Print Edition for The Observer: Commencement 2024

P.O.

Editor-in-Chief

Office Manager & General Info

Ph: (574) 631-7471

Fax: (574) 631-6927

Advertising (574) 631-6900 advertising@ndsmcobserver.com

Editor-in-Chief (574) 631-4542 isheikh@nd.edu

Managing Editor (574) 631-4542 kmuchnic@nd.edu

Assistant Managing Editors (574) 631-4541 ccolli23@nd.edu, tdobbs@nd.edu, mladd2@nd.edu

Business Office (574) 631-5313

Notre Dame News Desk (574) 631-5323 news@ndsmcobserver.com

Saint Mary’s News Desk (574) 631-5323 smcnews@ndsmcobserver.com

Viewpoint Desk (574) 631-5303 viewpoint@ndsmcobserver.om

Sports Desk (574) 631-4543 sports@ndsmcobserver.com

Scene Desk (574) 631-4540 scene@ndsmcobserver.com

Photo Desk (574) 631-8767 photo@ndsmcobserver.com

Systems & Web Administrators

webmaster@ndsmcobserver.com

Policies

The Observer is the independent, daily newspaper published in print and online by the students of the University of Notre Dame du Lac, Saint Mary’s College and Holy Cross College. Editorial content, including advertisements, is not governed by policies of the administration of any institution. The Observer reserves the right to refuse advertisements based on content.

The news is reported as accurately and objectively as possible. Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the majority of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Assistant Managing Editors and department editors. Commentaries, letters and columns present the views of the authors and not necessarily those of The Observer. Viewpoint space is available to all readers. The free expression of all opinions through letters is encouraged. Letters to the Editor must be signed and must include contact information.

Questions regarding Observer policies should be directed to Editor-in-Chief Isa Sheikh.

ND valedictorian to give address

By PETER MCKENNA Associate News Editor

Isabela Tasende was named valedictorian of the class of 2024 and will deliver valedictory remarks at the commencement ceremony on May 19. As a political science and economics major, she has maintained a 4.0 GPA and has earned a place on the dean’s list every semester. She has won the O’Donnell Prize for the best thesis in comparative politics, studying the Venezuelan military in upholding the Authoritarian regime.

Tasende said being valedictorian has “meant the whole world to me.“

“It’s a weird feeling because I am so unbelievably grateful and honored for the chance to speak to my classmates and to get this opportunity and this privilege. It’s just a sense of immense gratitude,” she explained.

Tasende emphasized the challenge of balancing academic work with other time

aspects of life.

“Notre Dame says ‘heart, mind, and soul,’ but really taking that to heart and looking at education holistically and trying to prioritize your time to make allow for exploration and fun,” she said.

Tasende was president of the Latino Honor Society, the director of communications for the pre-law board and the director of casing for Consulting Connect. She also worked as a peer mentor for Building Bridges, a copy editor for the Keough School’s Global Ambassador magazine and a volunteer for the charity Cultivate Food Rescue in South Bend.

Tasende stressed the importance of building relationships at Notre Dame.

“Another piece that has been fundamental to having my college experience has been the relationships I have formed while here. Whether that’s friends, peers or mentors, taking advantage of the incredible opportunity that

Notre Dame offers. I found that relationships are what have truly allowed me to take advantage of the resources that are here,” she said.

Tasende explained having a sense of gratitude and a positive attiude were essential for motivating her to succeed.

“I feel like there are two ways to go about it. You can either white knuckle your way through life and just p ush and grid, and that can work. But I have learned that leads to burnout,“ Tasende said. “I have a good friend at home who says ‘Don’t say “I have to do this homework.“

I get to do this zhomework.’

I think with that mentality, the privilege of a Notre Dame education will motivate you way more than any type of self-pressure to succeed would.”

During her time at Notre Dame, Tasende also founded Somos Voces, a charity in Panama, to help teenage mothers who could not finish their education get

their high school diplomas and establish themselves in the workforce.

“It’s a very big problem in Panama. One out of three pregnancies are from a teenage girl,” she explained.

The charity has “done everything from advocacy to building spaces where the young mothers could finish [their] education and fundraising to give them grants to go to College for the top two in the class.”

Tasende has assisted professor Abby Córdova through the Kellogg International Scholars Program in studying violence against women in Central America. She said that it has “complimented the practice experience of it with what the literature says and what the trends are.”

Tasende will continue volunteering with women’s organizations in Panama this summer before she starts her job at Bain Consulting.

Contact Peter McKenna at pmckenn2@nd.edu

SMC names two valedictorians

By AYNSLEE DELLACCA

Saint

Mary’s News Editor

Saint Mary’s seniors Nadia Muniz and Margaret McNabb will be recognized as the class of 2024 valedictorians, the College announced May 7. Both seniors will speak at the commencement ceremony.

Nadia Muniz

Muniz, from St. Joseph, Michigan, will be graduating with a bachelor of science in neuroscience with a concentration in neuropsychology and a minor in biology. She plans to enter the biotechnology field and will begin working with Pfizer in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a research and development rotational associate in a two-year program with the company.

Today’s Staff

News

Corrections

The Observer regards itself as a professional publication and strives for the highest standards of journalism at all times. We do, however, recognize that we will make mistakes. If we have made a mistake, please contact us at editor@ndsmcobserver.com so we can correct our error.

“Going into the fall, ... I was really trying to figure out what I wanted to do ... so I was just on LinkedIn and googling stuff, and then I stumbled upon this two-year program,” Muniz said. “This is honestly the best thing that I could have gotten out of college … by early December, I already knew that I had gotten the job and I [thought], ‘Okay, I can stop looking.’”

Throughout her time at Saint Mary’s, Muniz has been involved in several research projects through her biology laboratory research assistant position and her membership with the Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society in addition to her fellowship with National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)

fellowship at Notre Dame in the summer of 2023. During her fellowship, she worked alongside Kenna director of the Zebrafish Research Center David Hyde and her mentor Dmitri Serjanov in the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine.

“They study zebrafish and the cells that zebrafish have that allow their retina to regenerate, and they want to find therapeutics to implement into humans one day,” Muniz explained.

For her senior comprehensive research, Muniz studied hormones in female rats alongside her advisor, psychology professor Teresa Aubele-Futch.

“My group decided to focus on menopause and the effect of attention on women,” Muniz said. “We chose female rats, and we depleted their hormone levels, kind of how women who undergo menopause have depleted hormone levels, and tried to figure out if that affected their attention. Based on what we found, we concluded that there is a possibility that the timing at which hormones are depleted has an effect on whether attention will be increased or decreased.”

Outside of her research, Muniz served as treasurer for the Latina community club, La Fuerza, during the 2021-2022 academic year, volunteered in a kindergarten classroom through the ”Beyond the Belle” service program and tutored students in biology at the writing and tutoring center in the Cushwa-Leighton Library.

Margaret McNabb

McNabb, originally from Chicago, Illinois, will be graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in religious studies and theology and Spanish, with a minor in social work. After graduation, she plans to participate in high school campus ministry in Portland, Maine with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps for one year before continuing her ministry work through a hospital or prison chaplaincy.

McNabb explained why she decided to work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

“[When] I went through their application process and their discernment process, it just felt very right. I felt that it aligns with my own spirituality and my own goals and values, but also I would be pushed to grow,” McNabb said. “It felt like a structured risk that I could take … I am going off to a place I’ve never been, but I have a community ready to have my back.”

For her senior comprehensive research, McNabb studied interpretations of biblical women and the effects of societal and divine expectations on their mental health. She won the Tiefenthaler Student Research award in the spring of 2023 for this research and plans to publish it with an academic journal after graduation.

“I was really interested in messages of selflessness, how women always have to be selfsacrificing and how we see women in the Bible who are praised because they give away themselves. When I looked at this in conversation with

research on women’s depression and how women experience depression, I was struck by something that is often a source and a contributing factor to women’s depression, [this] idea that comes from society and is internalized that women have to take care of others and can’t take care of themselves and have to give of themselves always,” McNabb said. ”That’s exactly what these biblical women are being praised for”

During her time at Saint Mary’s, McNabb participated in many retreats, liturgies and service opportunities through the Center for Faith, Action and Ministry. McNabb said her role as ministry assistant to Le Mans Hall during her junior and senior years also kept her involved with ministry work and connected to fellow students on campus.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that these two years have been years of great change, but … some of my greatest joys as an MA have been in running my small groups both last year and this year and getting to know and develop relationships with students in those settings. I feel I have grown in my faith and been ministered to just as much as I have helped others grow in their faith, which I think is the amazing thing about ministry,” McNabb said.

McNabb also served as a Spanish tutor at the Writing and Tutoring Center and was a clarinet in the Fighting Irish Marching Band at Notre Dame.

Contact Aynslee Dellacca at adellacca01@saintmarys.edu

FOUR YEARS IN REVIEW:

Deaths

Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to Supreme Court — Oct. 26, 2020

The U.S. Senate confirmed Notre Dame Law School alumna and professor Amy Coney Barrett as an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Barrett’s nomination sparked demonstrations on campus, both in support of “ACB” and against her. Further buzz arose after University President Fr. John Jenkins did not wear a mask in the White House Rose Garden at the nomination ceremony and contracted COVID-19.

Notre Dame students, alumni flock to Dublin for game — Aug. 26, 2023

Notre Dame faced off against Navy at Aviva Stadium in Dublin, beating the Midshipmen 42-3. To see the spectacle, thousands of Notre Dame fans made the journey across the Atlantic, with many students missing class to do so. The city temporarily renamed Dame Street “Notre Dame Street,” the marching band performed throughout the city and Fr. Jenkins celebrated mass at historic Dublin Castle.

Students storm the field against Clemson — Nov. 7, 2020

Following a 47-40 overtime victory against No. 1 ranked Clemson, Notre Dame students rushed the field. Despite limited attendance, fans were jubilant in their celebration of the victory, throwing caution to the wind and jumping onto the field. The victory propelled Notre Dame to a college football playoff berth later in the season.

University disbands Zahm House — March 15, 2021

Residents of Zahm House were informed through a Zoom call and email that their residence hall would be disbanded. University administrators cited a lack of adherence to COVID testing protocols, incidents of vandalism and concerns about the dorm’s ‘troubling culture’ regarding alcohol and sexual assault. Zahm now serves as transitional housing for other dorms as they undergo renovation.

Demolition of Fisher and Pangborn Halls announced — Oct. 3, 2023

Vice president for student affairs Fr. Gerry Olinger announced to the residents of Fisher and Pangborn Halls that their dorms would be demolished at the end of the year. The University subsequently announced the construction of two new residence halls on the current sites of Fisher and Pangborn. Fisher residents were told they would move to Zahm House for two years, while Pangborn residents were told they would move to the new men’s residence hall opening in the fall on East Quad.

Fr. Robert Dowd elected as next president — Dec. 4, 2023

The Notre Dame Board of Trustees elected political scientist Fr. Robert Dowd as the 18th president of the University. Dowd’s election came after University President Fr. John Jenkins announced he would step down from the role at the end of the year in October. Dowd will assume the role of President July 1.

7 students, 4 professors lost over four years

On Oct. 24, 2020 Notre Dame first-year students Valeria Espinel of Guayaquil, Ecuador and Olivia Laura Rojas of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia were killed after being struck by a car on Ironwood Rd. shortly after 4 a.m. Espinel was a resident of Badin Hall and friends recalled that she always made the most of every day. Rojas lived in Cavanaugh Hall and was remembered for being a loyal friend above all else.

Student Majd “Jude Ash” al-Shoufi died according to an email sent by University leadership April 2, 2021. A doctoral candidate in the psychology and peace departments, al-Shoufi was also an advocate for peace and human rights and had experience working with trauma-inflicted refugees.

On Sept. 4, 2022, third-year biology Ph.D. student Gabriella “Bella” Tyler died. After undergoing the foster system and homelessness as a teenager, Tyler earned her GED in 2012 and later received an undergraduate degree from Georgia Gwinnett College. She is survived by her husband Jon and infant daughter Matilda.

On Nov. 11, 2022, Notre Dame sophomore and U.S. Army veteran James “Jake” Blaauboer passed away. An avid runner, Blaauboer enlisted in the army right out of high school where he served as a mechanic. A lover of political and philosophical debate, Blaauboer studied English and history at Notre Dame. Notre Dame aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Michael Stanisic died April 11, 2023. A robotics expert known for his engaging teaching, Stanistic received the University’s Joyce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching on three occasions.

Tiziana Serafini, a teaching professor of Italian in the department of romance languages and literatures, died in Rome on Aug. 19, 2023. Serafini is remembered for her dedication to the Notre Dame Italian Club and her care for students.

Michael Montalbano, an adjunct assistant teaching professor of management and organization in the Mendoza College of Business, died on Nov. 7, 2023.

Iossif Lozovatsky, a research professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences, died on Dec 23, 2023.

On March 2, 2024, Notre Dame sophomore Spencer Vermeule passed away in a car accident in Elkhart county. Vermeule, a resident of Keenan Hall, studied in the Mendoza College of Business and the College of Arts and Letters and was on the fencing team.

On May 11, 2024, Kathleen Gilpin, an executive MBA student, passed away from breast cancer.

ND salutatorian to offer invocation

By ANNELISE DEMERS Associate News Editor

Shaker Erbini has been honored as the salutatorian of Notre Dame’s Class of 2024 for his exceptional academic achievements and contributions to campus life. Erbini will be graduating with a 3.97 grade point average.

Born in Damascus, Syria, Erbini has called Crown Point, Indiana, home since he was one-and-a-half years old. Throughout his four years at Notre Dame, Erbini called many residence halls home, including Alumni Hall, Pangborn Hall, and Baumer Hall. Erbini will be the first in his family to graduate with a bachelor’s degree.

Majoring in neuroscience and behavior with a minor in compassionate care in medicine, Erbini was deeply involved in the Muslim Student Association (MSA), a club close to his heart.

“[MSA] was my favorite club because my faith is the most important thing to me. Through the club, the board and I were able to build a stronger sense of community, hold weekly on-campus prayers, and improve dining hall accommodations for Muslim students in addition to hosting game nights, a retreat, a humanitarian fundraiser, Islam Awareness Week and providing mosque transportation,” Erbini wrote over text message.

Following graduation, Erbini will continue his academic journey at the Indiana University School of Medicine and pursue his passion for healthcare and service.

“I always say being at Notre Dame has been both the hardest and most rewarding time of my life. It pushed me a lot academically for sure,” Erbini wrote.

Reflecting on his time at Notre Dame, Erbini shared insights on academic rigor, personal growth and finding balance that he has learned over the last four years.

“I have three main takeaways. One takeaway from my time in college is that it’s the people that make it special. We need close relationships to live fulfilling lives. Another main takeaway is that there will always be something to worry about, so the time to choose to be content is now, not later. Another one is you have to decide where you want to ‘draw the line,’” he wrote. “You can

always sacrifice more time, energy and mental health for the sake of ‘success.’ But there are some things not worth sacrificing. For instance, for me, that was my health and praying to God.”

Despite his academic success, Erbini remains humble, acknowledging his imperfections and the support of his community.

“Even though I am selected as salutatorian, I am not perfect. No one at Notre Dame, or any

where, has it all figured out, no matter what it may look like to you. I have experienced imposter syndrome and I am sure many of us have as well,” Erbini wrote.

His journey to becoming salutatorian was marked by personal challenges and the loss of classmates, shaping his perspective on life’s transient nature and the importance of living with purpose.

“I lost a classmate to an accident in high school, and I’ve experienced the loss of several classmates due to accidents during my time at Notre Dame. Death is a sad reality that we will all have to face one day, and the wise person does not ignore it,” Erbini wrote. “I remember the fact that our time on earth is temporary every single day. This helps me focus on what really matters most ... Thinking about death motivates me to always evaluate whether I am living my life the way I want to live it right now or if I need to make changes,” he continued.

South Bend’s Fiddler’s Hearth Public House was chosen among other local restaurants as the ESPN Game Day chef, feeding the Game Day panelists for the ND/Ohio State game in South Bend. Chosen too for ND v Michigan in 2018. Food was paraded by two pipers and a drummer from the local Caledonia Kilty Pipe Band.

Erbini’s path to medicine was a gradual discernment process, driven by his belief in the importance of health and service to others.

“I think health is at the foundation of any dream any person might have. I also believe our relationship with God and our health are the two biggest blessings we have in this world. Therefore, being able to serve others by helping them preserve their health is very important work. I found out gradually that medicine was right for me as I shadowed, volunteered at the hospital, conducted research, and took classes,” Erbini wrote.

As he prepares for the next chapter of his academic and professional journey, Erbini encourages his peers to explore their beliefs and embrace opportunities for

growth during their college years.

“College, especially being at Notre Dame, is a great time to figure out

what you believe in spiritually. Utilize [breaks] to reflect on the previous semester and/or year and what you will do better

for the next one,” Erbini wrote.

Photos courtesy of South Bend Tribune’s Austin Hough.

Pat McAfee, pro wrestler and sports analyst.

Terrance Patrick Meehan, Publican and owner of Fiddler’s Hearth.

YEAR IN REVIEW: 2023-2024

Notre Dame regilds Golden Dome — May 22, 2023

The University began its regilding of the iconic Golden Dome. Construction continued throughout the summer and into the fall, with the dome being covered in scaffolding for Welcome Weekend. The process eventually finished in September.

Affirmative action struck down — June 29, 2023

The Supreme Court released its decision in the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College case, officially ending the use of affirmative action in college admissions. Notre Dame pledged that it would abide by the ruling, but would continue to pursue the goal of diversity through legal means, including a new admissions question asking students how their identity has impacted their lives.

Justice Kagan speaks at Notre Dame — Sep. 22, 2023

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan spoke at Notre Dame with Dean of the Law School G. Marcus Cole. During the conversation, Kagan suggested that the Supreme Court adopt a code of conduct, responding to allegations of improper gifts being made to certain justices.

Demolition of Fisher, Pangborn Hall announced — Oct. 3, 2023

Vice president for student affairs Fr. Gerry Olinger announced to the men of Fisher and Pangborn Halls that their dorms would be demolished at the end of the year. The University subsequently announced the construction of two new residence halls on the current sites of Fisher and Pangborn. Fisher residents were told they would move to Zahm House for two years, while Pangborn residents were told they would move to the new men’s residence hall opening in the fall on East Quad.

Jenkins announces he will step down at end of year — Oct. 13, 2023

University President Fr. John Jenkins announced he would step down from his position at the end of the year, a year before the end of his term. Jenkins was first elected to the role in 2005 and said he would now return to teaching.

Students storm field after win against USC — Oct. 14, 2023

Notre Dame students rushed the field after a 48-20 victory against the USC Trojans. This marked the second year in a row that students stormed the field, following last year’s win against Clemson.

Senators Young and Coons speak on campus — Oct. 30, 2023

U.S. Senators Chris Coons of Delaware and Todd Young of Indiana spoke with University President Fr. John Jenkins as a part of Notre Dame’s forum on “The Future of Democracy.” Coons and Young emphasized the importance of bipartisanship and the dangers of social media.

Students protest drag queen performance — Nov. 3, 2023

Students protested both in favor of and against a performance by a drag queen being held in the Debartolo Performing Arts Center as a part of a one-credit elective called “Drag on Screen.” The event received national coverage, with many arguing the hosting of the event went against the University’s Catholic values.

Electric scooters banned — Nov. 30, 2023

In an email to the student body, the University announced that all personal electric vehicles would be banned on campus beginning Dec. 17. Executive vice president Shannon Cullinan cited the risk to campus safety and the pedestrian nature of the campus as reasons for the ban.

Raclin

Murphy Museum of Art opens — Nov. 30, 2023

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art opened its dorms to students for the first time after beginning construction in 2020. The new museum features a cafe, a chapel, classrooms and three floors of gallery space.

SMC reverses transgender admissions policy — Dec. 21, 2023

In an email to the student body, Saint Mary’s President Katie Conboy announced that the College Board of Trustees had reversed its change to the College’s non-discrimination clause allowing biological males who identify as females to apply to and attend the College. The policy, which had been instituted in June, but was not widely known until November, elicited nationwide controversy and condemnation by Bishop Kevin Rhoades.

Students flock to see Fr. Mike Schmitz speak — Feb. 25, 2024

Students packed the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to get the chance to see priest Fr. Mike Schmitz speak. Schmitz, who is famous in the American Catholic community for his “Bible in a Year” podcast, discussed the topic of love in the Book of Genesis.

University sets record low acceptance rate — March

15, 2024

At 6:42 p.m. EST, the University released its regular decision admissions decisions. In total, the University accepted 3,324 students out of 29,943 applicants, for an acceptance rate of roughly 11%. This was the University’s lowest acceptance rate in its history.

Pro-Palestinian protesters arrested — May 2, 2024

17 students were arrested during a pro-Palestinian protest on God Quad after refusing calls from police to disband. Protesters had staged a demonstration a week prior, attempting to set up tents on South Quad during a celebration for Fr. Jenkins’ presidency.

Holy Cross College names valedictorian

By LIAM KELLY Notre Dame News Editor

Holy Cross College senior Carmen “Stephanie“ Nunez will serve as this year’s valedictorian, the College announced on its website. Nunez, a South Bend native, is a visual arts major and an elementary education minor.

Applying to college during the confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic was a difficult experience, Nunez recalled, but Holy Cross emerged as the right place for her at that moment.

“Holy Cross was an option for me since I lived locally and had experienced

the campus’ unique sense of community when I attended Saints & Scholars in the summer,” Nunez said.

Although Nunez has always had an interest in art, she decided to pursue the major only after taking 20 credit hours in a number of subjects in her first semester freshman year. By the end of the semester, she had narrowed her choices down to visual arts and elementary education, but ended up choosing visual arts and pursuing a minor in elementary education due to the heavy course load of an elementary education major.

Throughout her experience

Jenkins to speak at commencement

Observer Staff Report

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in the print edition of The Observer on Jan. 17.

The Board of Trustees requested that outgoing president, Fr. John Jenkins, deliver this year’s commencement adress, board chair Jack Brennan wrote in an email to the Notre Dame community Jan. 16.

“While Notre Dame typically selects a distinguished speaker external to the University, we believe at this moment Father Jenkins’s leadership and exemplary service to the University make him a most fitting choice as we recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of the Class of 2024 and our distinguished faculty,” Brennan wrote.

Jenkins announced in October that he would step down as president at the end of the current academic year after nearly two decades. He will return to teaching and writing at the University. In a news release, the University recognized Jenkins for leading Notre Dame to become the country’s foremost Catholic research institution.

“He has brought renewed emphasis to Notre Dame’s distinctive mission, rooted in the tradition of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the University’s founding community, to educate the whole person — mind, body and spirit — to do good in the world,” the news release said.

This year’s University Commencement Ceremony is scheduled for May 19 at 9:30 a.m.

University awards Laetare medal

States, according to its website.

at Holy Cross, Nunez cited her arts courses and her time as an RA during her junior year as some of her favorite experiences. Above all, though, Nunez emphasized her personal relationships as the most important part of her experience.

“I would say that the friendships I have made and the experiences I have shared with them have been the most precious to me,” Nunez said. “This semester I have especially enjoyed going on walks with my roommate and going to Spanish mass together.”

Nunez said the transition from freshman to sophomore

year was somewhat difficult for her as she had moved off campus and found it difficult to be a part of the community on campus. Despite this, she stressed she was able to find a stable support system.

Although Nunez said she has not yet finalized her plans after graduation, she plans on applying to teaching positions or working with community organizations. At the same time, she said she wants to continue pursuing her love for art.

“I want to eventually enroll into an MFA program along the way which would qualify me to teach at the collegiate level,” she

explained. In her valedictory speech, Nunez says she plans to emphasize “the importance of relationships” in building communities.

“Being intentional in building relationships modeled after Christ’s love can go a long way in making any place or person feel like home,” Nunez said. “I feel that I have found this sense of home at Holy Cross through my peers, professors and staff.”

Nunez will give her address during commencement at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 18.

Contact Liam Kelly at lkelly8@nd.edu

SMC holds CSC Mission Awards ceremony

Observer Staff Report

The Saint Mary’s Center for Faith, Action, and Ministry recognized 11 seniors, three juniors and three sophomores at the annual Sr. Rose Anne Schultz, CSC Mission Awards and Senior Recognition ceremony May 1. Twelve total award titles were presented to the students, as well as an additional award to recognize eight seniors who showed great involvement with the center throughout their time at Saint Marys.

Nicole Labadie, the director of CFAM, and Julianne Wallace, the vice president of Mission for CFAM, each respectively led the opening prayer and gave introductory remarks to open the ceremony.

Smith and Eleanor Zahorick.

Zahorick was also awarded the Sr. Maria Concepta McDermott, CSC award for her service in education and earned second place for the Jane O’Rourke Bender Award, which is given to students who submit a piece of art that reflects themes such as compassion, forgiveness, service, love and social justice.

Senior Natalie Biegel earned first place for the Jane O’Rourke Bender Award and senior Amelia Brookshire earned third place.

In addition to her senior recognition award, Sigler received the Sr. Kathleen Anne Nelligan, CSC Award for her service in ministry at Saint Mary’s.

CSC award for her general service work at Saint Mary’s.

Junior Norah Como also received the Sr. Christine Healy, CSC award recognizing her service specifically to women.

Junior Abigail Kawalec and sophomore Mary O’Connell were both awarded the Mission Impact award. Sophomore Mary Ellsworth was presented with the Patricia Arch Green award for her leadership with “Beyond the Belle” at the Notre Dame Center for Civic Innovation. Lastly, the Mission Student Worker of the Year award was given to sophomore Maria Dach.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in the print edition of The Observer on March 20.

This year’s Laetare Medal will be awarded to Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, the CEO of Feeding America, the University announced in a press release last week. The Laetare Medal is awarded annually to a Catholic “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity.”

Feeding America is a nonprofit food bank organization that served 5.3 billion meals in 2023. The organization operates over 200 food banks in the United

Babineaux-Fontenot has served as CEO of Feeding America since 2018. Prior to that, she was the executive vice president of finance and global treasurer at Walmart, where she worked for 13 years.

University President Fr. John Jenkins praised BabineauxFontenot’s work at Feeding America.

“Under her visionary leadership, Feeding America has become a beacon of hope not only to the individuals and families it serves but for all who share her vision of eliminating food insecurity in this country,” he said in the statement.

Babineaux-Fontenot will receive the award during commencement on May 19.

Seniors who were recognized by the center included Georgia Sigler, Emily O’Donoghue, Maggie McNabb, Kat Hannon, Liliana Lomeli, Susan Pingel, Delaney

Senior Victoria Hardt was awarded The Sister Olivia Marie Hutcheson, CSC Award for service and work within the field of health.

Junior Jean Ochoa earned the Sister Olivette Whalen,

After the awards were given, College President Katie Conboy spoke about the positive work the recognized students accomplished at Saint Mary’s while living out the Catholic Church’s teachings. Farm manager Matthew Insley led the closing prayer and concluded the ceremony.

Holy Cross announces commencement speaker

Observer Staff Report

Kerry Alys Robinson, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, will serve as Holy Cross College commencement speaker on Saturday, May 18, the College announced.

Robinson assumed her current role in July, 2023 after working for the Catholic nonprofit organization Leadership Roundtable for 18 years. Robinson earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a master of arts in religion degree

from the Yale Divinity School.

Catholic Charities USA is the largest Catholic charitable network in the United States. It serves 15 million people in 3,900 locations.

The College’s commencement ceremony will begin at 2 p.m.

Observer Staff Report

ND to confer honorary degrees

Observer Staff Report

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in the print edition of The Observer on April 10.

At the commencement ceremony for the Class of 2024, Notre Dame will award four honorary degrees to leaders in business, science, the arts and the Catholic Church, according to a University press release.

The recipients include business leader John Brennan, pharmacologist Sabine Hadida, Cardinal Christophe Pierre and Jaume Plensa, an internationally renowned artist.

Brennan will be named an honorary doctor of laws. As the current chair emeritus, he became part of Vanguard, an investment management company, in 1982. Throughout his tenure, he has held roles including president, CEO, and chair of the board. Brennan also serves as a member of the University’s Board of Trustees.

Hadida, who will recieve an honorary doctor of science, is a senior vice president and San Diego site head at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. She was awarded the 2024 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the 2023 Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences,

along with her co-recipient Paul Negulescu, for her revolutionary work in drug development and research. Hadida earned a bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in pharmacy from the University of Barcelona in Spain.

Pierre has served as the apostolic nuncio to the United States since 2016. He will receive an honorary doctor of laws. According to the press release, “Pierre has devoted his life in service to the Catholic Church around the world, first as a parish priest and later as a member of the Vatican diplomatic service.”

Plensa will be awarded an honorary doctor of fine arts in recognition of his sculptures and public art installations. This includes ‘Endless,’ which welcomes visitors at the entrance of the Notre Dame Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, and ‘Tale Teller VI,’ which has been displayed on campus since 2014. His art “invites contemplation about connections among spirituality, the body and collective memory and focus on supporting global human rights and denouncing oppression, inequality and injustice.”

The honorary degree recipients will be recognized at the commencement ceremony on May 19.

Division of Student Affairs honors student leaders

By PETER MCKENNA Associate News Editor

The Division of Student Affairs honored seven students at the annual Student Leadership Awards banquet April 4.

The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. leadership award was given to senior Jo’Vette Hawkins. This award is given to a graduating senior whose work has made the Notre Dame community more inclusive and welcoming. Hawkins was president of the Diversity Council during the 2023-2024 academic year, where she led discussions on how to expand equity and representation of minority groups on campus. She worked with the University’s athletic facilities as well as a research assistant in the cognitive neuroscience of memory and aging lab.

Senior Christian Quilon received the Blessed Basil Moreau, C.S.C. leadership award, which honors a student who has worked to advance the Catholic nature of the University and is the highest faith-associated award that is given to students. Quilon was an Anchor intern in Campus Ministry where he prepared Catholics for confirmation. He was also president of the Totus Tuus Praise & Worship Band.

The Denny Moore Award for Excellence in Journalism was awarded to Dane Sherman. Sherman was a columnist and

contributor for The Observer for four years. He wrote articles on topics of social justice, the relationship between the Catholic church and LGBTQ+ rights and civil advocacy. Denny Moore was a provost known for his personal integrity, commitment to Notre Dame, character, and writing ability. This award goes to a senior who reflects these characteristics.

Editor’s Note: Dane Sherman is a former writer and columnist for The Observer.

The Mike Russo Spirit Award went to senior Kylie Boyer. This award honors a senior who has been notable in extracurricular activities, service and personal character. Boyer worked at the WISEWOMAN program at Catherine’s Health Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she helped people quit smoking, and volunteered twice a week at the Robinson Community Learning Center. During the summer of 2023, Boyer interned at a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya.

The Ray Siegfried Award for Leadership Excellence was given to senior Olivia Sanders. This is given to a senior who embodies the qualities of Siegfried, such as generosity, leadership, a likeness of sports and commitment to the Catholic faith. Sanders was captain of the water polo team, earning her all-American honors. She assisted professor Jenifer Prosperi’s research on a

tumor suppressor’s effectiveness on breast cancer progression. Sanders also taught CPR and first-aid classes while serving as a lifeguard at the University sports facilities.

The Rev. A. Leonard Collins, C.S.C Award went to senior Luzolo Matundu. This award goes to seniors who advance the interests of the Notre Dame student body. She helped open the Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and was involved with the Plunge Retreat, which connects Black students with the Shades of Ebony women’s club. Matundu also worked for the diversity, equity and inclusion departments in student government, the diversity council, and McGlinn Hall. Kenzie Paul received the John W. Gardner Student Award. This award goes to a student who has epitomized the ideals of the University through volunteer service. Paul founded Kenzie’s Helping Hands, which provides 3D-printed prosthetics for amputee children. She also served as president of Enable ND, where she focused on providing more advanced prostheses. She served in the student government’s office for disability advocacy and worked closely with the Meruelo Center for Career Development to better help those with disabilities.

Contact Peter McKenna at pmckenn2@nd.edu

SGA president, vice president reflect on term

By AYNSLEE DELLACCA

Saint Mary’s News Editor

As president and vice president for Saint Mary’s Student Government Association (SGA) in the 2023-2024 term, seniors Scarlet Peters and Hannah Kaczor worked to plan and host events and support and create new committees.

Peters, originally from Scottsdale, AZ, double-majored in political science and Spanish and minored in economics. She plans to pursue law school and follow a path in government law.

Kaczor, from Temperance, MI, double-majored in political science and global studies with a concentration in intercultural studies. She plans to earn her master’s in management degree at Notre Dame.

Their experience in SGA together began their sophomore year serving as co-chairs on the first-year committee, where they were in charge of planning social events for freshman students.

Peters said former SGA president Elly Hanson encouraged them to make their ‘joke’ a reality.

“I met with her, and she asked me, ‘Would you ever be interested in running for Saint Mary’s president? I think you’d be great for it.’ And just hearing that also reassured [me]. I was already involved a lot by being an RA and everything, so I [thought], let’s just keep it going,” Peters said.

Peters and Kaczor said they felt most proud of implementing an accessibility resource committee, which will be officially established during the 2024-2025 academic year.

This committee will work closely with the Accessibility Resource Office and students in need of their services.

“For students who have disabilities, whether that be physical or things that you wouldn’t be able to tell, [we want to] provide and connect

“We found out that we worked really well together, we liked doing student government. Then we were just like, ‘Hey, how cool would it be if in two years we ran?’ as a joke. But then we just stuck with it,” Kaczor said.

them with more resources that might help them feel more included on campus … [and] give them a stronger voice,” Peters said.

The two also helped host the first-ever “town hall” on campus in the fall semester, which gave students the opportunity to provide feedback to SGA about their opinions on different aspects of campus life and what they want to see in the future.

As liaisons between the student body and College administrators and the Board of Trustees, Peters and Kaczor attended and presented in a few Saint Mary’s board meetings about their efforts in improving student life.

“That was awesome, getting to meet a lot of very involved people in campus culture and powerful alums. Just getting to see that we can make a tangible difference here on campus has been amazing,” Kaczor said.

One of Peter’s favorite moments in her term stems from the first SGA event of the year, Bellefest, a social event for Saint Mary’s freshman hosted hours before Domerfest.

Kaczor and Peters, as well as a third senior in SGA, were in charge of escorting freshmen from Domerfest back to Saint Mary’s campus throughout the night.

“One of us would go and walk a group while the other would stay and receive. It was just a lot of walking, which was kind of chaotic but really fun at the end of the day. We would just text each other, ‘Passing the dome,’ ‘We’ll be back soon,’ and you know how the first-years are all excited,” Peters said. ”That was a good way to start the year.”

Kaczor cited their first meeting with the Alumnae Association Board at the beginning of the fall semester as one of her favorite moments of her term. Both Kaczor and Peters presented their presidential platform and the plans for change and improvement on campus they wanted to accomplish during their term.

“Just to have them all come up and talk to us afterwards, all these alums who are doing such great things in their lives and just seeing how excited they were for us made us more excited. I feel that better

helped us to take on that step of being seniors, being leaders,” Kaczor said.

As they step away from their roles and graduate from Saint Mary’s, Peters and Kaczor offered advice to the upcoming SGA president and vice president, juniors Ashley Chaveriat and Adare Carmody.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships, like your relationship [with] each other, relationships with your committee, the school as a whole and the administration. So just really focus on and strengthen those to the best of your ability,” Kaczor said.

Peters stressed the importance of having fun while in the job.

“As a president, vice president, you’re going to be busy, but just remember you’re at Saint Mary’s it’s such a blessing just to be here. So just have fun with being in your position and take advantage of meeting all those people. Enjoy your time because it goes by quickly,” Peters said.

Contact Aynslee Dellacca at adellacca01@saintmarys.edu

Graduates enter workforce, graduate schools

By CAROLINE COLLINS

Assistant Managing Editor

As of May 14, 81% of graduating seniors have responded to the “first destination survey” conducted annually by the Center for Career Development (CCD). Of the students surveyed, two-thirds have secured employment, one-quarter will be pursuing advanced degrees, 5% will be doing service and 2% serving in the military.

According to Ryan Willerton, associate vice president for career and professional development, early trends for the class of 2024 are projected to track trends from last year’s graduating class.

The two most popular destinations for graduating seniors are Chicago and New York.

Additionally, employers that have formed strong relationships with Notre

Dame over the years continue to recruit from the graduating class. According to Willerton, these employers, which include Deloitte, PwC, JPMorgan, Bank of America, KPMG, Epic, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Company and EY, hired ten or more students this year.

The job market has remained relatively stable since the fall semester but can vary depending on the industry. Some industries, like consulting and technology, have been impacted harder than others.

“For example, we have seen some, but not all, management consulting firms pull back on hiring due to economic factors, and some tech firms have also scaled back hiring college graduates as they have made workforce reductions,” Willerton wrote.

Following employment, the second most popular

post-graduation destination is pursuing an advanced degree like graduate school or medical school.

“Seniors continue to get accepted to top graduate programs, including Harvard Law School, Yale, and Cambridge,” Willerton wrote.

Willerton reported that five or more students have accepted offers at Northwestern University, Duke University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, UNC-Chapel Hill and Purdue University for advanced degrees.

The CCD has supported students throughout their journey at Notre Dame and their career discernment path over the last four years. Many students have worked with the CCD since their freshman and sophomore years and will continue working with career advisors following

graduation.

“About 86% of the senior class has engaged with the Center for Career Development during their time at Notre Dame,” Willerton wrote.

Willerton stressed the importance of networking with Notre Dame connections to find career opportunities. “Some of the best opportunities Notre Dame graduates secure come from networking, not submitting 100+ resumes,” he wrote.

The CCD hopes to help support students in their lifelong career development following graduation.

“Your major may inform, but does not determine your career path or success. What you learned both in the classroom and outside of the classroom can be leveraged,” Willerton wrote.

As seniors set off for their first post-graduation destination or continue to

search for employment, Willerton reminds students that the recruiting process and timeline looks different in each industry. Some students may have had a job lined up for months, while others are currently evaluating offers upon graduation.

“Accelerated recruiting for roles like investment banking and management consulting resulted in many students accepting full-time employment offers last fall,” Willerton wrote. “Many students in other industries are evaluating offers this month, and some lines of work, like government, public policy, media and entertainment focus on ‘just in time’ hiring, which means some graduates will be securing great opportunities in the coming months.”

Contact Caroline Collins at ccolli23@nd.edu

Graduating seniors to pursue religious life

By GRACE TADAJWESKI Associate News Editor

While some graduating seniors may feel unsure of what their next steps are, others, enabled by their faith journey at Notre Dame, have committed to pursuing religious life after graduation.

Among other seniors still discerning their call to religious life, Anna Polivka and Jack Herzog will be answering their calls after graduation.

Anna Polivka Polivka will be joining the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago, a religious community, in September.

“I think I began to discern the call to religious life towards the end of high school when I actually began to have a prayer life and grow in relationship with God, and I guess I felt a call to belong to God in a deeper way,” Polivka said.

Although Polivka grew up in the Catholic faith, she felt that she was missing a relationship with God, which made her want to get more involved in prayer. According to Polivka, time in college only strengthened the call she felt.

“And especially also, a call to belong to other people and serve them and to love God through other people has been really strong for me,” Polivka said. “So in the past couple years, I’ve more intentionally started discerning religious life and looking at other communities.”

This past summer, Polivka, a theology and history major,

stayed with the Franciscans of the Eucharist of Chicago to participate in service.

“I wasn’t intending to join them or even like to serve with them, but by the end of the summer, it felt like the Lord had moved my heart,” Polivka said. “I found their lifestyle very appealing and something that I could see myself doing, and I thought that it just felt natural for me to take the next step in discernment and then to apply to join.”

Joining the community involves a mutual discernment process with frequent meetings between prospective sisters and sisters of the community. After going through postulancy, novitiate and temporary vows for three to five years, one makes their final vows to the community.

“Right now, I feel confident that the Lord is calling me to this community,” Polivka said. “The first couple years are especially dedicated to further discernment and prayer, and I’m looking forward to taking that seriously and really growing in relationship with the Lord Jesus and seeing if he continues to call me to that community.”

The community’s apostolate of service to the poor is centered around their food pantry. The community also offers spiritual care to the poor through Bible study, evangelization and teaching religion in Catholic schools.

“I said that in high school I started thinking about religious life, but whenever I did, it made me feel sick to

my stomach. Not being married and leaving my family, it was just like a really scary thought,” Polivka said. “But [by] my sophomore year, I knew several older students who were graduating and entering religious life, and then also the witness of the religious on campus has been really influential for me and seeing that this is actually a life that people live, and it’s possible and its joyful was super impactful.”

According to Polivka, her time at Notre Dame immensely guided her and informed her decision, not only through the religious presence on campus but also through her study of theology and involvement in extracurriculars such as campus ministry.

“I think also the community I found here with my friends and mentors has been super influential and have drawn me into a more full participation in the life of the church and in prayer that has, like I said, formed me and guided me along the way that I think the Lord wants me to go,” Polivka said. “I’m very thankful for that. It’s been really powerful for me.”

Jack Herzog

Next school year, Herzog will be a postulant in Moreau Seminary where he will complete a year of discernment and formation for religious life for the Congregation of the Holy Cross.

“The idea of the priesthood is something that I started thinking about junior year of high school, and it had

just kind of been in the back of my mind,” Herzog said.

“At that point, I said ‘I have enough things to figure out with college. Let’s figure out college. If this is where God’s calling me, it’ll come back up.’”

According to Herzog, he started thinking more about what God wanted him to do after a relationship which began during his second semester of freshman year ended.

“I did Notre Dame Vision that next summer and, through that, really just started to feel this call towards discerning priesthood and religious life,” Herzog said.

Notre Dame Vision is a religious summer program for high school students mentored by undergraduates.

After participating in the program, Herzog reached out to the Holy Cross vocations office and visited Old College, which he could see himself living in.

“I think, first of all, just being somewhere where the faith is so present and such a part of the culture,” Herzog said. “The friends that I made freshman year being friends that wanted to talk about the faith and wanted to go to Mass together and being, you know, great friends but also great role models in the faith, I think, played a huge role.”

Herzog said that Notre Dame has absolutely affected his faith journey. He joined Old College his junior year and lived there for two years.

“Just having a culture where this is something that people think about and talk about and do, being able to join the seminary while still at Notre Dame, there’s not a lot of schools where halfway through your time, you can say, ‘I’m going to join the seminary and still be an undergrad at that school but also start following that call in a really serious way,’” Herzog said.

Following this coming year of formation, Herzog will spend a year in novitiate in Colorado Springs. After that, Herzog envisions taking temporary vows and then vows of poverty, chastity and obedience along with receiving a masters in divinity.

“It’d be really cool to continue in math,” Herzog said. “I don’t know for sure that that’s what I’d want to do, but I could absolutely see myself asking to be sent to continue studying math, and I think Holy Cross would probably encourage me to go on [to] get a PhD in math and be a professor or something like that.”

Herzog will receive an undergraduate degree in math during Notre Dame’s 2024 commencement, however, he is open to many paths beyond math.

“Parish life would be super cool,” Herzog said. “Being on a college campus in any way would be cool. Teaching, you know, middle or high school math would be super fun as well. So who knows?”

Contact Grace Tadajweski at gtadajwe@nd.edu

Saint Mary’s announces speaker, honorary degrees

By ELIZABETH BURT News Writer

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in the print edition of The Observer on April 24.

On April 16, Saint Mary’s College sent out an email releasing the name of the 2024 commencement speaker as well as the individuals who will receive honorary doctoral degrees during the commencement ceremony.

According to the email sent out announcing these three women, Patti Phillips will deliver the 2024 Commencement address.

Phillips is the current chief executive officer of Women Leaders in Sports and the former executive director of the Kansas City Sports Commission’s Women’s Intersport Network.

“Her story will inspire our graduates and the Commencement audience,” Saint Mary’s College President Katie Conboy said in an email. “We are so pleased to confer upon her the degree of honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.”

Michelle Egan, chair of the Commencement Committee and special assistant to the President, helped appoint the commencement speaker and believes her voice will be beneficial and meaningful for this year’s graduating class.

“She is committed to developing women leaders in sports and beyond. She is a charismatic leader who will be a very powerful voice for our graduates to hear before they leave Saint Mary’s,” Egan said in a later email.

When asked about the process of choosing the speakers and the honorees, Egan explained they choose from a list of nominees compiled from names submitted from students, staff, faculty, trustees and alumnae. From that list, they choose individuals to recognize “for outstanding achievements in their respective fields, significant contributions to the life of the College and/or their contributions to other recognized organizations nationally or internationally.”

Alongside Phillips, Saint Mary’s alumna Frances Bardello Craig ‘64 and humanitarian Sister Norma Pimentel, MJ are being awarded Honorary Doctorates.

Craig is to be honored as an Honorary Doctor of Science, recognizing her contribution to the field of computer strategy and software development. After graduating with her bachelor of science degree in mathematics, she went on to found her own company, Computer Strategies, in 1988. The company has since evolved into hosting nearly 400 employees and been renamed Unanet.

“There’s no hard and fast rule to have an alumna receive an honorary degree every year, but we welcome the opportunity to honor one of our own,” Egan said. “[Craig] has broken so many glass ceilings throughout her career and is such a positive role model for our graduates.”

Sister Norma Pimentel’s humanitarian work “is reflective of all four of Saint Mary’s core values,” Egan said.

At the United States-Mexico border, Pimentel currently works with and is the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in San Juan, Texas with a focus in ministry oversight and providing shelter, food, and other necessities to migrants coming into America. Since her appointment in 2004, Catholic Charities has provided aid to over 100,000 people at the border.

She is to be honored as an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, recognizing her work as a Sister with the Missionaries of Jesus and for, what Egan says is her “radical imitation of Christ reaching out to the poor.”

“All of these women are noteworthy in their life accomplishments,” Egan said in her email.

Contact Elizabeth Burt at eburt01@saintmarys.edu

Tri-campus holds graduation events

Observer Staff Report

Tri-campus students will conclude their academic experiences this week as Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross each host events for graduation.

The weekend’s festivities, following a week of senior week celebrations, will kick off on Friday with recognition ceremonies, celebrations and receptions for individual majors and academic programs being held across campus all day from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. A full list of events at Notre Dame can be found on the commencement website.

At Saint Mary’s, a commencement mass will be held at 4 p.m. in the Angela Athletic and Wellness Complex. At Holy Cross, a baccalaureate mass will be held at 4:30 p.m. in St. Joseph Chapel followed by a graduate reception at 5:30 p.m. in the Vincent Atrium.

The evening will conclude with performances by the Irish band the High Kings on South Quad and the Magnificat Choir in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart both at 6 p.m.

Saturday morning at Notre Dame will be consist of various graduate commencement ceremonies. At 9 a.m., the commencement ceremonies for the Graduate School and the Mendoza College of Business will take place in

Notre Dame Stadium and the Joyce Center, respectively. At 10:30 a.m., the Law School will confer degrees in the Joyce Center.

Also taking place Saturday morning at Notre Dame will be the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) commissioning ceremony in the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center. More recognition ceremonies, as well as diploma ceremonies for majors, schools and academic programs will occur throughout the day.

The Notre Dame commencement mass will be held at 5 p.m. in the Joyce Center following the academic procession, concluding Saturday’s events.

Both Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross will wrap up their events on Saturday for graduates. The Saint Mary’s commencement ceremony will take place at noon on LeMans Green, while the Holy Cross commencement ceremony will be at 2 p.m. in the Pfeil Center’s McKenna Arena.

On Sunday morning, the Notre Dame commencement ceremony will occur from 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. in Notre Dame Stadium. This is the 15th year that the ceremony will be held in the stadium. Events at Notre Dame will draw to a close as remaining diploma ceremonies take place at 2 p.m. across campus.

Joy Agwu

Micaela Alvarado

Sophia Alvarez

Lauren Amrol

Will Attig

Anna Bachiochi

Clare Barloon

Analina Barnes

Annika Barron

Claire Bass

Kyle Bass

Mia Bellafante

Michael Bender

Sarah Bender

Hannah Bergin

Zach Bergman

Elizabeth Bernath

Meg Beuter

Samantha Blake

Carolina Bolivar

Anne Marie Bollman

Haley Brandt

Zach Brnich

Bridget Brown

Michael Bsales

Claire Burks

Mary Clare Cameron

Aryel Carreon

Sofia Casillas

Jessica Castillo

Ashley Cho

Sophie Chorek

Meghan Chouanard

Dorrian Cohen

David Couri

Claire Crafts

Megan Cromie

Nick Daniel

Carmela D’Antuono

Natalie Daskal

Ava DeCroix

Jennifer Delgado

Kevin Dickson

Elise Dohoney

Ava Downey

Justin Durik

Cora Eaton

Megan Ebner

Gigi Eckholdt

Nikita Elkin

Taylor Erickson

Ava Ernst

CJ Escobar-Rodgers

Megan Fahrney

Quentin Fairchild

Audrey Feldman

Chaya Figueroa

Sara Foote

Brooke Friedman

Joyce Fu

Bridget Fuller

Kylie Gallegos

Anna Gazewood

Cullen Geahigan

David Giampietro

Lindsay Goldschmidt

José Gonzalez

Kareema Green

Anna Grillo

Clara Grillo

Brant Hadzima

Ella Haley

Layton Hall

Mae Harkins

Rachel Hartmann

Grace Hatfield

David Henry

Rhianna Hensler

Chris Hernández Rosales

Jack Herzog

Greta Hillesheim

Grady Hornbeek

Paul Howard

Sarah Hui

Lexi Hull

Nicholas Huls

William Hunter

Ainsley Hurford

Cecilia Luisa Ignacio

Thomas Joyce

Amber Jun

Bupe Lughano Kabaghe

Abigail Keaney

Bryan Keck

Jack Kelly

Kaylee Kern

William Kim

Catherine Kinkopf

Ava Kolb

Jack Konrad

Lexi Koplas

Maddie Kosobucki

Anna Krush

Anna Kulczycka

Saachi Kumar

Michelle Kwok

David LaMaster

Joan Lederer

Colleen Lipa

Sean Lonergan

Kendra Lyimo

Colleen Mackin

Teddy Maginn

Jack Manning

Ryan Mantey

Luis Sosa Manubes

Jack McEnery

Hank McNeil

Diane Medina Batista

Anand Mehta

Jake Miller

Natalie Modugno

Nora Mulligan

Claire Novak

Daniel O’Brien

Sarah Ochocki

Matthew O’Donnell

Payton Oliver

Johnny O’Meara

Sofia Orlandi

Olivia Ortega

Paola Ortiz

Maeve O’Shaughnessy

Daniel O’Shea

Lauren Ostdiek

Molly O’Toole

Garrett Pacholl

Anjali Pellegrin

Madeline Petrikas

Mack Pittman

Anna Polivka

Elizabeth Prater

Rose Quinlan

Maya Ramp

Isabela Rascon

Benjamín Rascón Gracia

Erin Reilly

Ben Riner

Lulu Romero

Julia Ruelle

Adam Salek

Rebeca Santa Maria Granados

Emma Sayler

Christina Sayut

Catherine Schafer

Faith Schafer

Bridget Schippers

Hannah Schmitz

Mimi Schneider

Ian Schowe

Anna Schroedel

Emma Sedlack

Lena Shadow

Jacob Shawwa

Jacob Sherer

Joel Skelley

Matthew Smolka

Grace Sorenson

Jessica Stehlik

Emma Stern

Lizzie Stifel

Cecelia Swartz

Isabela Tasende

Lauren TerMaat

Julia Thomalla

Adam Toland

Irasema Trujillo

Antonio Valdez

Audrey Veator

Mary Votava

Cora Vulin

Brian Wagner

Hugh Walsh

Julia Warden

Maggie Watson

Nicole Weiss

Sarah Wells

Katie Werner

Julia Wilcox

Felicity Wong

63 ND students finish ROTC programs

By LIAM KELLY Notre Dame News Editor

This year, 65 Notre Dame students will graduate from Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs to enter into service for the United States. 24 students are graduating from the army ROTC program, 20 are graduating from the navy program — including seven in the marine corps — and 19 are graduating from the air force program.

After graduating, those in the army ROTC program can enter into the army reserves, the national guard or active duty service, while those in the navy and air force programs are generally required to enter into active duty.

In order to enter the programs, students must apply to a scholarship (usually during one’s senior year of high school) which covers either full tuition or full room and board costs for two to four years. The ROTC program at Notre Dame was established in 1951 according to the army ROTC website.

Senior Katherine O’Neal, a psychology major and digital marketing and business economics minor graduating from the army

ROTC program, said she didn’t come from a military family and was unsure if she would like ROTC at first. What she said changed her mind, however, were the people within the program.

“It was totally a leap of faith. I didn’t really know how I was gonna go. But after my first year, I loved it, and I knew it was like the right program for me,” O’Neal explained. “The people are just fantastic. You couldn’t ask for a better group of people in ROTC.”

O’Neal said she originally struggled with the fitness side of the program and working out by herself as opposed to in a group setting, but was assisted by older ROTC cadets.

“I had a mentor who helped me and would work out with me. Although it was challenging at first … having that relationship with the older cadets at the time made it into now one of my strengths,” O’Neal said. “I’m in the top five female fitness scores in the battalion now.”

O’Neal will be joining the army in active duty, but has received a Fulbright grant and will study in the Czech Republic for a year.

Following this, she will have five years of active duty as

a medical services corps officer.

Senior Sullivan O’Hara, a chemistry major who was originally in the air force ROTC program before switching to the army program, outlined a similar experience of support from the ROTC community.

A week into his freshman year, O’Hara tore his ACL and was unable to participate in most ROTC activities.

“There was a year where I was new, so I didn’t know anyone already, and I had this injury where I couldn’t really do any exercise or stuff like that with everyone,” he explained.

Once he had recovered from his injury, however, O’Hara said the community welcomed him with open arms.

“They went out of their way to make me feel comfortable and welcome,” he said.

To O’Hara, ROTC presented him the best opportunity to live out his desire to serve.

“My whole life growing up, I knew that I wanted to serve and that was really a big part of what being like a good citizen meant to me,” O’Hara said.

O’Hara will be entering active duty and be stationed at Fort Moore in Georgia before

moving to Fort Liberty in North Carolina. He plans on going to infantry school, ranger school and then airborne school.

Senior Anne Gentine, a neuroscience major in the army ROTC program, also emphasized her desire to serve, explaining it coincided with her goal of becoming a doctor.

“Growing up, I always had this desire to serve. But I didn’t realize at first that I could do it because I wanted to go to med school [and] become a doctor. I didn’t realize that the military and that path aligned with one another,” she said.

Gentine will be joining the national guard where she will be a medical services officer for an infantry battalion for a year. Following this year, she will attend medical school while participating in training for the national guard on the weekends.

Senior Ethan MacMillan, an applied and computational mathematics and statistics major, said he originally joined the ROTC program in order to help pay for college, but grew to enjoy it.

“Through the first year, I started to decide to go active duty and actually enjoy my service,”

MacMillan explained. “It was a pretty commonly gritty experience where everyone was not only a good person, but everyone just enjoyed doing hard things and getting through it with each other.”

“Obviously, the money helped, but I kind of learned to seek out my vocation through that,” he said.

MacMillan will join the army on active duty as a cyber warfare officer. He plans to complete a year of training at Fort Eisenhower in Georgia.

Gentine emphasized the challenge and the reward she felt she received from the ROTC program.

“At first, it is very challenging, just getting used to what’s expected of you and the discipline and waking up super early for [physical training], but it becomes very rewarding through that,” she said. “I feel like I developed a lot more confidence in myself [and] what I was capable of.”

The ROTC commissioning ceremony will be held at the Debartolo Performing Arts Center Saturday, May 18 at 9 a.m.

Contact Liam Kelly at lkelly8@nd.edu

Notre Dame graduates pursue paths of service

By ANNELISE DEMERS Associate News Editor

While many Notre Dame seniors opt to enter the workforce or pursue further education upon graduation, others choose to embark on a year of service involving various programs and endeavors. In the graduating class of 2023, five percent entered into service.

Approximately 40 graduating Notre Dame students will be working for Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) after graduation. ACE is a program spanning two years, during which graduating tri-campus students teach in underprivileged Catholic schools across the nation and live in housing with other students within the program. Each cohort also receives their master’s in education by the end of the program.

“Once I started working with the South Bend community and seeing everything going on there, that had a big factor on my decision. It felt like two years to do something I was passionate about and to discover this new experience and through helping other people,” senior Ava

Kolb said. Kolb will be teaching fifth grade in Denver, Colorado through ACE.

Kolb is graduating with a degree in psychology and program of liberal studies. She found out about the program her sophomore year after someone came into one of her classes to speak about it. Kolb is active within the South Bend community by regularly tutoring school aged children and has started a recess program at Coquillard Elementary school.

“I think that these next two years will provide me with so many opportunities to grow, not only in professional skills that could apply to many different fields, but just in my understanding of myself in these different communities. I could totally see myself getting really attached to the school and community,” Kolb said.

Senior Joy Agwu will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a minor in constitutional studies. She will be teaching middle school social studies in Louisville, Kentucky through ACE.

“I eventually want to go into some type of education

policy or education law. So, eventually, I do want to go to law school. But I figured before going into policy, it might be an asset to have experience with education. And for me, my middle school and elementary school experiences were so formative,” Agwu said.

Agwu said the teachers she’s learned from were some of her biggest supporters, one of which will attend her college graduation, her middle school social studies teacher.

“I look forward to getting to chat with my kids about the world, getting asked all sorts of questions and to answer them in a way that isn’t biased, but provoking them to think about the world for themselves. It is going to be really fun, but also incredibly challenging,” Agwu said.

Senior Sean Kelley will be heading to Phoenix, Arizona to teach fourth grade. Kelley is graduating with bachelor’s degrees in French and anthropology and a minor in theology.

“Giving back is one of the most important things we can do. As people with faith, [we] are people that want to

see the better in the world, [and] we have to make sure we are that better in the world. For a long time, I thought that meant joining the Peace Corps, but COVID hit, and the idea of being out of the country was a little questionable. But I definitely knew I wanted to do something after college before the workforce,” Kelley said.

During his time at Notre Dame, Kelley served as resident assistant in Sorin College, tutored elementary school children in South Bend and served as an intern with ACE this academic year. As an intern, he went around to different dorms and classes on campus speaking about ACE.

“My pitch was always this: When I was younger, and by younger, I mean last year, I would pray and say, ‘God, I want clarity. I want to know where I am going.’ And I had to learn that clarity is not what I needed, what I needed was strength to face the unknown. I think that is just something that ACE provides, knowing that you are not putting yourself above others, but you do not know exactly how you are going to do it because it is beyond

the horizon. These next two years serve as discernment. That just gives me strength,” Kelley said.

Notre Dame graduates will also be serving with a variety of other organizations including Teach for America, Jesuit Service Corps and the Peace Corps.

Senior Gavin Sullivan will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in pre-professional studies and served as an resident assistant in Pangborn Hall. Sullivan plans to combine his passion for medicine and service by spending the next year with the Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH) in the Dominican Republic. NPH is an organization that serves orphaned and abandoned children across the Caribbean and Latin America. Sullivan will be helping with the surgical center.

“I think it is important to realize that we are going in not as a savior, but to serve the community. And in doing so, we will also be fulfilled by their knowledge and experience. Service is two sided,” Sullivan said.

Contact Annelise Demers at ademers@nd.edu

Jenkins reflects on presidency, controversy

University President found guidance from past

By ISA SHEIKH Editor-in-Chief

Editor’s Note: Fr. Jenkins will serve as this year’s commencement speaker. A version of this story appeared in the print edition of The Observer on May 1.

Over the last 19 years, University President Fr. John Ignatius Jenkins hasn’t had much free time.

“There are only so many hours in the day,” he told The Observer as he prepares to step down on June 1.

The occasion has not gone unnoticed. The campus community marked it last Thursday with festivities held by the Office of the President as a way of “thanking students” for supporting Jenkins during his presidency. Students received commemorative mugs reading “Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame President, 2005-2024” on one side and “Be a force for good” on the other. Later in the night, fireworks lit up the sky as protestors marched South Quad chanting about Palestine — and Jenkins himself, calling on the president to “act” on his statement calling for a ceasefire.

Jenkins spoke to The Observer earlier that day, in the first interview he’s given to the tri-campus’s independent newspaper since 2016.

The philosopher administrator

After graduating from Notre Dame in 1976 and 1978 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy, Jenkins was ordained a priest and went on to pursue a doctorate in the same field at the University of Oxford. He wrote his dissertation on “knowledge, faith and philosophy in Thomas Aquinas.” Jenkins returned to Notre Dame to teach philosophy from 1990 until his selection as president.

When he first graduated from Notre Dame “long, long ago,” Jenkins said he did not know what he wanted to do.

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I wanted to live a meaningful life, that is a life that was about something beyond myself and had meaning, beyond simply self-interest or self-serving, and I’ve been given that in abundance,” Jenkins said.

In “The Republic,” Plato wrote about the idea of a philosopher king, an ideal ruler who combines political skill with philosophical knowledge. Jenkins, with all his expertise in philosophy, has in a sense served as a philosopher administrator. He said that philosophy has undoubtedly shaped his outlook.

“I’m sure there are many things [from studies in philosophy] that kind of informed my

presidents, philosophers during his 19-year tenure

work,” he said.

He zeroed in on Aquinas.

“I’d say there’s a deep sense in Aquinas — going all through that tradition, from Aristotle to Aquinas and beyond — of community and our responsibility to one another, and that’s sort of very much part of what it is to be a university,” he said.

Aquinas wrote in a dialogic form, Jenkins said, harkening back to a lecture he gave his students, and Aquinas’ attempts to emulate a conversation are not unlike Notre Dame as a “community in conversation.”

Two decades of dialogue, two decades of controversy

With conversation comes controversy, and Jenkins has handled his fair share.

“Dialogue, and to an extent, controversy is what we do,” he said.

Uproar early in his tenure over performances of “The Vagina Monologues” was followed by controversy over President Barack Obama’s appearance at the 2009 commencement, the awarding of the Laetare Medal to current president Joe Biden and former Speaker of the House John Boehner, Mike Pence’s speech at commencement in 2017, Jenkins’ unmasked appearance at the White House Rose Garden and various other media cycles.

Jenkins said he regretted removing his mask at the White House while attending a ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court, though he does not regret attending.

“I don’t regret being there, because the court has been dominated by two schools, Harvard and Yale, and to have a Notre Dame alum and professor … I’m very proud of that, not that I’m endorsing [Justice Amy Coney] Barrett’s views,” he said.

Jenkins said that Notre Dame has a unique position.

“Our position invites controversies that other places don’t

have because there’s a set of values that may conflict with various views, but I feel proud that we’ve worked through those disagreements, controversies … that’s what we should be about,” he said.

Jenkins has waded into some of this discourse on occasion, including when he wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune distancing the University from two professors’ op-ed arguing for abortion rights. He emphasized that Notre Dame’s priority is not institutional neutrality but the University’s guiding Catholic commitments.

“As a Catholic university, we are just different than most of our peers and there’s a set of moral commitments and a moral tradition as well as a religious tradition that informs our work. That doesn’t mean that everyone accepts it. It doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree to it. It doesn’t mean that people can’t speak against it. All those things can happen,” he said. “But as the leader of this institution, that broad framework should inform what we do … I tried to do that and articulate as best I could, as best I see it, what Notre Dame’s broad position is.”

Balancing Catholic values with academic freedom and dialogue has been at the forefront of these arguments. Jenkins is eager to discuss Obama’s appearance as commencement speaker, which he said was welcomed.

“There was a lot of agitation, much of it from outside of the campus. But I think on campus, there was a general affirmation that the elected leader of the nation should speak and was received to speak,” he said.

On that graduation day, however, Fr. Wilson Miscamble, a history professor, spoke at a rally against Obama’s presence and argued that administrators were falling short of the University’s values.

“Instead of fostering the moral development of its students Notre Dame’s leaders have

this period.

“I think it’s a general phenomenon that people of the younger generation are disengaged from not only the Church but from many institutions, and so that does concern me a bit,” he said. “To be honest with you, what worries me most is a certain isolation.”

He also mentioned concerns over social capital.

planted the damaging seeds of moral confusion,” Miscamble said in his speech.

Critics have repeated those concerns over the allowance of a drag performance on campus and other recent administration moves.

In an interview earlier in the year, Jenkins told the National Catholic Reporter he is concerned about increasing polarization among American Catholics and that some special interest groups in the Church have tried to focus solely on questions regarding gay marriage or abortion.

Jenkins will serve as commencement speaker next month, a move that has elicited some criticism from graduates in the class of 2024.

“Honored to be asked, happy to do it. Will try to give a good speech,” he said bluntly. He offered no preview of what his speech might look like.

“I can’t ruin the suspense.”

Becoming an elite university

Under Jenkins’ tenure, the University has continued its ascension to the status of an elite university, becoming more selective, higher-ranked and expensive.

“I believe the world does not necessarily need another prestigious university,” Jenkins told the National Catholic Reporter.

“But a Catholic university in the richest, broadest sense is something the world needs and the church needs.”

As Notre Dame has nonetheless achieved that prestige, Jenkins said that despite mistakes, he is proud of the University’s trajectory.

“I think it is a remarkable story of how not me, but the whole University has moved forward, academically but also in terms of a distinctive mission,” he said.

Two decades is a long time, as Jenkins acknowledges. He said that he has been concerned about societal trends that have occurred across the country in

“There’s a tendency, really for society in general, but young people in particular, to have fewer friends, fewer connections. I agree with those who say that’s one of the pernicious effects of the digital revolution, and those phones. We kind of connect digitally, but we don’t connect humanly, and I think in the long run, that’s not healthy for people, and it doesn’t lead to the best outcomes of human development,” he said.

Former presidents and becoming one

Jenkins said that the examples and guidance of former presidents Fr. Ted Hesburgh and Fr. Edward “Monk” Malloy were helpful as he learned the ropes.

“One of [Notre Dame’s] strengths is a certain continuity of leadership and consistency of purpose,” he said. “Personally, Fr. Hesburgh and Fr. Malloy were very supportive of me and gave me great advice. I’m deeply indebted to both of them,” Jenkins said. “And that doesn’t always happen in institutions where the new guy comes in and the old guy is shoved aside, and I hope I will be the same sort of help to my successor, Fr. [Robert] Dowd.”

While decades have passed since Hesburgh’s famous opendoor policy and midnight chats, Jenkins says he didn’t feel removed from the student body.

“One of the best things about my situation is I live in Fisher Graduate Apartments and, you know, you walk to campus and you’ll run into people and have a conversation with them. Sometimes it wasn’t the best conversations, but those are the ways, you know … obviously, you get to interact with student government and student leaders a lot and those kinds of things,” he said.

Jenkins said he is excited for the change and looks forward to teaching rather than administering.

“I did love the job. I love the people I work with, but, you know, it’s time for a change after a while — both for the University and for me — and I very much look forward to getting back to reading and writing and teaching. So I’m actually excited about that,” he said.

Contact Isa Sheikh at isheikh@ nd.edu

Courtesy of the University of Notre Dame

University President Fr. John Jenkins will speak at Notre Dame’s commencement this year. Jenkins will step down from his role as president in July after 19 years at the helm. He will be succeeded by Fr. Robert Dowd.

At pretty much any given moment on campus — in the basement of DPAC, in the attic of Washington Hall, in some far-flung practice room — there’s someone rehearsing something. We gathered a coterie of performing arts seniors to tell us about those somethings and their highlights from the last four years.

Department of Film, Television and Theater

Christina Sayut — a film, television and theater minor — reflected on her work in the department’s productions. She enjoyed her behind-the-scenes job on “Dawn’s Early Light,” a student-written show. “It’s definitely, I think, a little bit more fun,“ she said. ”You get freedom. There’s no, ‘You have to do it this way because it’s always been done that way.’”

She recalled having to borrow a pair of socks from friend Joe Golden when choreographer Theresa Thomas spent a rehearsal making everyone, cast and crew alike, dance her choreography — a day Sayut was wearing Birkenstocks.

Another fond memory of hers was the opening night of “A Chorus Line” this April: “The curtain came up opening night, and I was literally in tears. I was fortunate enough that my family was in the front row, and my boyfriend was in the front row. I turned around, and the first people I could see were all of these people that love me.”

There was a great team behind “A Chorus Line,” Sayut said. “I really felt like I was with a completely and wholly committed group of people. There was not a single person who was not on the same page the entire time.”

After four straight months of rehearsal, “it was really hard to say goodbye.”

Pasquerilla East Musical Company

Colleen Mackin, the current executive producer for the Pasquerilla East Musical Company (PEMCo), started out at the bottom of the ladder.

“The first thing I ever did for PEMCo,” she said, “was ushering for the revue in the fall of 2020.” Mackin remembers herself as “a scared little freshman who really wanted to be involved in theater … so I would do whatever they needed or wanted me to do.”

Consequently, she’s worn a lot of hats in her time with the company — not only as an executive producer and usher but also as an associate producer, stage manager and assistant stage manager. It was in this role as an assistant stage manager that she worked on “Something Rotten” in the spring of 2021.

“It was during COVID restrictions,” she recalls, “and we did this really interesting thing where one person was allowed to sing indoors.We had to record each sound part individually, and they patched them together.”

“Something Rotten” was one of her favorite productions, she said.

“I really like that show a lot,” Mackin said. “It’s really fun — there’s a lot of dancing, so it was super interesting for that to be my introduction to musical theater in college.”

Another favorite show was “Young Frankenstein,” her first gig as a stage manager.

“A lot of [the cast] were freshmen, and they're still involved with PEMCo,” Mackin said. “It's really exciting to see that kind of growth, from what they were doing their first semester of freshman year to what they're going to be doing when they enter their senior year.”

Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company

Natalie Allton is the executive producer of the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company (NSR), but she acts too.

She told The Observer about her favorite roles from the past four years: “Beatrice in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ — I love her so dearly. She's such a fun, comedic character to play. I really loved being the nurse in ‘Rodeo and Juliet.’ And then when I was Buckingham in ‘Richard III,’ that was such a fun role to pick up. My favorite roles have definitely been the ones where I get to play a character that’s maybe a little bit funny, but especially roles where the scenes rely on chemistry with the other actors. That’s by far the best part of NSR, the community around it.”

Allton’s favorite NSR production was “Measure for Measure,” which she worked on as an assistant director.

“I think the end result was just this incredible hodgepodge of scenes that cut you really deeply and were genuinely very tragic, and then we moved to a scene that was just laugh out loud funny,” she said. Speaking about the club overall, Allton said, “I'm very proud to say that I think NSR provides people with the tools that they need to really parse through Shakespeare. ... NSR has this great ability to help people build those muscles to understand Shakespeare — and, of course, spending weeks with the text definitely helps — but for me now, I think in iambic pentameter sometimes. We joke about that, where we'll be in a conversation and one of us will just quote something from a show we've done recently.”

Transpose Dance Collective

Anna Falk is a choreographer for the Transpose Dance Collective — Notre Dame’s “all styles, all levels, no cut” dance ensemble. It consists of both people like Falk, who has been dancing since the age of two, and people who are new to dance.

As with Mackin, the beginning of Falk’s involvement in her organization was shaped by COVID. During restrictions, Falk bonded with a fellow dancer in her dorm. That friend prompted her to join, and join she did — halfway through the rehearsal process.

“I just kind of learned, and didn’t stop there. I started choreographing the next semester,” she said. “Part of the constitution of Transpose is to bring dance to the people more. … It’s more communal,” Falk added. That’s exactly why Transpose performs offstage, specifically in the Dahnke Ballroom (and formerly in the LaFortune Ballroom), in order to “be on the same level” as the audience.

Falk said she felt good about her final show with Transpose. “It was memorable because I got to do a solo, and I was really proud of the work that we had done on our senior dance. Also a lot of my friends came, and my mom was there, too. I felt very supported during that.”

Chorale

As a freshman, Anna Gazewood joined Chorale because she missed singing during the pandemic, a time when there ”wasn't a ton to do.”

Now, she’s the choir’s president.

“We had our first few rehearsals

Laughing, she toldThe Observer about“tummy time” — a mandatory rehearsal break to help with air circulation instituted as a COVID precaution.“We’d kind of just lie on the ground,” but“tummy time” also became a time to chat and get to know other singers.

She also spoke about Chorale’s winter tours every year: “It’s kind of our first really big bonding experience because we’re on the road for a week. …You get to really know the group more than sort of just singing together and maybe going to dinner.”

Gazewood made memories with Chorale in places like the dining hall and the library, but also on tour, in places like a Birmingham mall and the Bass Pro Shops pyramid in Memphis.

Still, her favorite memory was her first time singing Handel’s“Messiah” with the ensemble.

“I already felt like I was fully in the group, but at that point, it was like,‘I'm fully in the group and wow, we have all this legacy that like now I feel like I'm finally in,’” she said.

Humor Artists

Emily Shetterly is one of the Humor Artists, Notre Dame’s improv comedy group. She’s served as the club’s treasurer, as a sketch show director and as a longform improv troupe member, but she started as a fan.

“[The team] really has a groupie culture to it, in a really fun way,” she said. ”They were my campus celebrities.”

Shetterly decided to try to audition: “I — like — put on a good outfit to make a good impression, and then

I stumbled into DeBart 101. I was the first one there, ten minutes early … I was really nervous. I didn’t even really know what improv was.”

Once she got in, her first show was in the basement of Keenan Hall.

“I thought there was going to be no one there because that was the impression I was given,” Shetterly said.

“Then Keenan Hall packed the whole basement. It was actually electric — it was the first time where I was like, ‘Oh, I actually really love doing this.’”

Shetterly likened the Humor Artists to a family, adding that being a Humor Artist gives her a feeling of purpose.

“It’s just so electric, and I love the show high,” she said. “Then afterward, you sleep for like 14 hours, and it feels so beautiful.

Student Standups

Nick Pesce, also a Humor Artist, was initially hesitant to join the Student Standups.

“I kind of resisted it for a while, especially my freshman and sophomore years,” he said. “Doing improv was such a departure from the guy I had been in high school, to where it felt like,‘Okay, if I did both of these things, it'd be really like crossing a line.’”

“There were a lot of people in the club who told me that I should do it, that they thought I'd be good at it,” he said, so eventually he did.

Pesce has done some great work with the club since then.

At the Backer show, the group filled the venue to capacity. “It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done,” Pesce said.

He said he felt good about the recent senior show atWashington Hall too.“So much of it comes back to your material and what you thought was good. Part of it was the crowd at Mainstage, and part of it was that I was really proud of my set.”

“It’s an interesting group,” Pesce said about the club. “The club president, Aidan [Tompkins], is very good at giving feedback. … The feedback that people offer is kind of where their comedic voice starts to shine through.”

Notre Dame Bands

Josh Richards, a french horn player and music major, said his favorite marching band performance was the “Top Gun” routine for the game against UCLA in 2022, “mostly because the entire show was a straight banger.”

“It was also one of our most intricate shows, so the stress was high going into it, and it paid off,” he remembered in an email. “We can't see ourselves from a bird's eye point of view like the spectators in the stadium, so our only way to gauge how well we're doing is by the cheers from the audience — that day was the loudest the stadium had ever been for the ND band.”

He also reminisced about performing “Danny Boy” with his section for a crowd of Irish fans at Aviva Stadium in Dublin.

For Richards, the band is about community: “The band's heart beats for Notre Dame. … We care about delivering performances that get the crowd moving, get them excited and ready to cheer our boys in golden helmets to victory.We care about giving the fans something to relate to, something to hold onto as distinctly ‘Notre Dame.’We care about our traditions, the silly game day excursions that keep us distracted from the fact that we're sweating straight through our uniform.”

Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra

Cecilia O’Brien is the co-president of the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra (along with Richards). When she joined as a freshman in 2020, the ensemble rehearsed outside in a tent and had to keep their music on their stands with clothespins.

O’Brien’s favorite concerts were the crowd-pleasers.

“The StarWars concert, our first show of the 2023-2024 season, was a huge hit. The audience was massive,” she said in an email.

She said she loved the Christmas tour with the Glee Club too:“We played in some spectacular venues, such as Heinz Hall, Verizon Hall and St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in New York City), and it was truly the most fun I've had playing with the group. Since we had played the concert so many times, it wasn't stressful at all — we could just enjoy playing Christmas music together for enthusiastic audiences. Dan, our conductor, is great with the crowds — they absolutely love his jokes and stories. The tour brought us a lot closer together as a group.”

She and Richards have worked to do exactly that — to bring the orchestra closer together as a group.

“I'm really proud of how many people in the orchestra bonded over the tour and other events this year,” she said, “and I see a really bright future for the group.”

Editor's Note: Christina Sayut, Natalie Allton and Anna Falk are former Observer staffers. Peter Mikulski is a member of the Humor Artists.

EVAN COBB, MARISSA PANETHIERE

The Observer

that semester in the stadium concourse because of COVID,” Gazewood said.

By PETER MIKULSKI Scene Editor

This University is on a mad building spree. It basically always has been, ever since that fateful day in 1842 when Fr. Sorin laid the first log of his chapel. The last four years are no exception: construction crews scurry around like worker ants; the din wakes people up in the mornings; and everywhere you look, they’re putting up a new piece of yellow brick neotraditional architecture.

Since the class of 2027’s first day of class, Notre Dame has erected five new buildings — two which break new ground and three in place of an old one — as well as spearheading countless renovations. Just like how every man, even if he hasn’t touched a bat since elementary school tee ball, thinks he could manage an MLB team, I think I could design a dorm. Men feel entitled to kvetch about sports, and I feel entitled to judge buildings. My career never made it past sand castles, pillow forts and Minecraft houses, but I spend 99% of my time in and around buildings — that’s architectural expertise, no? So here’s my review of the last four years’ new buildings.

Corby Hall

I’m sure that if you live in Corby Hall — i.e. if you’re a CSC — its total demolition and reconstruction probably brought welcome quality of life improvements. Corby now boasts an underground garage, a fancy dining room, new bike storage, better laundry facilities, porches and patios.

But I’m not a priest, and I don’t live in Corby, so I can say that I miss the old one. It posed challenges — it was built before electricity and indoor plumbing, after all — but it had

a formal coherence and elegance which the new one lacks. They really don’t make windows like they used to.

Remick Family Hall

Brownson Hall was Notre Dame’s second oldest building, beaten only by Old College. But unlike Old College — which was clearly built out of necessity when this state was still a frontier — Brownson was fairly delicate and attractive. It featured those signature tall, slender windows with low segmental arches that you see all over God Quad, and its walls were covered in ivy. Like Lyons and Howard Halls, Brownson also boasted a walk-through arch.

It’s not so much that I dislike the architecture of Remick Family Hall — and hey, I love the free coffee in there — it’s just that I miss the architecture of the building that was razed to make room for it.

McKenna Hall

The new McKenna Hall, which replaced an older midcentury modern building of the same name, belongs to a genre of vernacular architecture endemic to Notre Dame — one that’s 50% St. Ed’s and 50% McMansion. It haphazardly mixes together every single architectural trope to be found on campus, tossing in North Quad-style dormers with a slate roof alongside gothic arches plus a castle tower like the one Alumni has.

Raclin Murphy Museum of Art

I hated you, Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, but you’re growing on me. In my defense, the bizarre neoclassical neighborhood you form with the architecture school in the middle of that vast expanse of parking lots is one of the most

dystopian sights at this school, especially when viewed on a cold overcast day.

Still, you’re coming into your own. Sculptures are starting to populate your sculpture garden, and the garden part of it is finally starting to grow lush and green. While walking past McKenna Hall makes me feel like I’m in a Cheesecake Factory and makes me feel cheap, walking past you — with your weighty Grecian forms — makes me feel dignified.

Johnson Family Hall

When Notre Dame filed an architectural application for the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, we prided ourselves on our “decorative elements on the exterior [which] evoke the flamboyant tradition of mid-19th century eclecticism.” The buildings which bear that torch, the torch of flamboyant eclecticism, are not the hotel-style dorms like Johnson Family Hall — it’s the whimsical, postmodern dorms on West Quad like Keough and O’Neill.

Architecturally, J-Fam is lying to itself. It’s a modern dorm pretending it’s a vintage one — wearing its skin “Texas Chain Saw Massacre”-style. Frankly, it’s dishonest.

It’s been four year, and Notre Dame is yet to hit an architectural grand slam; so far it’s just fouls and strikes. Still, there’s a lot of construction currently in progress, and there’s a lot of completion dates on the horizon. Maybe Notre Dame’s next masterpiece is around the corner.

Great walls and aqueducts, beautiful temples and gardens — that’s how emperors used to make their mark, by building. Hopefully Fr. Dowd is a better builder than his predecessor.

Contact Peter Mikulski at pmikulsk@nd.edu

By JACK HORTON Scene Writer

ONE MOVIE FOR EVERY NOTRE DAME COLLEGE

College of Arts and Letters: “Dead Poets Society” (1989)

“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys.”

Set at the prestigious Welton Academy, this film revolves around English teacher John Keating (played by Robin Williams). It explores themes of conformity, individuality and the power of literature to transform lives. For Arts & Letters students, this film closely aligns with the “Study Everything, Do Anything” motto.

College of Engineering: “Hidden Figures” (2016)

“Whoever gets there first will make the rules.”

This film follows three female African American mathematicians who played crucial roles in the early years of the U.S. space program. It highlights the resilience, intelligence and perseverance of these women who overcame racial barriers to play a pivotal role in the success of John Glenn’s

historic orbit around the Earth in 1962.

College of Science: “The Fugitive” (1993)

“Your fugitive’s name is Doctor Richard Kimble. Go get him.”

I get it. It’s more of an action movie than a science movie. But, you know what? I’m putting it down anyway because a story following Harrison Ford as a husband convicted of his wife’s murder while maintaining his innocence is endlessly entertaining. For doctors, the film features conflicts over proper medicine practices and the drug approval process.

Keough School of Global Affairs: “Argo” (2012)

“This is the best bad idea we have, sir. By far.”

When I found out that this was a true story, I couldn’t believe it. Disguising as a film crew to rescue trapped embassy workers during the Iran Hostage Crisis? No way. Ben Affleck gives a great performance as Tony Mendez, an officer for the CIA. It’s well deserving of its Oscar for Best Picture and is an exciting thriller about one of the most important events in the past 50 years.

Mendoza College of Business: “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992)

“Coffee is for closers.”

The easy answer would have been “The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013). However, far fewer have seen “Glengarry Glenn Ross.” What an incredible cast — Pacino, Lemon, Harris, Spacey, Arkin and Baldwin (whose “A.B.C.” monologue steals the show). For business students, this film highlights the pressure to succeed in a cuthroat sales environment.

School of Architecture: “The Money Pit” (1986)

“Ahhh, home crap home!”

“The Money Pit” has a lighter tone than the other films listed, but it’s still a very enjoyable movie with a young Tom Hanks. A young couple finds a house out in the countryside at an extremely low price and immediately purchases it. Their initial excitement turns to frustration as doors, staircases and bathtubs begin to break.

Contact Jack Horton at jhorton6@nd.edu

ETHAN CHIANG, MARISSA PANETHIERE | The Observer

YOU KNOW ALL THE BIG ONES BY NOW, BUT HERE'S A CRASH COURSE ON PRETTY MUCH EVERY SINGLE THEATER ON CAMPUS — FROM THE GREATEST HITS TO THE DEEP CUTS, FROM THE TOUR GUIDE FUN FACTS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE ICEBERG. THESE ARE THE PLACES WHERE EVERY SORT OF PERFORMER, THEATER KID AND CHOIR GEEK AND BAND NERD ALIKE, PUT THE HOURS IN TO EARN THEIR STANDING OVATIONS.

Mainstage at Washington Hall

Leighton Concert Hall at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

The crown jewel of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman called the Leighton Concert Hall “the best on the continent.” Acoustically speaking, it’s certainly the best venue on campus. Hell, it’s the best venue in South Bend. It’s probably the best venue in Northwest Indiana too. For its audience, Leighton is fitted with the works: not just floor and balcony seating but box, terrace and parterre (how French!) seating too.The largest theater of its sort on campus, it seats roughly 840 under its dramatic 96-foot ceiling. PRO TIP: the front seats aren’t always the best seats — you can see the back half of the stage, where the wind players of the symphony orchestra sit, much better from the back of the floor and from the parterre!

The Leighton Concert Hall is home to most of Notre Dame’s large musical ensembles, both instrumental and choral. To name a few, it hosts the Glee Club, Chorale, Symphony Orchestra, Jazz Bands, New Orleans Brass Band, Symphonic Winds, Concert Band and University Band. It’s also the go-to theater for hot-shot touring acts on campus.

This theater has a split personality.

On one hand, it brings to mind bat infestations and ghost stories and a legacy of blackface minstrel shows hosted a hundred years ago; it’s a little ratchet in there. But on the other, this sceptred stage is Notre Dame’s cloutiest venue; it feels good to perform in a building that’s going on 142, in a space that everyone from William Jennings Bryan to William F. Buckley has spoken in.

Mainstage seats an impressive 550 in two sections, a floor and a balcony. Formerly a proscenium stage — one in which an arch frames the actors and separates them from the audience — its orchestra pit was covered and converted into a thrust stage which juts into the floor section.

Before 1956, when the walls were repainted gray, Mainstage was ornately adorned with the names and portraits of people that students in the 1800s thought were important: undeniable greats like Shakespeare, Molière, Mozart, Beethoven, Cicero and Demosthenes; valid deep cuts like contemporary opera composer Charles Gounod and Notre Dame theater professor Maximilian Girac; and forgotten nobodies like “Michael William Balfe” too. The centerpiece of the artwork was a portrait of the eponymous president of the hall, sat atop the peak of the proscenium arch. Bits and pieces of these murals are still visible. PRO TIP: you can look at the wall art instead of watching the show if it’s boring or bad!

PEMCo uses Mainstage for their spring and fall shows. Dance Co. uses it for their spring and fall showcases. It’s also the premiere venue for a cappella groups, used by The Echoes, Halftime,The Undertones and Harmonia.

LaBar

Recital Hall at the O’Neill Hall of Music

The O’Neill Hall of Music, on the south side of the stadium, is perfectly symmetrical. Inside, there are two nearly identical performance spaces — one on each of its sides — and they’re both named “LaBar.” It’s endlessly confusing, like they’re deliberately trying to trick you. LaBar Recital Hall is the fancier of the two. PRO TIP: this is the home of the Notre Dame piano tuner’s favorite instrument, a Steinway Model D Grand Piano!

The Labar Recital Hall is built for the smaller classical music acts on campus, as well as the music and sacred music departments’ student and faculty recitals.

Decio Theatre at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

A fly system for hoisting actors mid-air, an orchestra pit for staging musicals and trap doors fitted into the stage — Decio has all the bells and whistles. Like all the theaters in DPAC, Decio sits on its own foundation separate from the rest of the building.

The film, television and theater department puts on its larger musical productions in the Decio Theatre.

Lab Theatre (“Blackbox”) at Washington Hall

In 1984, Washington Hall opened its black-box theater, the “Lab Theatre.” This small, flexible space seats about a hundred viewers in stackable chairs. It occupies the third floor of the building, up four or five long flights of stairs. Lacking an elevator, Lab Theatre is chronically inaccessible. PRO TIP: during rehearsal, actors open up the all-around black-out curtains, so from God Quad, you can peep at them working through the windows!

The Lab Theatre is the primary venue for the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Co.’s plays, the Notre Dame Student Standups’ shows and the Humor Artists’ improv shows.

Philbin Studio Theatre at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

DPAC’s Philbin Studio Theatre is to Decio Theatre as Wash Hall’s Lab Theatre is to Mainstage — i.e. it’s its spunky little sibling. A highly configurable black-box space, Philbin accommodates both thrust stage and theater-in-the-round setups. PRO TIP: If you’re seeing a show in Philbin and are easily startled, try to sit away from the edges of the seating — actors are lurking behind every curtain, liable to pop out from all angles at any moment!

Philbin Studio Theatre is the main venue for the film, television and theater department’s smaller productions, like plays.

Hagerty Family Cafe Stage at the Duncan Student Center

LaBar Performance Hall (“Whitebox”) at the O'Neill Hall of Music

Labar Performance Hall is sort of like the Lab Theater and Philbin black-box theaters, but it has tall sunny windows, slick shiny floors and bright white walls. Hence, the nickname “the Whitebox” was born.

For the most part, the Labar Performance Hall is used as a rehearsal space, but recently it has been a venue for Opera ND.

What’s a theater, really? What’s a stage but a wooden platform? The Hagerty Family Cafe Stage is precisely that, a bit of floor in the Duncan Student Center raised shin height. Nevertheless, art persists. At least once a week, the people who drink their coffee and do their homework on the ledge are shooed away, et voila, it becomes a theater.

The Hagerty Family Cafe Stage is the home of Acousticafe — Student Union Board’s weekly open mic — as well as the Juggler’s poetry readings and magazine launches. This is also where Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Co. performs its “unnrehearsed” productions. PRO TIP: if open mics are too awkward for you, keep your distance from the Hagerty Family Cafe on Thursday evenings!

PEMCo performed “Big Fish” on Mainstage this fall, dazzling the audience with a large cast and elaborate dance numbers.

The LaBar Recital Hall sits on the east side of the O’Neill Hall of Music, which is south of the stadium.

The “Whitebox” is on the west side of O’Neill.

The Hagerty Family Cafe Stage is centrally located on campus.

By PETER MIKULSKI SCENE EDITOR

Because of its top-notch acoustics and large seating capacity, the Leighton Concert Hall is an attractive venue for all sorts of musical ensembles on campus.

Browning Cinema at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Notre Dame has its own movie theater, the Browning Cinema. It’s capable of projecting 35 mm film on its 14 by 27 foot screen, and — equally important — it has a well-stocked and relatively cheap concessions stand. Popcorn and drinks are a buck apiece on Sundays!

Browning screens tastefully programmed art cinema, often in collaboration with institutions like the Center for Italian Studies or the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. Still, it’s increasingly able to grab big pop features. This year alone it showed “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as well as offering advance screenings of “Kung Fu Panda 4” and “The Fall Guy.” PRO TIP: Because the screen is a good distance from the first row, those seats aren’t really a problem, but because the rows are quite steep back-to-back, it’s the abnormally high back rows that you have to avoid!

Club Side at Legends of Notre Dame

Sitting in the back left corner of DPAC, under the concession stand and across from the movie theater, is what’s essentially a secular cathedral. It’s not built for worship, but as a performance space for organ and choir music. Still, it has all the fittings of a Catholic church — hard wooden pews, a high vaulted ceiling, etc. The only thing missing is a tabernacle and an altar. The hall’s centerpiece is its organ, which is elaborately hewn from 800-year-old Douglas fir. The thing weighs 10,000 pounds, containing 2,551 pipes and 35 stops (the origin of the phrase “to pull out all the stops”). The acoustic is, in a word, cavernous; the space’s reverberation time is a remarkable four full seconds. PRO TIP: when seeing a show in Reyes, make sure to arrive on time — the capacity is only 80, and the floors are creaky (and the creaks echo!) so there’s no way to “sneak in” without making a ton of noise.

The early music groups Schola Musicorum and Collegium Musicum use the Reyes Organ and Choral Hall, as well as the sacred music department’s organ program.

As part of the effort to revitalize itself, specifically as a student hangout, Legends has started offering its club side as a space for campus performing arts groups. The room is flexible: it’s the same one they use for catered private events, like big first communion lunches and office Christmas parties. It has a good stage, though, plus a solid sound and lighting system. With the tables and chairs, it makes a convincing comedy club, and without them it passes as a music venue.

Legends’ Club Side is the primary venue for Boogaloo — The Musician Network’s annual student music festival — and

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart

I don’t mean to be provocative by putting the Basilica on this list of theaters … but there’s an undeniably storied history surrounding the fortu itous relationship between Western drama and the Roman Rite, which preserved it through the Dark Ages. The Basilica, however, is also just a literal venue for Notre Dame’s plethora of Catholic choirs. On Sundays during the school year, the Liturgical Choir (or “Lit Choir”) sings at 10:00 a.m. Mass and 7:15 p.m. Vespers. They also give occasional concerts, like Mozart’s searing Requiem last Palm Sunday. The Folk Choir covers the noon Mass on Sundays. The all-female Magnificat Choir also sings a 5:00 p.m. Vigil Mass on Saturdays. For Holy Week, these choirs combine forces and put on an incredible week of music. PRO TIP: if you want to attend the Basilica’s beautiful Easter Vigil liturgy, be prepared to wait in line — some real heads wait as long as twelve hours to grab a primo spot in the pews!

Stepan Center

Finance finals, SYRs, Calculus tests and even a Noah Kahan concert once. This bizarre geodesic dome hosts a truly schizophrenic mix of events. Because of its 2,000-person capacity, Stepan Center is the spot for campus’ big-ticket acts. Bands like The Driver Era and performers like Noah Kahan are consistently able to sell out the center, packing a quarter of the student body into a single room. PRO  TIP: leave the jacket at home, it gets sweaty in there!

Some of Stepan’s big events include the Sound of SUB — the Student Union Board’s popular annual music festival — and the Keenan Revue.

CHRIS COLLINS, SOFIA CRIMIVAROLI, GRAY NOCJAR, MARISSA PANETHIERE | The Observer

Reyes Organ and Choral Hall at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

The organ in the Reyes Organ and Choral Hall sits above the stage facing the audience, who sit in the pews.

Right: The Basilica of the Sacred Heart’s organ sits above the front entrance facing the altar.

The Keenan Revue is an annual sketch comedy show performed by the men of Keenan Hall in order to support Dismas House in South Bend.

Maggie Eastland Editor-in-Chief Emerita

I don’t like graduations. I prefer not to say goodbye. What can I give you as we’re parting that will make it any easier? If I had it my way, I’d quietly recede from campus without any fanfare.

Unsurprisingly, I’m a big fan of the Irish goodbye. I won’t delude myself that I’ve left any kind of unspoken legacy here, but I do hope that my actions speak for themselves. If those I love don’t know how much they mean to me by now, is there any use tacking on an Observer column?

I am writing one anyway because Johnny Nolan, a fictional character from “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” keeps pestering me. The drunken Irish singer gives a model farewell. He dies of alcoholism before his daughter Francie graduates 8th grade. He departs the world without saying goodbye, but he leaves one breadcrumb. Even the sloppy singing waiter, a man who never could provide for his family, made his love known before he died.

After graduation, Francie resigns to a quiet bitterness, reluctant to say goodbye and ready to move on. Then, unexpectedly, a bouquet of two dozen dark red roses breaks her protest against affection.

“For Francie on graduation day. Love from Papa.” She sobs. The tears only multiply when she learns her

Ryan Peters Managing Editor Emeritus

Irish goodbyes

father set aside the money and wrote the card a year ago, asking someone to remember to give them Francie.

“Cry loud and hard,” Aunt Sissy tells Francie, “and hurry up.”

I suppose that’s my advice to fellow seniors. Cry loud and hard and hurry up. We have good things to share with the world, and there’s no time to mope. I think that’s the wisdom Sissy knew.

And if drunken Johnny can leave a bouquet for graduation, maybe I, too, can say goodbye and leave a few flowers for those people who have made the last four years lovely. If friends were like flowers, I’d have the most beautiful garden. To all those who shared their lives with me here, you are wonderful.

To those who taught me to live and breathe in the spirit of The Observer — Alysa, Adri, Issy, Manni, Isa, Claire, Ryan, Christina, Gabby, Andrew, Gray, Aynslee, Annelise and our entire Ed Board, thank you for inspiring me and sharing your friendship. For everyone at The Observer, lilacs upon lilacs, fragrant as the bushes outside South Dining Hall.

To my parents, thank you is not enough. For my mom: a bursting bouquet of trilliums and irises too. For my dad: tiger lilies.

For Ryan and Drew, a pair of playful foxglove stalks. For Grandma Peg and Pap, shamrock. Thank you for sharing your love of St. Patrick’s Day and for always

rooting for me.

For Nona and Papa, azalea. Thanks for letting me pick them when I was young and for teaching me about beauty. For Sofie, abundant cornflowers, sparkling like royalty with their purple-blue petals. For Morgan, crocuses. For Eve, violets. For Megan, daffodils. For Caroline, daisies, probably pink. For Annie, orange blossoms. For Bri, tulips. For Emma, magnolias.

For Josh and Brendan and Cole, joyful sunflowers. For Britton, columbine — because it thrives on cliffs. We found some on a field trip once, believe it or not. For Sofia, begonias. (Sorry, you can’t get rid of me kid.)

For Gus, Old Forest lilies, the ones Tom Bombadil tends. There are far too many people to name in this column. Countless club leaders, hall staff, poetry night regulars, professors and amazing people who I’ve been blessed to know. But this goodbye is already hard enough. For those named only in my heart, forget-me-knots. Thank you for being tender, strong and true. And no, I still won’t say it.

Maggie is a senior from Grand Rapids, Michigan graduating with a degree in finance and a minor in journalism. After graduation, she’ll pursue a career in business journalism and spend the summer interning at Bloomberg News. You can contact Maggie at maggie.eastland@gmail.com. The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

I could have gotten this anywhere

I could’ve gotten my college experience anywhere. I worked for the student newspaper, got a business degree, studied abroad, went out to bars, you know — the usual. Notre Dame was by far the “best” school I got into, but I could’ve gotten the full college experience and had a great time at any school.

During my time at The Observer, I’ve often found myself criticizing the school because, well, that’s what a student newspaper is here for. Now that I’m looking back, I find it appropriate to reflect on the most important lesson that I learned here.

While Notre Dame was the “best” school that made the mistake of letting me in, I did not and do not care about that. What drew me in and sticks with me is how comfortable Notre Dame is in its own skin.

There’s a lot of nonsense going around at some of the “top” universities right now. Schools are canceling commencement ceremonies, students are going

crazy, university administrators are proving incompetent at managing the well-being of their institutions. It’s a weird time.

I’m grateful to go to a school that carved out a unique character. A character that goes beyond simply appeasing the whims of pretentious 18-22-year-olds. Don’t get me wrong: there’s still a lot of that. But Notre Dame is Notre Dame. It’s not an Ivy. It’s not a party school. It’s not even just a Catholic school. It is its own thing.

At a time where Catholicism is even less trendy than normal and tight-knit communities and normal social interaction are hard to come by, Notre Dame is unique. It’s an intimate, pedestrian campus with lively dorm communities and a Catholic reputation it doesn’t downplay.

Notre Dame’s academics are phenomenal. But the rapid acceleration of the University’s academic prestige is a byproduct of its distinct reputation. Smart high school kids can get an “elite” education at a number of places. But if you’re looking for a school where most students are genuinely seeking to build community, well, that’s a little harder. When you distinguish yourself for a cause you believe in, doors open for you — often because you get flak for it.

While on the surface my college experience was basic, I’m not sure how many schools I could’ve gone to where I could cover multiple Supreme Court justices — one of them being a law school alumna — and the Ecumenical Patriarch visiting campus or Quarter Dogs disappearing. I’m lucky to have gotten to experience all the random — and sometimes weird — opportunities Notre Dame has afforded me, all while meeting unbelievable people and communities in every corner of campus I’ve visited.

I don’t know what the rest of my life will look like. But — for all its flaws — Notre Dame has taught me the importance of standing up for values I believe in. The path may not be clear at this point. But thanks to this really strange school in the greatest city in the world, I know that if I stay true to who I am, it will eventually fall into place.

Ryan is graduating from Notre Dame with a major in business analytics. After graduation, he will work in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. You can contact him at ryan.peters002@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

A home under South Dining Hall

I’ve been fortunate enough to find many different homes on campus, but I think the most surprising one has been The Observer.

I first applied to work for The Observer through an Instagram post that I saw, where Viewpoint was looking for illustrators. I sent in an email with a portfolio, and no one ever responded to me. I was bummed, sure, but ultimately I just assumed that I would never make it into the basement of South Dining Hall. Then all of a sudden I see an opening for a graphic designer. I thought to myself, “Why not? The worst thing is that they could ignore your application again!” And so, I sent one in. This time, I was met with open arms by then-graphics editor, Maggie Klaers.

Maggie got me involved in the office. I came in on Sunday nights, did my silly graphics, goofed off with

Aidan O’Malley and started to get to know the people who worked with me. The year flew by. Sitting in my 9:25 a.m. philosophy class (one of the five times I actually went to class — Mom and Dad, pretend you didn’t read that), Maggie asked me if I wanted to take on the graphics editor position. Originally, I thought there was no way I could do it all. At this point, I had accepted my RA position and knew that I did not want to spread myself too thin. However, Maggie was persistent. And I ended up listening. Boy, am I so glad that I did. Little did I know that I was about to be thrown into what has been one of the most loving and dedicated groups of people that I have ever been graced to meet. Luckily, I was able to trick my best friend and sister, Marissa, into taking on the same challenge that I did.

To the current editorial board — currently working in the wee hours of the morning to finish the commencement edition — hold onto these memories.

As I pick up phone calls from Marissa, Liam and Isa asking me to finish writing this column, I remember

how much work was put into making last year’s paper, but also how much fun it was to step into this role.

The Observer has created so many memories for me throughout my time at Notre Dame, but nothing beats the 1 p.m. meetings in the South Dining Hall basement every Sunday as I try to recover from the weekend before.

The Observer will always be my family, and my peers on the editorial board created an unforgettable senior year. SDH basement, take good care of my magnetic letters.

Christina is graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelors in visual communication design and minors in studio art and musical theater. After graduation, she will be “booling around” until she receives and accepts a job offer. You can contact Christina at christinasayut1@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Christina Sayut Graphics Editor Emerita

J.J. Post Senior Sports Writer

Those unseen forces

My first Notre Dame memory isn’t much of a memory at all.

I was eight years old when I first stepped on campus. Notre Dame was playing Boston College, and my parents presumably decided it was their duty as Catholics to make my first college football game as a young lover of the sport a battle between my mother’s alma mater and, well, the school basically every other Catholic in this country roots for.

The game itself was about as forgettable as can be, which is just as well given I only remember snippets of the day. It was chilly and wet. YouTube tells me a then-freshman by the name of Manti Te’o made a couple of big plays on the game’s final drive to help the Irish secure a 20-16 victory, an ending corroborated by a grainy photo of the stadium scoreboard that lies in the deep annals of my family’s desktop computer. We stopped at the Wendy’s on North Michigan Avenue before driving back home.

But I was hooked. Something felt right. Maybe it was the friendliness of the students running the table of whatever organization was on South Quad that morning that offered me and my younger sister bagels. Maybe it was the regal atmosphere I soaked in as I watched the band walk across campus and into the stadium. Or maybe was the watchful eyes of Touchdown Jesus gazing down at me as I walked out of the famed confines of Notre Dame Stadium and into the inky night.

As I grew up, my Irish fandom slowly progressed, incubated by countless hours of stress and jubilation watching NBC and ESPN. I’d get a Michael Floyd jersey the next summer. In fourth grade, I attempted to put Holy Water (obtained weeks prior at a CCD event) on our living room TV with Notre Dame trailing 28-0 in the 2012 national championship game. By eighth grade, I had named my FIFA Ultimate Team “Notre Dame SC” and dreamed of one day attending the school myself. By my senior year in high school, it was clear that dream was probably just that — a dream.

My grades were fine, but not where they’d need to be. I applied — hey, you never know — and was summarily rejected. And I assumed that would be the end of the story. I prepared to enroll at the University of Wisconsin where I’d be a proud Badger but a subway alum at heart.

But Wisconsin never felt like home to me. I wasn’t blind to the prospect of transferring being an option (in retrospect, it might have been an inevitability) but promised myself I’d put my whole heart into Wisconsin and see if I could shake Touchdown Jesus’ long-casted gaze. And try I did, earnestly. But it didn’t work. It took me all of a few months to realize that no memory I had made as a student even came close to the emotion I felt sitting alone at a Madison sports bar watching Notre Dame run onto the field for their first game of that strange 2020 season against Duke.

So I went all-in on school. I locked myself in my dorm room and fervently blazed through classwork until I reemerged with a perfect GPA. I worked tirelessly to write and re-write my transfer essays. And then, one cold day in March, I hit submit on a second application in as many years. And I waited and waited.

Much like that October afternoon almost a decade prior, I don’t recall much about the day I got accepted into Notre Dame. There was no Rudy, “my son’s going to Notre Dame!” moment. I just remember being unable to stop smiling.

Once in South Bend, it was far from the fairytale sort of story I’d love to tell. I wasn’t the first transfer student, and won’t be the last, to strugg/m,m,le to fit my way into friend groups that had already been established. I struggled, to the point where my “social life” essentially became entirely contingent on Notre Dame’s athletic schedule. I hailed cars, buses and trains on a fruitless search for something greater than a quality article, following Irish athletics to every corner of the country on a never-ending quest for the identity and community I was struggling to find on campus.

And yet even at my most lonesome, I never thought twice about my choice to transfer.

It’s worth noting here that I, notoriously, overthink everything. Was the question I asked in class stupid? Did I tip an appropriate amount at the Backer? If a choice has even the most minuscule impact on my life I will wring my hands over and over again about it during the day and lose sleep about it at night.

Unless it’s coming to Notre Dame.

There was and is an assuring magic about Notre Dame that rises above even the greatest heights of my anxiety. When welcoming viewers into the 1993 “Game of the Century” in South Bend, Bob Costas remarked that Notre Dame players draw

their inspiration from forces “seen and unseen.” It is through such a characterization that you can understand the mystical, unwavering allure of Our Lady best.

The forces you can see hardly need to be verbalized. Ask anyone what they picture when they think of Notre Dame and watch the answers coalesce around the university’s grand national identity: gold. The statue of Mary, glimmering high atop the Dome. The iconic chrome football helmets popping against a floodlit Saturday sky.

But the forces you can’t see are the ones that make Notre Dame such a truly special place to those who embrace it. The enticing mythology of the legends of the Gipper or Four Horsemen that haunt the hallowed concourses of Notre Dame Stadium, casting an overhanging aura of glory past and daring you to dream of glory future. The solemn peace of the Grotto when the only lights shining through a black winter night are its candles flickering across snowy ground, beckoning you to bask in its tranquil solitude. The serenity of kneeling beneath the crucifix off the Saint Joseph’s Lake trail when you need a moment of silent prayer in a time of stress or chaos. The feeling I’ll never have the words to describe in the pit of my chest when I talk about being at Notre Dame with my great aunt and she tells me how proud my grandparents would be of me.

These are the forces that make me know, that no matter my situation, I am home. I wake up every morning with peace of mind that no matter what might happen, I’m honored to just be a Notre Dame student. That I’ve made my grandparents proud. That I’ve made my eighth-grade self proud. That I’ve made what was once a dream become reality. Thank you, God, for making me Irish.

Pé áit a rachaidh tú, beidh mé leat // Wherever you go, I will be with you.

J.J. is a graduating senior from Mountainside, New Jersey graduating with a major in political science and a minor in journalism. He’s best known for attending just under 250 Notre Dame athletic events across his final two years at the University. After graduation, he’ll be continuing his reporting career with ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut. He’s not especially likely to respond to an email at jjpost19@gmail.com, but is extremely likely to discuss niche Notre Dame sports with you on Twitter/X via the handle @JayJayPost.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Embracing the unexpected

this necessity to shift gears manifests in all aspects of your life, for better or for worse.

If you told me in August that I would not be pursuing a doctoral degree right out of college, I think I would have thrown up. For many months, I dedicated hours of my time on crafting the perfect personal statement which encapsulated my passion for neuroscience and showcased all of my abilities and qualifications. Pursuing a doctorate was all I dreamed of for years, but I ended up turning down an offer of admission. Even before I put my deposit down for the University of Notre Dame, I knew I would have to get comfortable with change. Originally, I had absolutely no intention of coming here for school. I wanted to be unique, and my alumni parents and now-alumna sister affirmed that Notre Dame was not the school for me — until I got in.

To this day, I cannot tell you what made me rethink my original position; I wish more than anything that I could remember. This was my first lesson in a long line of lessons concerning my ability to confront the unexpected.

I’ve learned and relearned over my four years at Notre Dame that even the things that seem permanent can change within a week or two — I know every student who had to confront school during the pandemic understands this. Regardless,

I didn’t know I’d move dorms after my first year. I didn’t know I’d add a minor halfway through my senior year and drop the one I’d had since I was a sophomore. I didn’t know how my friend group would change both so much and so little within the span of four years. I didn’t know how such small things in life could make such a big difference, and I didn’t know how some big changes could mean so little to me.

For the sake of page space (and good journalism), I won’t write my whole laundry list of the unexpected that I’ve encountered during my undergraduate career. I’m sure I’m not alone in this experience, even though it can be an incredibly isolating one. One of the best things I’ve encountered at Notre Dame, however, is the wonderful people who have made these transitions smoother and stuck with me though times were terrifying and uncertain.

To my family: Thank you for being supportive of me through all of my crazy ventures in the past four years. You’ve stuck with me and loved me through it all, as I know you’ve done for a long time and will continue to do.

To my friends: Thank you for getting me through some of my worst moments. Thank you for all of the late-night study sessions, the trips to Target, DnD sessions, presentation nights and nights spent watching the worst movies of all time.

To Dr. Chan: Thank you for being an incredible professor and mentor throughout my time as an undergraduate. It has been an honor to work with you and to be taught by you.

To the Not-So-Royal Shakespeare Company: Thank you for trusting me to try something new. You are all talented beyond words, wise beyond your years and will be my closest group of friends for as long as I live.

To The Observer: Thank you for being there to watch me grow into the person and writer that I am today. The late nights and “love the passion, cannot print” moments are worth their weight in gold.

To all those who I have not thanked explicitly here: Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring.

I will miss this place and all the people in it, but it’s definitely time for me to graduate (and sleep for about three months). Go Irish!

Anna is a senior from Cincinnati, Ohio, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and behavior with a minor in Irish studies. After Notre Dame, she will be pursuing a master’s degree in behavioral neuroscience at University College Dublin. You can contact Anna at amf8357@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Anna Falk

Scene Editor Emerita

José Sánchez Córdova Assistant Managing Editor Emeritus

To those who got me here

True to form, I turned in my final college assignment — a 10-page research paper on Bob Marley — Friday night, less than 45 minutes before it was due. That was expected. What I didn’t expect was the wash of emotions that followed.

First came relief. After a week spent hunched over my laptop, it was liberating to know it was over. Forty pages of papers and two finals will do that. The workload was demoralizing, frankly. Sometimes it felt like I was the only senior who was still studying. My friends would text in our group chat, whipping up some fun plan for the day and I was stuck on campus instead. That final submission meant I’d spend all the time I had left with all the people I love, not with Microsoft Word.

Then it was happiness. A big smile stretched across my face right after hitting send. I walked straight to the fridge and opened up a beer to celebrate. I started to think about what that moment meant. Four years of sitting in class, taking notes and turning in papers are pretty much over. It’s something I’ve spent the last semester dreading, but it’s not so bad now that it’s here.

Less than a week from now, I’ll leave South Bend as an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame. I’ll be walking across a stage to get the piece of paper that I’ve worked toward across two decades of schooling. My family will be there cheering me on. The job is finished. There’s plenty to be happy about.

Last came the pride. Not necessarily in myself, but in the work I’ve done. I look back at these last four years and it was really hard at times. There have been long nights of little sleep. Sometimes they were at the library because I procrastinated, others it was at the Observer office, waiting for that last story to come in for tomorrow’s paper. There were the hard classes that pushed me to my limit. There were the lunch rushes at Au Bon Pain where the orders seemed endless and where sometimes the knife cut my hand instead of a bagel. There were the freezing cold soccer broadcasts where I’d slouch behind a camera outside, shivering for three hours. I didn’t always want to do it, but I knew it would all be worth it and I never faltered.

That’s why I felt so damn proud right after I turned in that final paper. It is because of the hard work, the commitment, the dedication. They all paid off. I’ve put everything I’ve got into my time at this school and arriving at the finish line makes it all even sweeter.

As such, I’d like to dedicate my last words in this newspaper I love so much to all the people that have made the last four years the best of my life.

To my parents, who gave me all their love, their support, their wisdom: I would never have made it this far without you and I am eternally grateful. I love you.

To my sister, the one who started talking about journalism and made me think it could be fun to try out: Thank you for being there my whole life, for sharing the good and the bad, for always answering the phone when I need to talk. I can’t wait to see the person you’ll become. I love you and I’m so proud of you.

To the rest of my family, all the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the cousins: Thank you for all your love and support. It truly means the world that you’re all coming out to celebrate with me. I couldn’t have done it without you. I love you.

To my friends at Notre Dame: We’ll keep in touch, but I’m going to miss you guys so much. I’ll miss the football games and the tailgates, but I’ll also miss the dining hall dinners and the games of pool in our dorms. I’m going to miss having best friends next door that I can always count on. Thank you for sharing this University with me. It wouldn’t be half the blessing it has been without you. I love you all.

Lastly, to my beloved Observer: I had no clue what I was in for when I covered that first fencing meet more than two years ago. Thank you to the sports department that brought me in and made me feel like part of the family. Thank you to all of Ed Board, you guys are the best group I could have ever asked for. Thank you to my fellow back editors, Maggie, Ryan, Gabby and Hannah. It has been a privilege to work and share the office with all of you. I love you all. Thank you to The Observer, you have made me a better person and a better journalist, and you have changed my life.

José is a senior from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico graduating with degrees in French and political science and a minor in journalism. After Notre Dame, he’ll continue his career in journalism as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. You can contact José at joche.sanchezcordova@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Stay in this moment

Andrew McGuinness Sports Editor Emeritus

The fourth pitch is the fastest one Atlanta Braves flamethrower Spencer Strider has hurled in the atbat, but it’s also just outside. Bryson Stott tracks it and watches it miss. Two balls, two strikes.

It is Oct. 14, 2022. The first home game in the postseason for the Philadelphia Phillies in 4,025 days is scoreless, but suddenly, an errant pickoff throw has given the Phils a runner at third with only one out in the third inning. My parents and sister, in town that weekend for a football game, sit next to me in the random Buffalo Wild Wings we decided to watch the game at, heads titled toward the closest of the endless TVs around us. Anticipation and anxiety fill the air with equal weight.

The entire postseason journey was something I had thought about for what felt like forever. I was nine the last time the Phillies had even made it. And, naturally, great stress came with those high hopes. I wanted it to be perfect. Dreaming the Phils would jump out to a big lead early every game, eliminating all of the anxiety before it could build up, was the easy way out.

But I knew this was too important of an experience to wish away. So, whenever I would find myself looking ahead that October, at risk of not soaking everything in, I would repeat a few words to myself over and over again until the haze faded.

“Stay here. Stay in this moment. It’s a really great moment, no matter what comes next.”

Pitch number five is another fastball. Stott fouls it off.

I’d never said that phrase before those fateful Phillies games. Yet in the time since that postseason journey ended, the sentiment has only become more relevant.

My time at Notre Dame has been the same — too meaningful not to savor to the fullest. Doing so, though, hasn’t always been easy. As any college student in 2020 could tell you, especially my fellow

freshmen, it was easy to wish that year — 25% of my college experience — away. We were HERE, but barely. The excitement of starting a new chapter and meeting new people was there, but it was muted.

Fastball again on pitch number six. Stott gets a piece of it.

Things started normalizing sophomore year, but it still felt like I was playing catch-up. I still had that freshman feeling but with more pressure on my shoulders. Excitement surfaced as I started to find my people and my place on the campus I had grown up visiting since I was one year old. Yet there were still pangs of emotion that made it feel like high school hadn’t ended.

The seventh pitch is thrown at 97.4 miles per hour. Shot foul down past third.

Junior year was fleeting, but I recognized how lucky I was to have it even then. So many goofy activities with friends throughout Siegfried Hall and beyond; immeasurable laughter abounds. The perfect blend of responsibility and carefreeness. Inside jokes, games of Chel, broadcasts and editing shifts that will always strike a wholesome chord. I wish it had come together sooner, though, producing an occasional frustration this feeling should last longer than I knew it would.

Pitch number eight is also fastball number eight, and consecutive foul ball number four.

And, so, senior year arrived. There have been days I’ve been painfully aware that the end is near and days it hasn’t crossed my mind. Many great people from the beginning remain. Some have gone, others have arrived. My timid freshman self morphed into a leader in my dorm and work, even if it didn’t always feel like it.

There were nights for studying and nights for work and nights for fun. There were high-fives in bars and hugs on the football field and staring into space in my room late at night. Silly debates in our paper’s office and talks of growth with the underclassmen in my section. I enjoyed the culmination of some four-year-long journeys and found fulfillment in trying new things. There was more independence than

before, and with it some more loneliness, but there was always a smile on my face when friends were around.

My nearly 1,400 days at Notre Dame have been amazing. Leaving something special is always hard. But I never could have gotten here without leaving my wonderful friends and memories from high school behind. And I won’t be able to get to wherever I’m going and meet the next great people out there if I don’t say goodbye to this incredible place.

It’s been a dream. It’s been surreal. And, now, it’s time. This is how it’s meant to be.

There will be times in the future when I long for these days. Sometimes, when I truly need it, I may let myself fall into a daydream that I’ve never left. But when I need to move forward and achieve the things the last four years have equipped me for and to be the best person I can be, I know just what to tell myself.

“Stay here, stay in this moment. It’s a really great moment, no matter what comes next.”

On the ninth pitch, Strider finally deviates from his heater. Stott drops his hands and brings the barrel of the bat through the strike zone.

The crowd roars. Brandon Marsh trots home from third. My family and I pop out of our seats in jubilation.

That dream became a reality. And, when graduation arrives in just a few days, so will another.

Here we are.

Andrew McGuinness is from Haddonfield, New Jersey. He is graduating with a major in film, television and theatre with a TV concentration and minors in sport, media and culture, digital marketing and business economics. After graduation, he will work at NBC Sports during the 2024 Summer Olympics in the one and only Paris … of Connecticut (Stamford, where its headquarters are). This is his 259th and final story for The Observer. He will miss it here, but he’s happy to be on the other side. You can reach him there at awmcguinn@gmail.com.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Both sides now

None of us knew when to throw our grad caps.

That’s what I remember most about my high school graduation in 2020 — not the walk across the stage, not the speeches, not even the masks and the socially distanced chairs on our local football field — but that single moment of hesitation. It’s generation-defining.

Graduation is an uncertain time, and by God, are these times uncertain.

The class of 2020 graduated during a pandemic; the class of 2024 will graduate during times of war. Some of our peers at USC and Columbia will not have graduations at all.

Our celebrations have been tinged with the sorrow of devastating world events — but, hey, I guess, it’s only fitting. The last four years of our college experience have been defined by disease, insurrection, inflation, climate catastrophe and genocide. The list of insurmountable challenges seemingly goes on and on, and for me, it is sometimes hard to find the silver lining.

For a long time, I found it hard to indulge in my happiness because I thought it meant I was complicit. I found it hard to fully enjoy anything — birthdays, weddings, graduations — because I knew people around the world were suffering, because I was suffering, because I knew my late mother would not be there to watch me walk the stage, to turn 20, to marry someone. The sweetness of joy had the bitter aftertaste of loss.

But these days, I think maybe bittersweet is my favorite flavor of emotion.

In my favorite song, Joni Mitchell sings, “There’s something lost, and something gained / In living every day.”

As graduation comes upon us, it is very easy for me to pinpoint exactly what I’m losing — proximity to my favorite people in the world, constant mental stimulation, the lakes, The Observer, my sense of purpose. It’s much harder to discern what exactly I am gaining.

I’ve been blessed with a world-class education, (hopefully) life-long friends and 72 bylines across four sections of The Observer. I have a (nearly) fully developed frontal lobe. My pen is sharper, and my writing has more bite. But going into the Real World, I am not certain if that means anything.

When I started at Notre Dame, I sincerely thought Claire Lyons was the answer to the world’s problems. Now I know how naive I was (Thanks college!). A large part of me feels powerless, the part that accepted a tolerable full-time job because she needs practical things like dental insurance and emergency rent money. The other part of me feels incredibly angry, the part that wants to follow my dreams, to answer the University’s call to be a force for good. I still don’t know which part to listen to.

I want to make a difference, and as far as I know, the only way I can do that be done is one person at a time, by loving the people I love as hard as I can and bearing witness to this miracle we call life. Those are kindnesses that ripple outwards. But this also means you must embrace everything — good and bad.

Francis Ward Weller writes, “If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering.” Both feelings — all feelings — are gifts, but the balance is what makes the flavor of our lives so exquisitely rich.

To all the people I love, don’t hesitate. Lean into the feeling. I want to see your goddamn cap in the air, even if there are tears in your eyes.

Claire is graduating with degrees in honors English and political science. She wrote the world’s first undergraduate thesis on TikTok’s #corecore movement (as far as she knows). After graduation, she will move to Chicago to start her Adult Job. If you’ve enjoyed her writing over the last three years, she hopes you will subscribe to her free post-grad blog on Substack which she is still learning to use. Keep in touch at claire.lyons@live.com.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Unavoidably detained by the world

Dane Sherman Columnist

Against the backdrop of the bright orange and yellow seats, the man sat almost attempting to shrink himself behind his big, black duffle bag. The train, overflowing with people, had a thick haze of carbon dioxide filling the small voids between bodies.

Every few seconds he would squirm his hand into the duffle and pop out a big, puffy Cheeto. When enough people had gotten off the train, I sat next to him and learned his name, Ben, and his occupation, a janitor in the financial district of New York. His first question of substance threw me through a loop, “What does home mean to you?”

I didn’t really know how to answer it — the people, place, amorphous idea of ‘religious community’, or maybe as a concept it only derives meaning from what we place on it. What can home be, or what is it?

I was apprehensive about coming to Notre Dame. I made a buzzer-beater decision to choose it. In the final Zoom call from admission we were told by Don Bishop, the former director of admissions, in a somewhat smirking tone, “If we’re doing our job right, these should not be the best four years of your life.” A glimmering light of honesty in a foggy haze of propaganda.

The smooth asphalt circle. Gaunt-brutalist-80s architecture building. A frail tree hanging next to the front door frame. Siegfried became my introduction to Notre Dame. Playing cards with Smoge and his Quad after a football game. Moving in, seeing the smiling (masked) face of my first-year RA, Pat McGuire. It became the place where I slept, and eventually where I found brotherhood.

Slivers of eudaemonia abound throughout campus. I will forever cherish small moments. The morsels of intellectual breakthrough with my research advisor, Meghan Sullivan — who routinely made me fall in love with learning whenever that devotion waned. During dorm mass giving hugs to every man in the pews as a sign of peace. My thesis advisor Peter Cajka who made me excited to learn and enraptured by the pursuit of knowledge. Or: office hours with Korey Garibaldi and Kathleen Cummings, who helped me master the simple art of a sentence.

But do slivers really count as home?

A cadre of priests who became my own safety net — Fr. Joe Pedersen, Fr. Gerry Olinger, Fr. Drew Clary, Fr. Joe Corpora, Fr. Kevin Grove — were always there to sit on the dirty shag carpet in my despair. Always there to tussle about various political stances. Each of whom came from different universes of thought from each other and myself.

When I first started the job as a resident assistant in Siegfried, one of my friends questioned me on my ability to make it a “comfortable home for Catholics who feel disenfranchised by the University.” I originally attempted to cover up my perceived deficiency in providing for Catholic students by COVERING my door with flyers for the Hallow app, prayers to various Saints and every campus ministry resource I could find.

Notre Dame is a weird bizarro world where those with power — money, influence or institutional backing — claim a mantle of persecution while actively persecuting others. Students for Child-Oriented Policies (SCOP) in their words, was founded in response to the creation of an LGBTQ+ club on campus. In their video fundraising, they depicted a rejection felt by “society, Notre Dame and peers for their preservation of traditional sexual morals.”

Students will decry a type of “cancel culture” that makes them feel persecuted for their speech. Those same individuals then stand by stating nothing when students are charged for protesting complicity in genocide and actively have police outside of every single event they hold. Those same individuals cheer as clubs with any pro-choice tilt are denied club status. A “persecution” that is so achingly hollow when those claiming to have stones thrown at them then begin to launch boulders at other people.

Many in University administration claim that, “If everyone is angry at us, we’re doing something right.” There is however a stark difference in power — when clubs with

particular views are funded by super PACs, have nearly unrestricted support of the University and a media ecosystem willing to publish whatever horses**t opinion they have. Nobody would look to the civil rights movement today and say both sides are angry at the state for the incredibly slow unwinding of anti-black policies.

A reality crystalized earlier this semester when I was in an on-campus medical appointment and was told, “When a man and a woman get together that is a little piece of heaven. When it’s two men, that’s just an early disgusting hell.” Being asked while going around the dining halls collecting signatures for a non-discrimination petition, “Well-done, medium-rare or rare? How thoroughly do you wish to be cooked in hell?” Watching as my friend, a 5-foot-7-inch Black woman, was told at a football game that she did “a really good job last basketball season,” and she looked “like an animal on the prowl.”

That is the unfortunate contradiction of being at Notre Dame. A shroud of beatific kindness that’s so often undergirded by a brittle cruelty. In the 1990s Nikole HannahJones (the creator of The 1619 Project) wrote a letter to the editor of The Observer entitled, “Notre Dame is yours but the world is mine.” She etched how her experience in the “white wilderness of Notre Dame” was an encounter with the cruel underbelly of the Catholic community that called itself a “family” as long as you looked, thought and acted the right way.

I have done things that 18-year-old Dane cannot fathom — crossing thresholds and arenas of possibility. Driving to the Iowa caucuses in the middle of winter with Isa Sheikh. Posing in Vogue for Thom Browne. Becoming a finalist for the Rhodes, Marshall and Truman scholarships (but not winning a single one — ouch). Getting flown around the world by the grace of Our Lady (Nepal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, College Station, Dallas, Arkansas for a summer, New York City, District of Columbia, New Haven, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and more). All things that would not have been possible without this place.

Notre Dame has taught me how to soak in the world like a sponge — people, experiences and knowledge that have exponentially accelerated my desire to make the world a more just place.

Notre Dame has been a house, but not a home. Being here has broken me down. My experiences have injected me with cynicism. I realize the soaring values that far outshine the slimy reality. One of my favorite books, Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust,” has a line where the protagonists write a note to their parents, “(We) have been unavoidably detained by the world, expect us when you see us.” To Notre Dame, I say the same.

To SCOP, the Irish Rover and the Sycamore Trust — Notre Dame is yours (for now). Yet, for me — a smart, empathetic and driven young man — the world is mine. You can fund a super PAC, use the power of the police to tear your fellow students down and be unwilling to engage in the cold hard work of engaging with those who are different than you.

I hold a deep gratitude for the ways this place has challenged my ideals, made my will stronger and beliefs more nuanced. Nobody has the right to make me feel the ways I have let this place make me feel. I look forward to using my degree from Notre Dame to undo the broken structures you have perpetuated and to make Notre Dame (and the world) live up to our ideals.

The older man, chomping on his Cheetos, described home as a sense of safety. Of being able to unequivocally be yourself and not be judged for your job or place in life. Notre Dame has made it so that I feel my own power in the world — in the middle of my parish, in the Middle East and with people who could not think more differently than I do. Expect me when you see me.

Editor’s Note: This is an abridged version of the column. The full version can be found online at ndsmcobserver.com. Dane is a senior from Seattle graduating with a degree in American studies and peace studies. After Notre Dame, he’ll continue his career in government and public policy doing community organizing in Virginia. You can contact Dane at lucasdanesherman@gmail.com.

Claire Lyons Viewpoint Editor Emerita

Gabrielle Beechert Assistant Managing Editor Emerita

Before I began writing this column, I looked back at one of the senior columns written for last year’s commencement edition of the paper. I remember reading the column when it was published and thinking, “Man, I don’t think my senior column is going to be as good as this one.” And now here I am, one year later, still thinking the exact same thing.

Because how can I put all of this into words? Maybe that’s a silly thing for me to say given that I’ve spent the better part of my college career heavily involved in a writing-based extracurricular, but I just can’t seem to find what I want to say. I also knew that this column — my last column — was going to be so important to me. I want to do this well for me and for The Observer. Part of me was (and I guess still is) afraid that no matter what I say, I’ll realize that I forgot to write something or that I’ll wish I said something else.

I know part of the issue is that I’m not good at letting go. And I really, really don’t want to let all this go. It’s probably why I didn’t start writing this column until the day it was due (my request for an extension on the deadline was politely declined). It’s also probably why I haven’t even thought about packing all my stuff up even though I have to leave South Bend the morning after graduation.

But deep down, I know my time has come. I love Notre Dame. I freaking love this place and everything it has given me. But if I were to spend another year on campus, doing the same things I’ve been doing for the past four years, I would probably feel like I had overstayed my welcome. But boy, am I

I know the end

going to miss it.

The other day, I realized that after May 19, I’m not going to be living with my best friends anymore. It’s not like we can just chat over text, FaceTime once a week over the summer knowing that we’ll be together again come August. This is it.

And, of course, maybe we’ll find our way back into another house or apartment together. But our current plans are dictating otherwise. Seeing my best friends isn’t going to be walking down the hallway and knocking on their doors, or waiting in the living room for them to come home so we can chat about our days. It’s going to be flying to different cities and scheduling weekend trips weeks in advance. Adult friendships are hard. They take much more time and effort to maintain. Soon, I won’t be able to walk four doors down to my neighbors house so we can sit on her porch while we talk, eat dinner and wave to our neighbors as they walk down the street. I know I take these little luxuries for granted, and now they’re going to be gone in less than one week.

When I sat down to write this column, I had no idea what I was going to say (and to be honest, I still don’t have one this far in). But, the first words I typed on the page were the title of this column: I Know the End. My inspiration comes from Phoebe Bridgers (shocker!) and the fact that every time I thought about writing this, I had the lyric, “The end is near” repeating in my head. I honestly thought about using that line as my column’s title, but it felt too apocalyptic. So, I settled for the title of the song rather than that one specific lyric.

“I Know the End” is the last song on Bridger’s second album, “Punisher,” and I absolutely love it. The first three minutes of the song are Bridgers singing

softly over somber instrumentals. About half way through the song, the violin picks up, leading into a massive crescendo that heavily relies on both drums and trumpet. During the final swell of the instruments, Bridgers just starts screaming. It’s awesome. I absolutely love albums that close with songs that have massive build-ups. “Punisher” is a great example, and “Fine Line” by Harry Styles does a good job of it, too. I’m realizing now that maybe I just brought all this up to say that it’s funny that someone who hates letting go as much as I do can find so much beauty in endings.

And I do think that my ending at Notre Dame will be beautiful, too. I’m closing out this chapter of my life as a very different person than I was four years ago when I arrived — which, I think, is a good thing.

On the day this edition of the paper is printed, I turn 22. Of course, I’ve been telling everyone that it’s actually just my opportunity to make grad week about me and me alone. But, I do think there is something special about having the chance to have a new beginning in a new year of my life.

But, of course, I’m writing this exactly one week before graduation, and I’m turning it in right before I set to drive my friends to Chicago to start celebrating senior week. So I guess I still have some time.

Gabrielle is a senior from Rye, NY graduating with a degree in neuroscience and behavior and a minor in journalism. After graduating, Gabrielle will spend her summer reporting for the Dallas Morning News. She can be contacted at gbeechert@alumni.nd.edu. Long live The Observer.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Home is where the heart is

Hannah Hebda Assistant Managing Editor Emerita

I’m not a person who gets homesick easily. Since arriving in South Bend four years ago, I can tell you I’ve absolutely missed my family, but I don’t need to be physically present to still feel at home. Family visits for football games and trips home for the holidays always cured any tinge of homesickness that I would start to feel. Just a couple of days with them made me feel prepared to take on new challenges away from the comforts of my little home in Pittsburgh.

The thing is, I was always ready to leave the nest and venture out into the world. That was my goal in high school — find a college far enough away to provide some independence and room for personal growth, but still close enough to Pittsburgh so that I knew I could always go home when I needed to. About a six-hour drive from home, Notre Dame provided the best of both worlds. I enrolled here believing it would be the perfect place for me. My four years on campus have proven my beliefs to be correct.

I remember move-in day, four years ago, like it was yesterday, a feeling I imagine many of my peers share. It was a classic Hebda family scramble. My mom and I packed too much stuff, my dad had to carry all of it upstairs, and we spent hours deciding the perfect room arrangement in my tiny double in 80 degree heat. It was a really fun time (not). As soon as it was time for my parents to go, my emotions

I woke up each morning, my feelings hit me like a freight train. They would be a phone call away, yes, but we were still hours apart. It didn’t matter that we’d prepared all summer for the move — it was still a poignant realization. College was my opportunity to grow up and learn how to meet new people and make a life for myself there. It was my chance to learn how to balance being independent with maintaining connections to the most important people in my life. But such a big change was still daunting.

The Notre Dame experience is hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t gone here. It’s different for everyone, but what holds universally true is that it’s so much more than academics and football. For me, it’s lake walks and stargazing with Justin and it’s Cafe J runs with Andrew. It’s sleepovers on Brooke, Brigit and Helen’s futon in Breen-Phillips Hall and Haley’s cooking and cocktail making. It’s waiting in the CJ’s line with Cate, who insists the party is really in the line. My Notre Dame experience is spending time with Aunt Patty and Uncle Tom and visits from Jake and Will, where I get to show them what my little part of the world is like. It’s hours spent in Gym 1 of the JACC, Saturdays on the sidelines with my teammates, and Sunday afternoons at the Observer office paired with all those late nights. It’s everything in between those memories too, all the moments of shared laughter and joy that I may not remember quite as vividly, but of which I know still made my experience what it turned out to be. It’s all about the moments when I realized my friends are part of my family — the moments when I realized I have a home with them now too.

of stress and uncertainty. Even so, these years have been nothing short of perfect. They say that the people make the place, and I wholeheartedly agree. I found my best friends here at Notre Dame, and thanks to them, I’ve been able to discover new homes, embrace fresh experiences and continue to grow as an individual. This university has opened countless doors for me, but none more important than the opportunity to join a new family.

For the first time in a long time, I must admit I feel a bit homesick. Graduation weekend marks the end of a sixteen year academic journey. I am on the precipice of yet another big change, and once again I must leave my family, this time here at Notre Dame. The world I’ve been privileged enough to create here in South Bend is nearly over. That is a bittersweet yet inspirational reality, a reality of growth and change, a time to find new families. Thinking of leaving a place as special as Notre Dame makes me feel prematurely homesick. What I’ve realized, though, is that my family here on campus is just like my family at home. They are the people who are always one phone call away. They are the people who I can spend just a few days with to cure any homesickness I feel. They will always be there. So, wherever we are, I know that I’ll always be able to return to the people that Notre Dame has given me, and I’ll be home.

Hannah is graduating with a degree in economics and minors in real estate and poverty studies. You can contact her at hannahhebda@gmail.com.

graduating seniors!

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: FOUR YEARS IN REVIEW

Silver linings of the ‘rain-soaked summit’

The Observer piece on the student arrests on Thursday night painted the administration in a bad light. One might conclude from reading the coverage that the “rain-soaked summit that preceded the arrest of peaceful student protestors was a failure. I suggest a different way to interpret what transpired. Thursday gives us a glimpse into what potentially sets Notre Dame apart as a distinctively Catholic institution of higher learning.

I encountered the “Gaza solidarity camp” on the way to the parking lot across from the Keough School, by the Eck Visitor Center, shortly after 5:00 p.m. I saw a number of faculty as I waded into the crowd: junior and senior, TPAC and endowed. Student leaders included Catholics, Muslims, Jews and agnostics, citizens and internationals, grad and undergrad. The environment was relaxed but purposeful. Students wanted to open a line of communication with the University leadership to have their concerns heard.

I called my dean, Scott Appleby, who I trust as a leading scholar, University leader and mentor. We had briefly discussed the protests from the week prior with empathy. I invited Scott to meet student leaders of the movement faceto-face in a relatively safe and informal space, to get to know them, so he could bring his experience of that encounter into the “smoke-filled rooms” with senior administrators. We had a text exchange. He said he could be there after an important event he was currently attending.

Later, Dean Appleby arrived along with Provost John McGreevy.

But the situation had changed. The camp had moved from the Eck Visitor Center to God Quad. In the glow of the magnificent Golden Dome, hardliners were pushing for escalation as the police issued a deadline to disperse. Tensions were high. It was dark, pouring rain. Arrests were imminent. Reporters and cameras were circling. There was a sense of brinkmanship. As soon as Appleby and McGreevy arrived, students pressed them to accede to the movement’s “demands,” or else. Instead of the original “meet-and-greet” atmosphere I had hoped the dean would encounter, it became a public spectacle, together with the University’s chief academic officer!

The dean and the provost found themselves in an impossible situation. Student organizers saw them as “the administration” and pounced on the opportunity to begin negotiations. For the dean and provost, it was an introduction, an opportunity to learn more and potentially open lines of communication. The fluid and rapidly evolving situation

got the better of us. As a result, the “rain-soaked summit” fell far short of expectations. It was not constructive. One deemed the other side immature, the other dismissive.

Where do we go from here?

First, I invite the students to recognize, with gratitude, the goodwill demonstrated by two University leaders on Thursday night. They came out to meet with students in the midst of an active protest. It was a good faith move. Moreover, the University police let the protest continue although it was not registered in advance and lasted close to five hours, even after it had moved to a highly restricted area at the heart of campus. Students were eventually warned before arrests commenced and given a fair opportunity to disperse after the dean and provost had left. Some students chose to be arrested peacefully as an act of civil disobedience. After the arrests, concerned faculty, staff and administrators came together to ensure that charges were dropped. Nobody was expelled or deported. To the extent possible, we must recognize that behind all this is a community of care. Surely, we can find ways to enter into constructive dialogue on what has be-

“On Thursday, student protesters with everything to lose, and two University leaders with nothing to gain, demonstrated by coming together that courage is not in short supply.”

come the defining moral issue for students nationwide.

Secondly, I invite the administration to think deeply about Notre Dame’s faith-based mission and identity. In the wake of widespread protests advocating for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, Fr. Ted Hesburgh wrote in 1969: “The university cannot cure all our ills today, but it can make a valiant beginning by bringing all its intellectual and moral powers to bear upon them: all the idealism and generosity of its young people, all the wisdom and intelligence of its oldsters, all the expertise and competence of those who are in their middle years. But it must do all this as a university does, within its proper style and capability, no longer an ivory tower, but not the Red Cross either.”

We are God, Country, Notre Dame. It is no secret that our country maintains global primacy in large part through a war economy that research universities actively participate

in. Students recognize the contradiction between Catholic Social Teachings and Notre Dame’s entanglement with the military industrial complex in its present form, and they are calling us to account. They are summoning our ideals to testify against us. These ideals are at the heart of the University’s Catholic mission. They thread the fabric of the Keough School of Global Affairs.

In the Keough School’s Dignity & Development blog, professor David Cortright, a Vietnam veteran against the war, reminds us: “Budgets are moral documents.” Are we profiting from conflicts we morally oppose? How do we distinguish between just and unjust wars in an investment portfolio? Is it possible to disentangle (or divest), wholly or in part, from a war economy without compromising the ambition of Notre Dame to be a leading Catholic research university? Are we ready to pay the price of aligning our investments with our values? What does divestment even look like with a company like Boeing, which develops weapons that kill innocent civilians and commercial airplanes we fly daily?

These are big and complicated questions. The national movement to divest is calling on us to engage them urgently and transparently. The student movement must accept that it is unrealistic to expect quick and simple solutions. A serious process toward divestment will be long and complex, the outcome uncertain. Administrations, in turn, must ponder carefully whether they can continue to ignore vexing moral questions that have brought American universities into crisis.

If Notre Dame simply follows Columbia and Harvard, it risks becoming distinctive for its inability to be distinctive. As an inspired faith-based institution, unique in the landscape of American higher education, we might very well be in the midst of a defining “moment to see,” but we also need “the courage to act.” On Thursday, student protesters with everything to lose, and two University leaders with nothing to gain, demonstrated by coming together that courage is not in short supply. If we proceed sensibly from here, the clouds of the fateful “rain-soaked summit” might have silver linings.

Mahan Mirza director, Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion teaching professor of Islam and science, Keough School of Global Affairs May 4, 2024

In solidarity with professor Tamara Kay

We write in response to The Irish Rover’s recent efforts to gather and publish the names of Notre Dame faculty, staff and graduate students who have contributed to Notre Dame professor Tamara Kay’s legal defense fund. In an unsigned email, donors were asked whether they wished to deny that they were contributors and were given ten hours to respond before The Irish Rover made their names public.

This letter is our reply to The Irish Rover. In it, we explain, those who donated and those who did not, why we support professor Kay and why we signed this letter in solidarity with her.

We signed because we believe professor Kay’s academic freedom was being undermined. The vilification of professor Kay began after she published a series of carefully researched opinion pieces in major newspapers addressing the ramifications of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. The personal attacks by people who disagreed with professor Kay’s views represented an assault on every academic who chooses to research and write about controversial issues.

We signed because we suspected there was an orchestrated campaign to malign professor Kay and drive her away from the University, in violation of the du Lac Community Standards, Standards of Conduct and the Well-Being and Culture Policy.

The discovery phase of professor Kay’s lawsuit showed justification for our concerns. We encourage all members of the Notre Dame community to review coverage that appeared in The Observer, The Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere to draw their own conclusions.

We signed because we were repulsed by the threats made against professor Kay for speaking for her beliefs. While The Irish Rover may focus on the technicalities of the lawsuit — and it is clear that technicalities often rule the day — we are collectively horrified by the threats of an utterly un-Christian nature that have been directed at professor Kay by self-professed defenders of the faith. We are deeply troubled by the revelations that Notre Dame students would be urged to depart from the positive sociality afforded by University life and promote a campaign of targeted harassment. We wonder whose values are being promoted and what, precisely, those values are.

We surmise that The Irish Rover intends to “expose” those willing to publicly support professor Kay; that, of course, is their right. Yet we wonder if the editors have reflected on the repercussions that may follow. Professor Kay was subjected to ongoing harassment, as well as rape and death threats because of the campaign against her — a campaign

in which The Irish Rover played a central part. Does The Irish Rover wish to see such all too predictable threats made against other members of the Notre Dame community? Is this what passes for courageous journalism? Is it, as Father Sorin would have asked, the way to act as a force for good in the world?

Yet perhaps the Irish Rover’s efforts can result in constructive outcomes. Those of us who support professor Kay have done so transparently. We have made our names public. We invite The Irish Rover to do likewise and share publicly the names of all those who support their activism. We also ask The Irish Rover to condemn the hateful threats made against professor Kay and join a campus-wide conversation about how to address such charged topics.

We are living through an extraordinarily dangerous moment of anger and polarization in this country. To survive it will require responsible people to act with wisdom, humility and grace. We believe that the entire Notre Dame community should be, must be and will be part of the solution. We hope we are not mistaken.

Sincerely,

101 members of Notre Dame’s faculty and administration Feb. 14, 2024

Affirmative action and campus diversity

For the past week, I have been reading “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin; during this time, I have also been reflecting on the Supreme Court hearings on affirmative action that took place on Monday, Oct. 31. On Thursday, while I was reading the book’s chapter on money (Chapter 7), I followed Rubin as she reflected on the connection between money and happiness. Early on in her musings, I came across the following comment that reminded me of the discussion on affirmative action:

“Money alone can’t buy happiness. But, as a follow-up, I asked myself, “Can money help buy happiness?” The answer: yes, used wisely, it can.”

Now, replace the idea of money with affirmative action and happiness with diversity. The ideas are nearly the same, except for one vital difference. Unlike with money and happiness, it’s not that an institution logically cannot rely on affirmative action to create diversity; it constitutionally cannot. Therein, lies the argument against affirmative action. Under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, affirmative action cannot be the reason your campus is diverse, but many would argue that it should continue to be allowed as one of many factors, including social economic status, first-generation status and the disclosures of any relevant hardships. Without affirmative action, that’s one less avenue toward creating diversity at higher education institutions. There are certainly other ways, but if you take out affirmative action, you fundamentally weaken the process towards diversity.

As Rubin continued her reflection on money and happiness, she noted that while money does not guarantee happiness, it can operate as a protective factor against unhappiness. If you live in poverty, you simply do not have the capacity to pursue happiness in your day-to-day life. Money won’t make you happy, but poverty will make it very difficult for you to get there. In the same way, for institutions with a predominantly white admissions history, their admissions processes simply are not designed to recognize the whole value of students of color. Affirmative action ensures that students of color won’t face further limitations from cultural and systemic disadvantages. It is not relying on a quota to create diversity; it is allowing an understanding of cultural contexts and history to inform lifechanging decisions. Then, when admissions officers can proceed with informed decisions and heightened awareness, they are able to foster diversity.

Now, returning to the question presented in the Supreme Court on Monday, do I think considering race in admissions decisions breaches the 14th Amendment? I think it has the potential to. If the considering race in college admissions meant contributing to a quota, then yes. I would certainly agree that the use of race was unconstitutional.

However, I think the way race is considered in modern admissions is entirely in line with the Fourteenth Amendment, because race is not the basis of the decision; it only informs it. It helps the admissions officer understand the applicant and their circumstances more. At a school like Notre Dame, where building community is everything, considering race means taking note of how one person’s cultural difference can enrich our beautiful campus. Additionally, our institution is also dedicated to fostering a community of intellectual rigor. Considering one’s cultural background can also mean making note of how one’s cultural differences may allow an individual to think differently from their peers and contribute to richer discussions.

Money is not everything in terms of happiness, but it has an impact. Likewise, affirmative action is not everything in terms of diversity, but it, too, has an impact — and there are dozens of thousands of students and alumni around the nation that can attest to this fact. It is my hope the Supreme Court chooses to protect affirmative action and allow our institutions to continue using it wisely in their efforts to foster diversity.

The spirit of Notre Dame is back

There’s a (new) Magic in the Sound of Her Name …

There is a palpable energy on campus right now. You can feel it. I was able to go over there Thursday for a meeting and realized it was something we’ve been missing for a long time now. What is it? It’s that spirit of Notre Dame that we all carry in our hearts.

When Marcus Freeman was picked as head coach, I was excited because he seemed to embody qualities we all desire to carry as members of the Notre Dame family.

Then, I saw the video of him being announced into the locker room. That said it all. I get chills every time I watch it. What we saw is exactly what I just spoke about — the spirit of Notre Dame — and it just blew the roof off of that locker room.

Marcus Freeman becoming Notre Dame’s head coach seems to have given all of us permission to reignite that spirit within us that we didn’t even know was dormant.

Was this past week rough? Yes. I cannot even begin to imagine what the players went through, or how they felt. Nobody wants a punch in the gut.

But I’m also a glass-half-full thinker. So here’s what I do know. I’ve been knocked down enough times, and been through enough storms to know if you trust God in the storm, He will always blow you away with His plan.

Sometimes the wrong things have to happen so the right things can. Sometimes you’ve got to break down to break through. God is known for making beauty from ashes, and we are about to see what I think will be one of the best seasons of Notre Dame football we’ve ever seen. I just wish my Dad was alive to see it.

So we’ve got to trust that God has a plan. He knew the timing of all of this. He knew exactly who he wanted to be the next coach. He even knew Brian Kelly would leave. So you’ve got to thank the good Lord that He did what only He could do to get us what we needed.

This wasn’t just about us getting a coach. It was about our team and our school getting its heart back, because that’s how our guys play on the field and how we all show up for life — with heart. So God (who sees our hearts) found a guy who has heart, to connect to the hearts of those team members. That is what I believe reignited the fire in all of our hearts for that spirit of Notre Dame. That is also what I believe makes this even bigger than

potentially winning a national championship. God is in it and He’s given us our hope back.

Think about this: When is the last time you saw players say they wanted someone to be their coach? I know in all of my time at Notre Dame I’ve never seen it. Now, there wasn’t social media when I was an undergrad. But still, to see some of these players post what they did on social media — “We want Freeman!” — and then to see it play out in the locker room? Powerful stuff. In fact, the only other place I could think of it was in the movie, “Rudy.” (Yes, I know, overplayed. But stay with me for a minute).

Remember the scene when all the players walked into Dan Devine’s office, wearing their letter jackets? Each one of them comes in, dropping their jerseys on his desk and saying they want Rudy to play in their place. Now, this is a completely different situation and person — but it’s the sentiment. In both cases, the team players were passionate about a person that displayed that powerful spirit of Notre Dame. In both cases, the players used their voices to stand up for what they wanted. This time, thankfully it was for Marcus Freeman and it seems because they wanted Him, he’s not just the team’s coach, he’s our coach because we are Notre Dame.

Knowing that the players are behind him is one thing, but to then hear him echo that sentiment in his first locker room speech as head coach shows what an incredible leader he is and will be. He has a great reputation and I know some consider him an underdog because of his age and lack of previous head coaching. But that’s the beauty, because you know God’s going do something amazing in him! God’s favor is upon this team. He will do great things through them, through this coach and through our Notre Dame family because he just lit the fire in our hearts again. We’ve got the spirit back we didn’t even know we needed.

We are all behind you, Coach Freeman and team. Thank you to whoever made this happen, especially to the football players for standing up for your choice. You’ve inspired us all. May God bless you on the field and beyond. May God bless you, Marcus Freeman. May God bless Notre Dame and may all of our hearts beat again as we hear the sound of her name.

Meredith Terpeluk Schoeller class of 1999 Dec. 3, 2021

Our 2020 moment

Dear students,

Our moment in the midst of this pandemic has arrived. It’s a moment that we never went looking for, but it’s our moment, nonetheless. Faced with a surge in COVID-positive cases during the early weeks of the fall semester, we are once again facing the possibility of returning home for remote instruction. How will you respond?

Sometimes the best teacher in life is failure. I wish we as humans would heed warnings and learn from others without the pain brought on by failure, but that is rarely the case. We tell ourselves things like “I’m the exception” or “These rules don’t apply to me.” This is a rationalization that may ease our conscience, but it doesn’t alter the reality of the challenges we face.

As Notre Dame students, you might find this rationalization particularly tempting. Family, friends and mentors have been rather proud of your accomplishments to date. You’ve been made to feel special, unique, gifted and a rare find. In fact, that’s likely how the University of Notre Dame recruited

you to join this community. This was the special place where your special talents could flourish.

While this is still true, let me offer a word of caution: Talent can be squandered if it is solely in service to oneself. The moment mentioned earlier, the one I defined as our moment, is the realization that true talent is fully expressed by using our collective abilities for the good of others. To spend time not thinking about what we can get, but what we can offer.

Right now, this community has no need for people trying to live college as if COVID isn’t happening. Instead, we need thoughtful men and women who creatively find new ways to foster community, support those who are anxious, love those who’ve made past mistakes and help get this semester back on track. This is our moment.

In Notre Dame,

Fr. Pete McCormick, C.S.C. Director of Campus Ministry

Aug. 19, 2020

Agwu

Irish stay on roller coaster ride under Freeman

By MADELINE LADD Assistant Managing Editor

The 2023-2024 Notre Dame football season was filled with some encouraging performances, tempered by plenty of frustrating lows. Though the Irish notched one more win than last year’s 9-4 season, it felt like a familiar, bumpy roller coaster ride for head coach Marcus Freeman’s sophomore season with a 10-3 record and lack of a playoff run. Despite an easier opening slate of games compared to last year, the team’s schedule soon toughened up. Four straight primetime matchups with five opponents finishing in the top 25 took

a toll, leading to inconsistent play.

Breaking down the 13-game slate

From the start, offseason changes had the 2023 season begin with questions coupled with high hopes. Former quarterbacks Tyler Buchner and Drew Pyne transferred out, but this was tempered by the addition of charismatic graduate quarterback Sam Hartman, who quickly became a popular name throughout Irish Nation. Tommy Rees’ stunning departure to Alabama ushered in new offensive coordinator Gerad Parker and went on to produce mixed results.

The Irish opened their season in Dublin, Ireland, claiming a blowout victory against Navy to begin on a high note. Subsequent decisive wins against Tennessee State, NC State and Central Michigan instilled confidence with a 4-0 start with the offense clicking on all cylinders. The Irish showed off their potential on both sides of the ball and early vibrance, but the most telling opponent of the team’s season would come in the form of Ohio State.

The energy was palpable with College GameDay’s first return to South Bend since 2020 and carried into the night as the team, clad in green, took the field and

PAID ADVERTISEMENT

played competitively against a top team. Yet, what resulted was a gut-wrenching last-second loss to the Buckeyes that stemmed from the team’s lack of preparation and shocking errors. The missing man on defense in the final two goal-line stands was the difference between the brutal loss and a season-changing tally in the win column for the Irish.

“You know, obviously, as I just told the team, it’s disappointing,” Freeman said after the game. “[We] had a lot of opportunities to win that game, and then we didn’t. Credit to them [Ohio State] for continuing to battle back and be resilient when we went up. And, you

know, we’ve got to finish that game. And [it’s a] tough loss.”

Bruised but not battered completely, the Irish saw a “sweet victory” one week later in Durham, North Carolina. Thanks to a rally on the road against Duke, Notre Dame flipped the script and found itself on the winning side of another College GameDay-previewed, last-second thriller. Gutsy plays from Hartman and junior running back Audric Estimé’s 30-yard touchdown run secured the win in the final moments of the game.

“Our two-minute mentality is we feel we can execute whatever we have to, whatever look comes at us,” junior tight end Mitchell Evans said, having led Notre Dame with six catches for 134 yards that night. “We didn’t panic. We didn’t flinch. We weren’t scared. We didn’t back down. Sam [Hartman] ran it [on] what was it, fourth-and-16? Pretty sick. [We did] what we had to do to get the frickin’ first down.”

Estimé’s stock skyrocketed in his final season, completing his transition from a backup player to a Notre Dame great who could be counted on to deliver in crucial moments. The newly drafted Denver Bronco led the team in rushing yards for the second straight season, recording 1,341 yards — good for fifthmost in program history. He also finished with six 100-yard rushing games, tying for seventh-most in a season in program history, and scored 18 rushing touchdowns to set a new program record.

“What a tough, physical, special football player,” Freeman said of Estimé. “He’s given Notre Dame everything he has the last few seasons.”

Riding high off of the comeback win at Duke, the Irish still had plenty to play for. The hiccup of Ohio State was still recoverable. However, then came the third straight primetime game at Louisville, where offensive woes were exposed even more. The team appeared to struggle for its identity, unable to get the ground game established as the offense as a whole failed to gain traction. Louisville found these holes and capitalized on them, resulting in an embarrassing defeat for the Irish.

“You can’t turn the ball over five times and expect to win a game against a good opponent,” Freeman said. “Most importantly, what we can’t do is make excuses for why the outcome was what it was, and we can’t let others make excuses for us.”

Despite the negative outcome in Louisville, an Irish star emerged from the lacrosse field in wide receiver Jordan Faison. The freshman made his debut with a 36-yard, game-tying touchdown. He would go on to contribute to substantial plays in each remaining matchup

Football facilitates three field stormings

The 2020s: the decade of “field stormings” at Notre Dame Stadium. The era began with a wild, 47-40 overtime defeat of No. 1 Clemson in the crowd capacity-limited 2020 season. It continued with a 35-14 blowout of No. 4 Clemson before a full house in 2022. Less than 365 days later, a 48-20 drubbing of No. 10 USC in primetime brought the Irish faithful down to the turf one more time.

Men’s soccer makes two dramatic College Cup runs

Exhilarating postseason wins have become a specialty for Notre Dame men’s soccer over the past three seasons. In 2021, the Irish defeated Pittsburgh in penalty kicks, reaching its first College Cup in eight years. Two seasons later, Bryan Dowd, Daniel Russo and company played hero once again as the Irish survived penalties in the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight en route to the national championship game.

Slaggert brothers strike in overtime to beat North Dakota

It’s been two years since Notre Dame hockey reached the NCAA Tournament, but the team’s last trip to the big dance kicked off with a memorable win. Less than two minutes into overtime of their first-round game against North Dakota, the Irish went on the power play. Graham Slaggert took full advantage, ripping a shot through the screen of his brother, Landon, bringing the Irish within a game of the Frozen Four.

Ivey’s Irish visit the best of both ACC worlds

‘Notre Dame with the upset of the year in college baseball!’

After falling short of Omaha in 2021, the 2022 Notre Dame baseball team made the impossible happen on Rocky Top. Facing top-seeded Tennessee at the Knoxville Super Regional, the Irish trailed 3-1 through six innings in the decisive Sunday game. David LaManna and Jack Brannigan would hit back-to-back home runs to take the lead and surge Notre Dame to its first College World Series berth in 20 years.

In four seasons at the helm of Notre Dame women’s basketball, Niele Ivey has taken two injury-riddled rosters to conference titles. In 2022-23, the Irish gutted out a win in Louisville after losing guards Dara Mabrey and Olivia Miles to clinch the ACC regular-season championship. A season later, they stood atop the ACC Tournament despite playing a full season without the All-American Miles.

Brey’s memorable goodbye segues to Shrewsberry era

After taking Notre Dame men’s basketball to the NCAA Tournament in the 2022, former head coach Mike Brey rode off into the sunset with a Senior Night win and legendary afterparty at the Linebacker Lounge. His successor, Micah Shrewsberry, led the Irish to a strong finish in 2023-24, including another Senior Night defeat of Elite Eight qualifier Clemson.

Fencing finishes off a three-peat

One national championship is special. Two is incredible. Three is just about unbelievable — whether done consecutively or not. But that’s what Notre Dame did between 2021 and 2023, going back-to-back-to-back atop the fencing world. The Irish also claimed five individual champions across those three title runs, with junior Luke Linder winning a pair of epee titles in 2021 and 2023.

Gumpf reaches the summit of Notre Dame coaching

Though Irish softball missed the NCAA Tournament in 2024, don’t let that take away from the accomplishments of head coach Deanna Gumpf. On April 11, 2023, she became the winningest head coach in the history of Notre Dame athletics, capturing her 849th career victory at Michigan State. Gumpf passed legendary women’s basketball coach Muffet McGraw with her milestone win.

Choma delivers the final chomp

Sent to the Gainesville Regional for the first two rounds of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, Notre Dame women’s lacrosse met host school Florida in the regional final. Despite coughing up a 15-11 lead to the Gators, the Irish didn’t back down. Kasey Choma scored a go-ahead goal with 10.1 seconds remaining in regulation, sending Notre Dame through to the national quarterfinals.

Men’s lacrosse masters ACC gauntlet for

first

national title

Just two weeks after Choma’s dramatic goal, Notre Dame men’s lacrosse pulled out an even bigger win in the Final Four. Brian Tevlin scored to beat Virginia, ending the game of the year in ACC men’s lacrosse. Two days later, the Irish rolled to a defeat of fellow ACC squad Duke in the title game, clinching the program’s first national championship and solidifying Notre Dame as a lacrosse destination.

ND Football

of the season, even finishing as the Most Outstanding Player in the Sun Bowl. Faison posted his first career 100-yard receiving day at the bowl game, finishing with five catches for 115 yards and a touchdown.

“Jordan’s a real good player,” senior safety Xavier Watts said. “He’s going to do some good things for us. He’s a lacrosse guy, but he’s good at football. We’ve known he was good since fall camp. He’s fast, he’s shifty, he’s quick and he makes plays.”

Fighting the Louisville hangover the following week for yet another primetime showing, the Irish managed to find a spark. This led to a decisive win against historic rival USC, clipping number one draft pick Caleb Williams with Al Golden’s top ranked defense.

Watts was the difference-maker in this Irish victory, recording a career-high two interceptions for a combined 61 return yards, setting the Irish up deep in USC territory. On top of that, he returned a fumble 16 yards for a touchdown and finished with seven total tackles

ND WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

— six solo. Marked the best defensive player in the country by winning the 2023 Bronko Nagurski Award, Watts led the nation with seven interceptions, averaging an interception every other game.

“Just don’t take the opportunity for granted,” Watts said of the USC game. “[We] just wanted to come out and dominate and play as best [we] can. Just ended up going good, I guess.”

After a week’s reprieve, the Irish saw another home win against Pitt, where they beat up on the Panthers.

The defense shined again, having forced 10 turnovers in the last two games. However, a season-ending injury to Hartman’s favorite target, Evans, proved to open up more challenges for an Irish receiving crew already dwindled by injuries.

The following weekend was the third of Notre Dame’s losses, this time down in Death Valley against Clemson. The Tigers defense preyed on the offense led by Hartman, who failed to find his groove throughout the game.

“If you guys want to blame anyone, put it on me,” Hartman said. “I played very poor today. [I] didn’t play well enough to be a winning quarterback, [for us] to be a

winning football team.”

With all other dreams clipped, the Irish had only their pride to play for. Late November wins against Hartman’s former team Wake Forest and annual rival Stanford ended the regular season on a high note — in theory.

Culminating the entire season at the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, the Irish faced off against Oregon State, upending the Beavers 40-8. Despite many players opting out, a blowout victory gave Freeman his 10th win of the season. Sophomore quarterback Steve Angeli took the lead in the quarterback room with a 79% completion rate, establishing himself as a legit challenge as starter.

“Ten looks better than nine,” Freeman said after the game. “To me it’s a reflection of the direction of this program. Nine wins last year, 10 wins this year — we just want to continue to improve … That’s the challenge of college football. How do you progress? How do you continue to take this group of football players and coaches to a place where we can win those close ones [and] win the ones we’re supposed to? I’m extremely pleased with our program, where it’s at now

and our direction in the future.”

Golden’s defense shines throughout season

Season outcome aside, the defense was the most consistent key for the Irish. By the numbers, it continually improved and had a historic year. Notre Dame’s defense allowed an average of 15.9 points per game, marking the program’s lowest point total allowed since 2012 (12.8). Prior to that, the last time a defense held opponents to fewer points in a season was 1992 (14.8).

Notre Dame gave up just 276.3 yards per game, which was the program’s most favorable since 1996 (270.0), and prior to that the only season that was better was the 1980 defense (234.5). Notre Dame gave up 4.44 yards per play — its best mark since 2002 (4.38).

Perhaps most impressively, Golden’s crew turned around its red-zone performance within the year. In 2022, Notre Dame ranked second-to-last in red-zone defense and last in red-zone touchdown defense. In 2023, the Irish jumped up to second and third in those categories, respectively. Notre Dame also held opponents to just eight

passing touchdowns in fall of 2023, its best single-season mark since the Irish defense gave up just seven passing touchdowns in 1997.

“We have a great staff,” Golden said. “We try and build it. We work together on it. We’re comfortable with each other and try to put our players in the best position.”

The Irish are set up well for success in 2024 with the arrival of former Duke quarterback Riley Leonard, a rebuilt wide receiver room and a showing performance from newcomers at the BlueGold Game. Major changes in the coaching staff like the addition of touted offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock from LSU should take the Irish offense to another level.

As Freeman enters his “show me” third year with an easier schedule there is a hope — but mostly a need — for the Irish to have a more stable 2024-2025 season. An expanded College Football Playoff system also bodes well for a potential postseason run, but for now it all begins at what the team and staff can build upon in practice this summer.

Contact Madeline Ladd at mladd2@nd.edu

ACC Champion Irish succeed despite adversity

By JAKE MILLER Senior Sports Writer

For Notre Dame women’s basketball head coach Niele Ivey, the 2023-2024 season was a testament to the thousands of hours of hard work put into her program. For many fans, the 2023-2024 season was a surprise. Although the Irish returned key starters like senior forward Maddy Westbeld and junior guard Sonia Citron, the rest of the roster was a bit of a question mark. At guard, the Irish were effectively swapping out junior Olivia Miles with freshman Hannah Hidalgo, a talented — but inexperienced — young guard who plays at a significantly different pace than Miles. Of course, the Irish also battled the continuous question of Miles’ potential presence. Would she return? If so, when, and what impact would that have on Hidalgo’s play? Ultimately, that question is still to be answered. Miles sat out the entirety of the year, leaving Hidalgo to lead the way.

After Notre Dame’s opening game — a beating against to-be national champion South Carolina in Paris — many more questions came to light. Notre Dame struggled mightily against Kamilla Cardoso, as her larger size and stature proved to be too much to handle for Westbeld and senior center Kylee Watson. Hidalgo had a great day in Paris, scoring 31 points off of 3-for-6 shooting from three. Though Notre Dame’s 29-point loss was demoralizing, the bigger loss was the unveiling of a clear gameplan that other teams could use against the Irish: feed the post. From there, superior heights seemed to be out of picture for Ivey’s squad — maybe next year would present a real opportunity. But boy, that couldn’t have been

more wrong.

Notre Dame found its stride after returning to the states. The rest of Notre Dame’s non-conference schedule proved to be much more manageable. The Irish won their nine following games heading all the way into ACC play, the best of those wins being an ACC-SEC challenge game at Tennessee that went down to the wire. Westbeld stole the show with a double-double on 15 points and 11 boards. Notre Dame’s win against Tennessee was its first against one that later made the NCAA Tournament.

While the team’s conclusion to the non-conference was nice, it surely wasn’t enough to appease Santa, as the Irish found themselves on cold feet after their Christmas break. Finding themselves without Citron — who tweaked her knee late in a November blowout against Northwestern — Notre Dame dropped its conference opener against Syracuse, largely due to the outstanding play of Orange guard Dyaisha Fair. The Irish were able to bounce back against Pitt, but not also without a loss. Westbeld left the game with a concussion, causing her to sit out one game: an Irish loss against North Carolina. Playing only six players, Ivey’s crew had a tough shooting day against the Tar Heels at 31.1%.

Once the students returned to campus, things seemed to stabilize for the Irish, as they picked up four straight conference wins — although all four were against teams not in the tournament. A rematch against Syracuse proved to be even more of a challenge than the programs’ first bout. Neither Hidalgo nor Citron had much success against Dyaisha Fair. Combined with a late-game offensive collapse, Notre Dame found itself looking for help. And it needed to come quick

with a midseason trip to former Big East rival UConn just days away.

On the night of the UConn game, Notre Dame won as much as it lost against Syracuse. The Irish shut down Paige Bueckers, and Hidalgo put up her best game yet — a 34-point, 10-rebound masterpiece on FOX Primetime Hoops. However, the FOX broadcast also told America (and the media) that Miles would not return to the court this season, raising question marks on why Notre Dame’s Athletic Communications Department and Coach Niele Ivey hadn’t announced anything prior. Nonetheless, shortly after, Ivey claimed that she was unaware of Miles’ decision to inform the public. While the University did confirm her season-long absence, few details were provided. During the postseason, The Observer confirmed that Miles was a near-full participant in practices and ran the Irish scout team.

Throughout February, Notre Dame continued to maintain its place — although frustrations began to grow. The Irish took care of business against all of its nonranked opponents, including an impressive, double-overtime victory at Florida State. However, in two February games against ranked opponents (Louisville and NC State), the Irish came up short. Far short. A road matchup against Louisville featured abysmal, 11% shooting from deep and 17 turnovers — many coming off simple, inexcusable mental lapses.

Notre Dame’s loss against the Wolfpack was its worst at home in 20 years — the alarm was sounding loud and clear. The Irish only managed to score 43 points with only seven in the first quarter. The Wolfpack’s mature, slow pace completely schooled Notre Dame’s fast,

offensive chaos, which just could not get going. At this point of the season, the Irish had a couple of nice wins, but ultimately, with a lack of depth, limited defensive options against premier post players, an offense that often stagnated and tons of mental lapses, the team’s ceiling looked very clear — and quite low.

On the evening of the NC State loss — the second day of Lent — the team clearly died to self. The rise from the ashes took full effect, though. From there on, the Irish nearly went unbeaten until Easter. A rare Monday game at Duke started Notre Dame’s 10-game winning streak that turned the season around.

In the team’s penultimate home game against ACC regular-season champion Virginia Tech, the Irish showed what they could bring. Westbeld and Watson contained the superpowers of Liz Kittley. The next week, Notre Dame’s emerging 2-3 zone contained the prowess of Louisville in the second of their two meetings. By winning, the Irish captured the No. 4 seed in the ACC Tournament, giving them two byes, and more importantly, two extra days off to rest and recover

The rest paid off, too. Notre Dame fought and scratched against the Cardinals to win the season series. The Irish then took care of business against a Kitleyless Virginia Tech, although the Irish lost Watson in the action to a torn ACL. On Sunday, though, the Irish faced NC State, which had continued its dominance and looked like a solid pick to win the league. The Wolfpack had horrible shooting luck, though. While the Irish played well, the Wolfpack somewhat beat themselves, shooting 35%, including 3-for-17 from 3-point range. Players and fans

leapt for joy as Ivey took home her first ACC Championship, a monumental step back towards the dominance that had become synonymous with the program’s name throughout Muffet McGraw’s tenure.

Notre Dame’s excellent performance in the tournament was rewarded with a higher-than-anticipated tournament seed: No. 2. Notre Dame faced Mid-American Conference champion Kent State to open the tournament in South Bend. The Irish ran through Kent State easily. Notre Dame’s next test — in the round of 32 — was Ole Miss, a team heavily reliant on post play. Without Watson, Notre Dame did not match up well against the Rebels. However, terrific play from Westbeld and senior Natalija Marshall led the Irish to victory and their third Sweet 16 in as many years.

Over the Easter weekend, Notre Dame made the trek to Albany, New York to take on Oregon State, a talented team looking to make its mark before the Pac-12 would dissolve over the summer. Led by Reagan Beers, a talented center, the Beavers did what Notre Dame couldn’t do: control the post. Without Watson’s presence, Beers took control of the post, and even though the Irish stayed close, it was too much to handle. Oregon State advanced, only to lose to South Carolina in the Elite Eight. For Ivey, the year was a success and a needed step towards establishing continual S-tier dominance in the ACC. Next year, the league adds Stanford, but also several firepower teams (like Virginia Tech) lose much of their talent. Guards Anna DeWolfe and Sarah Cernugel along with forward Becky Obinma

will graduate and head out to the professional world. Marshall announced her intention to transfer. Sophomore forward KK Bransford did as well, but at the team’s banquet, she announced that after testing the portal waters, she’ll be returning — a huge get for the Irish. Ivey and the coaching staff also

ND MEN’S BASKETBALL

acquired two key players in the transfer portal to open May. They worked within the conference to nab forward Liatu King, the ACC’s Most Improved Player, from Pitt. The Irish also earned the commitment of Liza Karlen, an All-Big East First Team guard from Marquette. Notre Dame will return most of its starting lineup, including Citron, Hidalgo, Watson and importantly, Westbeld, who decided to use her COVID year. Westbeld

was floated as a second-round WNBA draft pick, so her return is meaningful. The Irish will also return the recovering Miles, freshman forward Cassandre Prosper, and freshman guard Emma Risch along with incoming freshman center Kate Koval, a five-star player and the top center in her class. After playing with only six to seven players at most points this season, the Irish will have much more depth — the rotation looks to be more like

eight to nine players. “We have great firepower coming back, and you can’t teach experience,” Ivey said at the season’s conclusion. “That’s what my entire team has received this year. I’m excited next year to bring back Olivia Miles — we’re going to be healthy. We have an incredible post coming in. It’s going to be exciting. These types of moments are part of our journey.”

Until then, Notre Dame will take

advantage of time on campus this summer. After traveling abroad twice in 2023 (a summer team trip to Greece/Croatia and the season opener in Paris), the 2024 season should be calmer. Notre Dame will take the rest now, though. Come tip-off in late fall, the expectations for Ivey will be sky-high. Next season’s roster represents her best yet.

Contact Jake Miller at jmille89@nd.edu

Shrewsberry’s first year builds winning culture

By HENRY LYTLE Sports Writer

Entering a new era after Mike Brey’s departure was certain to be a challenge for Notre Dame men’s basketball. Following a disappointing 11-21 season in 2023 with 1.57% of scoring returning, the 2024 season seemed bleak for new head coach Micah Shrewsberry. However, despite almost every metric pointing to Notre Dame finishing last in the ACC with four conference wins, they won seven out of 20 ACC games and finished with a final record of 13-20. The new cast of freshmen and transfers for Micah Shrewsberry faced adversity at many points throughout the season but put together strong stretches of basketball. Winning five out of six games near the end of the regular season, capped off with a final home victory against Elite Eight qualifier Clemson, this Irish team gave fans something to cheer for to end the year. Men’s basketball finished the season losing in the second round of the ACC Tournament to Wake Forest, 72-59. Freshman guard Markus Burton excelled from his first moment on the court. Against Niagara, he set the new freshman debut record with 29 points. Earning ACC Rookie of the Week four times — and ACC Rookie of the Year — Burton continued to set new Notre Dame records throughout the season. Despite low expectations for the three-star point guard from

Mishawaka, Notre Dame found success through Burton’s scoring, playmaking and defensive energy throughout the season. The freshman was asked to carry the offensive load, leading the ACC in offensive usage rate and, despite struggling at times, gave serious flashes to Irish fans of a future star point guard.

“Coach [Shrewsberry] talked to me and told me the different role he wanted me to play to make the team better. Having fun through it all was what helped me stay locked in,” Burton said.

Burton finished the year averaging 17.5 points, 4.3 assists and 1.9 steals per game, finishing first for ACC rookies in scoring and steals and second in assists.

“We fed off his energy the whole year,” Micah Shrewsberry said.

With a season high of 31 points against Wake Forest in the last stretch of the season, Burton improved his scoring and efficiency over the course of the year. Following the conclusion of the season, he officially entered his name into the NBA Draft with all signs pointing to him returning to Notre Dame next season. With the new NIL and transfer portal rules, players can enter the draft process to be evaluated by scouts and still retain college eligibility.

The Irish began the first stretch of the season going 4-7, with losses to Sweet 16 qualifier Marquette and SEC Tournament champion Auburn. On top of the losses to

the top teams, the Irish also fell at home to Western Carolina (7161) and at the Citadel (65-45).

“The Citadel game was an awful loss,” freshman guard Braeden Shrewsberry said. “It helped us grow closer as a team. It was a wake-up call for us.”

Shooting only 26.6% from the field in that game, the Irish looked primed to struggle in ACC play after narrowly beating Marist next.

Starting ACC play at home against 10-2 Virginia, the Irish defied expectations and earned one of the the signature wins of the season, dominating the whole game to win 76-54. Coach Shrewsberry continuously talked about the defensive culture he looked to build on the team, and it was on full display against the Cavaliers.

Over the next 10 ACC games, the Irish struggled to find scoring down the stretch to lose close games, going 1-9 to start 2024. With a loss on a buzzer-beater against DJ Burns and the Final Four-bound NC State Wolfpack, a close home loss against Elite Eight qualifier Duke and a loss to Virginia, the Irish had entered a tough stretch of the ACC regular season. During this time in early January and into February, the Irish lost seven in a row and shot poorly as a team.

Looking back on the stretch, Burton said, “It says a lot based on how young we are. We played those [Elite Eight] teams very close and led against NC State until the buzzer-beater [from DJ burns], when we

let it slip at the end.”

The only win during this month-long stretch was an overtime victory over Georgia Tech. Braeden Shrewsberry’s seasonhigh 25-point game helped propel the Irish to win against the Yellow Jackets. Shrewsberry’s emergence in this game gave Irish fans some hope as the freshman began to find consistency from the 3-point line.

“Georgia Tech was my biggest game,” Shrewsberry said. “The Duke game before was important, too, because I gained confidence that I could make any shot.”

The freshman shooting guard showed flashes throughout the season of a sniper in blue and gold, shooting 37.7% on six 3-point attempts per game.

Over the last eight games over the season, beginning with a home victory against Virginia Tech, the Irish got the season back on track. They won five out of six, with the only loss coming off of a near 29-point, miraculous comeback against Syracuse that ended with an 88-85 score. The Irish triumphantly beat Clemson in the final home game of the season, 69-62.

Also winning against Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Louisville down the stretch, the Irish found a formula of ferocious defense and ball-handling help from freshman guards Logan Imes and Braeden Shrewsberry in the backcourt.

The Irish finished as the third-best defense in the ACC and cracked a

top-30 defensive rating in Division I at times throughout the season, which was on full display during this stretch.

The Irish beat Georgia Tech for the third time in the ACC Tournament’s first round but fell short against Wake Forest to end the season. In this loss, the Irish shot below 30% from the field, and Burton went 4 for 16. Throughout the season, the Irish found success as Burton did. With a whole offseason to regroup, the Irish should look to add more ball-handling and scoring help in the backcourt to take pressure off of Burton.

Over the past few weeks, the Irish have lost the highest recruit from 2023, 6-foot-10 freshman forward Carey Booth, who averaged 6.4 and 4.3 rebounds, to Illinois in the transfer portal. Senior forward Matt Zona also left for Fordham. The Irish have added graduate transfer Matt Allocco from Princeton, where he averaged 12.7 points, 3.3 assists and 2.9 rebounds last year. With four-star recruits Sir Mohammed and Cole Certa leading the incoming Irish recruiting class, Notre Dame currently has the 24th-best class (247Sports). Even amidst the ever-changing landscape of college basketball, within his first year of coaching, Micah Shrewsberry has begun to build a winning culture for Notre Dame men’s basketball.

Contact Henry Lytle at hlytle@nd.edu

Irish find their stride but still have work to do

By ANDREW MCGUINNESS Sports Editor Emeritus

It didn’t take long for it to be established that the 2024 season was not going to be an ordinary one for Notre Dame baseball. In the team’s second game of the season, the Irish scored six runs in the final two innings, completing a comeback win over Rice. The very next day, they rallied from 6-3 down by scoring five runs in the seventh and ninth innings for an even more improbable 13-10 victory, completing an opening-weekend sweep. For a while, though, the Irish hardly resembled a winning team, especially in ACC games. They surrendered at

least 10 runs in 11 of their first 24 games. A nightmare 2-16 start to conference competition seemingly left them for dead, staring down the barrel of a lost season.

Yet, somehow, the Irish have managed to course-correct.

”I don’t know if we ever felt like we weren’t playing very well,” head coach Shawn Stiffler said, who is in his second season at Notre Dame. ”We just kind of run the bat on the bad side of some results. And we took the approach about a month ago that we’re in — [when] we came out back out of the Chapel Hill series — and we felt like we could get jumpstarted here at home.”

The Irish have taken full

advantage of that homestand, most notably winning seven of nine games in conference play, sweeping Boston College and picking up series wins over Pitt and Wake Forest. From a walk-off home run to a combined nohitter, there’s been a little bit of everything in this stretch for Notre Dame.

The Irish hitting and pitching have both had their highs and lows throughout the season. While the offense did start the year at a historic home run pace, neither unit has graded out particularly great on the whole (10th in the ACC in runs scored, eighth in runs against). But while the Irish may not be a championship caliber team,

their defense has been consistently stellar.

”It started with the middle of the field. I mean, I really thought that our triangle positions of shortstop, second base and center field could rival anyone’s in the country, and so it started there

That will always try to be the mainstay of our team. I have a pitching and defensive mindset first, and so we start every practice with defense,” Stiffler said.

Notre Dame doesn’t just lead the ACC in fielding percentage — it leads the entire country. Part of that is having a pair of natural shortstops manning the corners in graduate student Simon Baumgardt (third

base) and senior Connor Hincks (first base). Both players are good representatives of how this year’s team came together. The Irish dipped heavily into the graduate transfer portal for experienced options. Baumgardt, team home run leader David Glancy and starting right fielder Tito Flores have been key cogs in the lineup. Four of the team’s most utilized relief pitchers came to the Irish from the transfer portal.

The Irish would also be lost if not for the development that many returning players have undergone, though. Senior pitcher Matt Bedford

Colleen Mackin - Austin

Shane Stanton - Austin

Aaron Kornaker - Baton Rouge

Maddie Schlehuber - Brownsville

Annie Gri n - Charleston

Mary Rozembajgier - Chicago

Clayton Glasgow - Cleveland

Marcello Nanni - Cleveland

Ashley Utnage - Cleveland

So a McGuinness - Corpus Christi

Mimi Schneider - Dallas

Shannon Kelly - Denver

Ava Kolb - Denver

Tommy Garnett - Detroit

Ryan Elkins - Indianapolis

Carter Bice - Jacksonville

Lauren Gavalas - Jacksonville

Angela Rea - Los Angeles

Joy Agwu - Louisville

Luke Speicher - Milwaukee

Joe Dickerson - New Orleans

Anastasia Matuszak - New York

Steve Sayles - New York

Rachel ompson - New York

Cameron Nash - Oakland

Stephanie Ona - Oakland

Nick Daniel - Oklahoma City

Sophia Alvarez - Philadelphia

Sean Kelley - Phoenix

Emma Sayler - Sacramento

Annie Smith - San Antonio

Aidan Lanz - San Jose

Shannon Williams - Santa Ana

Lauren Barry - St. Petersburg

Emily Brady - Stockton

Frank Paquette - Stockton

Sarah Conley - Tulsa

Aidan Couch - Tulsa

Jess Castillo - Twin Cities

Abby Maichin - Washington, DC

Established in 1993, ACE now places approximately 180 young professionals in 140+ parochial schools throughout the United States.

Cathol

had started just two games in college before 2024 and has emerged as a reliable Friday starter. Stiffler admitted he wasn’t sure Hincks, who has hit near .300 after earning just eight at-bats in the last two seasons combined, would ever be a startingcaliber player. Sophomore second baseman Estevan Moreno, a plus defender at

second base, has developed more consistency at the plate with a lofty slugging percentage to prove it.

“I think there’s a lot of people that have developed, which I’m very, very proud of our player development for that,” Stiffler said.

Still, barring an unprecedented run, the Irish will miss the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. That can be difficult to reconcile after the rapid ascent the team had under former

head coach Link Jarrett, who led them to its first College World Series since 2002 two years ago before leaving for his alma mater, Florida State, right after. It was a challenge Stiffler was cognizant of when he left his 10-year perch leading VCU. And while ending the year on a high note would be nice, Stiffler knows there is a long way to go.

”We’re not in a position to meet the standard appropriate from results standpoint,”

Stiffler said. ”And so I can’t sit here and pretend like that’s going to be a win.”

However, that doesn’t make it a failure, either.

”When I stood in there the other day after the Pitt win, I had that feeling again, where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I could be any prouder of the team that I have with these guys,’” he recalled. “They could have quit at any point ... and so to put themselves in an opportunity to make the conference tournament

from there against the people that are in this league, and where this league is kind of going from an NIL and portal standpoint, that is pretty impressive.”

This may not go down as an impressive season for Notre Dame baseball. But maybe it could be a building block to returning to where Stiffler believes the program belongs.

Contact Andrew McGuinness at amcguinn@nd.edu

Missed chances end NCAA Tournament streak

By J.J. POST Senior Sports Writer

Notre Dame softball’s season was summarized over the course of two games at the ACC Tournament in Durham, North Carolina.

The Irish entered with their season on the line. Qualifying for the tournament as the final squad in a 10-team field, Notre Dame needed to win four consecutive games to capture the title and the NCAA Tournament auto bid that would come with it.

And in game one, the Irish found a rhythm. Notre Dame erased what at one point was a three-run deficit to North Carolina with timely hitting from up and down the order. Ten batters came to the plate for the Irish during the game. Eight reached base at least once. The underdog Irish scored all seven of their runs with two outs and advanced to the quarterfinals. With the stakes at their highest, the 7-4 victory was a sign of what Notre Dame’s season could still be.

The ensuing quarterfinal against Florida State proved a frustrating reminder of what the season instead was: one of missed chances.

It wasn’t for a lack of a quality performance for the Irish against the Seminoles, who are traditionally the class of the conference. In fact, a lot went right for Notre Dame with its season effectively on the line. The Irish held Florida State to just two runs, tied for the Seminoles’ worst offensive output of the season against a conference opponent.

But the Irish offense, so pivotal just one day earlier against the Tar Heels, couldn’t seem to click. Notre Dame left five runners on base and was shut out for the first time all season in a 2-0 loss. And without the parachute of an automatic bid that would have come with an ACC Tournament title, Sunday night confirmed the Irish would miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 25 years.

Such was the story of the spring. So close, so many times. Notre Dame played in four “rubber match” games

— the third game in a threegame series where both teams split games one and two — in conference play. The Irish went 1-3 in such games with their lone win coming in mid-March.

The Irish were walked off in potentially key conference games against Georgia Tech and North Carolina.

Three outs away from a major midweek bubble triumph over Indiana, Notre Dame instead watched a walk-off grand slam sail over the fence in Bloomington. Perhaps the most backbreaking end came against eventual tournament squad Baylor during an early season tournament in California, as the Irish dug deep for a miraculous rally in the top of the seventh inning before immediately conceding two runs to lose the game in the bottom half of the frame.

Nobody was more aware of these bitter ends than veteran head coach Deanna Gumpf, who said her players’ strong culture off the field only made their struggles to put everything together on it more frustrating.

“When I look back at this

season so far, I think the biggest thing that I struggle with is the fact that I think our culture is so good,” Gumpf said. “That’s probably the hardest thing to take when you look at the games that we dropped, and maybe the result could have been a little bit different.”

Still, there were bright spots to be found in disappointment for the Irish. Notre Dame was always set to lose a frightening amount of production at the top of the order following this spring. Among the team’s pending graduating class are catcher Carlli Kloss, first baseman Karina Gaskins and third baseman Cassidy Grimm, three of the team’s top four leaders in batting average. The Irish offense was in dire need of a new stalwart to anchor the team’s efforts at the plate come summer. They found such a player in freshman second basemen Addison Amaral.

Amaral started the season hitting fifth in Notre Dame’s order and climbed to No. 3 by the season’s end. She led the Irish in home runs, doubles, runs batted in and slugging percentage. She drove in 53 runs across 50 games — no

other Notre Dame player had more than 35.

Gumpf noted that Amaral’s adaptability allowed her to continue to develop with every game as the season went on.

“Addison does a great job of learning from her mistakes,” Gumpf said. “I think that’s what makes her such an incredible athlete. Because you might get her on something one time, but she’ll find a way to make that adjustment next time. When you look at great athletes, it’s about adjustments and having the confidence to just go at the game, attack the game and make adjustments when needed.”

Notre Dame now looks ahead to the 2025 campaign and the potentially transformative offseason that will precede it. Remove the three above senior starters from the equation and the Irish lineup hit an average of .273 this spring, a sizable dropoff from a .290 overall average that was good for about average in the ACC.

Pitching should be a source of strength for the Irish, who are set to return all four hurlers from this spring. Alexis

Laudenslager has an additional year of eligibility, with the Princeton graduate transfer bringing stability to the team’s Friday starter slot following the graduation of longtime ace Payton Tidd at the end of the 2023 campaign. Elsewhere in the rotation, Notre Dame will bank on growth from rising senior Shannon Becker and rising junior Micaela Kastor, both of whom settled into solid roles as the season went on. Kami Kamzik showed flashes in spot action during her rookie year and should see her duties tick upward as she develops further.

Gumpf leaned on internal promotion to mitigate losses in the lineup last season and saw the likes of Anna Holloway and Jane Kronenberger rise to task as full-time starters. She went to the transfer portal to replace Payton Tidd in the circle. The Irish lose just as much as the season prior this summer. The question of how Gumpf and her staff will plug the holes will likely be a defining one for the coming months.

Contact J.J. Post at jpost2@nd.edu

Irish head into summer after another early exit

By RYAN MURPHY Sports Writer

Notre Dame hockey finds itself in unfamiliar territory this offseason.

For the first time in veteran head coach Jeff Jackson’s 19year tenure, the Irish are staring down the barrel of a two-year NCAA Tournament drought.

Notre Dame’s drive to make it back to the national tournament sputtered out in the Big Ten quarterfinal round for the second straight season, leaving an air of disappointment and urgency at Compton Family Ice Arena this spring.

“I was really pleased with the chemistry of the team and the kids that we have. They all came to work every day, had a good attitude — everything was positive in that regard,” Jackson told The Observer in late-April. “I feel good about the group but disappointed in the end result. I just felt like we should have still been playing when we got to the NCAA Tournament. I mean, I really felt that this team was capable of that.”

After a string of four consecutive victories over Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State to end January, the Irish did indeed seem poised for a run. With a 14-11-2 record on February 2, Notre Dame was in the mix for home ice in the Big Ten Tournament and potentially an NCAA bid. But the Irish struggled down the stretch, losing eight of their last nine, and they ended their season in the Big Ten first round, swept by Michigan.

Scoring, discipline hinder Irish

Some of the late season difficulties can be attributed to trouble scoring goals. In six of those final nine games — and in 16 of their 19 total losses— the Irish were held to two goals or fewer. They finished the season averaging 2.81 goals per game, a slight improvement on last year’s 2.3 goals per game.

“It’s been a pretty consistent thing over the last three or four years, where we’re just not scoring enough goals,” Jackson said.

Some of that is personnel. Jackson admitted that the Irish have lost a number of high-profile recruits in recent years, and that has contributed to their scoring woes. But the coach also offered a number of onice points that he would like to see his team improve upon going forward, including puck possession.

“I don’t think we possessed the puck as much as we should have,” Jackson said. “I don’t think that we had enough presence in the offensive zone, and especially net-front presence, in winning that area of the ice where goals are scored.”

Notre Dame was also hampered by discipline issues,

again especially late in the season. The Irish were whistled for an average of 12.6 penalty minutes per game, 13th-most nationally. They also took six 5-minute major penalties and six 10-minute game misconducts over their last 10 games.

“I just think discipline as a whole was not as good as it should have been,” Jackson said. “It’s not like we were having issues with the guys off the ice or in the classroom. There were no discipline issues, except for [that] they just didn’t quite grasp the importance of us playing with discipline, because discipline comes in a number of different areas.”

Those areas, according to Jackson, stretch far beyond just penalty minutes. They also include line changes, and yes, puck management too.

“It’s our discipline with puck management and our discipline with the type of penalties we’ve taken, and I think our [line] changes fall into that as well — I think those three things probably were significant in our struggles when we couldn’t score and in winning hockey games.”

Seniors skaters pass the torch

This season does leave the Irish with plenty of positives, though, and a blueprint for the way forward. Under the leadership of graduate transfer defenseman Ryan Siedem and senior defenseman Drew Bavaro, the Irish improved in their breakouts and neutral zone play.

Senior captain Landon Slaggert enjoyed a breakout year, scoring 20 goals to earn a contract with the Chicago Blackhawks at the conclusion of the season.

Perhaps most importantly, the Irish successfully integrated an eight-member freshman class that had an immediate impact. By the regular season’s end, all eight were in the lineup almost every night.

That group was headlined by centers Cole Knuble and Danny Nelson, who stepped into the team’s number one and two center roles right from the opening puck drop. Nelson, a New York Islanders secondrounder, found his scoring touch especially quickly, tallying nine goals and 23 points. The sharp-shooting Knuble, a Philadelphia Flyers draftee, took some time to heat up but still finished with nine goals and 20 points. Both will be cornerstones at center as Notre Dame moves forward.

“You definitely want to be strong up the middle, and those two guys give us real strength,” Jackson said.

Notre Dame hopes that its strength up the middle will provide some stability from the get-go next year, especially considering that it will have some production to replace.

The Irish graduated 10 players from this year’s roster, including Slaggert, Siedem and Bavaro, as well as key forwards Trevor Janicke and Patrick Moynihan. Of the 10 departing players, only one will remain in college hockey. Defenseman Jake Boltmann plans to transfer to Northeastern University for his final season of eligibility.

All in all, the Irish will need to replace three of their top six defensemen, a goaltender in Ryan Bischel who started each of their last 73 games, and over half of their 101 goals from last season.

Among the 11 returning forwards, the Irish will look to rising seniors Tyler Carpenter, Hunter Strand and Justin Janicke to set the tone next season. Grant Silianoff will also return for a graduate season, adding some sandpaper to the lineup. But by and large, it will be the rising sophomores — Nelson, Knuble and their classmates Brennan Ali, Carter Slaggert, Maddox Fleming and Jayden Davis — who will form the team’s core up front.

“We just brought in maybe one of the best freshman classes in the country this past year,” Jackson said. “We have a number of guys there in that younger group that hopefully can start building us back to where we need to get to.”

As for newcomers, Jackson says Notre Dame’s recruiting class is still in flux. Forward Jack Larrigan is likely to join the team this summer, as are defensemen Jaedon Kerr and Jimmy Jurcev. All three played this season in the USHL.

Notre Dame also added three skaters out of the transfer portal who they hope will have an impact. Two are graduate student forwards, Blake Biondi and Ian Murphy. A former Montreal Canadiens draft pick, Biondi arrives after four years at Minnesota-Duluth, where he topped out at 17 goals his sophomore year. Murphy earned

first and second team All-Ivy honors in his final two years at Princeton.

“With a few transfers that we have coming in and the returning guys we have, we’re pretty solid up front, and then we just have to hope that some of those guys have good years,” Jackson said.

The Irish also added rising junior defenseman Axel Kumlin from Miami. The Swede will help shore up the right side of Notre Dame’s defense. Kumlin joins a defense corps that will undergo a similar passing of the torch as the forward group.

Rising sophomores Paul Fischer, Henry Nelson and rising junior Michael Mastrodomenico can all expect to play larger roles next to upcoming seniors Zach Plucinski and Ryan Helliwell. Mastrodomenico in particular enjoyed a breakout late in the year, while Fischer factored into nearly every situation as a freshman.

The future in goal

The biggest question Notre Dame faces, though, is undoubtedly in goal. It’s hard to underestimate the impact that netminder Bischel had for the Irish over the last two seasons, twice named a Richter Award semifinalist.

“He’ll go down as one of the best goalies we ever had here,” Jackson said.

He also leaves a gaping hole in net. With his eligibility up after this season, Bischel signed with the AHL’s Providence Bruins in March. With no other netminder on the roster that has a start to his name, the Irish will seek to fill the void through all possible means, bringing in a freshman and a transfer to supplement returning backup Jack Williams, a rising junior.

Freshman Nick Kempf will join the Irish from the US National Team Development Program, where he started 26 games with an .897 save percentage. Draft-eligible in 2024,

Kempf was ranked fourth among North American goalies by NHL Central Scouting.

“Nick is going to be a great goalie, but he is going to be a true freshman goalie — a little bit challenging sometimes,” Jackson said. ”It’s not that way all the time, but I think he’s got a chance to be exceptional.”

The Irish also added rising junior Owen Say out of the transfer portal. Say comes to South Bend from Mercyhurst, where he started 31 games as a sophomore and posted a .913 save percentage. When he started against Notre Dame in late October, Say made no less than 50 saves on 54 shots and singlehandedly kept Mercyhurst in the game until overtime.

The two newcomers, along with Williams, will all compete for the number one position. In fact, the competition in goal will be representative of increased internal competition up and down the Irish roster.

“Having been out of the NCAA Tournament for two years, one of the things to get discipline back is to create more competition for jobs,” Jackson said. “I see competition at every position. Guys are going to be competing for opportunities for the lineup, for special teams. We intentionally wanted more competition.”

With more competition, Notre Dame hopes to create a sense of urgency indicative of where it feels the program falls. For Jackson, his staff, the players and all involved with the team, building on this season towards success next year is paramount.

“We have to make sure that we’re moving in a positive direction going into next year, there’s no question about that,” Jackson said. “Because it’s not acceptable for us to be out of the NCAA Tournament two years in a row.”

Contact Ryan Murphy at rmurph22@nd.edu

MEGHAN LANGE | THE OBSERVER

Senior forward Landon Slaggert protects the puck during Notre Dame’s game at Wisconsin on Feb. 10, 2024, at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Slaggert led the Irish with 20 goals along with 31 points.

ALL-COMMENCEMENT TEAMS MEN WOMEN

Bryan Dowd, ND Soccer

As Notre Dame’s starting goalkeeper, Dowd played his way to ACC Goalkeeper of the Year and TopDrawer Soccer National Player of the Year status. The Chicago Fire selected him sixth overall in the 2023 MLS SuperDraft.

Liam Entenmann, ND Lacrosse

Entenmann has topped off his legendary goalkeeping career with his second consecutive year of ACC Defensive Player of the Year and Goalie of the Year honors. The New York Atlas selected the Tewaaraton finalist fifth overall in the 2024 Premier Lacrosse League draft.

Palmer Jackson, ND Golf

Jackson led the Irish to a berth in the NCAA Austin Regional, finishing in the top five for three consecutive competitions to wrap up the regular season.

Pat Kavanagh, ND Lacrosse

Kavanagh set Notre Dame’s program record for points en route to ACC Offensive Player of the Year honors. The three-time Tewaaraton finalist was selected sixth overall by the Boston Cannons in the 2024 Premier Lacrosse League draft.

Luke Linder, ND Fencing Linder claimed the ACC’s Fencer of the Year in men’s sabre for the second consecutive season. He won both his second straight NCAA Championship and ACC Championship in men’s sabre, going 22-1 in the NCAA round robin.

Marcello Olivares, ND Fencing Olivares won his second consecutive ACC Fencer of the Year award in men’s foil, also finishing as a second-team All-American. He claimed sixth place at the NCAA Championships after posting a 27-6 record in intercollegiate competition.

Michael Shoaf, ND Track and Field Shoaf captured All-American honors for a second consecutive year by placing sixth in the men’s shot put at the NCAA Indoor Championships. In the outdoor season, he took first place in the same category at the Spartan Invitational.

Landon Slaggert, ND Hockey

Slaggert captained the Irish hockey team, leading Notre Dame with 20 goals and 31 points. The Hobey Baker Award Nominee landed on the All-Big Ten Second Team and made his National Hockey League debut with the Chicago Blackhawks this year.

Xavier Watts, ND Football

A unanimous All-American, Watts brought home the 2023 Bronko Nagurski Trophy, presented to the nation’s best defensive player. He led the nation in interceptions with seven, becoming the first Notre Dame player to record multiple interceptions in back-to-back games in October.

TJ Williams, ND Baseball

As Notre Dame’s primary leadoff hitter and everyday center fielder, Williams leads the Irish in batting average, on-base percentage and stolen bases. He hit a walk-off home run in April that clinched a series win against No. 8 Wake Forest.

Lauren Beaudreau, ND Golf

After landing on the All-ACC Women’s Golf Team, Beaudreau won the NCAA East Lansing Regional for her second first-place finish of the season. Beaudreau’s individual title marked the first regional win in program history.

Kasey Choma, ND Lacrosse

Choma earned All-ACC First Team honors for the second consecutive season, posting 46 goals and 21 assists in Notre Dame’s midfield. The Tewaaraton nominee finished the regular season with ACC Offensive Player of the Week honors as well.

Eva Gaetino, ND Soccer

Gaetino defended her title as ACC Defender of the Year, winning the award for the second consecutive season. Before signing a pro contract with Paris Saint Germain, Gaetino provided the Irish with a career-high four goals and three assists.

Atara Greenbaum, ND Fencing

Greenbaum was the ACC Fencer of the Year in women’s sabre after claiming an ACC Championship and finishing in fifth place at the NCAA Championships. The second-team All-American posted a 29-8 record in intercollegiate competition throughout the season.

Olivia Markezich, ND Cross Country

Markezich finished the season as one of four finalists for the Class of 2024 Honda Sport Award for Cross Country, also earning USTFCCCA All-American status for the third time in her career. She placed third in the NCAA Championship after individually winning the NCAA Great Lakes Regional title.

Jadin O’Brien, ND Track and Field

O’Brien won her second consecutive NCAA Championship in March, claiming the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Pentathlon title with a score that broke her own facility record. She also repeated as the ACC Women’s Indoor Field Performer of the Year.

Olivia Shaw, HCC Soccer

Shaw attained All-CCAC Second Team status, marking her fourth career all-conference selection. The midfielder started all 17 games and led Holy Cross in goals with five and assists with eight, becoming the program’s all-time points leader with 104.

Kiki Van Zanten, ND Soccer

Van Zanten earned an All-ACC First Team selection for the first time in her career, tying her career high with 16 points. Her six goals tied for second on the team, and her four assists ranked fourth.

Maddy Westbeld, ND Basketball

Westbeld emerged as Notre Dame’s leading rebounder at the power forward position, averaging 8.7 boards per game to go with 14.4 points per contest. She landed on the All-ACC Second Team, posting 12 double-doubles.

Jackie Wolak, ND Lacrosse

Wolak was named both a Tewaaraton Finalist and the ACC Attacker of the Year to start the month of May. The First-Team All-ACC honoree eclipsed 300 career points earlier this