CLC aims to aid students, school
By JASON McFARLEY
News Editor
A former student on a recent visit to the University told Knott Hall rector Brother Jerome Meyer that as a Notre Dame undergraduate, he felt like a misfit.
"He came from a different financial and ethnic background than most students," Meyer said Monday at a Campus Life Council meeting. "He said he felt like he never belonged."
Meyer's comments were the springboard into a discussion that led CLC members to form task forces targeting community-building and diversity awareness and communication between students and administrators.
At the group's first meeting of the semester, thoughtful discussion of somewhat sensitive issues brought the council to a consensus to create the new task forces.
"Part of our job is to ensure that everyone feels as comfortable as possible," said Daly Barnes, the Coalition Council representative to the CLC. "If people feel like they're not fitting in because of their cultural differences, then that's something we need to address."
Jesse Flores, a Student Senate representative to the council, said Notre Dame students are uninterested in learning about people different from themselves. Attendance of multicultural events is routinely low, he said.
"There's not that sense of a university where there's a free flow of ideas — on the macro level. I see it more in individual pockets," Flores said.
Members suggested that the trend was related to students' focus on personal — rather than community — goals.
Notre Dame officials annually admit classes of students whose test scores and academic achievement surpass the previous class' success, Pangborn Hall rector Heather Rakoczy said.
"I start to worry that as scores go up, we're getting more individually focused students and not community-focused students," she said, noting that admitted students who were more community-minded would also be interested in multicultural affairs.
David Moss, assistant vice president for student affairs, told members that they should determine what steps other Notre Dame organizations are taking to address diversity issues. "It would be unfortunate if we basically re-did something that was already being done," he said.
One such effort to publicize and boost attendance of campus offerings is a comprehensive University calendar that lists all campus events for a given month, according to Brooke Norton, student body president.
Norton, who is also CLC chair, took care of housekeeping matters Monday, outlining the agenda for the group this semester.
"My goal is to really work on things that will benefit the students and the school," she said, adding that she wanted to use resources available to her as student body president to assist the council's task force work.
The creation of the latest task forces means the CLC is now working on five areas of campus life: off-campus living, alcohol use, social space, community-building and student-administration communication.
Members approved formation of a communication task force to examine perceived tensions between students and University officials.
"The real issue has to do with communication, especially from the standpoint of the tailgating situation," Tim Jarotkiewicz of the Judicial Council said about administrators' crackdown on tailgaters last fall before home football games.
In other CLC news:
uJarotkiewicz, who chairs the off-campus living task force, reported that a housing survey last month generated more than 2,600 undergraduate responses. He expected results to be available soon.
"It was very successful. [Responses] kept coming in like you wouldn't believe," he said.
Moss told the group that senior staff in the Office of Student Affairs was looking forward to receiving survey data from the task force.
uNorton said Father Mark Poorman, vice president for student affairs, offered to speak and answer questions at an upcoming CLC meeting.
uTo accommodate two members' schedule conflicts, council meetings may be held an hour earlier in the future. The change would shift the meeting time to 3:30 p.m. every other Monday.
All News Stories for Tuesday, January 22, 2002
