Student journalist’s investigation into Prospect’s first principal prompts review of honorary naming

A student journalist for Prospect High School’s newspaper uncovered former Principal Alvin Kulieke’s ties to a fringe religious group and its early embrace of eugenics principles.

Now Northwest Suburban High School District 214 is considering stripping the name of Kulieke — principal of the Mount Prospect school from its opening in 1957 until his death in 1973 — from the school theater.

Sophomore Sage Gilliland’s monthslong investigation, published in the May 16 edition of The Prospector, detailed Kulieke’s connections to the Urantia movement and leader William S. Sadler, a Chicago physician and publisher of the group’s 2,097-page religious and scientific book in 1955.

With Sadler — who wrote other works and toured the country giving speeches in support of eugenics — Kulieke co-authored workbooks that were used as study aids to train teachers and students of the Urantia movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Among the annotated passages, Gilliland notes, are those that call for “subnormal” men to be “kept under society’s control” and other justifications for slavery.

Using the Urantia Historical Society’s own archives online, Gilliland found science exams Kulieke wrote for the Urantia Brotherhood School that posed questions about which races were “most intelligent (and) belligerent.”

Gilliland began looking into Kulieke’s background after initially digging through old yearbooks to research the history of minstrel shows in Arlington Heights-based District 214. One such show occurred at Prospect after the school opened and Kulieke was named its principal.

“I knew that people would say, ‘Oh, well, like, it was the ’50s, crazy stuff happened,’” Gilliland said of the shows put on by white students wearing blackface. “But the eugenics part — that was not as common in the ’50s, especially since World War II had just happened and people weren’t exactly eager to have the same kind of ideology as Germany did. … I do not think that was what it was like back then. It was not widespread. And even if it was, I’m not sure that really excuses it.”

After the student reporter began raising questions surrounding Kulieke’s past to District 214 administrators in February, the district launched its own investigation along with a broader historical review of all known honorary namings across the district.

The reporting also initiated a general review of the district’s naming practices and prompted changes to school board policy in April that formally gives board members the power to approve or rescind namings of district facilities and programs.

That updated procedure “makes clear that honorary namings are not guaranteed in perpetuity. Names may be changed or rescinded if information surfaces that doesn’t align with key district values or other issues arise,” said Pat Mogge, the district’s director of community engagement and outreach.

Now, Prospect and District 214 administrators are discussing whether to remove Kulieke’s name from the theater, with plans to bring a recommendation to the school board this summer.

“We appreciate the work of the award-winning Prospect journalism program and the student who raised these questions,” Mogge wrote in an email. “The district has carefully reviewed the information shared by the student journalist and other publicly available sources. We are currently focused on verifying information and applying our updated honorary naming procedure to determine appropriate next steps.”

Marilynn Kulieke, the daughter-in-law of Alvin Kulieke, said she is “saddened by an accusation” against him.

The Lincolnshire resident is vice president of the Urantia Foundation, which is based at its longtime home on Diversey Parkway in Chicago. She also is an educational consultant who was director of research and evaluation in District 214 from 1987 to 2001.

Marilynn Kulieke said her father-in-law was “dedicated” to Prospect, Arlington and District 214. She also disputed that “The Urantia Book” proposes eugenics principles.

It “is written in an archaic text that was composed in the first quarter of the 20th century,” she wrote in an email to the Daily Herald. “There was a continued use of this term politically in the United States after World War II and Hitler’s crimes against humanity. We all come from different points of view, but I would encourage anyone who wants to evaluate its contents as a eugenist text to read ‘The Urantia Book’ themselves.”

Gilliland interviewed Pittsburgh-based journalist Joseph Flatley, who has covered the Urantia movement and said that while the group’s past is steeped in eugenics doctrine, few modern believers maintain those tenets now.

But Gilliland said she’s read online forums suggesting at least some adjacent support of the concept among followers.

Gilliland, 16, is autistic, so her reporting became personal as she discovered more about Kulieke’s background. She’s also performed in school plays in the theater. Now, she’s become an advocate for the former principal’s name to come down.

She joined KnightMedia — the school’s newspaper, TV, podcast and online presence — as a copy editor this past school year. The program, under adviser Jason Block, has long been praised. But in April, Gilliland and her student media colleagues won the school’s first IHSA state championship in journalism.

In the final issue of the year, The Prospector ran a front-page story about the feat next to Gilliland’s exposé.

“This story really whetted my appetite for investigative journalism. But I’m not sure how much you could really call this investigative because I really just utilized the power of Google,” Gilliland said. “Nothing was being covered up. Everything was easily available, and all a person really needed to do was just care about the issue. Just care enough to keep looking through all the mounds of information.”