This year's Notre Dame Award for international humanitarian service
went to Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan -- except he couldn't
come to campus to pick it up. The award was announced in late
March, by which time the prince had curtailed his travel, a statement
said, because of the war in Iraq. The war was then about a week
old. As of late May the ceremony had yet to be rescheduled. Hassan
is the younger brother of King Hussein, who reigned in Jordan
from 1952 until his death in 1999. He served as the king's political
adviser, confidant and deputy, and founded and has been active
in numerous educational, developmental and humanitarian institutions
in his own country and internationally. . . . Also preempted by
the war -- and also not yet rescheduled -- was a talk by ABC News
anchor and former Clinton administration adviser George Stephanopoulos.
. . . Father Sam Peters, CSC, '01M.Div., who was featured prominently
in a story in this magazine's spring issue on Holy Cross vocations,
was fired as rector of Sorin Hall this spring for having what
a University spokesman termed an "inappropriate sexual relationship"
with an adult female. The spokesman declined to say whether the
woman was a student. The announcement came during finals week.
The Indiana Province of Holy Cross said after the firing that
Peters -- ordained in September 2002, a year after becoming rector
of Sorin -- remained a priest but was not being permitted to exercise
public ministry. The statement said the province felt a responsibility
to get appropriate help for the priest but was "equally concerned
for all parties who have been hurt by his actions or who lose
confidence in Church officials by this public disclosure of violation."
The province added, "We are deeply sorry and apologize for the
betrayal of the trust that the People of God place in those whom
we ordain for sacred duties." . . . College applicants and parents today see Notre Dame as one of the nation's top 10 "dream schools,"
according to a survey. The Princeton Review, a New York-based
company that sells its services and books to assist college applicants
in improving performances on standardized tests and in navigating
the admissions process, asked 1,003 college applicants and their
parents, "What is your dream college -- the school you'd most
like to attend (or see your child attend) if acceptance or cost
weren't issues?" Notre Dame finished eighth in the unscientific
survey, behind Stanford, NYU, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke and
Columbia in the top 10 and ahead of Brown and MIT. . . . Many
of today's students arrive on campus having already banked a boatload
of college credits, thanks to their having taken lots of advanced
placement courses in high school. They typically don't use the
head start to scale back, however. Forty percent of students enrolled
in the College of Arts and Letters double-major, and the figure
is 20 percent Universitywide. This spring The Observer
ran a story about Dan Brunner, who graduated in May with a degree
in computer science after only three years of study. He arrived
on campus with 50 hours of college credits. By cutting a year
off his college career instead of coasting or double-majoring
he saved his parents about $30,000, he told the paper. . . . In
the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of MBA
programs, Notre Dame stands at No. 29. Four years ago the program
was unranked. . . . The next time you're at Notre Dame and want
to prove it, go to the Eck Visitors Center. A postcard kiosk in
the lobby allows you to take a picture of yourself and e-mail
it instantly for $2. (You get two chances at the picture-taking,
in case you don't like the way you look in the first.) If you'd
rather not send a picture of yourself you can e-mail a photo of
the stadium, Main Building, the Visitors Center or Father Sorin's
statue. . . . What appeared to be a marriage proposal in the April
29 issue of The Observer was actually a prank. Senior
Joey Hickey's roommates took out the ad, which read, "Last week
I won Bookstore, this week I win your heart - Melissa, will you
marry me?" It ran one week after the annual Bookstore Basketball
tournament and was in response to a blithe comment Hickey had
made a week earlier. He said that if he won the tournament he
would ask his girlfriend, Melissa, to marry him. Unexpectedly,
Hickey's team, RBC, brought home the championship, and his friends
held him to his word. The bogus proposal drew attention from many,
including Hickey's mother, who heard about it from a friend before
she knew it was a prank. Melissa reportedly recognized it as a
prank the moment she saw it. . . . The Alumni Hall Wake came and
went this year without the traditional decorations, priest-bearing
coffin, and boxer-shorts-and-necktie-only procession. The annual
week-long event, originally a commemoration of the ban on beer
kegs in dorms, began in 1978. It underwent many changes this year
following the Student Affairs' decision last year to discontinue
in-hall dances. A diluted version of the event, held April 12,
included a dance in the LaFortune Ballroom and a solemn procession
in which only dorm leaders and staff were allowed to participate.
The participants were fully dressed and the coffin was empty.
. . . Saint Joseph County Council rejected a proposal by a developer
to build a permanent tailgating park in a residential area a few
blocks east of campus and south of Douglas Road. Go Park Enterprises
reportedly wanted to subdivide the site into 576 oversized parking
spaces and sell them for $10,000 to $15,000. Neighborhood residents
pressured the council to vote down the proposal. . . . Designers
of the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, scheduled
for completion next year, are going to extremes to keep noise
from leaking into the building's five theaters and musical performance
venues from the outside or from the other venues. Each space is
constructed on its own foundation, and the roof is lined with
six-inch-thick concrete slabs (the entire roof is almost a foot
thick). The gothic-looking structure at the south end of campus
has already acquired a nickname in the community: The Castle.
Plans call for Angela Road to be straightened and a public park
to be built on the south side of the building, facing the Northeast
Neighborhood . . . . A new book by scholars at the Carnegie Foundational
for the Advancement of Teaching says today's colleges and universities
generally underemphasize moral and civic education - except Notre
Dame. The authors repeatedly cite the University as an example
of an institution that fosters such learning, particularly in
the Center for Social Concerns. The book is titled Educating
Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates for Lives of Moral
and Civic Responsibility. . . . Saint Mary's College is building
something Notre Dame doesn't have - apartments for students. Groundbreaking
for a three-story apartment building was scheduled for June. "The
goal . . . is to provide more independent housing to students
who might otherwise move off-campus," Saint Mary's spokeswoman
Melanie Engler told The Observer student paper. . . .
James Seida, assistant professor of accountancy, testified before
the Senate Finance Committee in February on an investigative report
into Enron Corporations' use of tax shelters. . . . Some faculty now have students choose an ID number to put on their writing
assignments instead of their names. The professors feel it insulates
them from showing any bias toward papers stemming from students'
classroom behavior. The students tell the professor their number
at the end of the term so the faculty member can total scores.
. . . At every commencement, after officially bestowing degrees
on graduates, Father Malloy takes a few minutes to offer his trademark
extemporaneous remarks. This year he confided that it's his custom
on the night before graduation to go down to the Grotto around
11, take a seat on a bench, and watch family members, students,
first-time visitors. The night before, he told the audience at
commencement, he had seen people kneeling and praying and reflecting
on all that had happened and all that lay ahead. "I really wasn't
there checking to see if they were paying for the candles, as
I was suspected," he said. . . . Monk had an even better line,
unintentionally, earlier in the program. In introducing the principal
speaker, Richard Lugar, Indiana's senior senator, Malloy instead
called him "Indiana's senior citizen." A murmur went through the
crowd. The white-haired Lugar, 71, stepped to the lectern and
declared, "It's true."
(July 2003)
