Athletic director Kevin White, now beginning his fourth year
on the job, received a two-year contract extension. His original
five-year contract had already been extended five years and now
reaches to 2012. Notre Dame was the only school last fall to qualify
all six of its teams for NCAA tournament play or a football bowl
game. After the fall sports the Irish stood third in the standings
for the all-sports Directors' Cup. . . . Women's volleyball coach
Debbie Brown received the NCAA Silver Anniversary Award, which
recognizes former student athletes who have distinguished themselves
since completing their college athletics careers 25 years ago.
She has led her teams to NCAA tournament appearances in 15 of
16 years as a head coach, including 10 straight with Notre Dame.
. . . Bishop Joseph R. Crowley, former auxiliary bishop of the
Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, died in early February at age
88. He retired in 1990. . . . Three Notre Dame faculty received
research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities
for 2003, bringing to 16 the number of NEH fellowships won by
the faculty the past four years -- the most of any university.
The latest winners are Donald Crafton of the Department of Film,
Television and Theatre, English professor John Duffy, and art
history professor Meredith Gill. . . . The Sporting News
listed football coach Tyrone Willingham 39th on the publication's
annual Power 100 list of the most powerful people in sports. The
Sporting News earlier named Willingham Sportsman of the Year
for 2002. . . . The Snite Museum hosted the provocative photo
exhibit "Girl Culture," by contemporary American photographer
Lauren Greenfield. A frank and sometimes disturbing collection
of images interspersed with text from interviews, Girl Culture
explored the world of showgirls, ballet dancers, athletes, beauty
queens and others. The campus showing closed March 9, but future
exhibits are planned for Davenport, Iowa; Salt Lake City, Utah;
and Ithaca, New York. . . . For a while a tiny penguin appeared
in almost every issue of Scholastic magazine. The nearly
subliminal image was the idea of a staff member who had taken
a picture of his own plastic penguin and began inserting it discreetly
into one photo per issue via image-editing software. The penguin-inserter
was studying abroad spring semester, so the penguin disappeared.
No word yet on whether next year's staff will revive the idea.
. . . A Notre Dame theology professor received the same award
as pop singer Ricky Martin at a ceremony last September. Father
Virgilio P. Elizondo, visiting professor of theology and associate
director of Latino theology and pastoral concerns in the Institute
of Latino Studies, was presented a 2002 Hispanic Heritage award
during a ceremony at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Other winners
included the founder and publisher of People en Espanol
and a Mexican-American Olympic gold-medal-winning speed skater.
Elizondo was honored for his "worldwide impact upon Hispanic religion."
He served for many years as pastor of a cathedral in San Antonio
whose Sunday Spanish Mass became famous throughout Latin America.
It was televised and carried via satellite to more than a million
households. . . . Project Warmth, which collects new and used
coats for people in need of winter clothing, had a record year.
People donated more then 4,700 coats between late October and
early December. Zahm Hall collected the most -- 898, nearly four
coats per resident. After cleaning at no charge by Saint Michael's
Laundry, the coats are distributed to community service agencies
in South Bend. . . . Sophomore Jordan Cornette broke former UCLA
star Bill Walton's Joyce Center record of 10 blocked shots in
a game when he swatted 11 in an early season victory over Belmont.
. . . In a memorable Week in Distortion column in Scholastic,
sophomore Jessica Cisewski analyzed the ups and downs, ins and
outs of thong underwear. One of the chief advantages: elimination
of the dreaded VPL (Visible Panty Line). "This makes perfect sense
-- after all, we wouldn't want anyone walking around behind us
thinking we actually wear underwear. That is one of a girls' best-kept
secrets." . . . A group of Saint Mary's College students stood
outside O'Laughlin Auditorium handing out flyers to people entering
to see the Keenan Revue, the annual comedy-variety show put on
for free by the men of Keenan Hall. The flyer listed definitions
of terms including sexism, misogyny and denigrate, and suggested
the Revue perpetuated hateful stereotypes. Particular attention
was paid to a skit that said Saint Mary's was named not for the
Virgin Mary but "Saint Mary Magdalene, patron saint of whores."
The flyers didn't appear to discourage any show-goers -- including
hundreds of Saint Mary's students -- and the performance drew
its usual mix of mostly raucous laughter and occasional groans.
The show program was patterned after a baseball program and included
a seventh-inning stretch in the second act with a sing-a-long.
The revised "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" seemed to speak to critics:
"Take me out to the Re-vue/Take me out to the show/Guys with fake
titties and jokes about Zahn/Don't forget the one 'bout your mom/So
let's laugh, laugh, laugh with old Kee-nan;And if you don't like
what we do/Then it's/"Up/yours/the tickets were free."/At the
old Re-vue.". . . . It didn't get the loudest laughs and it may
not have been original, but one of the brainier lines in this
year's show came in a sketch that imagined headlines from the
year 3000 (a rip-off of Conan O'Brien's "In the Year 2000" bit).
One millennium hence, the prognosticator announced, the American
public will be outraged when Johnson & Johnson discloses that
baby powder is, in fact, made out of babies.
