Emil T. Hofman, the legendary chemistry professor emeritus and former dean of First Year of Studies, has made two trips this past year to Notre Dame’s Holy Cross Hospital in Leogane, Haiti. The clinic, which combats HIV/AIDS and labors to eradicate lymphatic filariasis (also known as elephantiasis), is operated in conjunction with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is supported in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The 85-year-old Hofman, who estimates that he taught 32,000 students over his 40-year teaching career, is now looking for some of those alumni, particularly physicians, to make a four-day reconnaissance visit to the clinic, headed by Rev. Thomas G. Streit, CSC. Visitors would be met at the Port-au-Prince airport, transported to Leogane and stay in a modern, secure facility. For more information, contact Hofman.2@nd.edu or Haiti@nd.edu. . . . Rev. John Jenkins, CSC, issued his decision April 5 on the status of The Vagina Monologues at Notre Dame. In January the University president had initiated a conversation on academic freedom and the University’s Catholic character that was spurred, in part, by The Vagina Monologues and the annual Queer Film Festival. Father Jenkins addressed the topic in several campus talks, met with faculty and students, took the discussion to alumni via email, and sought responses from all members of the Notre Dame community. His “Closing Statement,” which allows future performances of Monologues, may be read at president.nd.edu/closingstatement/index.shtml. . . . In our spring issue, we reported that Notre Dame ranked second in the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate (GSR) scale. That ranking only applied to Notre Dame’s place among the 26 Division I-A football schools. Among all Division I schools, Notre Dame is tied for third place with Valparaiso, with the Naval Academy ranking second. Radford University in Virginia was ranked first, with a 100 percent GSR. . . . .A crowd estimated at more than 2,000 cheered the 2006 edition of The Shirt at unveiling ceremonies outside the Hammes Bookstore in April. This year’s version of the fund-raising T-shirt is navy blue and features a gold football helmet and the word “Tradition” in block letters on the front. The back includes pictures of Knute Rockne, Ara Parseghian, Lou Holtz and Charlie Weis as well as the Four Horsemen. The Knute Rockne quote, “This is the day and you are the team” anchors the back design. . . .
Randy McCloy, Jr. may not yet have the 2006 version of “The Shirt,” but the lone survivor of the Sago Mine explosion in West Virginia was seen in TV interviews wearing a Notre Dame baseball cap upon his release from the hospital. And there is a back story explaining how that came to be. Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, was moved by the January 2 disaster and sent a letter to the McCloys expressing his admiration for the family’s courage and his intention to keep them in his prayers. During a subsequent phone conversation, Anna McCloy, Randy’s wife, told Father Jenkins that her husband was a Fighting Irish fan. The Notre Dame athletic department then sent the recovering miner a gift package containing hats, T-shirts, sweatshirts and a blanket. Football coach Charlie Weis and Athletic Director Kevin White also sent McCloy ND memorabilia. . . . Junior Michelle Shiriaev was selected as one of 33 princesses for the Indianapolis 500 Festival. Shiriaev and the other young women from 10 Indiana colleges and universities were chosen on the basis of communication skills, academic performance and community work. . . . “Kevin Keller, come on down!” the announcer boomed, and the next thing the Notre Dame Glee Club senior knew he had won $21,621 in prizes on The Price is Right TV show. Keller, who was the tour manager for the Glee Club’s spring break tour to California, had made arrangements for 25 Glee Club members to attend the March 16 taping, which aired in early April CBS. . . . Also recently on the tube, Professor A. James McAdams, director of the University’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies, was featured in the National Geographic Channel documentary “Megastructures: The Berlin Wall,” which aired in March. The Dr. William M. Scholl Professor of International Studies, who lived and traveled in East Germany during the 1980s, offered commentary on the political significance and history of the wall that divided the city for four decades until 1989. . .. . . . You also may have seen Professor Robert Coleman on NBC the week of May 21. The Notre Dame art historian appeared on Jesus Decoded, a rebuttal to the sensational film The Da Vinci Code. In the documentary, which featured biblical scholars and art historians “setting the record straight,” Coleman debunked many of the film’s assertions about da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper_. . . . And yet another faculty member on the airwaves was Professor Teresa Ghilarducci, who was featured in the PBS Frontline documentary on baby boomers and retirement which aired the week of May 15. . . . No butts about it anywhere—well with two exceptions. In compliance with a new Saint Joseph County antismoking ordinance that took effect in April, Notre Dame now prohibits smoking in all buildings, stadiums and vehicles owned, leased or operated by the University. The two exceptions are the University Club bar area and the Morris Inn, which maintains a few smoking rooms for guests. . . .While you may not be able to smoke in the football stadium, by next fall your cell phone should work better during a football game. A distributed antenna system, consisting of 16 small antennas discreetly placed around campus, is scheduled to be completed by August 1. The upgrade should enhance cell phone reception, which has been notoriously poor on game days and in certain dead spots on campus. . . . It was the ring, but not a phone ring that concerned Notre Dame defensive back Tom Zbikowski last March and June. The scrappy special teams star TKO’d amateur heavyweight Artese Plaire (23-4) in the second round of a three-round charity boxing match in Merrionette Park, Illinois. As a result of the impressive showing, the former Silver Gloves national finalist was slated for his first professional boxing match at Madison Square Garden on June 10. According to NCAA bylaws, a student athlete is allowed to be a pro in one sport while maintaining amateur status in another. Zbikowski said he had official permission for the fight. “Coach Weis likes the toughness, so he’s gonna let me do it,” the Arlington Heights, Illinois, native said prior to the March bout. . . . Economic sanctions can be an effective weapon in the fight against rogue states and should be employed to coerce the Sudanese government to end the genocide in Darfur, Professor George Lopez, a senior fellow in Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, testified in May at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. Lopez, who has conducted research on sanctions for 15 years, told the subcommittee that the United Nations has sharpened the sanctions tool since the 1990s “oil-for-food” program in Iraq gave them a bad name due to abuse and mismanagement. Lopez’s full report to the subcommittee may be viewed on line at kroc.nd.edu/research/sanctions_oilfood.shtmloilfood.shtml . . . . Notre Dame continues to fare well with parents in the ratings game. According to the recently released Princeton Review, the University ranked fourth among parents as the “dream college” they would most like their children to attend. The schools ahead of Notre Dame were, in order, Princeton, Stanford, Harvard. The Princeton Review, it should be noted, is not affiliated with Princeton University. . . . Business Week Magazine ranked Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business third nationally for its undergraduate program, behind only the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. The magazine’s May 8 edition cited Notre Dame for its “rigorous classes requiring teamwork skills and an intimate knowledge of economics, calculus, and corporate strategy.” The magazine noted favorably that the “curriculum works ethics into most classes, requires that half of all course work be in nonbusiness subjects, and emphasizes group projects.” . . . The numbers don’t look good when it comes to how well Notre Dame and other elite schools do in enrolling low-income students, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Using the proportion of undergraduates holding Pell grants as an indicator, the special report ranked Notre Dame 49th among private schools, with 9.7 percent of undergraduates receiving Pell grants. In order to qualify for the federal program, a student’s family must have an income of $40,000 or less. Among private schools, Berea College in Kentucky with 80.8 percent had the best Pell record. Smith College was second with 25.9 percent. Notre Dame lagged behind such peer schools as Columbia (16 percent), MIT (14.7), Dartmouth (13.6), Stanford (13), Brown (11.5), Georgetown (10.4) and Boston College (10.3 percent). . . . Dean Carolyn Woo was recently a guest at the White House. She and her husband, David Bartkus, were invited to an April 21 luncheon for Chinese President Hu Jintao hosted by President Bush. The Notre Dame business dean said she mingled with U.N. ambassador John Bolton, shook hands with Vice President Dick Cheney and exchanged greetings with “fellow Domer” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ’75M.A. Among the other 175 guests were U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, figure skating champion Michelle Kwan and Henry Kissinger. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was the host of the table at which Woo sat.