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Ticket demand was expected to be so great for a February concert in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center by the New York Philharmonic that a hall administrator organized a ticket lottery. Make that lotteries. One lottery was for tickets set aside for faculty and staff, one for students, and one for members of the South Bend community. Tom Barkes, the center's director of audience advancement, said he sent out an e-mail on December 23 announcing the procedures and by Christmas Day had 610 responses. There were ultimately requests for more than 2,000 tickets. The concert hall holds 961. . . . According to a student familiar with such things, students of legal drinking age regard particular bars as the places to go on particular nights. Here's the barflies' itinerary: Monday, Club 23 on Notre Dame Avenue or Bookmakers Pub (South Bend Avenue); Tuesday, Corby's Irish Pub (East LaSalle); Wednesday, the State Theater Lounge (South Michigan Street); Thursday, The Library Irish Pub, formerly Finnigans (East Wayne Street) or Heartland Night Club (South Michigan Street). There are no designated haunts for Friday and Saturday nights. Many students throw their own parties on the weekends. . . . Charlie Webber, the timekeeper at men's basketball games since 1957 and at the women's games since the 1970s, has donated blood twice a month for 12 years, according to a story in the _South Bend Tribune_. In February he was expected to donate his 300th unit, not far behind the world record of 340 units, credited to a South African as of last August. Webber is able to donate so often because he does so through a process called apheresis, which draws blood out through a filter, takes out the platelets, and returns the rest to the body. . . . In December, Street & Smith's _SportsBusiness Journal_ named Athletic Director Kevin White the 15th-most-influential individual in collegiate sports. No 1 on the list was NCAA President Myles Brand. . . . A team of MBA students won an usual competition in February. The contest combined analysis of a business ethics case with a downhill ski race. Notre Dame bested teams from eight other universities to win the Daniels Cup in the Daniels College Race and Case competition, which was held at the Copper Mountain resort, 75 miles west of Denver. The event was organized by the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business. The Notre Dame MBAs finished second in the ski race and won the case competition, which challenged students to prepare an ethical response to a bill not yet voted into law. . . . Five MBA students won the $12,000 first prize in the Fuqua Produce Strategy Case Competition at Duke University. In the final challenge, the group had 24 hours to come up with a strategy to boost business for the lawn and garden care group of John Deere & Company. The judges were managers with John Deere. . . . Carlos Gutierrez wrote an open letter to the Notre Dame community in December. Not Carlos Gutierrez the former CEO of Kellogg cereals, whom President Bush had nominated to become secretary of commerce. This was Carlos Gutierrez the senior finance and political science double major. The student Gutierrez said he had received 27 e-mails congratulating him on his cabinet nomination. He wrote to explain that, unlike his namesake, he's from Mexico City (not Cuba), he's never worked for Kellogg's, he doesn't have a mustache, "[a]nd most importantly, I have yet to find a job." . . . Former men's basketball coach Digger Phelps, now an ESPN commentator, is moonlighting as an actor. Phelps appeared in the past two Summer Shakespeare productions at Washington Hall and in February co-starred in a production of_ Love Letters,_ also in Washington Hall. The play, which debuted on Broadway in 1989, traces the friendship of two people over the course of 50 years and consists entirely of the two actors reading their correspondence aloud. The performance raised funds for South Bend's Logan Center, which provides resources and opportunities for people with disabilities. . . . As a way to remind people to change their computer passwords more and improve security, the Office of Information Technology is using the analogy of a cat's litter box. The OIT as put up posters showing a photo of a cat with text reading, in part, "'Change the cat box? That's the cat's problem.' Problem piles up. Property values go down." . . . Washing machines on campus now cost $1.50 a load and dryers are $1, both up 25 cents from last year. . . . After the University fired Ty Willingham and Father Malloy declared publically that he disagreed with the decision, it seemed like everyone had an opinion about what to do next. In an editorial written before the hiring of Charlie Weis, the _South Bend Tribune_ said the "best solution" would be to hire Willingham back.. . . . A new course being taught this semester looks at ideas and trends likely to affect society and business over the next 10 years. The 1.5-credit course features eight guest lecturers on topics including the baby boomers' impending retirement, the future of water, and fundamentalism, peace and the Middle East . . . . The role of sports within a Catholic university will be dissected during a conference on campus the weekend of the Navy football game, November 10-12. Speakers scheduled for the Catholic Identity and Collegiate Sports conference include Murray Sperber, author of _Shake Down the Thunder,_ and two scholar-authors who played football for the Irish: Michael Oriard '70 and Allen Sack '67. The event is being planned by the Program in Catholic Social Tradition, an undergraduate minor in Arts and Letters. . . . In an Inside Column in_ The Observer,_ staff photographer Kelly Higgins shared a couple of the jokes she's heard that denigrate Saint Mary's students. One was, "What is the first thing a Saint Mary's girl does when she wakes up in the morning? Puts her pants on and walks back to campus." The other was, "What does a Saint Mary's girl have that a Notre Dame girl doesn't? A rejection letter." Higgins wrote that she's tired of being thought of as a second-class citizen. She says chose to attend Saint Mary's, it wasn't a fallback. She also says Notre Dame woman students sometimes shoot Saint Mary's students dirty looks, thinking the Saint Mary's women are all trying to land Notre Dame men. "I am not spending my time scouring Notre Dame for boys," Higgins wrote. "I don't want to steal them from you." . . . Saint Mary's has closed its undergroun_d_ utilities tunnels to pedestrian use. The tunnels, which connect many of the buildings on campus, had been used for more than 100 years and were a welcome alternative during cold weather. Administrators said they were forced to exclude pedestrians because of new safety codes relating to the electrical and other utility lines in the tunnels.