Ethical business
The winter edition has a five-page article ("Take Your Conscience
to Work") discussing business ethics and how well Notre Dame has
addressed ethics in business. On the very next page there is an
article questioning whether Notre Dame has too many business majors.
Given the ethical condition of corporate America, shouldn't the
question be whether Notre Dame has enough business majors?
Gerry Swider '72
Sherman Oaks, California
"Take Your Conscience to Work" should be read by every college
student and taken to heart. I have been a college professor for
all of my professional career and have followed college curricula
in many colleges. Fifty years ago almost every liberal arts college
required an ethics course of every student; I doubt many still
require this. I wish Notre Dame could become a model for others
to return to this type of instruction so we could change the marketplace
from self-centered greed to that of honesty, truth and altruistic
behavior.
John H. Stoll '75Ph.D.
Sun City, Arizona
I sew and I am fiercely loyal to Malden Mills and Aaron Feuerstein
("Take Your Conscience to Work"). His decision not to outsource
polar fleece manufacturing but instead to rebuild his burned factory
and care for his suddenly out-of-work employees is like Jimmy
Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. In case Harvey the
angel doesn't tell you what really matters, let me try: Ethics
is more than not lying or stealing from our employer. It is seeing
the consequences of our actions as they relate to others -- like
a business ethic that actually teaches the true cost of today's
cheap goods.
Today's pernicious business greed casts its shadow over all
our futures. Right now too many jobs are outsourced, too many
dispossessed families are sleeping in their cars and the factories
our ancestors built brick by brick are shut down. I crave a better
business ethic, and I buy Malden Mills, the last American polar
fleece mill.
Mary Ann Proctor '73
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Good neighbors
"Notre Dame Downtown" provided encouraging news about Notre Dame's
stepping up serious good-neighbor activities with South Bend.
In November we were guest presenters at a gathering of South Bend
neighborhood activists and city planners to assess citizen roles
in public planning organized by the University. It was an evening
of critical defining and discussing the potential of neighborhood
people sharing control with city planners, and it brought forth
impressive ideas. The event demonstrated unusually open and mature
involvement by a University in the civic life of its region.
Patricia Murphy and James Cunningham
University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work
Not so great
Inclusion of Martin Sheen in an otherwise outstanding article
("What's So Great about Notre Dame?") is an insult
to the Notre Dame experience and to those on the list. Sheen is
an actor who uses his fame to promote controversial political
views and to actively support fringe beliefs, such as pacifism.
The show in which he stars, The West Wing, is arguably
slanted and devoid of substance. The fictional association with
the University through his character is overshadowed by this activism.
This and that Sheen-narrated Notre Dame promo ad are just more
examples of Notre Dame trying to be accepted by the so-called
establishment by associating with the cool Catholics. Let's get
some institutional self-esteem.
Pat Timon '88
Louisville, Kentucky
The title "What's So Great about Notre Dame?" gives one a warm,
cozy connotation of provocative intimacy and ethical superiority.
And while the musings and remembrances are nostalgic, we must
take dead issue with a clear theme of the article. Specifically
that it is "great" and "special" for Notre Dame to have single-sex
dorms, parietals, in loco parentis and "SMC chicks."
We are considerably shocked to think that there are still people
in the third millennium who champion parietals and university
babysitting. I dare say a majority of the alumni and a nearly
unanimous student body do not feel the same. What was distinctive
and "Catholic" for the 1960 and '70s is downright absurd and ludicrous
for 2004.
Doug Smego '73 and Mary Ann Shahade Smego '74
Damien, Connecticut
Conference affiliation
While matters of philosophy and emotion percolate through
Notre Dame's discussion of conference affiliation in football,
the decision must be driven by academic self-interest. Conferencing
in football would squander our unique identity, and this uniqueness
provides much of the backdrop and prestige for our whole enterprise.
Worse might be the sacrifice of unshared television and bowl revenues
that support the academic life. Our special example has long been
using athletics to fund academics, and what higher purpose can
college sports have? Of course, the rest of college football would
like to stampede us into giving up our unique nature and will
use the BCS to do it. If they tilt the BCS criteria against us,
let them. Writing us out of the BCS is like writing the Cubs or
Red Sox out of the World Series, at least until Notre Dame football
gets well, which obviously is years away.
John Gaski '71
Notre Dame
The magazine received dozens of responses to the article
"Still in a League of Our Own?" through our React Online feature.
These letters, nearly unanimous in support of retaining independence
in football, are available
online.
* * *
(April 2004)
