Hours before President George W. Bush spoke from his Texas ranch in August, 2001, to explain the administration’s new policy on funding for embryonic stem cell research, his aides told reporters that the momentous decision was comparable to sending troops to war.

The metaphor rang true for a controversy that had bitterly alienated the scientific community from religious leaders. Many people of faith — especially Catholics — held that research which destroys human embryos is always unacceptable. Biologists, who claimed no lesser love for human life, stressed that stem cells from embryos could bring treatments for diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson’s. Almost nightly, the two camps hashed out their differences in the primal scream debate format of cable news shows.…

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Senior Luis Matos prays the rosary on the South Quad during an awareness-raising camp out organized by the Notre Dame Peace Coalition. In late February, 2002, 31 people slept overnight in tents during a snowstorm to express solidarity with Afghan refugees.

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Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2002…

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Edward O. Wilson and Wendell Berry are unlikely opponents in the cultural war. Both men have roots in rural America. Both men are motivated by a love of nature. Both men are prolific writers whose work is represented almost side by side in the The Norton Book of Nature Writing. Both men see environmental catastrophe in the offing if humans continue their wanton ways. Both men champion conservation and biodiversity.…

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A recent PBS documentary on the bitter Joe Louis-Max Schmeling rivalry brought to my mind another larger-than-life boxer named Max. He was a Polish-American from Chicago who earned a Notre Dame football scholarship in 1933, the same year he beat Joe Louis in the Golden Gloves finals in Boston. He thereafter billed himself as “The Man Who Beat Joe Louis.” …

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For my 20th reunion last June I decided to bike to Notre Dame from Chicago. I have driven the sterile toll road route a hundred times, often wondering what the bike route would be like. The reunion gave me a purpose to be in South Bend, so I went for it.

My back-of-the-envelope navigation put the bike ride at 90 to 100 miles, with much of it on trails or back roads, so I knew it was doable. My mother and my sister tried to talk me out of it, but I was determined to ride.…

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When I arrived as a freshman at Notre Dame in 1980, it was the first time I’d been away from my parents. Having lived in Hawaii all my life, my contact with the mainland United States was minimal; Disneyland at age 10 was it. I saw snow only on TV. South Bend, Indiana, was as foreign to me as most Midwesterners would consider Hawaii’s culture and customs to be. I was definitely a fish out of water.…

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Alumni Association Awards

The James F. Armstrong Award will be presented to Father Paul F. Doyle, CSC, ’65, ’75M.Th., at Alumni Senate in April in recognition of his distinguished service to the University. Doyle was a trustee and fellow of the University from 1991 to ’97 during his tenure as religious superior of the Holy Cross priests for the Indiana Province. He is associate rector of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and has been rector of Dillon Hall since 1997.…

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President Bush’s chief speech writer during his second term will be former Wall Street Journal editorial-page writer William McGurn ‘80. . . . John Walker ’78 produced the Academy Award-winning animated feature The Incredibles. . . . Brett Galley ’97 was on the team of doctors at Loyola University Medical Center, west of Chicago, that cared for the world’s smallest surviving baby. The infant girl weighed 8.6 ounces at delivery last September. . . . The Illinois Republican Party elected Andrew McKenna ‘79…

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Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon’s First Years

, Michael J. Collins, M.D., ’71 (St. Martin’s Press). A fast-paced memoir of the fear, heartbreak, humor and triumph of the author’s four-year residency in orthopedic surgery. Can that young boy’s leg be saved? How do you tell a woman she has widespread cancer? And when do you stop being bone tired? “We were learning that all the training and all the caring in the world were not going to solve every problem,” Collins writes. What he also learns is the role he truly plays as a doctor, a role in which compassion is integral to the treatment.…

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Wonderfall

, wonderfall. The brothers Bregande—guitarists/vocalists Dave ‘95 and Joe—and bassist John Fletcher ’92 have been playing music together since 1998. Music should make you move, the band members believe, and that pop sensibility comes through in their melodic, energetic CD. The musicians, who released the CD Monday Morning, Start Again…

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Commenting on the pending collision between the planet Earth and a giant comet, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan had this to say in January:

“While it remains to be seen what the ultimate impact of the comet will be, I would recommend that people pay only the minimum on your credit card balance.”…

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On Father Malloy

If you think Father Malloy has preserved our Catholic identity, you lead a very narrow existence—i.e. the ND spokesperson on TV-in-house heretic McBrien and Vagina Monologues for four straight years. He’s a scandal and he’s embarrassed!

George Meyer
Concordia, Kansas

Your article on Father Malloy was very interesting. His long and distinguished career as president of Notre Dame will be long remembered by the students of the University, both past and present. …

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Father Malloy’s presidency

In “The Pastoral Presidency of Monk Malloy,” I believe one line was left out of the sidebar table of information entitled “Measuring Up.” That would be the cost of tuition. Even with the increase in financial aid awarded, is Notre Dame still within the reach of the middle class where so many of my classmates came from when I attended the University?…

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The destruction of southern Louisiana by flood water is a thing of beauty. Not in reality, of course; that would be a terrible calamity. But on Joannes Westerink’s computer screen it appears as graceful swirls of red, yellow and blue undulating in a green sea, morphing over time across a map of the coast. The image, which could be abstract art, is in fact an animated graph of what would happen to the Louisiana coastline from a hurricane-generated storm surge. The undulating colors signify the depth of the flow, increasing from yellow to red.…

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Someday SB-3CT might save your life. The collection of letters and numbers is chemical shorthand for a novel compound that has shown promise in stopping cancer spread and lessening the effects of a stroke.

Designed and synthesized by Notre Dame Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Shahriar Mobashery and his colleagues, the compound has the ability to inhibit two enzymes, MMP…

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The declining interest in reading is a cause of concern for Mark Roche, Notre Dame’s dean of Arts and Letters. His new book, Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century, published by Yale University Press, makes the case that great literature is being neglected today even though it is needed more than ever. Among other things, we recently asked the scholar of German literature why he believes that to be so and what does Liberty Valance have to do with all this any way?…

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How did Notre Dame’s art students do representing the United States at the Global Design Laboratory 2004?

Notre Dame was the only North American university chosen to compete at what is known as the Olympics of product design. For the contest, which culminated in New York City in November, 2004, students were challenged to develop concepts for new kitchen and laundry appliances for three distinct client groups: baby boomers, urban dwellers and people living in developing nations.…

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A course that has been taught here for years, Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Warfare, is enjoying renewed interest in the wake of fears about weapons of mass destruction.

The class teaches not only about the physics and technological aspects of nuclear weapons but covers ethical, legal and social dimensions.…

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Every year about 200 students fail the University’s mandatory swimming test and have to take eight weeks of swimming lessons.

The test requires students to complete four 25-meter lengths of the Rolfs Aquatic Center pool demonstrating both front and backstrokes.

The swimming requirement is believed to date to World War II, when drowning was a more frequent cause of death and the Navy encouraged colleges to institute swimming requirements and training.…

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Notre Dame senior Paul Joice opens his e-mail inbox and finds one new message. A young woman has requested to become his friend. But before that can happen, the message informs him, he has to confirm that they are, in fact, already friends.

Confused? You wouldn’t be if you were a college student and had heard of thefacebook.com, as most have.…

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The Folk Choir is planning what figures to be an enormous reunion concert in the Basilica on May 7, 2005, to celebrate the choir’s 25th anniversary (and raise money for the Holy Cross missions). For more information, visit www.nd.edu/~folk/reunion.html or contact Kelly Kingsbury (kkingsbu@nd.edu, 574-472-1034 or 574-631-7270), the choir’s alumni relations officer.…

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Tariq Ramadan, the renowned Muslum scholar who was expected to begin teaching about peace at Notre Dame this past fall but couldn’t because the government wouldn’t let him into the country, officially resigned his appointment in December.

In a letter informing the University of his decision he cited stress on him and his family because of the uncertainty of their position. Ramadan, who lives in Switzerland, was hired to teach in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the classics department. But last August, after his furniture had already been shipped to South Bend, his visa was revoked by the State Department acting on a recommendation from the Homeland Security Administration. No specific information was provided to Ramadan or Notre Dame on the reasons for the revocation, except that it involved matters of “national security.”…

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U.S. 31 Business is as far west as he goes. Eddy Street is as far east. He won’t head farther north than Corby Street, and two miles south of campus is his limit.

What, you might wonder, is contained in this geographical block?

Landlord Mark Kramer’s off-campus housing kingdom.…

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Compiled by Ed Cohen

Number of campus buildings today: 136

Number in 1976: 91

Number in 1844: 5

Number of chapels on campus: 58

Number at Georgetown: 6

Number at Boston College: 5

Tuition and room and board this year: $36,930

Tuition and room and board next year: $39,552.

Tuition and room and board 1985-86: $10,291 …

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Liquid error: no implicit conversion from nil to integer

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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…

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February brought the second Notre Dame Queer Film Festival and the fourth performance of the Vagina Monologues and plenty of talk about whether either event should take place at a Catholic university. Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend wrote letters criticizing both. Among those writing to The Observer,…

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February 9 was the first day of the new year. Oh, perhaps not to most people at Notre Dame, some of whom may have spent January 1 recovering from their celebration of the night before. But for the Asian community on campus, it was the Lunar New Year and it was time to celebrate.…

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EDWARD J. CRONIN ‘38, a legendary professor in the Program of Liberal Studies who taught at Notre Dame for nearly 50 years, passed away on Christmas Day at age 88. He so loved what he taught —literature, especially James Joyce’s Ulysses — that in class he would often read aloud a line from a book and ask, “Isn’t that beautiful?” He said his wish was to die sitting on a bench at the Grotto reading Dickens. He actually was at a local nursing home when he died. The PLS…

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Scholastic

News magazine

Begun: 1867

Frequency: every other week while classes are in session

Size: 28 to 52 pages

Circulation: 7,100 distributed free on campus, 400 mailed subscriptions ($35/year)

Staff: 30-35

Salaries: $300 to $400 per semester for editors

Funding: Student Activities allocation plus some advertising and subscriptions…

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