Notre Dame students usually get four days to study between the end of classes and the start of finals, but last fall they only got two. Finals started on Friday and Saturday, December 14 and 15, took a break on Sunday, and resumed on Monday for three consecutive days. Why the odd schedule? Because of a late start. The fall semester generally begins the third Tuesday in August, which happened to be August 21 this year. But an Academic Council rule stipulates that the semester can’t begin before August 22, the idea being that students wouldn’t time to finish internships, vacations, and the like. As a result, classes had to begin on the fourth Tuesday, August 28. There was no way to squeeze in enough class sessions during the semester without pushing back finals and cutting the study days. . . . Someone stole the keys to O’Neill Hall’s government office in February and stole about $2,800 from sales of tickets to the annual Mardi Gras celebration in the men’s hall. After a voice-mail appeal to residents by hall rector Father John Herman, CSC, more than half of money was returned anonymously in an envelope left outside his room. But the rest was still missing. The Mardi Gras event involves parties in rooms throughout the hall and typically draws a large turnout. But there have been problems in the past with excessive drinking and party crashers, Herman said, so the event’s future was in doubt even before the robbery. . . A week and a half after the September 11 terrorist attacks, police closed Douglas Road near Moreau Seminary because of a bomb scare. A graffiti-covered car was found parked in the seminary lot with what looked like wires and a liquid-filled container inside Also, the front passenger seat had been removed. After the bomb squad was called, one of the seminary’s residents, Father Michael Baxter, CSC, defused the situation by informing them that the car belonged to a friend of a friend who was passing through the area. The vehicle’s owner wasn’t a terrorist and there was no bomb. . . . Marketing professor William L. Wilkie won the highest honor given to educators by the American Marketing Association: the Irwin/McGraw-Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award. He specializes in consumer behavior, public policy and advertising, and he’s one of the most frequently published and cited authors in the fields. . . . The space in the basement of LaFortune once occupied by ND Video sat empty all of the 2000-01 academic year. The Student Business Board couldn’t make up its mind on what kind of business should replace the video store, which had trouble competing with the big video chains when it came to stocking new releases. While the pondering continues, two student groups — the Voices of Faith gospel choir and Flipside, the non-alcoholic alternative social club — have been splitting the space. Student businesses in LaFortune each pay the University rent of $1 a month.