A group of young men stand waiting on a rural New York state driveway, looking both ways down a road for the approach of a mystery woman. One of them has already fallen in love with her, despite never actually meeting in person.
Driving through downtown Port-au-Prince yesterday, the signs of progress are palpable but serve as a reminder of what was lost.
Trivia question: In what rounds were 1979 grads Bob Golic, Joe Montana and Dave Huffman drafted into the NFL?
A record number of Notre Dame students traveled to Washington, D.C., this week for the annual March for Life.
A male point of view on co-education is similarly inadequate. We all experienced it differently, though most were hardly impacted. There were sightings in the dining halls and an occasional woman in class, but few opportunities for real interaction.
Readers sent us their stories from the early years of co-education. Ready to add your own?
We Notre Dame men knew that the new Notre Dame women were smarter, more prepared and definitely more mature. They had already begun to “grow up and grow deep.” We men were a bit intimidated, and so what do large groups of intimidated males do? They try to be funny; they try to take advantage of larger numbers; they lose sight of decorum.
Every university continually wants to better itself, that means attracting better faculty and better students, and Notre Dame was attracting students from only one half the human race — males. If Notre Dame were open to women that would greatly increase the overall pool, and the quality of the student body should increase.
But what’s been made obvious during this 40th anniversary celebration of co-education is that my 21st century normal was definitely abnormal four decades ago. And the fact that I seldom thought about co-education is a sign of how far Notre Dame has come.
You are eating lunch at Legends on the Notre Dame campus. Televisions are mounted all over the place, and every screen — doesn’t matter what channel — is showing Manti Te’o. The whole episode is almost too incredulous, too bizarre. Parts could almost make you smile, except you feel so bad for Te’o right now. So you scratch your head and wonder who you can believe. And isn’t that the essential thread of this whole saga — what’s true, who’s telling the truth, what is the truth?
When I was here on campus, Harry Nilsson’s “One” was one of the most popular songs, so blaring in and out of the dorms we heard, “One is the loneliest number you’ll ever do.” Being a co-ed pioneer was an exhilarating, baffling, thrill-a-minute adventure, but at times being a pioneer could be very lonely.
A whole day and a half has passed since deadspin.com published its troubling report and I don’t have much worthwhile to say about Manti Te’o ’12 and the Lennay Kekua hoax. Judging by everything I’ve read so far of this sad episode, no one else who writes for a living does, either.
It’s January, the beginning of a new year, a fresh start, a clean slate, an opportunity to look back on 2012 and come up with New Year’s resolutions for 2013. For starters, I’m not listening to “Gangnam Style” one more time during hockey car pool. I’m not turning up the volume and I’m not listening to 8-year-old boys screaming “Hey sexy lady” out the car windows.
When some people hear that I was one of the pioneers they say, “Oh, you were so brave to do that.” Well, no. The brave ones were actually the St. Mary’s transfers who knew exactly what they were getting into and came anyway. Most of us freshmen were just naïve. We were excited, but, frankly, we didn’t know what we were signing on for.
Lance Armstrong should be sorry, particularly to the people he slandered to protect his good name and to the millions of credulous true believers who took him at his defiant word. As for the doping, in and of itself? I’m one of the few people on earth who doesn’t think Armstrong needs to apologize for that.
I’m going to start by saying that as I write this, I am, in fact, wearing red pants. If that strikes you as ludicrous, you probably won’t believe that even though I have never been to Italy, last week I was able to escape a few times a day from South Bend to Florence.
John Doe’s hair looks like it is usually blond, but now it is covered in dried blood and caked to his scalp. Unfortunately, there is often a John Doe in the trauma hospital I work at in Port-au-Prince. People are victims of motor vehicle accidents, falling off of motorcycles or out of tap taps, the brightly colored pickup trucks that function as public transportation. Gun shots tear through their abdomen or bounce off of their skull.
Among the unfinished business at my house as 2012 approached the runway for an emergency crash landing – what with the last-minute Christmas-shopping snafus and an overzealous bulk eggnog purchase for which we are still paying, financially and spiritually – was this: We hadn’t yet awarded The Stewie.
I’m thankful for many things, and I appreciate my sweetheart, my mom, my dad, secretaries, bosses and groundhogs. But we seem to have lots of “holidays” whose biggest significance is keeping florists and greeting-card companies in business. So in the spirit of those made-up celebrations, I hereby propose we institute an anti-holiday holiday.
The strangest transformation took place at the bar after Doc passed. All the regulars, the Penn State guys, all the ND haters all started rooting for ND, to win the National Championship. They all wanted Doc, to go out with a win!
Notre Dame Stadium is quiet now, its bones chilled in the winter winds, its ghosts sitting on hard benches and looking with longing eyes at a snow-covered field. There will be no new banner for them to gaze upon this year, no new statue or monument. For the Fighting Irish finally met their match and lost to Alabama.
I think we knew, out in the tailgate lots in our droves and swarms, the sea of blue and green easily flooding the tide of crimson, that our numbers may not be enough to match their strength.
Notre Dame lost a football game last night. It was a big game. And Notre Dame got bludgeoned. But today, sipping coffee on this morning after, I’m looking back on what we all had all season long as the party partied on from one week to the next, a new gift opened each Saturday, a different surprise popping out of the box — road wins, overtime victories, close calls, rivals vanquished.
I’ve often wondered if Harper, Dorais and Rockne knew when they stepped on the field to play Army a century ago whether it would become a defining moment in the history of Notre Dame. It’s hard not to wonder the same as the Fighting Irish take the field tonight against Alabama.
Welcome to Molarity Redux, the 40th strip in the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends. Is there some big football game on this week?
I’ve seen babies being pushed in strollers, mini ND caps shading them from the sun. I’ve seen middle-age men wearing ND polos, excited to be reunited with their dorm pals and reliving the days before they had wives and children, jobs and worries. I’ve seen children tossing Notre Dame footballs with their young mothers and fathers who have ND bags and towels in tow. What I haven’t seen are a wide variety of Alabama fans.
I have heard tales of times when bowl games were not giant, multiday events filled with sponsors and tents and merchandise. I assume those days were both sepia-toned and anodyne. Also, the exact opposite of what’s been happening in Miami. If you want spectacle, you couldn’t do much better than here.
An Irish fan checks out Alabama’s football history.
Sunny and 80 degrees in January. There really isn’t a better metaphor for Notre Dame’s football season so far than the weather in Miami.