Quo vadis, Father Warner? Notre Dame’s longtime director of campus ministry has traded his third floor office in the Coleman-Morse Center for new digs in Rome. In July, Rev. Richard Warner, CSC, ’62 was elected superior general of the Congregation of Holy Cross after 21 years leading campus ministry. In his new job, Warner will oversee the educational, missionary and pastoral presence of the order’s 1,500 priests and brothers on five continents. He is accustomed to senior leadership, having also served as counselor to former University President Rev. Edward Malloy, CSC, ’63 and as religious superior of the order’s Indiana Province from 1979 to 1988. Rev. Joseph Carey, CSC, ’62, a campus ministry chaplain and former rector of Dillon Hall, will preside over all aspects of student faith life on campus in Warner’s place until a permanent successor is selected from the congregation next spring. . . . Spiritual buildup over the last 25 years may be the best answer for why the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes burst into flame half an hour before the evening rosary on July 26. Inspectors could not determine a cause for the blaze, which was quickly extinguished by four campus firefighters, leaving the grotto’s ivy brow lightly singed. This was not the first time the beloved campus prayer spot has caught fire. The last flare-up in September 1985 was attributed to the combustion of heavy carbon residue, triggering a limit on the number of candles allowed to burn inside the cave at any one time. This time around ND Fire Chief Bill Farhat said the holy site’s heat-resistant granite helped it withstand significant structural damage, but who’s to say that prayer didn’t help a little, too? . . . The 50-bed field hospital that stood outside the gates of the Notre Dame Haiti Program’s residential headquarters in Léogâne, Haiti, as part of this year’s vital earthquake relief effort, has closed. Partially sponsored by the St. Paul, Minnesota-based World Wide Village in partnership with Notre Dame and InterVol, the tent hospital was christened by Anglican bishops in March as the temporary site of the town’s main healthcare center, Hôpital Sainte Croix. Operations moved to the hospital’s original building in August, after structural repairs were completed on the part that was salvageable after the January 12 quake. Tristan Hunt ’10 has put off his first year in medical school at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons to coordinate ongoing missions of medical, surgical and nursing teams to Leogane through InterVol, a Rochester, New York-based medical charity founded by Dr. Ralph Pennino ’75, and related networking efforts at the University. Prospective volunteers may contact Hunt at thunt2@nd.edu. . . . Police arrested more than 40 people attending a midsummer party on South Bend’s East Washington Street, including a reported 27 ND student athletes representing several sports. Most of the arrests cited misdemeanor underage drinking violations. According to The Observer, police raids on four student parties produced another 61 arrests during the week classes began in August. University officials affirmed that they do not condone underage drinking or disorderly behavior but expressed concerns about the manner in which state and local police handled some of the incidents. A spokesman for the Indiana State Excise Police told the student newspaper that officers encountered resistance even when they presented a search warrant at an August 29 party at which 35 people were arrested, including one who was charged with battery to a police officer. . . . The flooding DuPage River in Naperville, Illinois, may have claimed the life of a teenage girl in July were it not for the quick action of Erik Bock. The Notre Dame junior heard screams coming from the river as he worked in his parents’ yard and ran to find the girl pinned in rushing water between a wooden construction beam and fallen tree limbs. Bock, a theology major, pried the beam away and pulled the girl to safety, but he brushes aside praise for his heroism, telling a local reporter he was just doing what his parents had raised him to do. . . . The Hall has summoned Muffet McGraw. The head coach of the Fighting Irish was named to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in July as the only coach in the enshrinement class of 2011, making her the ninth currently active college coach selected for the sport’s top honor. Entering her 24th year at Notre Dame, McGraw’s statistical accomplishments include 613 wins (525 at ND), a .715 lifetime winning percentage, two Final Four appearances and the 2001 national championship title. The induction weekend is set for June of 2011 at the Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tennessee. . . . Budget loads borne by local governments in the down economy were lightened this year thanks to the second annual distribution from Notre Dame’s 10-year, $5.5 million commitment to the support of its municipal neighbors. South Bend put its $275,000 share toward the maintenance of police, fire and park services. St. Joseph County ($170,000) and Mishawaka ($50,000) worked their gifts into general funds for the coming year. Roseland will use its $5,000 to pay back taxes and penalties related to its police payroll. . . . The Sisters of the Holy Cross left their convent and their service at Notre Dame in 1958, opening the yellow-brick structure between the Main Building and St. Mary’s Lake for classroom use and offices that eventually housed the Institute for Educational Initiatives (IEI) and its flagship Alliance for Catholic Education program. Now the 1874 addition where the sisters dined, exercised and attended the quieter aspects of community life is gone, too. The demolition was the first step in the construction of Carole Sandner Hall, named for one of its major donors, the wife of University trustee Jack Sandner ’68J.D. The new building will connect with renovated portions of the original 1873 building as the new home of the IEI. Follow progress on the project at thenewiei.wordpress.com/. . . . Blue raspberry edged out strawberry-coconut as the favorite sno-cone flavor at the Tropical Sno shop sophomore Ryan Williams opened out of the old Hinsdale Theater in his hometown of Hinsdale, Illinois. Williams’ business taught him a lot about entrepreneurship, and the traffic he generated doubled his expectations, allowing him at summer’s end to earn good money and exceed his charitable goals in handing a $4,000 check to the Notre Dame Haiti Program and its fight against the disfiguring disease, lymphatic filariasis. . . . The “Play Like A Champion Today” sign that Irish football players have slapped on their way out to the gridiron since the Lou Holtz era has become a national pop culture icon responsible for countless reproductions, imitations and parodies plastered on office walls and T-shirts far, far away from the Joyce Center sign shop where the original was painted. Last spring, the original sign’s creator, Laurie Wenger, retired after long service to the athletics department. . . . Can you play Monopoly in 21 seconds? Sociology Professor Dan Myers and his son Micah, 14, can. In May, Myers posted a video on YouTube showing father and son completing a two-player matchup with two turns per player and nine total rolls of the dice. Within a week the video had scored hundreds of thousands of hits and earned Myers an on-the-air interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel. The pair began playing “Speed Monopoly” years ago when the Boardwalk jockeys found there often wasn’t enough time to fit in a round of Micah’s favorite game. The object was not to win the Parker Brothers classic but to finish fast. Efficiency soon became the name of the game, and they started to ask themselves what the shortest theoretically possible Monopoly contest would look like with just the right cards and dice rolls. Challengers to their video version emerged and within a month the Myerses had come up with a new video of the “Really, Really Shortest Game of Monopoly: 13 Seconds,” a lightning spree in which Player 2 lands on Player 1’s New York Avenue hotel and goes bankrupt.
John Nagy is an associate editor of Notre Dame Magazine.