The School of Architecture has been trying for
some time to raise awareness of South Bend's shortcomings as a
college town. It gained an ally last fall in Sports Illustrated
on Campus, a new weekly supplement to student newspapers nationally,
including The Observer. The September 16, 2003, issue
rated the best college towns in the United States (No. 1 was Madison,
Wisconsin) but also dubbed three places "Great Campus, Bad Town."
South Bend headed that list. The editors didn't like the smell
from the ethanol plant or lake-effect snow. The other two disparaged
college towns were Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford, (non-students
seem indifferent to Cardinal sports teams) and Colorado Springs,
Colorado, home of the Air Force Academy (because "if you're seeking
anything remotely wild, Denver is 55 miles away"). . . . The
350,000 people jammed into Saint Peter's Square in Rome
for Mother Teresa's beatification Mass on October 19 included
about 100 Notre Dame students who made the pilgrimage there from
ND study-abroad sites in London, Dublin, Angers (France) and Rome.
The weekend-long get- together was organized by Michael Downs
'00, '02M.E., Campus Ministry's director of outreach programs
in Europe, with help from his girlfriend, songstress Danielle
Rose Skorich '02. . . . Notre Dame Stadium averages
six heart attacks per football season, says a campus medical specialist.
Not all of them are fatal, but, sadly, the one that hit Roger
L. Bailey, 49, of Mapleton, Illinois, was. Bailey was discovered
on the floor of a men's room on the stadium's upper level before
the Navy game November 8. He was rushed to Saint Joseph Regional
Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead. . . . Father
Malloy's long-time right-hand man, former Executive Vice
President Bill Beauchamp, CSC, '75J.D., '81M.Div., was named president
of ND's Holy Cross sister institution, the University of Portland.
Beauchamp was one of two finalists for the position along with
Father James E. McDonald, CSC, '79, '84M.Div., rector of Saint
George's College in Santiago, Chile, and a former associate dean
of the Notre Dame Law School. Beauchamp left Notre Dame in 2002
to become senior vice president of Portland under Father David
Tyson, CSC, '70, '74M.A.. Tyson resigned Portland's presidency
last year after being elected superior of the CSC's Indiana Province.
. . . Notre Dame's own WNDU-TV and a station
in Salt Lake City were reportedly the only NBC affiliates to refuse
to air the network's racy new sitcom Coupling. A cable
station agreed to show it in the Michiana market instead. . .
. In introducing 60 Minutes veteran
Mike Wallace at an informal talk at the Center for Continuing
Education in October, Father Malloy noted that 60 Minutes
did a piece on him, Monk, during his first year as president,
1987. "It was done, thank God, by Morley Safer, who was a lot
safer than our guest here today." Wallace later referred
to Safer's piece as "a valentine" but before leaving added that
he thought Notre Dame had a beautiful campus and "I like your
president. He's a straight-up guy." . . . Vice President
Dick Cheney attended a fund-raising luncheon for northcentral
Indiana's first-term Republican congressman, Chris Chocola, in
the Joyce Center in October. It wasn't an invited talk; Chocola
supporters merely rented the space from the University. While
the vice president was inside, about 100 students, faculty and
members of the local community protested peacefully across Juniper
Road. Members of the group Women's Action for New Directions (WAND)
wore yellow hazardous materials suits to ridicule the Bush administration's
claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. . . . For
nine straight years Notre Dame has had either the most
or the second-most players on NFL rosters on opening day. This
year the Irish and Florida were No. 1 with 40 each. . . . Ninety-two
percent of all student-athletes who enrolled at Notre
Dame in 1996 earned a degree from the University, the best rate
of any Division I-A school. The results earned Notre Dame top
honors in the 2003 USA Today/NCAA Academic Achievement
Awards and a $20,000 prize. Studies of this type take off points
for student athletes who leave college or transfer to another
school, regardless of whether they were kicked out or just decided
to go elsewhere. For student athletes who complete all four years
of their playing eligibility at Notre Dame, the University's graduation
rate is 99 percent. . . . The cases against four
former Notre Dame football players charged with sexually assaulting
a female student ended with one of the defendants, Abram Elam,
convicted of sexual battery and sentenced to two years of probation.
Of the other three, Donald Dykes was tried and found not guilty.
After Dykes's acquittal prosecutors decided to drop the charges
against Lorenzo Crawford and Justin Smith. The four were accused
of assaulting a woman identified as a former football student
manager at Smith's off-campus residence early one morning in March
2002. The players maintained that the sexual acts were consensual.
According to news reports, the four were all expelled for sexual
misconduct. Their accuser has since graduated. . . . In
September a jury awarded damages of $1 million to a former
Saint Mary's College student in a civil suit against former football
player Clifford Jefferson '02. The plaintiff said Jefferson raped
her in his car outside her dormitory in March 2001 after giving
her a ride back to campus from a downtown bar. Jefferson maintained
that the sex was consensual. No criminal charges were filed. The
woman, a freshman at the time, reportedly withdrew from Saint
Mary's. She is also suing Notre Dame and Saint Mary's for failing
to discipline Jefferson. . . . This January the
NCAA is scheduled to present its inaugural Gerald R. Ford Award
to a long-time friend of the 90-year-old former president -- Father
Ted Hesburgh, who's 86. The award is intended to honor individuals
who have provided significant leadership as advocates for intercollegiate
athletics on a continuous basis over the course of their careers.
. . .In his appearance on campus in October,
2003, another of Hesburgh's friends, Millard Fuller, founder and
president of Habitat for Humanity International, explained about
the "theology of the hammer." He said it means taking action rather
than just singing and talking in church or praying for God to
fix things. "A person says to God, 'We have problems here' and
asks God to take care of it, and then he goes and watches TV.
And you know what happens? God goes and watches TV with him."
. . . Regis Philbin '53 promotes Notre Dame almost
daily on Live with Regis and Kelly, but October 7 marked
the first appearance of Father Malloy on the program. Monk talked
with the hosts from a seat in the audience, where he was joined
by Vice President for University Relations Lou Nanni '84, '88M.A.
and Eddie Colton, a New York City police sergeant who attended
the Blue Mass on campus two years ago after 9/11. . . . Saint
Mary's Student Government Association announced a contest
to come up with lyrics for a proposed fight song for the college.
The prize: $250. . . . Frank McCourt, whose memoir
of his childhood in a miserably poor family in Limerick, Ireland,
Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography
in 1997, was asked during an appearance on campus if everything
in the book was factual. In it he recalls, often in vivid detail,
events and conversations starting from when he was very young.
McCourt was born in 1930. "There are facts in there and then there
are spaces in between," he said. "[As a memoirist] you have to
fill in between." McCourt gave the 20th anniversary Red Smith
Lecture in Journalism, which honors the late New York Times
columnist and 1927 Notre Dame graduate. Early in his talk McCourt
recalled his disappointment long ago when, after having heard
about the mighty "Fighting Irish" of the gridiron, he was informed
by a fellow Irishman that Notre Dame's players were -- as far
as his acquaintance could tell -- all Polish.
(January 2004)
