To their credit, it occurred to the student journalists of Walter Payton College Prep that an important question to ask about nearby Cabrini-Green was whether their own fancy new school sticks in the residents’ craw.
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Antos (a junior) and Bennon (a senior) draw a contrast between Payton, just northeast of Cabrini at 1034 N. Wells, and Schiller, in the heart of the project. “CPS thinks of a school with 35 kids to a classroom, no library or special ed. classes, and no art programs as a well-run institution,” Schiller vice principal Brian Billings is quoted as saying. Payton is another world. Someone from the Department of Children and Family Services comments, “You should see the look on a kid’s face when he sees a new school going up in his neighborhood and he realizes that they won’t let him in”; and Antos and Bennon add, on their own authority, “For better or worse, Payton is part of a movement to phase Cabrini-Green out, making the building all the more frightening to local students.”
“People didn’t know much about Cabrini except what they’ve read in history books,” says Klionsky, “that it was one of the worst housing projects in the country.” The Pawprint didn’t intend to leave it at that. Payton has maintenance workers who grew up there, and a few students from the neighborhood. The grandmother of senior staff reporter Logan Cotton lived there most of her life. “As soon as they heard there was community and people love their community,” says Klionsky, speaking of her staff, “people got really into it. There was a lot of enthusiasm to go out into the area and talk to people.”
I had a chance to speak to Carroll and Klionsky. Carroll hopes to land in a good journalism school, while Klionsky, after a gap year in Israel, wants to study international relations somewhere to prepare herself to be a foreign correspondent. “I’ve been noticing the Reader‘s coverage in past weeks that journalism is dying,” Klionsky says bravely, “but people will always need news and they’ll always want to be informed.” If journalism has a future, I hope they’re it.
