Early last fall an issue of Sports Illustrated
on Campus, a new weekly supplement to student newspapers
nationally, listed Notre Dame among three universities with great
campuses but bad college towns. As the semester went along references
to Notre Dame athletes and traditions continued to turn up in
nearly every issue of SI on C., leading some to wonder if the
publication wasn't producing regional issues and highlighting
local teams to boost readership. Not so, answered a member of
the staff in an e-mail. "Notre Dame's just that interesting (off
the football field, that is)." . . . Notre Dame Stadium
ushers cracked down on the traditional senior class marshmallow
fights in the student section during halftime of home games this
year. Or tried to. Again. Cappy Gagnon '66, coordinator of stadium
personnel, said the problem is students insert stones and coins
into the marshmallows to make them fly farther. That sometimes
causes injuries or damage to band instruments. Once it even to
damaged a lens on an NBC camera, he said. . . . Junior
Charlie Ebersol, president of the Student Union Board,
promised to let comic actor David Spade shave Ebersol's head on
stage if Spade's stand-up show in the Joyce Center drew at least
3,500 people. It didn't. Fewer than 1,500 attended. Ticket sales
for the early October show were probably hurt by there being only
a week's advance notice. . . . Publication of Catholic
Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, a quarterly,
refereed research journal, moved to Notre Dame this past July
from the University of Dayton. Sponsored by 16 Catholic universities,
the quarterly journal is the only scholarly publication to focus
exclusively on Catholic K-12 and higher education. It was established
in 1997. . . . At a conference on campus in September,
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said the United States had
a moral duty to help poor countries, and he pleaded with the audience
to "try and keep Africa on the discussion table." He gave the
keynote address at the conference A Call to Solidarity with Africa,
sponsored by Notre Dame's Institute for Church Life. The title
came from a document of the same name issued by the U.S. Conference
of Catholic Bishops. . . . Garret FitzGerald,
former prime minister of Ireland, lectured on "Northern Ireland
and the Normalization of the Irish-British Relationship" in late
September. His visit came a few days after Irish poet and Nobel
laureate Seamus Heaney read from his works at the fourth-annual
Dante Seminar. . . . In his appearance on campus
in October, Millard Fuller, founder and president of Habitat for
Humanity International, mentioned that the organization has begun
building houses in Islamic countries like Jordan and Egypt. He
explained, "I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said, 'The best
way to get rid of your enemies is to make them your friends."
. . . . Observer columnist Joey
Falco read that John Haynes, executive director of the
DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, which is nearing completion
at the south end of campus, wants the arts to be "as pervasive
at Notre Dame as athletics." He gazed into his crystal ball to
September 3, 2012 ("the start of the fine arts season") and imagined
what campus would be like were Haynes' dream to come true. "That
night the entire student body congregated in the JACC (the Joyce
Arts and Crafts Center) to watch our favorite Notre Dame film,
Trudy. By the time that compassionate tale of a talentless
girl from an Indiana steel town who realizes her dream of performing
as an extra in a Notre Dame Main Stage production of Les Misérables
had finished, there wasn't a dry eye in the house." . . . A
total of 494 new legacy students arrived on campus this
fall, counting all freshmen and new transfer and graduate students.
According to a report, the most common class year among the parents
of these studetns was 1976. There were 51 such cases. . . . First
Year of Studies wanted the Class of 2007 to get its feet
wet intellectually before arriving on campus, so it assigned homework.
A letter asked all incoming freshmen to read Seyyed Hossein Nasr's
The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity along
with four articles over the summer and come to campus prepared
to discuss issues raised in the works. The assignment culminated
in a first-of-its kind academic convocation for freshmen at the
Joyce Center in September. The get- together examined "The United
States and the Middle East: Do We Face a Clash of Civilizations?"
In a letter to students, the moderator of the convocation, Scott
Appleby, professor of history, director of the Kroc Institute
for International Peace Studies, said, "The goal is to provide
a window on the way intellectuals think and to formally welcome
you into that august company." About a thousand august-wanna-bes
turned up at the JACC event (attendance was expected but not taken).
The program featured panels of faculty and a few students. . .
. Last summer fund-raiser for Saint Mary's College
sent humorous school T-shirts to Regis Philbin and Live! With
Regis and Kelly co-host Kelly Ripa. (Hers read: "Saint Mary's:
Not a Girls' School Without Men, A Women's College without Boys.")
The hosts showed the shirts on camera and Philbin began suggesting
that Ripa, who never attended college, apply to Saint Mary's.
The women's college responded by producing a mock recruiting video
featuring a campus tour done as if through the eyes of Ripa. At
one point the camera looked in on a theater class in which the
instructor is having students study a video of exemplary acting
-- clips of Ripa from the sitcom Hope & Faith. The
video was shown on the October 22 edition of Live! .
. . A report from the NCAA looking at student
athletes who enrolled between 1993 and 1996 found that ND graduated
a four-year average of 87 percent, trailing only Duke and Northwestern,
both at 89 percent. The report also said Notre Dame graduated
78 percent of its African-American student athletes, sixth-best
nationally, and 81 percent of its football players, which was
seventh-best.
(January 2004)
