preparatory school” for the lower grades appeared in the 1897 catalogue. In 1898, the school designated separate building entrances for each program, and in 1903 began distinguishing the lower grades as a “high school.” In 1913, Boston College moved to its new campus in Chestnut Hill, leaving the existing academic building on James Street in Boston’s South End and the Church of the Immaculate Conception to the High School. The programs split administratively in 1919, and legally in 1927. Charles W. Lyons, SJ, was the last person to head both the College and the High School together, and John J. Geoghan, SJ, the first to head the High School alone.

When the College separated, taking the Stylus, the school magazine, with it, the High School established their own, The Botolphian, in 1915. The school yearbook, the Renaissance, was first published in 1927. The most popular early student activity was debate, organized by the Bapst and McElroy Debating Societies. Students also participated in various varsity and intramural sports, Sodality, theater productions, and other social and academic activities.

Boston College High School itself moved to a new campus on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester in 1950, following a large increase in enrollment after World War II. The first woman teacher, Marguerite Thomson, was hired to teach English in 1969, joining a faculty composed of Jesuits and an increasing percentage of laymen. Women teachers rarely stayed for longer than a few years, however, experiencing much higher turnover than their male counterparts. Also in 1969, cheerleaders from Notre Dame Academy were allowed to cheer at Boston College High School games. The school maintained its exclusively male student body, however, with one exception: Chantal Bernard, a female student from the Centre Scolaire St. Marc in Lyon, France, attended as an exchange student in 1973.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the school underwent a period of discernment and reorganization in response to financial difficulties and shifting cultural trends. In line with a national trend among Jesuit schools, the responsibility of Head of School was split into two positions: the Rector, charged with caring for the needs of the Jesuits at the school and serving a 6-year term; and the President, charged with the practical administration of the school and serving an indefinite term. The first lay members of the Board of Trustees were elected in 1979.

In 2007, Boston College High School expanded its program to include the Arrupe Division, housing seventh and eighth grades.

Sources:

A Century of Jesuit Education in Boston, Boston: Boston College High School, 1963.

Loftus, David J., Boston College High School, 1863-1983, Boston: Addison C. Getchell & Son, Inc., 1983.

“Our Heritage,” Boston College High School. https://www.bchigh.edu/about/our-heritage. Accessed March 21, 2023.