When asked the question, “Where’d you go to school,” John Meek doesn’t respond with where he graduated from college.
“It means high school around here,” says Meek, co-founder of Faulk & Meek general contractors in Baton Rouge. “Every time I hear that, I’m going to answer, ‘Catholic High.’ I might get to LSU after that, but that’s what people mean when they ask.”
The tendency to place what might seem to the rest of the country as outsized value on high school affiliation has special resonance in south Louisiana, Business Report writes in its latest issue.
The phenomenon is well known in Greater New Orleans, where an affiliation with all-male Catholic high schools like Brother Martin, Jesuit and Archbishop Rummel also serves as social currency. In Baton Rouge, Catholic High trades on its 130-year history, boasting an extensive web of successful alumni with deep pockets and institutional fealty.
Read more from the latest issue of Business Report.
