Jocks had Kirkland House and preps had Eliot--but there was no House for those on the margin, and that was troubling for Kiely.

"These were my students...and it hurt me when I heard them made fun of," Kielys says. "There seemed to be absolutely no choice when people from my own classes and House said, 'Can you help us? We're being discriminated against.' I felt that I had to stand up for them."

Tending to the Flock

But if "standing up" for students means actively shepherding them into his House--observers like Associate Dean for the House System Thomas A. Dingman '67 say the Kielys have embodied "the ideals of the Statue of Liberty"--Kiely hasn't exactly seen it that way.

He says he used his position to empower students who themselves chose to be in the House, offering both his personal support of their pursuits and the extensive resources he has had at his disposal.

He was deeply honored, then, when the College's first support group for lesbian and gay students surfaced in Adams and that the founders felt comfortable enough to ask him--a "straight and married" Catholic--to act as the adviser to the group.

And in the name of tolerance, he saw no religious or moral conflict in presiding over the commitment ceremony of two Jewish lesbians--Adams alumnae--who could find no area rabbi to officiate.

According to Alfred E. Alden '99, current co-chair of the Adams House Committee, Kiely's infamous empathy for the eccentric and off-beat has served as a powerful draw to many, including Alden, into the House community.