Live! With Regis and Kelly was
live from Notre Dame on October 24. Regis '53 was here, but Kelly
Ripa co-hosted from the show's regular studio headquarters in
New York City. The day before the broadcast Regis performed a
concert to benefit South Bend's Center for the Homeless. Tickets
weren't cheap -- $30 for the general public and $100 for preferred
seating -- but the show sold out the 900-plus-seat concert hall
of the new Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts.
That raised nearly $80,000 for the homeless center, according
to the center's director. Regis sang selections from his new CD
of standards, When You're Smiling, backed by a 22-piece
pick-up orchestra consisting of 14 Notre Dame students and eight
local professionals. . . . . The Mendoza College
of Business's MBA program jumped five positions into the No. 24
spot on BusinessWeek magazine's biennial survey of the
nation's top 30 business schools. . . . Actor Martin Sheen told
the Washington Post that the creators of NBC's The
West Wing made his character, President Josiah Bartlet, a
Catholic because he, Sheen, is a Catholic, and they made him a
Notre Dame grad "because I'm nuts about Notre Dame." . . . A
few people have been heard referring to the new combination
police station/post office adjacent to Stepan Center -- designed
in the same collegiate gothic style as all recent additions to
campus -- as "Castle Rex." That's a reference to Security/Police
Director Rex Rakow, who has his office there. The Scholastic's
Judgment Calls column earlier this year gave an ambivalent horizontal
arrow to "Campus buildings that look like castles." Wrote the
editors: "While we love that our new buildings contribute to our
image as a Catholic Disney World, do we really need a security
building/post office that Prince Charles could call home?" . .
. The City of South Bend has reportedly filed
a lawsuit against the owners of the Turtle Creek Apartments, saying
they are overlooking underage drinking, public intoxication, indecent
exposure and other illegal activities. Turtle Creek, just east
of campus, has been put up for sale. Asking price: $12.25 million.
. . . The old greenhouse behind Haggar Hall was
demolished in late September to lay new chilled-water lines from
the physical plant. Built in 1949, the greenhouse was the first
construction project overseen by Father Hesburgh after he was
appointed executive vice president. The Jordan Hall of Science,
under construction next to the Joyce Center on Juniper Road, will
have its own greenhouse. . . . The "Gay? Fine by Me"
shirts were back en masse November 17. Hundreds of students have
donned the bright orange T-shirts on selected days the past two
semesters. The demonstrations come in response to the Princeton
Review's guide to the nation's Best 331 Colleges accusing
Notre Dame of having the country's most homophobic campus. This
time organizers also erected a closet out on the South Quad so
that people could "come out," although not necessarily to reveal
their sexual orientation. The Observer reported that
one female student came out of the closet declaring herself "one
hungry, anal-retentive accounting major." . . . One of
those notoriously unscientific polls posted at the website
NDToday.com asked, "Seriously now . . . gays at Notre Dame: fine
by me or not fine by me?" Of the nearly 4,000 votes cast as of
November 20, "not fine by me" led 53 to 47 percent. At one point
several weeks earlier, the vote had been 80-20 the same way. .
. . Though it rates Notre Dame as homophobic,
the Princeton Review says Notre Dame does have the best fans of
its sports teams. . . . For the first time in memory,
The Observer has no student-drawn comic strip. According
to the paper's editor, the editorial board received submissions
but didn't think any were good enough. . . . Unknown vandals
knocked down most of the 1,200 small white crosses planted on
the South Quad by the campus's Right to Life group in mid-October.
The crosses are set out annually in the form of a Cemetery of
the Innocents to symbolize the roughly 3,600 abortions the group
says are performed daily in the United States. The display usually
is set up once a year for a couple of days, but this year, because
of the vandalism, it reappeared a month later. . . . Edmund
R. Haggar Sr. '38 of Haggar slacks and Haggar Hall fame
died in late September at age 88. He was a Life Trustee of the
University, first elected to the board in 1976. On behalf of the
Hagggar Foundation he and his brother Joseph made a $750,000 gift
to the University in 1972 in honor of their father. The gift made
possible the renovation of Haggar Hall, which up until then had
been known as the Wenninger-Kirsch Building. . . . Home
run king Hank Aaron attended the home football game against
Purdue in October as the guest of Frank Belatti '69 and his son,
Greg, a junior. The senior Belatti, chairman and chief executive
officer of AFC Enterprises, which owns the Popeye's and Church's
chicken restaurant chains, is a member of the business college's
advisory council. His company is based in Atlanta, where Aaron
played most of his career, and the two became acquainted through
work on nonprofit projects. A son from a family living in a Habitat
for Humanity house sponsored by AFC Enterprises and built next
to the Atlanta Braves' former stadium is a freshman at Notre Dame
this year. . . . Every day The Observer
carries a man-on-the-street-type poll with brief responses from
six students. On October 6, the Question of the Day was, "What's
your prediction for the football game this weekend?" The printed
responses included "From what I hear I wouldn't want to get too
sick there" and "As long as the cough syrup remains unguarded,
a 10." Those responses were to a different question, "What do
you think of Health Services?" . . . Naval Lieutenant
Ryan O'Connor '02, back on campus for the football game against
Michigan in September, suffered fatal injuries at night after
the game when he was struck by a car as he ran across South Bend
Avenue east of campus. The accident happened around 3:30 in the
morning after he and friends left a bar. Tests later showed he
was intoxicated. The former Siegfried Hall resident was on a two-week
leave after serving six months aboard a ship deployed to the Middle
East. He ran into the path of a car driven by a Saint Mary's sophomore.
The death was ruled an accident, but the driver was ticketed for
having consumed alcohol as a minor. . . . Dean Eileen
Kolman is retiring at the end of this academic year after
15 years as head of the University's celebrated First Year of
Studies program. . . . A football weekend at
Notre Dame is the fifth-best such experience one can have, according
to the campus-newspaper insert Sports Illustrated on Campus.
No. 1 in the magazine's Best College Football Weekend rankings
was Tennessee. Working in Notre Dame's favor: "Students are as
likely to attend home games as they are their own graduation."
But: "South Bend is one dead town -- and Chicago isn't as close
as you think." . . . A sharp debate ensued after
the campus's College Republicans group declined to support an
initiative of the campus Rock the Vote voter- registration group.
ND Rock the Vote wanted to give riders on South Bend's city buses
information on how to register to vote and directions on where
to go on Election Day. The College Republicans said people riding
buses were likely to vote Democrat and they didn't want to give
a boost to the opposition. . . . In a Scholastic
humor column, junior Erik Powers wrote that he has no
qualm with men lying out on the quad with their girlfriends to
tan on sunny days. Here's why: "[W]hen you are in a relationship
you are exempt from criticism for two reasons: 1) It's your duty
to help your girlfriend with suntan lotion, and if you're comfortable
with her putting it on herself or having someone else do it for
her, then she's not really your girlfriend but an awkward breakup
you keep putting off, and 2) In addition to tanning, you do a
lot of things while dating that you wouldn't normally do unless
you were a girl, such as shower and talk about your feelings."
(January 2005)
