Damien Memorial School president Bernard Ho, above left, stands in his office May 13 with students Matteo Muelhauser and Kenneth Go. Muelhauser and Go will be graduating May 24 in Damien’s last all-boys class. At their commencement ceremony, the boys will receive special pins, below, in honor of their historic distinction. (HCH photo | Darlene Dela Cruz)
Damien Memorial School will complete its transition to a coed institution when its last all-male class graduates May 24. It is a conversion that has proven itself in a positive spirit and a near doubling of enrollment.
The Kalihi Catholic school was founded in 1962 by the Christian Brothers religious order as a four-year high school for boys. Lower grades six through eight were later added. Damien president Bernard Ho announced in 2011 the decision to accept girls to the school in a plan to have all grades coed by 2015.
Sixty-eight boys will graduate this year, the smallest group of graduates ever at Damien. May 24 will mark the school’s 50th commencement ceremony and the culmination of its all-male tradition.
Ho — who in 2011 cited slumping enrollment, campus expansion and other factors behind the move to enroll girls — said the effect on Damien has been positive. Some alumni and community members initially had mixed feelings about the coed announcement. Students and staff have since embraced the transition, he said.
“We were cautious, and we were concerned about making sure that everything was seamless,” Ho said. “The cooperation of the students, and the type of students that we’re fortunate to have at Damien, also helped to keep things together.”
Going coed, Ho said, has “helped us economically.” Enrollment this coming school year is expected to be about 700, nearly double what it was in 2012. Girls comprise about 40 percent of the students.
The boost in numbers has encouraged Ho to underscore a commitment to Damien’s “values and what we stand for.” He acknowledged that the school’s “Catholic identity” and the Christian Brothers’ vision of teaching students compassion and excellence have not changed.
Boys in the class of 2015 were told during their freshman year to “welcome the girls as sisters in Christ and be role models and try to teach the people about the legacy of St. Damien,” Ho said.
“It reinforced our point that we were successful in 50 years of having all boys, that we could also extend our values to our incoming girls,” he added.
Matteo Muelhauser, the class of 2015 valedictorian, has been at Damien since eighth grade. The transition from his first two years of all-boys classes to coed, he said, “wasn’t too much of an adjustment at all,” since he previously attended public school.
Muelhauser explained, however, that the boys in his class were at first apprehensive that “maybe the girls will kind of distort the mentality that we already had.” The girls eventually “just blended straight in” and brought renewed energy to Damien.
“It was a very good decision to include girls,” he said.
Kenneth Go attended St. Elizabeth School in Aiea before coming to Damien as a freshman in 2011. The coed transition has been “a healthy change” at Damien, Go said, because “people just got a little bit more excited and involved, and there’s a lot more spirit in our school.”
Muelhauser and Go said it’s surreal and historic to be part of Damien’s last all-boys class.
“We’ve kind of bonded more,” Go said, “and I think it just really put our class in a special place where we recognize that we have something that no one else will have beyond our years.”
“Everybody knows each other very well,” Muelhauser added.
After graduation, Muelhauser will attend the University of Notre Dame. Go is heading to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is the first Damien student to achieve early acceptance into the John A. Burns School of Medicine.
The class of 2015 will receive special pins at the May 24 commencement ceremony. On the pins are inscribed Damien’s school motto, “Viriliter Age.” Before the coed transition, the motto was translated from Latin as “Act Manfully.” The school now has adapted it to mean “Act Courageously.”
Damien president Ho is proud of Muelhauser, Go and the class of 2015. As they graduate and Damien soon embarks on its first completely coed semester, Ho said he sees a bright future ahead.
“We always appeal to our graduates to keep in mind that there’s a lot of needs out there, a lot of services, that they can use their talents and give back to the community and their school,” Ho said.
“I hope that the products we produce will be just as outstanding as we did when we had all males,” he noted. “Our girls are very competitive athletically and academically, and I think the boys have worked well with that. It’s been wonderful.”
