Summer-long voting at the official Notre Dame
athletics website, www.und.com, yielded a 25-player All-Century
Basketball Team to commemorate the men's program's 100th season.
One of the most striking details about the players elected is
how much less scoring there used to be. The legendary Moose Krause
led the Irish in 1931-32 with an average of 7.7 points per game.
The only current player to make the All-Century team was point
guard Chris Thomas. . . . As was the case last year,
the 3,000 seats available to students for this year's men's games
sold out in less than three hours. . . . The latest student-
athlete graduate rate report from the NCAA ranks Notre
Dame second among Division I-A (major football power) schools
with a four-year average of 87 percent. Notre Dame tied for second
with Northwestern and Stanford. Duke was No. 1 at 90 percent.
The national average was 61 percent. . . . New government
restrictions on travel to Cuba forced Father Robert Pelton,
CSC, to cancel the trip his From Power to Communion theology class
has taken to the communist island nation during spring break the
past two years. . . . A column in The Observer
at the beginning of the year by Kristin Shrader-Frechette, O'Neill
Family Professor of Philosophy and professor of biological sciences,
contained frightening information about South Bend's air quality.
She wrote that pollution data reported to the EPA by industry
shows that Saint Joseph County's cancer risk from air releases
of known carcinogens makes its air dirtier than 90 percent of
all counties in the United States and that South Bend residents
face a cancer risk 100 times higher than that mandated by the
U.S. Clean Air Act. She then presented evidence that she says
suggests the situation is actually worse than even those figures
indicate. . . . Freshman Angela Maxey and her
father, Jon, cofounder of a humanitarian aid organization called
Bright Light Inc., say they want to launch a large, inflatable
sphere into orbit around the Earth. The International Peace Star,
as they call it, would serve as "a constant reminder of the beauty
that surrounds us and the importance of peace to our future."
More information is available at www.thepeacestar.org. . . . The
Princeton Review and Forbes.com rate Notre Dame as the
nation's second-most entrepreneurially minded university behind
only the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The website
said the 25 schools it identified were the best at teaching undergraduates
how to start their own businesses and supported them with everything
from mentoring to venture funds. . . . A fashion trend
among students this year is to "pop" one's collar, meaning stand
it up. Some deride the practice as imitative of East Coast preppies.
. . . Some members of the marching band were
unhappy that the band traveled to only one away game, Tennessee,
during the regular season instead of the usual two. Director Ken
Dye explained that because it is so expensive for the 360-member
band to travel, the group usually chooses to go to two games close
enough for a single-day roundtrip. This year it was decided that
a two-day trip to Knoxville was more worthwhile than going to
two closer games. The band got a bonus when the Irish accepted
a bid to the postseason Insight Bowl and the University paid to
have the band come along. . . . Huddle Video
opened in LaFortune this fall offering DVD rentals for a pricey
$2.99 a night. . . . . . . Bruno's Pizza offered
students free roundtrip transportation from campus to its Prairie
Avenue location on the city's southwest side Thursday nights to
take advantage of the restaurant's $6.95 all-you-can-eat buffet.
. . . Before the Purdue game, a 68-year-old fan,
James D. Beaty Sr. of Saint Joseph, Michigan, and Boca Raton,
Florida, collapsed and died of a heat attack in the Pendle lot
north of campus. He was said to have had a history of heart problems.
. . . Harry Jenkins, father of Father John Jenkins,
CSC, '76, '78M.A., Notre Dame's president-elect, passed away in
September after being in declining health for several years. He
was 75. John Jenkins was the third of Harry and Helen Jenkins'
12 children, all of whom survive along with Mrs. Jenkins. . .
. Philosophy professor Philip Quinn, a member
of the faculty since 1985, died in November following a long illness.
He was remembered by colleagues a "sweet guy." He was the author
of more than 100 articles and reviews in philosophical journals
and anthologies. He also wrote two books, Divine Commands
and Moral Requirements and The Philosophical Challenges
of Religious Diversity, and co-edited a third.. . . . There
are now two alternative student newspapers on campus:
the conservative Irish Rover, now in its second year
and published roughly twice a month, and the new Advocata
Nostra, described as a newsletter of Catholic orthodoxy.
The latter hopes to publish monthly. . . . Students often
bemoan the state of gender relations on campus and usually
blame it on single-sex dorms. At the new Gender Relations Center,
which opened last fall in the LaFortune Student Center, students
can "explore," among other things, how to cultivate "healthy friendships
and dating relationships," according to the head of Student Affairs,
Father Mark Poorman, CSC, '80M.Div. . . . The back
of this year's Lewis Hall ("Chicks") T-shirt consisted of a list
in the tradition of MasterCard's "priceless" commercials. Understanding
the references required some help, provide here in parentheses.
The shirt read: "Lakeside view: $650,000 (imagined cost of waterfront
property, somewhere; Lewis is near Saint Joseph's Lake); Kitchens
on every floor: $75,010 (imagined cost of four kitchens plus $10
for cookie dough); Working elevator: $40,000; Walks to DeBartolo:
$80 (estimated cost of a class skipped in the large classroom
building that some residents consider to be a long trek); Being
a Chick: Priceless." . . . In an Inside Column
in The Observer, Assistant Scene Editor Christie Bolsen
confessed that she is such a nerd that she carries a travel-size
stapler in her backpack "for emergency in-class paper stapling."
. . . In a Scholastic Magazine humor
column, junior Erik Powers described his plan to avoid getting
a job after college by instead becoming a "trophy husband." Step
one was to transfer to Saint Mary's, where, as he put it - begging
feminist rebuke - he would be able to "learn about being a trophy
spouse from the girls who do it best." The women of Saint Mary's,
he wrote, could teach him how to "spot future cardiologists, corporate
lawyers and stockbrokers." . . . Asked to comment
on the dazzling academic credentials of the latest freshman class,
admissions director Dan Saracino told The Observer, "If
you brag too much about the class, it's like a hospital bragging
about the health of the patients coming in. The mark of the school
is what they've done when they leave." . . . Relations
continue to be rocky between students living in rental
houses off-campus and the permanent residents of the neighborhoods.
The complaints usually concern students' large, loud, late-night
parties. One resident told the South Bend Tribune he'd
seen students urinating in his yard and having sex outdoors in
plain view. A South Bend city council member organized several
forums last fall for students, residents, police and city officials
at which they could air grievances and try to resolve conflicts.
. . . A couple of Notre Dame students abroad
in London were assaulted in the lobby of their flat last fall,
but neither was seriously hurt. The incident took place after
midnight, according to one of the students involved. He gave this
account: Two Englishmen in their 20s were standing outside a pub
across the street from the flat, apparently drunk. They began
yelling over to the three Notre Dame students who had just come
outside. The students retreated inside. The men came over and
began banging on the door. A female student, unaware of the situation,
let them in. The men came in yelling and swinging fists. One student
was cut when he was hit in the head with a thrown telephone receiver.
The men swore and spat and referred to the students insultingly
as foreigners. The student witness said the ruckus may have been
sparked by another student overhearing a loud conversation outside
the pub earlier in the evening and making a comment to his friends
that was overheard by those at the pub. Last spring a group of
students abroad in Fremantle, Western Australia, were taunted
by drunken off-duty police officers because of their nationality
and the assailants' displeasure over the U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq. The London student said he didn't think the war or their
nationality played a major role in this incident. . . . Here's
another reason to purchase football tickets through legitimate
channels: According to an account in the South Bend Tribune,
a South Bend man posted a message on the fan site ndnation.com
saying he was looking to buy six tickets to the home game against
Pittsburgh. A stranger e-mailed back saying his dead father had
been a Notre Dame professor and he had eight tickets near the
50-yard line. After the two talked on the phone, the first man
wired $360 to the seller via Western Union. Needless to say, the
six tickets never arrived. The phone number the seller gave him
wouldn't receive incoming calls and appeared to be a pay phone.
Notre Dame has no affiliation with ndnation.com. . . . The
talk of campus at the start of fall semester was the
federal government's decision to revoke the visa of a famous Muslim
scholar hired to teach in the Kroc Institute for International
Peace Studies. Most of the letters to The Observer's
Viewpoint page said they wanted Tariq Ramadan, named by Time
magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world,
to be allowed into the country to teach. Some Jewish groups are
suspicious of Ramadan, saying he may have ties to Muslim extremists.
But members of the Law School's new Jewish Law Students Society
wrote a letter to newspapers supporting Ramadan's hiring and condemning
the government's action. . . . In addition to the Jewish
law students' group, also new to campus this year is
the Jewish Club of Notre Dame. President Leah McKelvey '05, whose
mother is Jewish and father Catholic, says the purpose of the
club is to "celebrate diversity and acceptance within the Notre
Dame community and beyond by learning together through discussion
and events." The club has about 20 dues-paying members, she says.
. . . Young children living on South Bend's mostly
poor, minority-heavy west side wanted the Irish football team
and its coach, Ty Willingham, to feel better after the team's
last-second loss Pittsburgh, and they expressed their feelings
to one of the South Bend Tribune's columnists. Nine-year-old
Traveon Johnson told columnist May Lee Johnson that he wanted
the players to know they had played well. "I think you are one
of the best teams in the world, and you have a great coach who
is black," he was quoted as saying. "I'd never seen a black coach
until Tyrone Willingham came. Now I see one all the time when
I watch the game. That makes me and my friends feel really good."
Willingham was fired after the team's regular-season finale, a
31-point loss to Southern Cal. . . A van carrying the
men's golf team to a practice in Michigan in mid-September
was sideswiped by a semi when the van's driver, a freshman on
the team, tried to make an illegal U-turn on the Indiana Toll
Road. The accident would have been worse if the truck driver hadn't
taken evasive action to avoid plowing into the back of the van,
which was decelerating quickly to make the turn from the speed
lane. No one was seriously injured. Students who hold drivers
licenses are allowed to drive University vehicles after they have
completed a training course. . . . Student government
is trying to create a SafeBus service that would provide students
cheap bus service from downtown back to campus and nearby apartment
complexes in the early morning hours on weekends. . . . With
the nationwide shortage of flu vaccine and strict guidelines
issued by the federal government for whom should receive the doses,
the University couldn't offer free vaccines to all employees and
students this year, as in years past. Health Services was authorized
to administer the vaccine only to people who met the criteria
for being at higher risk. However, because the University ordred
and received its supply of the vaccine before the restrictions
were announced, Health Services ended up with almost twice as
many doses as it could use. The University decided to donate the
surplus - nearly a thousand doses - to a local community group,
Healthy Communities Initiative, which helps provide health care
to people with no ability to pay for it. . . . Athletic
Director Kevin White was appointed president of the Division
I-A Athletic Directors Association for 2004-05. . . . Anne
"Sandy" Barbour, deputy director of athletics under White
the past two years, was named the first female athletic director
at the University of California-Berkeley.
(January 2005)
