Print Edition for The Observer for Wednesday, February 15, 2023

MAGGIE KLAERS | The Observer

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INSidER

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

Seniors

junior captains

Junior captains excited to lead tournament

By MANNION McGINLEY Assistant Managing Editor

The Notre Dame men’s box ing club spent the last t wo semesters preparing for the 2023 Bengal Bouts Tournament. Among this year’s captains are five juniors Rob Rucki, Jack Lannon, Marcello Nanni, Nick Buhay and Mike Guyette. The five of them round out the 11-person leadership group at the head of the Bengal Bouts mission.

Each of the junior captains took a different path to find themselves a member of the men’s box ing club.

Rucki, know n in the ring as “The VooDoo Ranger,” didn’t even originally want to go to Notre Dame. The management consulting major wanted to go to the Naval Academy but after one tour here, Rucki said he opted for Notre Dame and its Naval ROTC program instead. From there, Bengal Bouts fell into his lap.

“Some of the guys I looked up to in ROTC were Bengal Bouts guys and they were absolute studs, I wanted to be just like them. Yeah it was just a great opportunit y to work my a** off, learn a new skill, get in front of my friends, do something really hard and raise money for an awesome cause,” he said.

For Mike “The Real Big” Guyette, Notre Dame was a dream that came true. The Keough Hall native got in off the waitlist but wasn’t sure what clubs he wanted to do once he got here.

Guyette started Bengal Bouts because his roommate was interested.

Once they started though, Guyette said he quick ly fell in love. One thing Guyette pointed out though was that he didn’t feel behind the eight ball hav ing never boxed before.

“Something like 85 or 90% of people here have never done any sort of martial arts,” Guyette said.

“But what allows people to fall in love w ith it is the fact that ever yone here is just like a homie.

Ever yone here loves each other. It’s just great to have such a large group that you can see out and around and you’re like ‘that’s my brother.’”

Being chosen to be a captain was an “absolute honor” for Guyette who says he had been “grinding” all of his sophomore year and

was f loored to get the call from Jack Phillips at the end of last academic year.

Rucki also said he was proud to be chosen.

“It meant the world to me, it blew my mind, there’s a lot of awesome dudes out here,” Rucki said. “So it meant the world to be seen like that by the older guys I looked up to.”

Buhay also ref lected on how rewarding being a captain is. He and Rucki shared how much the older guys taught them.

“Being able to pay that back,” Buhay said. “Leading by example and then technically working one on one w ith guys, complimenting what looks good, pointing out what they need to work on and helping them work on it … it’s an honor to be able to pay that for ward.”

Originally from Atlanta, GA, Buhay resides in Dunne on campus.

The summer after his sophomore year he was supposed to go to Bangladesh but COV ID-19 threw a w rench in that plan.

Still, in the planning for that trip, Buhay said he learned on a more personal level all about the importance of the work the club does.

“I got to talk to some of the veterans of the club who had already graduated by that point. They shared a lot of their experiences w ith me about over there,” he said.

“Really, just being able to have some personal stories about how what we’re doing is making lasting impacts on people across the world, it’s just really powerful to think about that.”

Rucki said he wants to experience some of that more personal level of work himself.

“I w ish more than anything I could get out to Bangladesh myself,” he said. “They just do amazing work over there, hundreds of thousands of mouths fed, people educated.

We’re literally sav ing people’s lives one dollar at a time. We have an enormous impact. I can’t say enough good things about what we do.”

Buhay said it was gratif y ing to understand that the work the group puts into both fundraising and working in the ring is paying off at so many different levels. In terms of goals for the tournament, all three guys are excited to compete again. They’ve each only competed once as the

competition was canceled during their first year on campus due to COV ID-19.

Buhay says he has goals of his ow n but he’s also really looking for ward to cornering for other guys, especially since he was abroad last semester and is still building relationships.

“I’ve only been here a few weeks but even in just those few weeks, I’ve gotten to know a few of the nov ice guys and some of the vets too prett y well,” he said.

“I’ve been able to work w ith them and corner their spars so there are a few guys I’ve been working w ith and I’m excited to lead them through the tournament.”

The trio of junior captains should be five but they are missing teammates Lannon and Nanni who are abroad this semester and w ill ultimately miss the tournament.

Their leadership was present last semester though as the men’s team’s captains helped to run the Baraka Bouts tournament and this included all the junior captains.

Hav ing seen several tournaments now, including the one he competed in, Rucki says he’ll lead by example during competition as he has all year.

Still, there’s something more to the event now that he’s ser v ing as a captain and a corner for his ow n guys.

“It’s awesome to see the guys you worked w ith all season come so far. I just want to see us raise a ton of money and watch the guys I’ve worked w ith kick a** and show off to their friends,” Rucki said.

Guyette said he’s excited for the club’s new guys to get in the ring for the first time. The electrical engineering major played football for a long time but he says box ing is competing on a different level.

“In a one-on-one sport, ever yone’s looking at you and you get to showcase ever y thing you’ve worked on and so it allows you to have your strengths exposed and your weaknesses exposed as well,” Guyette said.

“You show up and you have no idea what to expect,” Buhay said. That feeling, he says, is exciting to watch others experience for the first time and he’s ready to help them through it.

Contact Mannion McGinley at mmcginl3@nd.edu

Continued from page 4

under the nickname “More of a Lover than a Fighter” (he feels that it encapsulates his spirit), a key aspect of being a captain is ensuring that everyone feels welcome in the club, regardless of ability.

“Most of the kids in the club don’t have any experience coming in, so you really build a good base here with boxing. Every year, we start all the guys from the beginning, so everyone feels like they can join the club,” Williams said. “It’s a very welcoming atmosphere, a lot of likeminded guys who want to get after it in workouts.”

After having spent the last three years focused on improving their own skills in the ring, it took an adjustment to serve in a more handsoff role, coaching other boxers from the sideline.

“I think a lot of times when you’re coaching for somebody, you wish you could just get in the ring and do it yourself, but you can’t do that,” Molka said. “A true leader doesn’t have to do it yourself, you’re able to influence others to do the job correctly. It’s really rewarding to see someone put in a lot of hard work when you’re working with them every day, and to see them put that finished product in the ring.”

DeFalco considers seeing the improvement of the boxers that he’s trained with to be one of the most rewarding experiences he’s had in the club.

“I’ve had guys who have asked to spar me at the beginning of the year and then I’ll spar them a month later and I’m like, ‘wow, this guy’s a lot better’,” DeFalco said. “It’s great to see. It makes me happy.”

Through all of the practices, workouts and sparring sessions, the mission of the club never strays far from the front of its members’ minds. The Bengal Bouts raise money for the Congregation of the Holy Cross in Bangladesh, a group that works to provide education and health care in the poorest parts of the country.

The 2022 Bengal Bouts raised over $250,000 for the Holy Cross mission.

Having the opportunity to make that kind of impact helps the boxers put their own lives in perspective, they said.

“At the end of the day, the reason we do this is for people who have so few opportunities,” DeFalco said.

“This stuff is hard. Boxing is hard, school is hard, we’re Notre Dame students, everything seems hard.

But we have a million opportunities.

In Bangladesh, the people we serve, they have no opportunities, or a lot of their opportunities come from funds that we need to raise for them. When you’re dead tired and the other guy’s strong and he’s beating you up, you really try to dig deep and think about what you’re doing this for. I think it helps to stay grounded. Because this is a team, and our end goal is to send money to people who need it a lot more than us.”

Over the course of their four years in the club, the senior captains’ appreciation for and understanding of the mission has only grown. Luke “Mantequilla” Slahor, a Dallas native and Duncan Hall resident, discussed an experience that opened his eyes to the impact of the club.

“Every Monday, the captains give an excerpt about the mission to the guys, a five-minute talk before

practice,” Slahor said. “I found these letters from 2012 that kids from Bangladesh schools that were supported by our program, the Holy Cross missions over there, wrote thanking all the boxers.”

The letters thanked the boxers for their hard work and explained how many lives they’ve impacted in Bangladesh. The kids wrote about what they wanted to be when they grew up, professions that included doctors and nurses.

“We’re not just sending money over there, we’re sending money to educate kids, who are in turn going to make a difference throughout their lives and hopefully make their communities a better place,” Slahor said. “That was kind of the moment where everything came together for me, in terms of thinking about the mission and feeling good about what we’re doing here.”

United in their dedication to boxing and service of that important cause, the club is a strong community of friends who support each other and enjoy spending time together, in the ring and out.

“We’re a team first, and we may compete against each other in the ring, but we’re always here for each other, help train with each other,” Molka said. “It’s a great team.”

“Some of my best friends are here.

The other captains, other vets and even new guys I met this year. We just have a ton of fun down here, l earning a really difficult sport and doing good charity work,” DeFalco added.

“They’re all great guys, great to work with. We have a lot of fun outside of boxing too,” said Williams.

But the recent focus for the club, and the captains, has been on boxing in advance of the seniors’ final Bengal Bouts.

“I feel really confident in how my skills have progressed over the past four years to be the best I can today,” Slahor said. “Last tournament here, definitely going to be my last boxing match ever, so it’s kind of bittersweet, but I want to go out on top.”

Each of the four captains will be gunning to take home a title, but their leadership roles have shifted their priorities. Seeing great performances from their teammates is just as meaningful as winning bouts themselves.

“I want to see all the guys do great,” Slahor said. “I’m really excited to coach a lot of my friends.”

Training for Bengal Bouts requires a great deal of time and sacrifice that often goes unseen. For DeFalco, part of what makes the competition so special is that it gives the boxers a chance to showcase their hard work.

“When your friends and your family come watch, [they think], ’okay, this guy’s been working hard for months,’” DeFalco said. “You want that to show.”

The senior captains have spent the last four years growing as boxers, guiding their teammates and supporting the club’s mission. Now they’re ready to make their last Bengal Bouts one to remember.

“Being in the ring, under the lights, there’s no other feeling like that,” Molka said. “I played football in high school, Friday Night Lights, but that pales in comparison. It’s a crazy feeling.”

Contact Matthew Crow at mcrow2@nd.edu

The independent

To uncover

newspaper serving

the truth

Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s

and report

and holy cross

it accurately

Volume 57, Issue 52 | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

MSU students honored University, College leaders release statements Observer Staff Report

Three student victims were killed in a Monday shooting at Michigan State University (MSU). In a Tuesday statement released by the University, Fr. John Jenkins offered condolences.

“The senseless gun violence that continues to plague our nation has again shattered a university campus. To the victims of this violence, as well as the many friends and colleagues we have at Michigan State, the prayers and support of the Notre Dame community are with you,“ the statement said.

A statement released by Saint Mary’s College on social media echoed the sentiment.

Observer Staff Report

MAX PETROSKY | The Observer

Candles were arranged to spell ‘MSU’ in a show of solidarity with the Michigan State University community at the Grotto.

“We mourn w ith our sisters and brothers at Michigan State Universit y.

We pray for physical healing for the sur v ivors and

strength for the families and friends of those who lost their lives in this unnecessar y tragedy,“ the College w rote.

University NIL policy outlined in lecture

By ALYSA GUFFEY

NEWS PAGE 3

On Tuesday evening, Student Government announced the reinstatement of the Student Life Council (SLC), a public meeting and forum with the vice president of student affairs, associate provost for undergraduate education and the student body president.

Each meeting will address a specific topic, and students will have the chance to hear about the work of each group in the area and ask questions.

“This forum will be fantastic because what it will enable us as students to do is to ask questions face to face with decision makers about anything going on that

By BELLA LAUFENBERG

The Not re Da me student body elect ion ca mpa ig n was a tumu lt of et hics v iolat ion a llegat ions a nd on line hate for ca ndidates.

On Ja n. 31, ca mpa ig ning sta r ted for Not re Da me student body president a nd v ice president. Three separate t ickets, a l l made up of sophomore ma le students, had successf u lly ga ined ALYSA GUFFEY | The Observer

Claire VeNard details the University’s NIL policies, from not violating du Lac to partnerships with marketplaces run by ND alumni.

NIL policy went into effect on July 1, 2021. Indiana is one of seven states that have not touched NIL legislation, meaning Notre Dame started from scratch when crafting an institutional policy for its studentathletes, VeNard said.

Notre Dame also adds one more categor y to its policies — ideas. Through the IDE A Center, the Universit y has seen student-athletes pursue startups that can

VIEWPOINT PAGE 7

benefit financially and socially from the approval of NIL, VeNard said. One example is Pediatric Peptalk, a nonprofit created by Irish lacrosse player Ma x Manyak that connects children w ith chronic illnesses to their favorite athletes.

By the end of its initial policy formation stage, Notre Dame landed on five elements that would see NIL PAGE 5

Scene PAGE 10

may bother us,” student body president Patrick Lee said.

The first meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 21 from 8 to 9 p.m. in Carey Auditorium in Hesburgh Library, and the forum will reconvene two other times during the spring semester.

The first meeting will address faith formation and questions of meaning at Notre Dame and will include Fr. Pete McCormick as the session’s guest speaker. The SLC was initiated by University President Fr. Theodore Hesburgh during the Vietnam War after he decided it necessary for students to be informed about the decisions of the University and share their opinions.

Campaigns discuss allegations Notre Dame News Editor

Editor-in-Chief

W hen name, image and likeness (NIL) exploded in college athletics 18 months ago, Notre Dame analyzed how it could support its student-athletes while not sacrificing its identit y as a universit y.

“W hen we talk to our student-athletes, who are our primar y audience, we cannot dive right into name, image and likeness,” senior associate athletic director Claire VeNard said. “We have to start w ith the core of who we are and what this opportunit y is, which is to come to the Universit y of Notre Dame to grow and develop as a student, as an athlete and as a person.”

On the second day of this year’s NIL-focused Ethics Week, hosted by the Mendoza College of Business, VeNard detailed the Universit y’s unique policies on the rapidly grow ing force in college football.

The first official NCA A

Student Life Council reinstated

t he 700 verif ied sig natures in order to ma ke it on t he ba l lot: Da niel JungA ida n Rezner; Derick Wi l lia ms-Hunter Brooke a nd Pablo Oropeza-Grif f in McA ndrew.

A l l of t he t ickets had a llegat ions f i led aga inst t hem, resu lt ing in leng t hy hea rings w it h Judicia l Counci l a nd u lt imately sa nct ions. see ELECTION PAGE 5

College farm to receive chickens

By MOIRA QUINN News Writer

The Sustainable Farm at Saint Mar y’s is an accessible place for students to get hands-on experience and learn about sustainabilit y and agriculture. Since its unveiling in the fall of 2020, the five-acre plot north of campus has grow n in many

M BASKETBALL PAGE 16

ways and is now preparing to welcome a brood of baby chickens as well as host an open house next Friday.

Farm manager Matthew Insley is optimistic about the week ahead.

“We had chickens for the first time on the farm last semester and they were sort see FARM PAGE 4

ND SOFTBALL PAGE 16

2

TODAY

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

Question of the Day: ndsmcobserver.com

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“Uranus. Because I pronounce it uniquely.”

“Whichever one they haven’t found yet.”

Jadin O’Brien

Stephen Kasko

junior McGlinn Hall

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“Neptune. It’s very pretty.”

“Pluto.”

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Editor-in-Chief Alysa Guffey Managing Editor Aidan O’Malley Asst. Managing Editor: Mannion McGinley Asst. Managing Editor: Genevieve Coleman Asst. Managing Editor: Maggie Eastland Notre Dame News Editor: Bella Laufenberg Saint Mary’s News Editor: Meghan Lange Viewpoint Editor: Hannah Hebda Sports Editor: Aidan Thomas Scene Editor: Willoughby Thom Photo Editor: Ryan Vigilante Graphics Editor: Maggie Klaers Social Media Editor: Anna Hurt Advertising Manager: Emili Garcia Casas Ad Design Manager: Alyssa Rave Systems Administrator: Jack MapelLentz Talent & Inclusion Manager: Angela Mathew Office Manager & General Info

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Today’s Staff News

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Isa Sheikh Peter Breen Cora Haddad

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SOPHIA CRIMIVAROLI | The Observer

Students across the tri-campus community eagerly lined up in the Dahnke Ballroom awaiting the release of tickets for the annual Keenan Revue. This year, the Keenan Knights present High School Revuesical, with three nights of shows on the weekend of Feb. 23.

The next Five days:

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Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Virtual Flash Panel on the Earthquake in Turkey and Syria Online 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Join on Zoom.

Notre Dame Women’s Baskeball Joyce Center 7 p.m.

The Irish take on Louisville.

Sovereign Debt Restructuring Panel 1310 Biolchini 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Discussion on sovereign debt crises.

Notre Dame Men’s Tennis Eck Tennis Pavilion 12 p.m.

Notre Dame plays Wisconsin.

St. Margaret’s House Winter Walk SMC Student Center 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Fundrasier for St. Margaret’s House.

Notre Dame Men’s Lacrosse Arlotta Stadium 5 p.m.

Season opener against Marquette.

Bishop Joseph Perry Lecture Driscoll Auditorium 7:30 p..m.

Lecture on the life of Augustus Tolton.

Concert and Conversation with Iris DeMent DPAC 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Tickets start at $15.

Emily Kane, Senior Clarinet Recital LeBar Recital Hall 4 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Free and open to the public.

Class of 2024 Mass Purcell Pavillion , Joyce Center 11 a.m. - 12 p.m.

Mass for Junior Parents Weekend.

News

ndsmcobserver.com | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | The Observer

3

Céilí celebrates Irish dance, culture

By CAROLINE COLLINS News Writer

Dahnke Ballroom was filled with the click-clack of hard shoes, cheers from the audience and the clapping of students Tuesday evening as they swung their partners around the dance f loor at the Irish céilí.

Students participated in the céilí as part of the Center for the Study of Languages and Culture’s Language Week.

The event was organized by Shannon Dunne, adjunct teaching professor for Irish language and literature.

A “céilí” is an Irish word that refers to a big social gathering, Dunne said.

At the event, Dunne taught and called the Irish social dances. The dances were accompanied by live music from the céilí band featuring traditional Irish instruments like fiddles and tin whistles.

Céilí dances are similar, in a way, to square dances, Dunne said. They are performed as a group and participants switch between different sets of partners.

Dunne said she choreographed the dances to be easy to learn and that people

don’t need previous experience to participate in them.

“I specifically call dances that are easy to learn, and they’re meant to be very easy to grab on to because it’s meant to be a social occasion,” Dunne said.

During her time studying in Ireland, Dunne learned to call Irish social dances from traditional musicians and dancers who are dance callers in their communities.

At Notre Dame, Dunne teaches an old-style Irish dancing course, an Irish social dancing course and a tin whistle course. Dunne started these classes last year with the help of associate professor Sarah McKibben, who also teaches in the department.

Dunne and McKibben started the céilí as a way for students in the classes to experience Irish culture and see all the components come together. Students in the social dancing class demonstrated the dance steps to other students at the ceilí, the tin whistle class joined the band and there was a performance by students in the old-style Irish dance course.

The event allowed students

CAROLINE COLLINS | The Observer

On Tuesday evening in Dahnke Ballroom, the Irish Dance Team performed a traditional dance called “A Trip to the Cottage.” The performance was during an Irish céilí held as part of Language Week this year.

in different classes and groups to come together and share what they have been learning and working on.

“It’s great to see everybody suddenly together in a way that makes sense, and there are all these people who totally get what they are doing,” Dunne said.

During intermission, there was a performance by the Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s Irish Dance Team. The first Paid Advertisement

two dances they performed, a reel and slip jig, were more modern styles of Irish dance.

Their last dance was also called a céilí, a traditional Irish dance similar to the social dances Dunne’s students participated in.

Seniors Maura Doyle and Molly Brown, co-presidents of the Irish Dance Team, said there are dancers of all different levels and varying experience on the team.

“The club is all-inclusive and it’s a fun way to continue dancing in college,” Doyle said.

Following the performance by the Irish Dance Team, the social dancing class demonstrated a few final dances and the céilí band played the Notre Dame Alma Mater to end the night.

Contact Caroline Collins at ccolli23@nd.edu

4

NEWS

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

Campus dining, students discuss flex points

By KATIE MUCHNICK Associate News Editor

Inf lation over the past year has some students calling for an increase in the f lex point budget.

Though the inf lation rate has begun declining since its peak in June 2022, the consumer price index increased 6.5 percent over twelve months, through December 2022. The food away from home index increased by 8.3 percent over twelve months.

Prices for food on-campus ref lect these increases.

Luigi A lberganti, the executive director of Campus Dining, said that on-campus retail food prices are guided by the restaurants.

“Each brand is separate.

You have Starbucks and you have Chick-fil-a and you have Modern Market,” A lberganti said. “So we do not dictate [menu prices] — we recommend — but ultimately we’ll go w ith the guidance of the franchise.”

Indeed, on-campus menu prices seem to track offcampus prices relatively closely, though w ith a slight increase. A grande vanilla sweet cream cold brew from Starbucks costs $4.75 at the Starbucks on State Route 933 and Cleveland and $ 5.05 on campus. A Chick-fil-A chicken sandw ich costs $4.99 at the Chick-fil-A on S Michigan Street and $ 5.39 on campus.

The standard meal plan — block 250 — allots $ 500 in f lex points for students to use at on-campus restaurants. The block 250 upgrade plan costs $296 more per semester, but students receive $360 f lex points and $360 domer dollars per semester.

Farm Continued from page 1

of a trial run,” he said. “They were very popular so this year we decided to go with some chicks in the spring.”

Insley sees the open house as an exciting event for the campus community.

“We want people to know that our students are doing awesome things like learning about local food production and what it takes to raise these birds, animals and crops,” he said. “I think people will be shocked and surprised to see how legit our farm is.”

Insley is joined by a team of professors, volunteers and student leaders who have worked to improve the farm and make it available for the entire tricampus community. Maria Gonzalez-Diaz, the volunteer coordinator for the Office of Common Good (OCG), praised the student leaders who have

That amounts to $720 dollars to use at on-campus locations, though domer dollars can also be spent at some off-campus locations.

The block 180 meal plan, which is only available to on-campus seniors, includes 180 meal sw ipes and $1,000 f lex points per semester.

This plan costs $203 less per semester than the block 250 plan.

A lberganti said that the f lex points were added to the meal plan to offer variet y for students by allow ing them to eat at on-campus restaurants.

“If I picked the best restaurant in the world and got you to eat there for 30 days in a row, you w ill get tired of it,” A lberganti said. “Therefore the f lex points give you a little break on that.”

Students have been offered $ 500 in f lex points since about 2016, according to A lberganti. The amount was decided by benchmarking against other institutions.

“500 by far has been in the top bracket. I haven’t run into any other institution that did 500,” A lberganti said. He said that $ 500 in f lex points is greater than the amount prov ided to students at universities like Yale, UMass and Arizona State Universit y.

A lberganti noted that Campus Dining belongs to the National Association of College & Universit y Food Ser v ices, which they use to compare their meal plans.

At an upcoming convention in March, Campus Dining plans to benchmark their allotment of f lex points to ensure that Notre Dame “stays competitive,” A lberganti said.

Over the course of 17 weeks, the $ 500 f lex point allowance breaks dow n to $30 per week. However, students spend their f lex points in a variet y of ways.

Jayden Espinoza, a sophomore, said he ran out of f lex points around fall break last semester. After fall break, he spent personal money at on-campus restaurants, though not as much as he was spending in f lex points before running out.

“I get more or less the same thing ever y time I go into the dining hall. So if I’m in the mood to eat that, like one of the three things I actually get, then I Æll go to the dining hall,” Espinoza said. “But if it’s like, you know what, I’ve eaten that for the past few days, I just spend f lex points.”

Other times, Espinoza said he relies on f lex points for convenience’s sake bet ween classes. He predicts that an increase in f lex points would not change his behav ior.

“I wouldn’t run out as fast but my habits of eating would probably stay similar,” Espinoza said.

Anissa Cavanaugh, a sophomore who cannot eat gluten, said that it is easier for her to eat at f lex point-based restaurants than at the dining hall. Though the dining halls offer a regular glutenfree meal, she said it’s often the same thing ever y day.

In lieu of the dining halls, Cavanaugh frequents Modern Market and Garbanzo for their glutenfree options. She ran out of f lex points t wo or three weeks before the end of last semester, though she had 80 or 90 meal sw ipes left.

“It’s more expensive to

worked to sustain the farm and prepare for the baby chickens.

“Valentina Rubio, Elizabeth Bourassa, and Dakota Freel have been working really hard to create a plan for the chicken brooder area,” she said. “We’ve been preparing for the chicks to arrive and then hopefully later in the spring we can begin seeing and planting things outside.”

Gonzalez-Diaz also said she is optimistic about the future of the farm.

“We’re partnering with Carrie Badertscher from campus ministries, and she has a nonprofit called ‘For The Good,’” she said. “Over the summer, once we have produce we’re going to be giving a good chunk of it to Carrie who then will create food boxes for the people whom she works with and serves.

With the sustainable farm being the only one in the tri-campus community, Insley sees this as an opportunity to positively impact Saint Mary’s students.

“This is not the first campus farm in the country but there aren‘t that many, it‘s a unique project,” he said. “I think it‘s perfect for a women‘s college because one of the largest sectors of new pharma growth is actually young women who are learning these things and actually taking this on as a career path.”

Gonzalez-Diaz hopes the sustainable farm will continue to impact the greater South Bend community the same way it has impacted her.

“The farm is not only giving a spot for people to relax and, you know, take a brain break from their studies or whatever they’re working on but it also empowers people,” she said. “One of my goals is to introduce people who go to the farm to how you can get those skills you don’t learn from a textbook that are very necessary in daily life.”

Contact Moira Quinn at mquinn02@saintmarys.edu

get gluten-free options,” Cavanaugh said of on-campus restaurants. “I’ll pay like t wo or three extra dollars ever y time I get a meal … So it’s hard to have the same f lex points as ever yone else but have to pay more for my meals.”

According to A lberganti, Campus Dining works w ith a registered dietitian to tr y and accommodate each student’s dietar y needs. He said he hears recommendations that students w ith dietar y restrictions receive the senior-only block 180 plan, or something similar so that they can have more f lex points to spend at on-campus restaurants.

“If we cannot accommodate those [dietar y needs] then probably we examine that option, but normally, w ith the allergens especially, we can make special meals for students on a daily basis,” A lberganti said. “So we tr y to ex haust those options before getting into any exceptions to the requirement.”

A lberganti also said he often sees first-year students deplete their f lex points early in the semester.

“You see a little bit of different behav ior w ith sophomore and upperclassmen, extending the f lex points and doing a little bit of better budgeting w ith that,” A lberganti added.

Natalie Sekerak, a freshman in Welsh Family Hall, differs from that norm. She has about $750 f lex points left, after sav ing from last semester.

“First semester, I strictly used [f lex points] at Chickfil-a ever y Friday after my

last class,” Sekerak said.

“That was about the only time I would spend f lex points last semester.”

This semester, she is more w illing to spend f lex points at restaurants like Au Bon Pain, though she anticipates using up what’s left of the $750 w ith a “really big, treat myself meal” at Rohr’s.

Despite her tendency to save, Sekerak thinks she would spend more f lex points if given more than $ 500 per semester.

“Because I feel like for $ 500, especially at the prices that they charge you for stuff now, it’s just not worth it,” Sekerak said.

A lberganti said he cannot speak to whether an increase in f lex point allowance is coming. The f lex point budget is part of the room and board cost paid by each student, which is decided by the Board of Directors.

Though students have received $ 500 in f lex points since about 2016, the price of room and board t y pically increases from year to year. Bet ween the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years, the room and board price is predicted to increase from $16,710 and $17,378.

However, A lberganti said that it is significantly more expensive to run on-campus restaurants than traditional dining halls.

“The first thing we want to protect against is food insecurit y,” A lberganti said.

“So making a nice, generous amount of sw ipes … The f lex points are treated as the cushioning or the extra factor of that.”

Contact Katie Muchnick at kmuchnic@nd.edu

News

Election Continued from page 1

Williams-Brooke T he Wi l l ia ms-Brooke t icket had t he most a l legat ions f i led aga i nst t hem out of t he t h ree. In tota l, t hey were not if ied of t h ree a l legat ions, a nd of t hose, one was t h row n out before it ca me to t he t r ia l process.

Brooke out l i ned t he process t hat occu rs a f ter a n a l legat ion: f i rst, t he ca nd idates a re not if ied v ia ema i l a nd told a specif ic t i me to meet w it h Jud icia l Cou nci l; second, t he ca nd idates a re locked in a sepa rate room wh i le t he pa r t y who f i led t he a l legat ion spea k s to t he cou nci l a nd presents ev idence ; t h i rd, t he ca nd idates a re a l lowed to rev iew ev idence a nd test i mony i n f ront of t he cou nci l a nd a re able to mou nt a defense. Then, t he comm ittee del iberates a nd sends out a not if icat ion of t hei r decision a nd a ny consequences t hat m ig ht fol low.

T he rema i n ing t wo a llegat ions were rega rd i ng t he sa me problem, a n i ncor rect l i n k t hat was sent out to potent ia l voters by suppor ters of Wi l l ia ms a nd Brooke. These a l legat ions were f i led on t he n ig ht of t he elect ion a nd were seem i ng ly t he cause of t he delayed resu lts a n nou ncement.

In a press release to ca mpus med ia f rom Jud icia l Cou nci l president Mad ison Nemet h a nd v ice president

NIL Continued from page 1

dif ferent iate its approach to NIL a nd simu lta neously uphold t he Universit y’s overa rching mission: bra nd bui lding; content ma nagement; na me, image, likeness a nd ideas (NILI) educat ion; ma rket faci litat ion; a nd t hird-pa r t y init iat ives.

Under its reg u lat ions, t he NC A A limits how colleges ca n promote NIL dea ls for its at h letes.

“We a re limited in how we ca n do t his by t he NC A A’s policy, which says t hat we as a n inst itut ion ca nnot pay t hem direct ly a nd we ca nnot create or faci litate NIL oppor tunit ies for t hem,” she sa id.

A common misconcept ion in t he NIL space is t hat t hird-pa r t y collect ives a re r un by universit ies to pay a nd ma nage dea ls w it h at h letes t hemselves, VeNa rd sa id.

“It’s important to understand that they are not us, even though the collectives associate with the

ndsmcobserver.com | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | The Observer

for elect ions Kor y n Isa, t he elect ion com m ittee “decided t here w i l l be a deduct ion of ten (10) votes f rom t he Wi l lia ms-Brooke t icket i n t he pr i ma r y elect ion for each i ncor rect lin k t hat was sent out. Thus, t he tota l votes t hat sha l l be deducted f rom t he Wi l lia ms-Brooke t icket is t went y (20) votes.” The t icket a lso had to issue a for ma l apolog y on t heir ca mpa ig n Instag ra m accou nt, @ w i l lia msbrooke2023.

T he apolog y read, “We k now ma ny of you a re conf used about what has been goi ng on beh i nd t he scenes.

We appreciate you r pat ience as we ou rselves have t r ied to get to t he bottom of t h is.”

Brooke told The Obser ver t hat t he t icket received a lot of back lash over t he days preced ing t he elect ion, most of wh ich ca n u nder t he vei l of a nony mit y over socia l med ia platfor ms — i nclud ing mu lt iple Instag ra m accou nts u nder t he na me @hatew i llia msbrooke2023.

Brooke says t hat when t he accou nt was f i rst created, it on ly fol lowed one page : t he Oropeza-McA nd rew ca mpa ig n.

Brooke sa id he received t he br u nt of t he hate, w it h lots of a nony mous accou nts attack ing h im a nd a l leg i ng he had cheated on h is g i rlf r iend. He told The Obser ver t hose cla ims were ex pressly not t r ue. “[T he hate] ca n be d if f icu lt. It ca n be ver y polit ica l. It’s u n for t u nate, but [ Wi l l ia ms] a nd I have a lways t r ied to be honest,

institutions in the sense that that is who they support,” she said. “But there is both legal and practical and operational separateness between what they are doing and what the institution is doing.

As a resu lt, t he Universit y’s ma in role is to educate on t he resources ava ilable to students a nd how to nav igate t he NIL space, as long as Not re Da me does not of fer lega l or ta x adv ice to its at h letes.

“That’s a line t hat we’re not crossing,” VeNa rd sa id.

A role t hat Not re Da me ca n ta ke on, however, is t he responsibilit y to create a ma rketplace where bra nds connect to student-at hletes a nd pa r t ner w it h loca l f irms such as MOGL, a ma rketplace r un by t wo Not re Da me a lums.

“We a lso like t hat na rrat ive,” VeNa rd sa id. “Bra ndon Wimbush, former qua r terback at Not re Da me, had a ver y successf u l ca reer a nd has now gone on to have a professiona l ca reer in somet hing ot her t ha n footba ll. That’s pa r t of t he Not re Da me proposit ion to come

t ra nspa rent, open,” he noted. “I t h in k St udent Gover n ment has a n incredible way of br ing ing out at t he sa me t ime, t he worst in people a nd t he best in people.”

Oropeza-McA ndrew The a l legat ion a imed at t he Oropeza-McA nd rew t icket sta r ted before t he ca mpa ig n ing per iod even bega n. In Instag ra m posts on t heir persona l accou nts, wh ich have now been deleted, t he ca nd idates a n nou nced t heir “ca mpa ig n” to r u n for st udent body president a nd v ice president before t he off icia l t ime for ca mpa ig n ing bega n.

The Opropeza-McA nd rew ca mpa ig n released a post t hat included loose platfor m policies, int roduced by t he ph rase “here’s a list of ou r pr ior it ies a nd why you shou ld suppor t ou r r u n.” Oropeza says t hat t he word “r u n” a nd t he inclusion of policies were problemat ic in Jud icia l Cou nci l’s v iew, suggesting t hat t hey were a lready ca mpa ig n ing du r ing a per iod t hat was rest r icted to pet it ion i ng.

Jud icia l Cou nci l sa nct ioned t hem by ba n n ing t hem f rom ca mpa ig n ing t h roug h socia l med ia on t he f irst day of t he ca mpa ig ning per iod.

W h i le d iscussing a l legat ions aga inst ot her t ickets, Oropeza told The Obser ver t hat t heir t icket was involved in t he subm ission of mu lt iple a l legat ions aga inst Wi l lia ms-Brooke on t he day of t he elect ion,

to Not re Da me, as well.”

Former Irish players a lso ow n collect ives, such as FUND — Friends of t he Universit y of Not re Da me — founded by former qua r terback Brady Quinn.

A key appea l of Not re Da me in t he NIL ma rket is t he footba ll prog ra m’s nat iona l ma rket — a resu lt of t he school’s independent status a nd geog raphica lly diverse fa n base, VeNa rd sa id. Ma k ing student-at h letes awa re of t his dist inct ion in t he Not re Da me bra nd is one of t he f irst steps of t he educat iona l role of t he inst itut ion.

“The bra nd ex posure t hey get simply by hav ing Not re Da me across t heir chest is rea lly va luable, a nd t hat’s a piece t hat we communicate a nd we help t hem understa nd,” VeNa rd sa id.

Student-at h letes a lso have t he oppor tunit y to f urt her lea rn about NIL in t he classroom t hrough a onecredit course taught by VeNa rd t it led “Nav igat ing

say ing t hat t hey were “nex t to” t he pa r t y who f i led.

“I’m not going to place [t he bla me] on someone else when I was pa r t of it,” Oropeza sa id of h is ad m ission.

Oropeza a nd McA nd rew a lso su f fered t heir sha re of on line hate du r ing t he ca mpa ig n per iod, especia l ly because of pol it ica l v iews a nd ident it ies not a f f i l iated w it h t heir plat for m. “[The hate] is a n noy ing, but at t he sa me t ime, it was sa id u nder t he vei l of a nony m it y, a nd so I t h in k it’s just cowa rd ice, a nd you’re t r y ing to get a r ise out of me,” Oropeza ex pla ined, adding t hat he ex per ienced much worse com ments in h is ch i ld hood. “You ca n’t ever rea l ly hu r t me more t ha n I’ve been hu r t before.”

McA nd rew concu r red, say ing t hat t hey g reat ly appreciated people who stood up for t hem.

“It was hea r ten ing to see t hat people ca me out to ou r defense,” he sa id.

Jung-Rezner Ult imately t he w inn ing t icket, Ju ng-Rezner received not if icat ion t he day before vot ing, Feb. 7, t hat a poster was hu ng up on t he t h ird f loor of La For t u ne St udent Center (La Fu n). A s out l ined on t he Jud icia l Cou nci l website, t h is v iolat ion broke A r t icle X V, Sect ion 1(d)(3), wh ich states t hat no ca mpa ig n ing may occu r on t he upper levels of La Fu n.

The tea m received a sa nct ion of hav ing to

NIL at Not re Da me.” The course fa l ls under t he spor ts, media a nd cu lture minor.

A not her benef it Not re Da me g ives at h letes is access to its cor porate pa r tners, such as Under A rmour.

Since t he act ivat ion of NIL, at h letes col laborated w it h t he bra nd for socia l media a nd in-store promot iona l photos at t he Universit y.

In t he lecture, VeNa rd ra n t hrough what studentat h letes ca n do, what t hey must get permission to do a nd what t hey ca nnot do under a ny circumsta nces.

Ground-level r u les a llow at h letes to undergo self-bra nd promot ion on persona l accounts, including in Not re Da meissued gea r t hat is not a n of f icia l uniform.

Dea ls t hat must be f irst approved by t he Universit y include wea ring a uniform in a bra nd adver t isement a nd pa r t icipat ing in “g roup act iv ites,” such as t he Irish of fensive line securing a n endorsement

5

1) ta ke dow n t he poster a nd 2) issue a forma l apolog y on t heir of f icia l ca mpa ig n plat for m, @ da n rez23 on Instag ra m.

T he post sa id, “we have no idea how t h is poster ended up t here as we followed all t he proper protocols for poster d ist r ibut ion.”

In a n inter v iew w it h T he Obser ver, Ju ngRezner sa id t hey took f u l l responsibi l it y for t he v iolat ion a nd lea r ned f rom t heir m ista ke.

“We ta ke f u l l responsibi l it y for [t he poster]. We had to post a publ ic apolog y on ou r socia l med ia, wh ich we w i l lf u l ly d id,” Ju ng emphasi zed.

“You k now, you lea r n f rom it, a nd you recog n i ze you r m ista ke. You g row a nd go f rom t here.”

Rezner seconded t h is, add ing, “t he r u les ca n be ver y st r ict somet imes a nd for good reason.

We wa nted to ma ke su re t hat ever yone has a fa ir cha nce.”

T he pa ir a lso prepa red to g ive back lash aga inst t heir ca mpa ig n before it happened. “[T he elect ion] is a st ressf u l process.

A nd somet imes [people] w i l l say t h ings about you w it hout mer it. We met at t he beg in n ing of t h is process, a nd we just sa id, ‘look, t h ings a re going to get t h row n a rou nd t hat may or may not be t r ue’,” Ju ng sa id. “We ca n’t let it a f fect us persona l ly.”

Contact Bella Laufenberg at ilaufenb@nd.edu

w it h Mission BBQ in Mishawa ka.

Prohibited act ions include a ny NIL act iv it ies during of f icia l compet it ions a nd pract ices a nd a ny dea ls w it h bra nds t hat do not ad here to t he Universit y’s Cat holic mission — including du Lac. Some NIL reg u lat ions a re pa radox ica lly ironic, as VeNa rd sa id student-at h letes “ca nnot ga mble but t hey cou ld promote ga mbling.”

Answering an audience question regarding how Notre Dame’s NIL rules compare with other football powerhouses — Georgia, Alabama, LSU, to name a few — VeNard said that Notre Dame has relatively “competitive” policies.

“Our policies a re actua l ly prett y compet it ive, in t he sense t hat we have fewer ba nned categories,” she sa id.

“We g ive more broad ly licenses to use [intel lectua l proper t y].”

Contact Alysa Guffey at aguffey@nd.edu

6

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

Inside Column

Love & Biryani Angela Mathew Manager of Talent and Inclusion

Valentine’s Day is a huge deal in America. Even if you ignore the unbridled consumerism (candy, flowers, expensive gifts) there is so much emphasis on celebrating the day even if you’re not in a romantic relationship. Just walking around my residence hall, with most of the bulletin boards awash in various shades of pink, emblazoned advertisements for love themed events.

Though the day’s fixation on love can be a bit much, I’ve enjoyed the chance to celebrate the people who’ve seen me through two and a half years of college.

So far my Valentine’s/Galentines celebrations have involved accepting my roommate’s spontaneous invitation to go to the Bee Club’s meeting in Debart to drink tea with honey, color apian themed Valentines (pre-school style, with actual crayons!) as the most iconic film about cross species love (“Bee Movie” 2007) played on the projector.

I also upheld some consumerism (for a good cause!) by helping to deliver flowers to dorms as part of P-dub’s Carnation Sale. It was heartwarming to see the cute notes people had written to each other and fun to talk to the obliging strangers who helped me locate their fellow dorm mates’ rooms.

Other Galentine’s Day plans are in the works from rounding up friends for ‘all you can eat’ sushi to meshing different friend groups to paint pottery. Honoring love one random Tuesday a year seems trite but it gives us a nice structure to remember our friends. Amidst the chaos of college life and people’s parents visiting for JPW, I know that these plans will take around a month to actually happen.

But that’s okay because I love when love is like pleasant background noise, instead of punctuated.

I love how love sneaks into my daily life.

Love is when my dad will read every line of a twelve page essay and give me feedback over WhatsApp. Love is his questions about the progress of various drafts of pieces that others may not even realize are subtly different.

Love is conversations with my close friends where we commiserate — about not getting a certain internship, about people who don’t respond to our texts, new friends who don’t seem as enthusiastic as we are. Love is whining about being busy and gossiping about people we both know in rapid back and forths that would be unintelligible and annoying to most other people. Love is listening with interest as they talk about clubs or jobs you know nothing about.

Love is phrases from my favorite books living rent-free in my mind, materializing whenever I have writer’s block and letting me remember stories I’ve re-read too many times. Some of my favorites from “Americanah” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie are: “Her joy … a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her.”

“With him, she was at ease: her skin felt as though it was the right size.”

And some whimsical ones from “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy: “The loss of Sophie Mol stepped softly around the Ayemenem House like a quiet thing in socks.”

“The yellow wasp wasping against the windowpane in a dangerous dzzzz.”

Love is spending Christmas Eve in pajamas peeling 12 potatoes with my mom who took on the valiant task of teaching me how to cook. With our other festive plans cancelled because of family members being ill or only coming home closer to New Year’s Eve, we spent the day making biryani — a dish of spicy rice, mutton, fried onions and potatoes (in our version).

Though that day and the following weeks of break were spent chopping, shelling, stirring and steaming, I am by no means a good cook. However, I’ll always value those times with my mom a lot, especially when I’m contemplating ordering overpriced biryani from India Garden in South Bend.

Love is a friend asking the question “What are you excited for?” when you run into each other after months. Catching up on the highlights of each others’ lives and getting thrown back into the memories and mindsets you had the last time you spoke, as if the conversation was a sort of time capsule.

Love is my sister taking time out from her days working in a hospital to share pictures of cute cats with me or to tell me theories about Jane Austen, Vikram Seth, George R.R. Martin and her other favorite authors who I don’t know much about, except from her.

Love is telling college friends about my hometown, about my favorite street food and bookstores, about art-deco architecture, crowded footpaths and the salty air.

Go celebrate love wherever you find it!

You can contact Angela at amathew3@nd.edu.

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

A business judgment rule of life Devin Humphreys Life, Law and the Lord

In the grand scheme of things, there are not all that many required classes at Notre Dame Law School. Sure, we, like practically any others, have a set of first-year doctrinal courses that we must complete: the standard civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, property and torts. But after 1L, almost every course we take is an elective. Sure, everyone has to have six “skills credits,” everyone has to take professional responsibility at some point, and Notre Dame is unique in requiring every student to take a course in jurisprudence, but by my count that leaves 48 credits in two years that are entirely elective.

With Notre Dame Law’s wide array of course offerings, there’s something for everyone’s niche, from copyright to administrative law to Anglican Canon Law (all of which I’ve taken).

But even at Notre Dame Law, with this vast freedom to set one’s own course schedule and explore a multitude of legal interests beyond the 1L doctrinal portfolio, there are some courses that are still considered “must-take.” One of those courses, Business Associations, I must confess I put off until the last minute. I want to be a law professor, you see, and private law isn’t really an area of research or teaching interest for me, so I always assumed that Business Associations would be one of those classes I either took because it would help me with the bar exam or would forego taking in law school because I could always learn the material in bar prep. But then, on a whim, as I was putting together my schedule for the spring semester of 3L, I decided that I’d give Business Associations a go anyway, and I am quite glad that I did indeed.

Business Associations sounds like a course in how to start a business and order a business’s affairs vis-a-vis the behemoth that is corporate law, and it is certainly that. But under the direction of the eminent Professor Julian Velasco, we’ve gone much further than simply evaluating how businesses work, additionally considering the question of why businesses even exist in the first place. While there are many philosophical answers to that question, the one that matters most for a couple of key black-letter law principles is that businesses are meant to make their owners or investors money. For corporations, this means that the purpose of a corporation is to make its shareholders money.

This is somewhat intuitive, of course, but the consequences are striking. As a critical example, take the 1919 case of Dodge v. Ford (yes, the car companies). Henry Ford, as the story goes, wanted to pay his assembly line workers exceptionally high wages (for the time, anyway), but the Dodge brothers were shareholders in Ford and were quite miffed that Ford was increasing wages and reinvesting in steel mills and the like instead of paying shareholder dividends. (It definitely didn’t have anything to do with the fact that Ford knew the Dodges were thinking of starting their own car company.) So the Dodges sue, claiming that Ford intended to deprive them of dividends to which, as shareholders, the Dodges were entitled.

And the Michigan Supreme Court agreed, saying that “it is not within the lawful powers of a board of directors to shape and conduct the affairs of a corporation for the merely incidental benefit of shareholders and for the primary purpose of benefiting others.” Ford’s problem wasn’t that he was trying to pay his workers more money or that he wanted to reinvest profits, said the court; his problem was that he was trying to do these things to keep his shareholders from making

more money. While corporations are able to be shielded from shareholder challenges whenever they’ve acted in good faith for the benefit of the shareholders, giving corporations the ability to make risky business decisions that just might pay off (one formulation of what’s called the business judgment rule, or BJR for short), the one way a shareholder challenge might still succeed in spite of the business judgment rule is if a shareholder can show that those running a corporation had some primary purpose apart from making them money. That said, businesses can (and do!) get very creative about how money that isn’t going directly into the shareholders’ pockets is nonetheless indirectly benefitting them in some ancillary way. While it might take some mental gymnastics to make those justifications, the end result is a broad understanding of what business decisions can fall under the protective cover of the BJR. At breakfast with my dear friend Ellie Augustine, though, where we were talking about the day-to-day of law school amidst our other obligations, from Ellie serving as an assistant rector in Lewis Hall to me serving as the symposium editor for my journal, I realized that maybe the BJR has a more personal application. The very first column I ever wrote for The Observer, all the way back in August of 2021, was a column deploring the so-called Culture of Busy. There, I said that one of the biggest lies the “Culture of Busy” tells us is that “if you decide that time should be spent on things that are not work or school, you should be budgeting it down to the minute, for all such time spent is a net burden.” At the end of the day, though, perhaps the Culture of Busy can be tamed with mental gymnastics like those corporations use to shelter themselves under the umbrella of the BJR. Ford could have made, but didn’t make, the argument that paying his workers more will increase company loyalty and worker morale, increasing car output (and shareholder profit!) in the process. Had he done so, Dodge v. Ford might have come out the other way. Accordingly, maybe the best way to combat the “Culture of Busy” is to conceive of our leisure in similar terms. Getting enough sleep every night doesn’t mean you aren’t working hard enough — it means you know you do better work well-rested! Spending an evening catching up with a friend need not be a “waste” of time if it means you’ll approach the work to come after with a refreshed mind, body or spirit!

So let’s consider, in these weeks ahead, how we can be intentional about ordering our work and our leisure. Done well, taking the “risky business” decision to reject the “Culture of Busy” will almost certainly end up helping us better manage our busyness in the long term. At the end of the day, our time is not our own but instead a gift from God, and he has trusted us to be stewards of our time. May we use our time, in work as in leisure, in such a manner that when all is said and done, God might look upon us and say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” a heavenly analogue to the BJR. Devin Humphreys is a 3L at Notre Dame Law School. When he isn’t serving as the sacristan at the Law School Chapel, singing with the Liturgical Choir or Chorale or competing at a quiz bowl tournament, he’s sharing his thoughts on the legal developments of the day with anyone who will listen. For advice on law school, hot takes on Mass music and free scholarly publication ideas, reach out to Devin at dhumphr2@nd.edu or @DevinJHumphreys on Twitter.

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

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

7

“Sonder,” y una lluvia de febrero Gracie Eppler The Soapbox

Llegué a mi clase de las 9:30 a.m. el jueves con el pelo empapado, chorreándome toda mi camisa blanca como si hubiera nadado a través de todo el lago de St. Mar y’s para llegar al edificio de Bond Hall. Sin aliento, incómoda, y un poco avergonzada, me preguntaba como todos los otros estudiantes de la universidad entera habían sido lo suficientemente prudentes para empacar una sombrilla.

Una caída de lluv ia en febrero no es algo común. Una lluv ia en febrero en South Bend, Indiana es inconcebible. Mientras escuchaba mi clase de Teología 2 sobre San Benito de Nursia, mi pelo aún empapado mojando mi ropa y escritorio, la lluv ia seguía cayendo afuera. Caía silenciosamente.

Para las 10 :45, el cielo se había aclarado a un lindo azul. La famosa “permacloud,” o nube permanente, de Notre Dame se había ido al ser perseguida por un suave sol de primavera.

Durante mi rutina de ejercicio de la mañana, estaba molesta al ver que la máquina de ejercicio que siempre uso estaba tomada. Aún peor — también se me había olvidado meter más de mis chicles favoritos a mi mochila.

A mediodía, aún sintiéndome húmeda (y también sin chicles y oliendo a muchísimo desodorante), decidí ir a Decio Hall para el almuerzo.

Compré un env uelto agridulce asiático, el cual me comía distraída mientras miraba mis mensajes pendientes en mi celular. Vi un mensaje de mi hermana, Mía, que decía: “Vi este artículo del New York Times sobre los presos políticos en Nicaragua siendo liberados. ¿Será alguno de estos el papá de tu amiga? ” Leí el artículo. Le dije a Mia que el artículo no mencionaba nada del padre de Victoria. Decidí env iarle un texto a Vic preguntándole como estaba, y diciéndole que tenía a su familia en mis pensamientos y oraciones.

A las 12:25, me paré y apuradamente recogí todas mis cosas. Gruñí con exasperación cuando me di cuenta de que mi env uelto agridulce asiático había dejado una gran mancha de salsa agridulce asiática por toda mi camisa blanca. Irritada, solo tuve tiempo de pasar unas cuantas ser villetas encima de la mancha mientras corría hacia el edificio de Mendoza para mi clase de las 12:30.

Me sentía espinosa y pegajosa mientras me sentaba en mi clase de estadística. Me preguntaba qué habrá sido la primera cosa que mi compañera de alado había notado sobre mí hoy: ¿Serán las manchas en mi camisa y la humedad de mi ropa? ¿Será que puede oler las sobras de mi almuerzo f lotando a mi alrededor? ¿O será que se distrajo por mis colochos esponjosos y solo medio secos?

Salí de Mendoza pisoteando con solo diez minutos para correr a Main Building para mi última clase del día (Ciudadanías y América).

Estaba llov iendo otra vez – la lluvia se sentía como una neblina fría y fuerte que volaba hacia el lado gracias a un viento implacable. Se me hacía difícil ver mi pantalla mientras trataba de ver los mensajes en mi celular.

Y ahí, en medio de la lluvia de febrero, vi una respuesta de Victoria: “Es libre.”

Frené mis pasos, parándome dentro de un charco.

“Esta fuera, Gracie. Estoy montada en un avión

en camino a Washington, D.C. Es libre.”

Y ahí estaba yo, refunfuñando por un poco de lluv ia, unas cuantas manchas, unos chicles olv idados y mi cabello esponjoso. Mientras yo me quejaba, mi amiga Victoria iba en camino a ver a su papá por la primera vez en más de diecinueve meses. De repente, me olv idé por completo de la lluv ia, las manchas, los chicles y mi pelo.

La palabra “sonder,” en inglés, es una palabra que abarca la idea de que cada ser humano — cada uno de los ocho millones de nosotros — está pasando por el día de hoy con una experiencia completamente diferente. La lluv ia de febrero me trajo unos cuantos inconvenientes pequeños. Para Victoria, le trajo a su papá.

Ella se enteró de la noticia esa misma mañana y compró su pasaje de av ión inmediatamente.

Ella caminaba por la tristeza con una sonrisa llena de esperanza. 611 días. Habían pasado 611 días desde que ella había v isto a su papa, desde que había agarrado su mano, desde que había escuchado su voz. 611 días desde que él había sido robado de ella. 611 días él había estado en una celda en Nicaragua, todo por usar su voz para traerle luz a todas las injusticias políticas de su país. 611 días en la cárcel sin ningún tan solo crimen cometido.

Victoria, quien también tuvo que lidiar con el pelo mojado además de terrible dolor, ansiedad y frustración, logró enfrentar cada uno de estos 611 días con un corazón amable, una voz suave y una forma de ser tan cariñosa. Ella es buena con todos y mala con nadie. Es una artista, una fanática de Trader Joe’s y una amante de la música.

Y yo – yo fui tonta. Deje que estas incomodidades insignificantes arruinaran un día que me habían otorgado – un día lleno de priv ilegio.

Que suerte tengo de que mis peores inconvenientes son la lluv ia, las manchas, los chicles y el pelo esponjoso. Que la lluv ia de febrero se lleve mis quejas, y que los cielos se aclaren enteros para Victoria mientras ella logra reunirse con su padre.

English translation : I arrived to my 9:30 on Thursday w ith hair sopping wet, dribbling dow n my white turtleneck, as if I’d swam through St. Mar y’s Lake to make it to Bond Hall. Breathless, uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed, I wondered how ever y other student in the entire school had each been prudent enough to pack umbrellas.

A rain in Februar y is uncommon. A rain in Februar y in South Bend, Indiana is inconceivable. As I sat through my Theolog y two lecture on St. Benedict of Nursia, my still sodden hair dripping over my desk and soaking my clothes, the rain lingered on outside. It fell quietly.

By 10 :45, the sk y had cleared to a pleasant blue.

The notorious Notre Dame “permacloud” was chased away by a pale, early Spring sun.

During my morning workout, I was annoyed to find that my usual exercise machine was taken. Even more annoying — I‘d forgotten to restock my trident gum I always kept snug in my backpack.

At noon, still damp (and now gum-less and smelling of overcompensating deodorant), I made my way to Decio hall for lunch. I got a sweet Asian w rap and crunched on it distractedly as I scrolled through my texts. One, from my sister Mia, read: “I saw this NY T post about political prisoners in Nicaragua being set free. Are any of them your friend’s dad? ”

I read the article. I told Mia the article didn’t mention Victoria’s dad, then sent a text to Vic asking how she was doing and that I was thinking of her family and praying for them.

At 12:25, I stood up and scrambled my stuff together. I let out a groan in exasperation as I realized that the sweet Asian w rap had dripped its sweet Asian sauce all dow n my white turtleneck.

Irritated, I had only enough time to snatch a few napkins and dab at myself hastily as I raced off to Mendoza for my 12:30.

I sat through my stats class feeling ver y prick ly and ver y stick y. I wondered what my classmate next to me had noticed first —had she seen the stains on my shirt and noticed the dampness of my clothing? Did she smell the remnants of my lunch wafting around me? Or was she too distracted by my frizzy, half dried curls?

I stomped out of Mendoza w ith only 10 minutes to race to the Main Building for my final class of the day (Citizenship and America). It was raining again — a cold, harsh mist blow n sideways by an unforgiv ing w ind. It made it difficult to see my screen as I scanned my texts.

And then, there, grumbling in the Februar y rain, a response from Victoria: “He’s free.”

I halted, stopping suddenly inside a puddle.

“He’s out, Gracie. I’m on a plane to DC right now. He’s free.”

There I was, grumbling over a little rain, a couple of stains, a forgotten piece of gum, and a frizzy head of hair. W hile I’d been complaining, my friend Victoria was going to see her dad for the first time in over 19 months. Suddenly, the rain, the stains, the gum and the hair were forgotten.

Sonder is a word which encompasses the realization that ever y single human — all eight billion of us — is experiencing the day entirely differently. The Februar y rain had brought me a few minor inconveniences. For Victoria, it brought her father.

She got word that morning and bought her f light immediately. She’d waded through the dreariness w ith a hopeful smile. 611 days. It had been 611 days since she’d seen her dad, since she’d held his hand, since she’d heard his voice.

611 days since he’d been stolen from her. 611 he’d been in that Nicaraguan prison cell, all for using his voice to point out the injustices in his home countr y. 611 days in prison for no crime committed.

Victoria — who had to deal w ith wet hair as well as an over whelming grief, anx iet y and frustration — managed to face each of these 611 days w ith a kind heart, a soft voice and a careful, comforting nature. She is good to all and unkind to none. She is a sketcher, a Trader Joe’s frequent and a lover of music.

And I — I am silly. I let all those triv ial annoyances ruin a day that I had been given — a day full of priv ilege. How luck y I am that the worst inconveniences in my day should be rain, stains, gum and frizzy hair. Let the Februar y rain wash away my grumbles, and let the skies clear over Victoria as she reunites w ith her father.

Gracie Eppler is a sophomore Business Analytics and English major from St. Louis, MO. Her three top three things ever to exist are 70’s music, Nutella and Smith Studio 3, where she can be found dancing. Reach her at geppler@nd.edu.

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

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The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

Overcoming purgatory Pablo Lacayo Reliable Ramblings

At the start of my senior year, I had just emerged from a ten-week stint living in Northwest Arkansas. I had finished a productive internship that gave me good insights into what working in finance looks like in the professional world and was looking forward to kicking off my last year of college on a strong note.

During the summer, I had plenty of time to reflect on my first three years at Notre Dame, and craft an idea of what my final chapter in South Bend would look like. Priorities naturally shift over time, and I wanted to invest all the time I had available into solidifying my existing friendships and authentically connecting with the people that came to define the essence of my Notre Dame experience.

Naturally, a fall semester is abuzz with activity and excitement. The late summer weather has everybody in a good mood, and it is very easy to maintain a busy social life when the sun sets after 9 p.m. and you do not have to worry about wrapping yourself in thousands of layers of warm clothing to make the frigidly dreadful walk between your dorm and DeBart. Football consumes the better part of most weekends, and somehow, there is always something to do.

This past fall, I was also busy recruiting for a full-time job, which kept me pretty busy preparing for interviews and scootering to and from the Career Center dressed in a full suit. The fall was a wonderful time, and the combination of recruiting, college football, going out three nights a week, Halloween, the midterm elections, the NFL, and the FIFA World Cup were more than enough to make it one of the most memorable fifteen weeks of my time as an undergraduate. The fall steadily marched to a satisfactory conclusion in December, and before I knew it I found myself on a plane back to Nicaragua for the first time in a year.

After three weeks back home in Nicaragua, and a jam-packed ten days of activities during my roommate Ryan’s whirlwind visit to the country, I was back in South Bend on the verge of starting my last trip around the Golden Dome. As soon as I got here, it was evident that things felt different. Firstly, I am finished with both my major and minor. Instead of the usual load of Mendoza classes that had me banging my head against the walls of the Library late at night, I found myself with a straight flush of electives. The classes are all on topics I find interesting and can sometimes be very passionate about, but the departure from the usual Mendoza routine was extremely off-putting. The transition away from number crunching into learning about the ins and outs of Chinese politics, Cosmology, or the history of the Crusades was a weird one, as the essence of the classes is fundamentally different. Furthermore, knowing with certainty what the contents of the next chapter of my life are going to entail, I felt encouraged to simply coast through my last months in college without much care for divorcing from the routines and habits of the previous seven semesters. After all, what’s one more semester working nights running plates out of NDH’s dish room, sneaking through the Keenan basement for a late-night slice from ’Zaland and liturgically timing the doing of my laundry with Stanford’s Sunday mass? The answer is simple: a bad idea.

This time around, the very things I found entertaining for so long felt quite limiting. I came to the conclusion that life needs to be spiced up, to avoid making my final weeks at Notre Dame the same as the ones that preceded them.

College should never feel like purgatory and I became determined to slash whatever felt constraining with activities that make the days seem more invigorating. As my friends jokingly put it, “life’s become one large collection of side-quests.” After all, it’s more amusing to convince your freshman neighbor to run for Hall president in exchange for running his campaign than to spend yet another night stuck in the library for hours on end. It’s better to pick where to have lunch based on spinning a wheel rather than mindlessly marching into the dining hall to get a quesadilla for the fourth day in a row. It’s also better to spend your Saturdays exploring South Bend’s restaurants and finding things to do rather than laying in bed and watching reruns of some series you got hooked on halfway through high school for the fifth time Time at Notre Dame is limited. Most of us will only ever get four years, and then be ushered out into the real world. Even when the clock is ticking and the end is near, one should not allow life here to transform itself into a dull purgatory, where you’re just spending your days waiting for something to arrive and a new chapter to begin, be it spring break, an internship in a far off city you’ve never lived in, graduation or the next The Last of Us episode so air on HBOMax. There is meaning and satisfaction to experience and extract every day. I have done my best to do so in the 1,200 days I have spent at Notre Dame since my freshman year, and I should continue to do so in the less than 90 days I have left here.

Pablo Lacayo is a senior at Notre Dame, majoring in finance while minoring in Chinese. He enjoys discussing current affairs, giving out bowl plates at the dining hall, walking around the lakes and karaoke. You can reach him at placayo@nd.edu.

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

Back to the bend Jonah Tran De Republica

10/24/22 5:30 wakeup 6:00 lift 7:00 run 8:00 finish workout 8:30 NDH breakfast 9:00 finish breakfast 9:30-10:45 Micro 10:50-11:25 relax 11:30-12:20 Calc B 12:30-1:15 NDH lunch 1:20-3:15 study 3:30-4:45 Latin 5:00-6:00 relax 6:10-6:45 dinner 7:00-11:30 HW Sleep by 12 I copied verbatim my schedule of the day Oct. 24, from the pink journal, a planner, that I carry around with me everywhere. Order. Structure. Control.

Those words describe how I prefer my days. Truthfully, it is much less prefer but more so need. I need a schedule to direct my day, otherwise I fall apart. I fall victim to procrastination, forgetfulness and laziness. Creating a schedule is the only method that I have ever known to uphold a lasting structure for the day. Of course, I often amend the schedule in cases of a workout running too long or meals eaten swifter than anticipated. I acknowledge that my method of calculating the day minute by minute, even meals, is somewhat ridiculous, overkill perhaps, so I accept all criticism willingly. I realize that my system is imperfect, and in light of first semester culminating in finals, I recount how the imperfections are increasingly apparent.

Now that I think about it. Winter break in middle school was a complete and utter joke. I spent countless hours mastering multiplication tables with tacit understanding and labored on the P.E. grass field running for multiple touchdowns in a 20-minute pick-up football game. I certainly needed three weeks of nothingness to recover from the academic and physical strain. Now I concede it is essential to allow time to spend with family during Christmastime, but I seriously doubt middle schoolers need that extensive of a break from recess. I can apply the same principle to high school, substituting with algebra and maybe baseline calculus. However, college is a different story. There is legitimate academic and physical strain that I had never priorly experienced in my formative education.

In the final week of my first semester in college, I was soulless, as many are. I descended into insanity. The long hours of mindlessly reading texts summarily rotted my brain as I began adding newly created curse words to the English dictionary to encapsulate my present feelings. I engaged in dialogue with my imaginary microeconomics studypartner named Nash, with whom I also had countless laughs all in the silence of my room. My diet primarily consisted of animal crackers inhabiting large cylindrical tubs and dining hall cheesecake slices stuffed into to-go cups (you can comfortably fit four slices into a single cup). I never claimed to be an exemplar of healthy lifestyle.

In a vain effort to exhibit some control over my life, I drew up daily schedules to manage my time and efforts more efficiently. However, I found myself constantly amending, constantly crossing out time allotments and creating new ones. After a few attempts, I gave up and winged it for the remaining days.

Fortunately, the damage to my soul and body did not negatively impact my grades. I did well!

Moving forward, I needed this winter break. I was exhausted like never before, craving rest, warm weather and quality food. I thought I needed weeks to restore my mind and body, but I felt normal after about three days. I visited friends from high school to catch up, but then what? I ate delicious tacos and barbecued meats, but then what? I slept in plenty and played video games, but then what next? Each day melted into the subsequent one until my memory could not decipher either.

Creating a schedule completely slipped my mind since I abandoned it amid the chaos of finals weeks. I wandered day to day with no direction other than mindlessly repeating the same actions of the day before, invariably feeling frustrated for the lack of productivity. I lacked purpose and the structure that college life provides. I was conditioned, even addicted, to the hustle and bustle of work.

Perhaps, this is indicative to the faults of capitalism or even the consequences of the industrial revolution, but I will save that discussion for another article.

Upon arrival back to campus, I attempted to rationalize my boredom during winter break with friends but to no avail. Everyone seemed reluctant to be back, savoring every moment of rest and activity during break. Perhaps, I am the only one who dislikes sleeping in or doing absolutely nothing. I was further disenfranchised upon seeing the numerous Instagram posts lamenting their longing of the dome or to be back at the bend since I could not accurately verify if we desired the same thing.

Thinking deeper about the subject, I question whether it was the nature of how I spent my time at home or the duration of winter break that caused my laziness.

I do not know. But I know for certain an imperfection in my system of schedulemaking. I found that my life falls apart when I try too hard to keep my life in order, as in the case of finals week, and my life also falls apart when I do not try at all. If I posed a scale of 1-100 about how much effort I ought to exert in making a controlled day, I would say 78.

I offer my story of finals and winter break as a guideline for you to learn from my own mistakes. Perhaps, you are like me in that you value a structured day and purpose. Perhaps, you prefer just seizing the day, full sending it. And in that case, I do not get you.

Jonah Tran is a first-year at Notre Dame double majoring in Finance and Economics and minoring in Classics.

Although fully embracing the notorious title of a “Menbroza,” he prides himself on being an Educated Young Southern Gentleman. You can contact Jonah by email at jtran5@nd.edu.

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

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The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

By AYDEN KOWALSKI Scene Writer

The Super Bowl Ha lf t ime Show is a nea rly impossible task: cr unch a discog raphy of globa lly recog ni zed a nt hems into t hir teen minutes w it h incredibly complex choreog raphy, iconic stage desig n a nd a moment t hat w ill rema in imprinted on t he A merica n consciousness. On top of t hat, one must do t his in a n ex t remely normat ive ma nner. Since Jay-Z has pa r t nered w it h t he NFL for t he product ion, t he shows have been consistent ly good, a nd for t he most pa r t, R iha nna’s show fa l ls w it hin t hese convent ions. The best element of t he show is Riha nna as a per former, who elevates above t he product ion’s wea k nesses to sta nd as a beacon of inspirat ion.

As was t he case for last yea r’s ha lf t ime show, t he stage r uns hori zonta lly across t he f ield a nd is ex t remely minima list ic. For a concer t based historica l ly on spectacle, t his stage does not ser ve t his end. The f loat ing plat forms, however, absolutely do, even if t hey look like a Super Smash Bros. stage. They prov ide a sense of wonder, whet her it is t he backg round da ncers or R iha nna herself ut i li zing t hem. The show uses a lmost on ly red a nd white coloring, w it h Riha nna in a

By NICOLE BILYAK Scene Writer

Brit ish pop singer Sa m Smit h has not released a studio a lbum in nea rly t hree yea rs since “Love Goes” g raced t he cha r ts. Smit h ca me out as nonbina r y in 2019, just one yea r before “Love Goes” was released. Then not hing was hea rd f rom t hem for a whi le unt i l 2022 when Smit h a nnounced t he release of t heir four t h studio a lbum “Gloria.”

The a lbum was released on Ja n. 27, 2023.

“Gloria” clocks in at just over t hir t y-t hree minutes long, w it h t hir teen t racks t hat feature some wel l-k now n a r t ists collaborat ing w it h Smit h including Scott ish DJ Ca lv in Ha rris a nd fellow Eng lish singer-song w riter Ed Sheera n. A long w it h Ha rris a nd Sheera n, Smit h collaborated w it h Germa n t ra nsgender singer K im Pet ras for one t rack.

The f irst t rack to be released for “Gloria” was t he a lbum’s f irst song t it led, “Love Me More”, which was described by “Rolling Stone” as a “self-empowering a nt hem”. But t he one song t hat shot to t he top of t he cha r ts was t he a lbum’s si x t h t rack t it led “Un holy”. This song was considered one of t he most sex ua lly cha rged songs in t he a lbum. “Un holy” had a music v ideo t hat was released on Sept. 30, 2022 a nd features a woma n who is fol low ing her husba nd a f ter suspect ing

stunning red suit a nd t he suppor t ing da ncers in ver y st ra nge white suits t hat at t imes ma ke t hem look like cotton ca ndy. A la rger color pa lette cou ld have helped w it h t he bombast t hat was t he show.

The choreog raphy of t he per forma nce does not match t he spectacle of t he event, eit her. R iha nna is preg na nt, which probably inspired her sma ller choreog raphy, which she aces. W hen a n ent ire a rmy of Michelin t ire mascots is a ll follow ing t he sma ll moves, however, it doesn’t create a sense of si ze for t he per forma nce. Since t his per forma nce does not commit to int imacy, t he g roup da ncing shou ld be ex plosive, a nd it is not. There a re some st rong moments, such as t he shots of da ncers on t he f loat ing plat forms def y ing g ravit y w it h t heir moves, or t he int ro to “Rude Boy”, where t he ca mera f loats t hrough a line of da ncers who show out for t he ca mera before da r t ing away, adding to t he k inet ic moment.

Riha nna herself is spectacu la r. Her voice has a ra re combinat ion of beaut y, v u lnerabilit y a nd might t hat ca n match pract ica lly a ny song. She doesn’t need much choreog raphy for her presence to be felt. W hen she scr unches up her face in recog nit ion of t he power of t he songs or teasing ly smiles at t he ca mera, t hat is more t ha n enough.

The songs a re most ly excel lent, w it h t he outsta nding musica l passage being t he t ra nsposed chor us of “A l l of t he Lights”. Perhaps “Stay” or “Love on t he Bra in” cou ld have ta ken t he place of one of t he songs here, g iv ing t he show more tona l va riet y (a lso, “Love on t he Bra in” is a n S-t ier song in recorded music).

Ri ha nna, of course, is achiev ing a l l of t his whi le preg na nt, a nd t his is where t he inspirat ion of t he show sta nds. There is a n a l l-too-common concept ion t hat mot herhood dema nds passivit y precludes devot ion to a ny t hing persona l a nd somehow divorces mot hers f rom a ny sensua lit y.

In R i ha nna’s Super Bowl per forma nce, she is a n undeniable counterexa mple to t his reduct ionist line of t hought. Here, a mot her is ferocious, cool, sex y a nd t riumpha nt, f ly ing above tens of t housa nds of people w it h t he whole count r y f i xated on her bri l lia nce. Yes, t he show may have its technica l f laws, a nd t he costume desig n for t he backup da ncers is ludicrous. But t his is a Super Bowl Ha lf t ime Show w it h somet hing to say: mot hers a re not const ricted a nd deprived of elements of t heir huma nit y, but mot herhood on ly adds to a l l t hat t hey a re.

him of cheat ing to a caba ret-st yle show ca lled “The Body Shop,” w it h Smit h ser v ing as t he show’s master of ceremonies.

The a lbum a lso features severa l t racks t hat a re under t wo minutes long. A mong t hose t racks, t here is one song t hat is t he t it le of t he a lbum.

“Gloria” is a beaut if u l gospel song t hat actua l ly does not involve Smit h t hemself. If you listen to t he song closely, you ca n hea r Smit h voca li zing while t he gospel choir is t he sta r of t he song. There a re a lso t wo interludes t hat a re not even t hir t y seconds long. The f irst of t hese interludes, “Hur t ing Interlude,” conta ins excer pts f rom a news a nchor who covered t he f irst Pride celebrat ion in t he 1970s a nd t he second interlude, “Dorot hy’s Interlude,” conta ins seg ments f rom severa l f ilms t hat depicted t he LGBTQI A+ communit y, including Div ine f rom John Waters’ “Pin k Fla mingos”, Judy Ga rla nd f rom “The Wi za rd of Oz,” a speech by Sylv ia Rivera f rom a 1973 gay liberat ion ra lly a nd t he 1991 documenta r y “Pa ris is Burning.”

This a lbum rea lly depicted being dif ferent a nd what it is like to be a pa r t of t he LGBTQI A+ communit y. Since Smit h a nd Pet ras (who appea rs on t he a lbum) a re considered members of t he communit y, ma ny of t he t racks depicted self-accepta nce. It a lso ex plored Smit h’s upbring ing of being a queer Cat holic in t heir child hood. Ma ny

of t he t racks on t he a lbum had a not iceable relig ious v ibe to t hem, including “No God”, t he a lbum’s second t rack.

Of course, t his a lbum is not w it hout a load of cont roversy. In t he weeks a f ter t he a lbum was released, Smit h a nd Pet ra per formed “Un holy” at ma ny awa rds shows, most notably at t he Brit Awa rds t his past Saturday. This spa rked severa l discussions about Smit h’s clot hing choice of wea ring a huge leat her blow up suit a nd ex t remely la rge boots t hat actua l ly depicted Smit h as a n auto-shop worker. Ma ny of t hose who v iewed t he per forma nce described it as being ver y raunchy since t he song is, as stated above, sex ua l ly cha rged a nd made to seem li ke a song t hat cou ld be per formed at a st rip club.

I persona l ly loved t his a lbum. I have been a huge Sa m Smit h fa n ever since t heir f irst song “Stay Wit h Me” was released a lmost a decade ago. This a lbum rea l ly spea ks to me since I was brought up Cat holic a nd I loved a l l of t he litt le deta i ls t hat Smit h brought up in a l l of t he songs.

Ever y song had a loud message t hat needed to be shouted f rom t he highest hi l l.

For what it was wor t h, “Gloria” was def initely t he breat h of f resh a ir t hat Sa m Smit h needed a nd hopef u l ly fa ns feel t he sa me way as wel l.

Contact Ayden at akowals2@nd.edu

Contact Nicole at nbilyak01@saintmarys.edu MARIA DACH | The Observer

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The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

By AMANDA DEMPSON Scene Writer

On Saturday, Ha rr y St yles attended t he Brit Awa rds — now severa l yea rs a f ter going solo — to accept A r t ist of t he Yea r. A round t his sa me t ime 10 yea rs ago, a ll f ive members of One Direct ion took t he stage to accept t he Globa l Success Awa rd follow ing a w ild yea r of touring a nd new music. St yles had much to say t his weekend as he added to his ever-g row ing list of accolades, a nd fa ns were quick to pick up on it.

A f ter ta k ing home t hree w ins at t he 2023 Gra mmy Awa rds, St yles faced back lash for saying t hat “t his doesn’t happen to people like me ver y of ten.” As a white, cisgender ma le in a notoriously pat ria rcha l indust r y, ma ny found his statement to be tone-dea f. However, St yles cla rif ied t his past weekend t hat he is “ver y awa re of his priv i lege” in his response to t he f irm public react ion. Wit h no women nominated for t he categor y, a lt hough elig ible a nd deser v ing, ma ny felt slighted by t he academy once aga in. Ha rr y ended his speech by dedicat ing his awa rd to Beck y Hill, Florence a nd t he Machine, Mabel, Cha rlie XC X a nd Rina

By CLAIRE LYONS Associate Scene Editor

Is emo dead, or a m I just gett ing old?

As of last weekend, Pierce t he Veil a nd Pa ra more a re back on t he Scene, baby! But as I listened to t heir new releases, I was wondering — shou ld t hey be ?

W hen Pierce t he Veil a nd Pa ra more a nnounced t heir upcoming a lbums, I was as excited as a ny former emo k id. I have pictures of myself in t he bad eyeliner a nd ba nd tees to prove it. I g rew up ja mming to t he sick g uita r on “Ca raphernelia” a nd Hayley Wi l lia m’s power f u l belts on “A l l I Wa nted.”

Somet hing about t he energet ic product ion a nd screa ming rea lly “got” me. They were just some of t he ba nds t hat cou ld ex terna li ze my teen a ngst. The ba nds t hat got me out of my head. The ba nds t hat got me da ncing or yelling in my Volvo.

The ba nds t hat saved my life (in a way).

A nd sue me, I’m loya l. So, of course, I was going to listen to whatever Pierce t he Veil a nd Pa ra more were releasing on Feb. 10.

Pierce t he Vei l was clea rly reinv igorated in late 2022 by a a v ira l Tiktok t rend t hat la nded t heir 10-yea r-old hit, “K ing for a Day,” a No. 1 place on t he ha rd rock cha r ts. Inspired by t he

Sawaya ma — fema le a r t ists t hat ma ny deemed wor t hy of being nominated. However, St yles didn’t end t here.

The boyba nd One Direct ion beca me a worldw ide sensat ion in 2010 a f ter being g rouped toget her on popu la r Brit ish T V show “The X-Factor,” a nd t heir rise to sta rdom never slowed. However, a f ter t heir split in 2016, fa ns have been attent ive to a ny a nd a ll interact ions bet ween t he members.

W hile t here were ma ny notable pa r ts of St yles’ speech, t he crowd er upted a f ter he t ha n ked his former ba ndmates Lia m, Nia ll, Louis a nd Zay n. A ll members pursued solo ca reers a f ter t heir split, rema ining attached to music in one way or a not her a nd ta k ing t ime to bui ld t heir lives beyond t he ba nd. To fa ns, however, it of ten feels as t hough t he members a ren’t nea rly as close as t hey used to be, a nd t heir splintered relat ionships seem to be t he on ly coverage t hey get nowadays. Zay n Ma lik, t he cata lyst of t heir disba ndment, lef t t he g roup f irst a nd faced heat follow ing his decision.

W hile it’s a touchy subject for t he g roup, St yles looks fond ly upon his days in One Direct ion.

He even t ha n ked his mot her in his speech for “sig ning him up for X-Factor” because he

wou ldn’t have made it to such a stage if she hadn’t. Fa ns were not on ly caught of f g ua rd at St yles’ ment ion of One Direct ion at t he awa rds, but t hey were a lso st r uck w it h t he nosta lg ia of t he moment. Wit h t he fa ndom st i l l st rong severa l yea rs later, “Direct ioners” hold t ight to t he hope t hat t he g roup may one day reunite.

In t he mea nt ime, St yles’ solo ca reer cont inues to g row as he adds to his discog raphy, most recent ly w it h his a lbums “Ha rr y’s House” a nd “Fine Line.” Wit hin t he past couple yea rs, Ha rr y St yles has been incredibly act ive, working to bui ld his ow n image in t he enter ta inment world. Lia m Pay ne a nd Nia l l Hora n took to Tw itter to cong ratu late him on his w in a nd — a lt hough t he ot hers haven’t sa id a ny t hing publicly — fa ns a re hopef u l t hat t hey at least saw it. Not on ly did Ha rr y’s ode to One Direct ion wa rm t he hea r ts of fa ns a l l over t he world, but his speech high lighted just how much he has accomplished w it hin his ca reer t hus fa r, bot h a lone a nd as a former member of one of t he world’s biggest boy ba nds.

persevering love of t heir fa ns a nd t heir sudden launch back into pop-cu lture releva ncy, t he ba nd got back in t he recording studio to release t heir f irst a lbum in nea rly seven yea rs.

“The Jaws of Life” has some ba ngers — t he single “Pass t he Nir va na,” t he opener “Deat h of a n Execut ioner” a nd a “Friday Night Lights” sa mple in “Resilience.” But overa ll, I was under whelmed. The a lbum lost some of t he cha racterist ic Spa nish musica l inf luences t hat made t he Sa n Diego-based pun k ba nd so unique. In “Sha red Trauma,” t hey use a low-ef for t t rap beat to back up some low-ef for t ly rics. (Inser t former Interim Scene Editor scowl of disapprova l.) Don’t get me w rong, t here’s not hing w rong w it h cha ng ing up your sound, but at least do it w it h some integ rit y. I’m not conv inced t hat t his is Pierce t he Vei l “at t heir most raw.” If so, “Collide w it h t he Sk y” must be a live a nima l, k ick ing a nd screa ming.

Like Pierce t he Veil, Pa ra more released “This Is W hy” si x yea rs a f ter t heir last a lbum. No doubt, Tiktok has been inspiring Willia ms a nd ba ndmates to come back to t he spotlight. The ba nd is a lso touring for t he f irst t ime in ages. Ma ny fa ns had t hought t hey had broken up.

“This Is W hy” f inds its foot ing in t he latter ha lf of t he a lbum w it h quiet a nd clea n

inst r umenta l tones t hat bring a l l t he attent ion to Wi l lia ms’ gorgeous low-reg ister crooning.

It’s reminiscent of Wi l lia ms’ solo ca reer a nd Pa ra more’s ea rly days a la “Bra nd New Eyes” circa 2009. The most popu la r songs, “This is W hy” a nd “C’est Comme Ca,” sound juveni le in compa rison.

The new a lbum is more t r ue to old Pa ra more t ha n “The Jaws of Life” is to old Pierce t he Vei l, but t he polit ica l commenta r y in “This Is W hy” is def initely shy of scat hing.

We’ve been t hrough a lot t he past si x or seven yea rs. COV ID-19. Black Lives Matter.

Ja nua r y 6. Vic Fuentes of Pierce t he Vei l k icked his brot her out of t he ba nd due to sex ua l assau lt a l legat ions.

Hayley Wi l lia ms went t hrough a divorce. I sta r ted college which is a n incredibly minor event in compa rison.

We’ve a l l g row n up a litt le bit, a nd maybe, just maybe, I’ve g row n out of my emo phase.

If I wa nt to get out my a ngst about societ y, I now listen to Cheek face. If I’m st ressing about my love life, I listen to t he sweet sounds of Et hel Ca in. Tastes cha nge. Ba nds evolve.

A nd a lt hough I’m disappointed by t he recent releases f rom Pierce t he Vei l a nd Pa ra more, emo as a whole is st i l l k i l ling it.

Contact Amanda Dempson at adempson@nd.edu

Contact Claire Lyons at clyons3@nd.edu MARIA GORECKI | The Observer

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ndsmcobserver.com | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | The Observer

Crossword | Will Shortz

11

Horoscope | Eugenia Last Happy Birthday: Be aware of the changes around you. You’ll figure out how to turn a negative into a positive. It’s up to you to create opportunities and take responsibility for your happiness. Be open about your plans and how you intend to use your skills to increase your income. A resourceful approach to life will make the changes you face easier. Your numbers are 4, 12, 22, 29, 34, 40, 46.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Connect with people you know you can count on, then create a plan. A joint venture will offer greater opportunities than you anticipate, helping with cash flow and long-term effects. Surprise everyone with your ingenuity; you will impress someone influential.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If you ask questions, you will find out what you want to know. It might be easier to make decisions once you know where you stand and what others are willing to contribute. Maintaining equality will be essential to making progress.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Do what others expect and move on to the things you enjoy doing most. Think about the process involved in reaching your target. You’ll be able to draw on your experience and knowledge to get things done in record time.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Accept what’s happening around you. Change can be good if you structure it properly. Be part of whatever transition is heading your way; it will be easier for you to carry on without setbacks or concerns. Express your love for someone special.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Take responsibility, alter what you don’t like and push forward until you are satisfied with the results. Put time aside to spend with someone special. The discussion you have will decide what comes next. Live in the moment and enjoy life.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Keep your message consistent. Reaching out beyond the call of duty can make a difference for someone less fortunate than you. Love is in the stars and will motivate you to do fun things with someone special.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Watch your step, but keep moving toward your destination. Be observant and research opportunities. Dedicate your time, skills and experience to something that interests you. Discuss emotional issues in person.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your imagination won’t disappoint you. If you find a way to please someone you love, your gesture will get a standing ovation. It’s OK to think big, but don’t go over budget when it comes to following through. Have fun, but play it safe.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Channel emotional energy into something meaningful. Show how much you care, share your intentions and be open and honest about life. Change begins with you; refuse to let anyone interfere with your plans or push you in an undesired direction.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Be true to yourself and do things to suit your needs.

A unique approach will give you the edge you need to outmaneuver anyone who cares to stand in your way. Share your intentions and spice up your personal life.

Romance is encouraged.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): IGive your all, and something good will transpire.

Aggressive action will help tie up loose ends while you outmaneuver anyone who gets in your way. Trust in your ability, follow your heart and pursue the people and pastimes you love.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Precision and honoring your promises will draw others to your side. You’ll gain support and assistance if you know what will help you pursue your goals. Size up situations and leave nothing to chance. An optimistic attitude will attract a positive response.

Birthday Baby: You are courageous, inventive and trendy. You are willful and competent.

Sudoku | The Mepham Group

Jumble | David Hoyt and Jeff knurek

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The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

MBB Continued from page 16

RYAN VIGILANTE | The Observer

Irish graduate guard Trey Wertz gets air in a layup attempt. Wertz contributed to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s 72-68 overtime win against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in McCamish Pavilion on Jan. 8 2022.

Softball Continued from page 16

t h ree more r u ns i n t he f i f t h, a nd Not re Da me c r u i s e d t o t h e 8 -2 v i c t o r y.

In t he weekend f i na le, t he I r ish got of f t he f ield e a r l y, t a k i n g h o m e a 9 -1 m e r c y-r u l e v i c t o r y o v e r Memph i s i n si x i n n i ngs.

Not re Da me put a f ivespot on t he boa rd i n t he top of t he f i rst i n n i ng, prov id i ng Becker w it h plent y of r u n suppor t.

G r a d u a t e s t u d e n t s h o r tstop L ex i Orozoco sta r ted t he scor i ng w it h a t wor u n si ng le. Becker sta r ted her day w it h fou r shutout

f ra mes before g iv i ng up a si ng le blem ish i n t he fifth.

Not re Da me responded q u i c k l y w i t h a f o u r-r u n si x t h i n n i ng, a nd Ka stor pol ished of f t he ga me w it h a scoreless i n n i ng t o s e c u r e t h e m e r c y-r u l e v i c t o r y.

Ju n i o r i n f ielder Mac Va s q u e z p l a t e d a p a i r i n h e r o n l y a t- b a t o f t h e contest, spa rk i ng t he big si xt h inning.

T he Ir ish w i l l prepa re to t a k e o n t h e B i g Te n /ACC cha l lenge nex t, where t hey ’l l play fou r ga mes i n Clemson, Sout h Ca rol i na.

T hey ’l l play Oh io State

t w i c e a n d t h e N o. 13 Nor t hwester n W i ldcats t w ice.

T he W i ldcat s went to t h e C o l l e g e S o f t b a l l Wo r l d S e r i e s l a s t y e a r.

N o t r e D a m e ’s f i r s t g a m e of t he weekend w i l l sta r t at noon on Fr iday aga i nst Oh io State.

C o nt a c t A i d a n T h o m a s a t at homa 2 8 @ nd.edu

or less.

Head i ng i nto Tuesday ’s late-n ig ht matchup, t he I r i sh were 12-poi nt u nderdogs play i ng aw ay i n a host i le Du ke env i ron ment .

T he tea m w a s deter m i ned to set t he tone ea rly, however, w it h a n ea rly 7- 0 r u n a l low i ng t hem to keep up w it h t hei r opponent s.

Fol low i ng t h i s r u n, shot selec t ion bec a me a problem for Not re Da me a s t he y cou ld not seem to f i nd a rhy t h m a s a tea m.

W it h on ly one a ssi st i n t he f i r st ha l f i n compa r ison to Du ke’s n i ne, t he tea m ma i n ly oper ated i n t he m id-r a nge a rea, scori ng f rom fadeaw ay s a nd ju mpshot s. T h i s h ig h l ig hted a g reater i ssue, a s wel l, a s t he I r i sh on ly made one shot be yond t he a rc i n t he f i r st .

Despite t h i s, D u ke on ly held a na r row eig ht-poi nt lead head i ng i nto t he second.

T h i s c a me a s a resu lt of ef fec t ive defend i ng on t he ot her end of t he cou r t .

Despite f ive t u r nover s i n t he f i r st, good t r a n sit ion defen se f rom Not re Da me on ly a l lowed for t wo poi nt s of f of t hese m i st a kes. Head coach M i ke Bre y ’s choice to u se a z one-defen sive scheme a l so forced t u r nover s a nd defended t he t h ree-ba l l wel l.

I n t he second ha l f, t he tea m showed more potent ia l, play i ng wel l on bot h end s.

Not re Da me w a s hav i ng a block pa r t y on defen se, w it h a tot a l f ive s w at s f rom f resh ma n for w a rd Ven-A l len Lubi n, g r aduate g ua rd Cor mac Ry a n a nd g r aduate for w a rd Nate L a sz ew sk i.

I n t u r n, t he y conver ted on t he fa st-brea k cha nces t hat were c reated.

One rejec t ion f rom Ry a n a l lowed h i m to r ace dow n t he f loor a nd f i nd L a sz wesk i for a n open t h ree.

T h i s ba l l movement a nd exec ut ion of oppor t u n it ies h ig h l ig hted a n i mproved I r i sh of fen se i n t he second. T he scor i ng w a s led by g r aduate g ua rd Da ne G oodw i n w ho w a s t wo poi nt s shy of match i ng h i s c a reer-h ig h w it h 25 poi nt s.

G oodw i n, w ho was benched t h i s ga me i n place of St a rl i ng , took of f i n t he second ha l f, helpi ng Not re Da me keep up w it h a power f u l Du ke of fen se t hat ju st kept com i ng on st rong to

t he I r i sh. Home-cou r t adv a nt age seemed to prev a i l.

L ate i nto t he ga me, G oodw i n scored 17 st r a ig ht poi nt s to c ut t he def ic it to ju st fou r. T he g r aduate g ua rd ended t he second ha l f per fec t f rom t he f ield, ma k i ng shot s f rom a l l a rea s of t he cou r t .

However, Du ke w a s able to c apit a l i z e on some late ga me-dec id i ng er ror s f rom t he I r i sh. A f ter hav i ng a c a reer-h ig h n ig ht w it h 33 poi nt s la st ga me aga i n st V i rg i n ia Tech, L a sz ew sk i fou led out late i n t he second w hen t he ga me w a s w it h i n t wo possession s.

T h i s c a me a s a n u n for t unate t u r n for t he tea m, a s h i s presence a s a scor i ng t h reat wou ld have helped i n t he f i na l m i nutes of t he ga me.

However, t he I r i sh rema i ned composed a s excel lent play s f rom Lubi n a nd St a rl i ng broug ht t he ga me w it h i n reach. A n emphat ic block f rom Lubi n led to a t r a n sit ion t h reepoi nter f rom St a rl i ng w it h a m i nute to go.

Soon a f ter, a Lubi n putback lay up a f ter a n of fensive rebou nd na r rowed t he lead to t wo poi nt s.

Un for t u nately, a s it seemed t h roug hout t he ga me, Not re Da me w a s close enoug h to w i n, but Du ke put t he ga me aw ay w it h f ree t h row s.

Du ke w a s led by st a r f resh ma n Ky le Fi l ipow sk i, w ho scored 22 poi nt s for t he n ig ht .

I n h i s post-ga me i nterv iew, Fi l ipow sk i sha red respec t for t he compet it ion, st at i ng : “A l l c red it to Not re Da me — t he y ’re a g reat tea m.

T he y ’re ver y ex per ienced, a nd t hei r record doesn’t show how good t he y ac t ua l ly a re. We k new it w a s goi ng to be a bat t le.”

T he ga me w a s a l so emot iona l for D u ket ma rked t he ret u r n of legenda r y head coach M i ke K r z y z ew sk i, w ho ret i red la st sea son a fter h i s 42nd yea r w it h t he tea m.

Bre y ser ved on h i s coachi ng st a f f f rom 1987-1995 a s a n a ssi st a nt before event ua l ly joi n i ng t he I r i sh i n 20 0 0.

T he I r i sh look to get some late-sea son moment u m i n t hei r nex t ga me a f ter losi ng eig ht of t hei r la st n i ne matches.

Mov i ng on f rom t h i s loss, Not re Da me cont i nues t hei r road t r ip aga i n st V i r g i n ia t h i s Sat u rday at 12 p.m..

Contact Nicola s Morles at n morles @ nd.edu

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PWCATS: Mike Myer’s famous question to Eddie Murphy

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ndsmcobserver.com | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | The Observer

13

nd WOMEN’S LACROSSE

Irish prepare for Northwestern

By OL I V I A SCH ATZ A s soc iate Spor t s E d itor

A f ter a dom i nat i ng ga me aga i nst Sa n Diego State, t he No. 14 Not re Da me women’s lacrosse tea m is back i n act ion on T hu rsday, Feb. 16 to play aga i nst No. 5 Nor t hwester n.

T he W i ldcat s a re Not re Da me’s f i rst ra n ked opponent on t he sea son, a nd t h is matchup w i l l ma rk a s a l it mus test for t he Ir ish mov i ng for wa rd.

W h i le Not re Da me won t hei r f i rst ga me of t he season, Nor t hwester n d ropped 16 -15 to t hen No. 5 Sy rac use on t he road. Nor t hwester n wa s favored at No. 4.

W h i le t he score u lt i mately d id n’t fa l l i n t hei r favor, t he W i ldcat s were ag g ressive a nd goa l hu ng r y t he ent i ret y of t he ga me. Now back at t hei r home f ield, Nor t hwester n is ready for Not re Da me’s a r r iva l.

A lt houg h Not re Da me is ra n ked lower t ha n Nor t hwester n, t hey have a roster stacked w it h ta lent, a nd a h istor y of toug h compet it ion. L a st sea son, t he Ir ish lost f ive out of 10 of t hei r losses by less t ha n t wo poi nt s. Out of a l l of t hei r losses, on ly t wo were u n ra n ked.

One of t hese “one goa l losses” ca me w hen Nor t hwester n t raveled to Sout h Bend.

T he W i ldcat s ca me out hot, scor i ng f ive goa ls to Not re Da me’s t wo i n t he f i rst qua r ter. T he Ir ish t hen out scored Nor t hwester n 5-4 i n t he second qua r ter, just to have t he W i ldcat s out score t he Ir ish 5-4 i n t he t h i rd.

It a l l ca me dow n to t he fou r t h qua r ter, w here t he Ir ish t r ied to f ig ht for v ictor y but fel l shor t, u lt imately losi ng 17-16.

Bot h tea ms have not g raduated a lot, a nd ret u r n a h ig h level of play a nd sen ior it y. From la st yea r, Nor t hwester n ha s lost t wo of t hei r h ig hest scorers, L au ren Gi lber t a nd Ji l l Gi ra rd i. However, t hey ret u r n t hei r t h i rd h ig hest scorer Er i n Coykenda l l, a s wel l a s a load of ot her toug h sen iors t he Ir ish w i l l have to face.

W h i le Coykenda l l on ly scored once i n t he W i ldcat ’s match aga i nst Sy rac use, Nor t hwester n had t wo players score f ive goa ls : I z z y Sca ne a nd Mad ison Taylor.

Sca ne comes of f of i nju r y f rom 2022, however she ha s been a n i mpor ta nt player

for t he W i ldcat s i n pa st sea sons.

Taylor is a f resh ma n f rom Wa ntaug h, N Y, a nd she is a l ready ma k i ng her presence k now n.

Even w it h t hese t wo powerhouses work i ng toget her, Not re Da me ha s a deep roster ready to f ig ht.

T he sen ior t r io of m idf ielder Ka sey Choma, attack Mad ison A her n a nd at tack Jack ie Wola k combi ned 215 poi nt s on la st sea son. T h is yea r, t hey a re a lso back a nd scor i ng ea rly a nd of ten. Aga i nst Sa n Diego State, A her n had fou r goa ls a nd one a ssist, Wola k had t wo goa ls a nd t wo a ssist s a nd Choma had t h ree goa ls. T hey a re accompan ied by ju n ior m id f ielder Ma r y Kel ly Doher t y, w ho a lso scored.

Not re Da me ha s a toug h defense a s wel l, w it h t hei r new sta r ter ju n ior goa l ie L i l ly Ca l la ha n.

Ca l la ha n had to sit id ly wa it i ng a s for mer 2022 presea son A l l-ACC goa l ie Br idget Deeha n had her moment.

Now, Ca l la ha n is prepa red to ta ke t he rei ns, a nd she proved it i n her bat t le aga i nst Sa n Diego State. Ca l la ha n had a .818 save percentage aga i nst Sa n Diego State, a nd out of t he f i f teen ga mes she ha s played for t he Ir ish, she ha s ta l l ied 30 saves w it h a .652 save percentage. However, Ca l la ha n faces her toug hest cha l lenge yet aga i nst Nor t hwester n.

Sen ior E m ma Schet t ig is a lso a backbone to t he Ir ish defense.

On Fr iday, she won t h ree g rou nd ba l ls a nd ea r ned t h ree d raw cont rols.

W h i le t hei r match aga i nst Nor t hwester n w i l l be t he f i rst ra n ked opponent of t he sea son, it w i l l def i n itely not be t hei r la st.

T he ACC is t he toug hest d iv ision i n d iv ision one women’s lacrosse. T he Ir ish face seven ra n ked opponent s before t hey have a cha nce at t he ACC tou r nament. W h i le t he Ir ish have had a losi ng st rea k aga i nst ra n ked opponent s i n t he pa st, it ha s a l most a lway s been by close ga mes.

T he Ir ish sta r t of f t hei r jou r ney to t he ACC a nd NC A A tou r na ment t h is T hu rsday aga i nst No. 5 Nor t hwester n. Not re Da me w i l l t ravel to Eva nston, IL w here t he ga me w i l l sta r t 7 p.m. EST.

RYAN VIGILANTE | The Observer

Irish junior midfield Mary Kelly Doherty cradles the ball in the Irish’s matchup against Pitt on April 16, 2022. The Irish came out winners in this contest, besting the Panthers 19-7 at home in South Bend.

HCC Continued from page 14

2OT a nd won 99-93.

The w in is t he f irst t ime in prog ra m h istor y t hat t he Sa ints have played in double-over t ime. It is a lso t he

f irst t ime t hey have won in double over t ime.

The Sa ints’ w in improved t heir overa l l record to 12-14 (8-11). The Sa ints cu r rent ly sit in n int h, just outside t he con ference playof f, ha lf a ga me back to eig ht h place Gover nors St reet.

The Sa ints w i l l resu me t heir season when t hey play out-of-con ference foe East-West Un iversit y on Feb. 15 at home. Tip-of f is schedu led for 6 p.m.

Contact Tom Zw iller at t z w iller @nd.edu

RYAN VIGILANTE | The Observer

Contact Ol iv ia Schat z at oschat z @ nd.edu

Irish junior midfield Keelin Schlageter pushes past the defense in the Irish’s matchup against the Pittsburgh Panthers. Schlageter helped contribute to the Irish’s 19-7 win on April 16, 2022.

14

Sports

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

HCC women’s Basketball

Saints sweep St. Ambrose at home

By TOM Z W ILLER Spor t s Wr iter

T he Holy Cross women’s basketba l l tea m played t hei r f i na l home ga me of t he yea r aga i nst Sa i nt A mbrose Un iversit y on Sat u rday.

T he Sa i nts opened t heir ga me w it h a d isast rous fou r-m i nute spa n t hat saw t hem t ra i l 9-0 ea rly. A f ter a 30-second t i meout, however, t he Sa i nts col lected t hemselves a nd, t ha n k s i n pa r t to cr it ica l f ree t h rows by f resh ma n for wa rd El i zabet h Ed monds, led 1817 a f ter t he f irst.

T he second qua r ter saw t he Fig ht i ng Bees recla i m t he lead w it h a n 8-3 r u n.

But, t he Sa i nts t hen fou nd t hei r rhy t h m f rom beh i nd t he a rc as t hey made t h ree consecut ive t h ree-point shots a nd bu i lt up a n eig htpoi nt lead w it h just a m i nute rema i n i ng i n t he ha lf.

T he Fig ht i ng Bees lived up to t hei r na me a nd foug ht to close t he gap as t he second qua r ter ex pi red, forci ng t u r novers f rom Holy Cross on consecut ive possessions. Despite a sha k y sta r t a nd f i n ish to t he f i rst ha lf, t he Sa i nts lead 36-35.

A f ter t he brea k, t he ga me was a l l Holy Cross. Once sen ior g ua rd Jayda Mi l ler h it a t h ree to put t he Sa i nts up si x, St. A mbrose fa i led to get w it h i n f ive for t he rest of t he ga me a nd t he Sa i nts bu i lt up a double-d ig it lead for much of t he t h i rd.T he Sa i nts put on cr u ise cont rol i n t he fou r t h qua r ter a nd i ncreased t hei r lead to 20, w it h t he Fig ht i ng Bees fa i li ng to go on a ny k i nd of r u n.

T he Sa i nts won t hei r f i na l compet it ion at home a nd got to cla i m t hei r 15t h w i n a f ter a n 81-62 t h rash ing of St. A mbrose.

Wit h t h is w i n over St. A mbrose, t he Sa i nts i mprove to 15-12 on t he yea r a nd 10-9 in con ference play. The Sa i nts a re in sevent h place i n t he CCAC w it h a 1.5-ga me lead on t he eig ht h-place Roosevelt La kers.

T he w in a lso assu res t hat t he Sa i nts w i l l f in ish t he yea r w it h a prog ra m a l lt i me w i n n i ng percentage.

Shou ld t he tea m w in t hei r f i na l ga me, t hey w i l l f i nish t he yea r w it h a 16-12 record, a w i n n i ng percentage of .571. Shou ld t he tea m lose, t hey wou ld f i n ish 1513 (.536).

T he prev ious a l l-t i me ma rk was set i n 2018-2019 a nd 2021-2022 when t he prog ra m f i n ished 16-16 a nd 15-15, respect ively (.500).

T he Sa i nts w i l l look to

set a prog ra m h ig h in t heir f i na l ga me of t he season when t hey play Tr in it y on t he road. T he ga me is schedu led for t he 18t h, but t ip-of f has yet to be deter m ined.

T he Holy Cross men’s tea m a lso made h istor y when t hey hosted St. A mbrose on Sat u rday. A f ter a t h r i l l ing back-a nd-for t h ga me t hat saw t he Sa ints lose a si x-point lead w it h just 14 seconds lef t, t he ga me needed t wo over t ime per iods to decide a w in ner.

St. A mbrose sta r ted overt i me i n t he way t hey closed out reg u lat ion; by h itt ing a t h ree-point dagger. Sa ints’ sophomores Just in O’Nea l a nd Nash Hostet ler t hen got t he Sa i nts a head by one.

T he t wo tea ms t ied aga in at 81 a nd despite a Sa ints t u r nover i n t he last t h ir t y seconds, t he score stayed t ied at 81 a l l, forcing t he ga me to a second over t ime.

In t he second over t ime, f resh ma n Tom my Snyder took over t he ga me for Holy Cross. T he for wa rd scored eig ht consecut ive points for t he Sa i nts, ma k ing t wo ju mp shots a nd fou r f ree t h rows. A f ter Snyder comm itted h is fou r t h persona l fou l a nd was benched, t he Sa i nts had a massed a n 8983 lead w it h a litt le u nder t wo m inutes rema in ing.

Snyder re-entered t he ga me as t he Fig ht ing Bees got w it h i n fou r a nd he h it a t h ree to put t he ga me on ice. Despite t he Bees’ best ef for ts, t he Sa ints cont rol led t he f ina l m inute of see HCC PAGE 13

ARIANNA DENNING | The Observer

An Irish swimmer extends off the block for a backstroke race at the Tim Welsh Classic hosted by the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Rolfs Aquatic Center in South Bend, Indiana on Friday Jan. 27, 2023.

Swim Continued from page 15

Cason Wilburn are leaders also capable of posting top times.

“Jack is up at the top in all three of his events. Just really excited for him,” Lindauer said.

This meet w ill be the test of the Irish’s training throughout the whole season. Lindauer described some of the training techniques he has used w ith his sw immers such as early-morning race practices and extensive film v iewing. Breaking dow n qualit y

and rehearsing for the big day have been t wo major priorities for Lindauer.

Though this meet is a big step in the Irish postseason, it is far from the end for some sw immers.

Lindauer’s goal for ACCs — aside from performing well as a team — is to qualif y as many people for the NCAA tournament as possible.

According to Lindauer, a meet of this caliber is the perfect opportunit y to give sw immers a shot to earn these qualif ying times.

“We want to bring all five relays on both genders and have multiple

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NCAA qualifiers,” Lindauer said. “We can do that by going out there and doing what we can do. This is another step as we climb the ladder of meets and approach NCAA championships.”

The competition begins in Greensboro on Tuesday, Feb. 14. The 800 freest yle relay and the 200 medley relay w ill be first on the docket for the Irish, giv ing them the chance to be the best in program histor y and post some top finishes early on.

Contact Madeline Ladd at mladd2@nd.edu

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ndsmcobserver.com | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | The Observer

15

nd track and field

Solomon, Ryan highlight successful weekend for Irish track and field

By NATE MOLLER Senior Spor ts Writer

The Irish track and f ield team returned to action t his weekend w it h t he majorit y of t heir at hletes competing at t he Windy Cit y Inv ite in Chicago.

Graduate student Kev in Berr y and sophomore Carter Solomon were t he t wo at hletes t hat competed in t he Va lentine’s Inv itationa l in Boston.

The Irish had a strong show ing in Chicago in t he pole vault w it h junior Nolan Blachowsk i ta k ing second place w it h a mark of 4.94m.

The Irish a lso found success in t he f ield w it h sophomore Madison Schmidt ta k ing si xt h place in t he high jump w it h a mark of 1.73m.

The meet was highlighted by graduate student Katie Ryan, who ran a persona l best time of 2: 05.50 in t he 800m dash. That time set a new Notre Dame indoor track and f ield record.

The ot her mid-distance runners a lso had productive

days. In t he men’s 800m dash, graduate student Nick Miller took f if t h place w it h a time of 1:50.94. In t he men’s 400m dash, sophomore Joey Dobr ydney took t hird place w it h a time of 48.21. Junior Eve Ba lseiro led t he way for t he Irish women in t he same event, f inishing second w it h a time of 55.34.

The Irish a lso had success in t he distance events w it h sophomore Josh Met hner running 13:54.20 in t he 5000m run. In t he women’s 3000m, senior Katie Thronson took second place and set a new facilit y record w it h a time of 9 : 07.67.

The young ta lent of t he Irish men’s distance squad was on f ull display in t he mile race. They were led by freshman Daelen Ack ley, who took second place w it h a time of 4: 03.15. That was a new persona l best for Ack ley, cutting t wo seconds from his prev ious mile time.

Freshmen C.J. Singleton and John Schuler a lso had impressive showings, crossing t he lines in times of 4: 04.55 and 4:10.32,

respectively.

In t he women’s mile, graduate student A nna Sophia Keller took si xt h and set a facilit y record w it h a time of 4:37.84. Sophomore Sophie Nova k a lso had a strong performance in t he mile, f inishing w it h a time of 4:47.60.

In t he Va lentine’s Inv ite at Boston Universit y, sophomore Carter Solomon didn’t disappoint in t he 5000m race. Solomon f inished t he race w it h a time of 13:26.11, which was good for f ift h place in a highly competitive race. Solomon was t he f irst collegiate runner to cross t he line, f inishing only behind professiona l runners. Graduate student Kev in Berr y a lso broke 14 for t he Irish, f inishing t he 5K race in a time of 13:52.46.

The Irish w ill return home t his next weekend for t he A lex Wilson Inv itationa l, which w ill be t he last reg ular season meet of t he indoor season.

Contact Nate Moller at nmoller2@nd.edu

KATE NAESSENS | The Observer

Irish distance sophomore Carter Sullivan pushes through the race in the infamous “Meyo Mile” at the Meyo Invitational on Feb. 4, 2023.

nd Swim and Dive

Irish gear up for ACC Championships, look ahead toward NCAA meet

By M ADELINE L ADD Associate Spor ts Editor

ARIANNA DENNING | The Observer

An Irish swimmer races down the lane in the men’s butterfly at the Tim Welsh Classic hosted by the Irish in Rolfs on Friday Jan. 27, 2023.

The Notre Dame sw imming and div ing championship season kicks off this week w ith the ACC Men’s and Women’s Championships taking place Februar y 1418 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Fort y-t wo Irish men and women are ready to hit the deck dow n south and contend w ith top ACC teams.

This count is composed of 18 men, 18 women and three divers on each side. Head coach Chris Lindauer describes the team as “hungr y” as they prepare to compete.

For him, team env ironment and attitude is a priorit y for the weekend.

“We’ve worked really hard this year and followed the process and believed in it along the way,” Lindauer said. “I’m excited to see them sw im freely and w ith Notre Dame passion.

Culture-w ise for us, team is the number one priorit y and there’s nothing like sw imming for your team and w ith your heart.”

ACCs w ill be the Irish freshmen’s first taste of a true college postseason

meet. Lindauer has reiterated the importance of approaching the meet w ith a “business trip” mindset. In other words, a professional approach toward the meet is what he feels it takes to deliver top performances.

“It’s exciting for freshmen... to give them this opportunit y early on,” Lindauer said. “It’s definitely a learning experience.

There’s no club meet like ACCs that they’ve been to.

ACCs has more of a back yard brawl-t y pe feel to it. A lot of this is a learning experience for the freshman and we do our best to bring them along the way and prepare them for what goes on mentally at the meet.”

Lindauer is looking toward senior leadership this week to help lead by example.

This leadership team is what Lindauer describes as the “glue” that keeps the team bonded together.

“As they say, a team goes as seniors go,” Lindauer said. “Without that studentathlete upperclassmen leadership, you lose that bond,” Lindauer said. “They’re so important in helping guide this meet. It’s one thing for

the coach to say something, but it’s another thing for an upperclassman or teammate to reaffirm and show it.”

In terms of sw immers to watch, senior Coleen Gillilan has the potential to da zzle on the women’s side.

As one of the top performers in the 100 butterf ly, Gillilan has the opportunit y to sw im a personal best and score some serious points for the Irish. She w ill also be a key relay player for the women.

“We’re excited to see her experience and leadership at play,” Lindauer said. “We want her to just go race and have fun, that’s a big part of this. It’s certainly exciting to see what she can do.”

For the men, sophomore Chris Guiliano is someone to watch. Guiliano recently broke the school 100 freest yle record untapered at the Tim Welsh Classic where he touched the wall in 42.32 seconds. Freshman Tommy Janton has also seen much success in backstroke this season, coming just short of the 200 backstroke school record at Tim Welsh. Finally, seniors Jack Hoagland and see SWIM PAGE 14

16

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

nd SOFTBAll, 4-1

nd MEN’s basketball, 68-64

Irish pick up ranked win opening weekend

By AIDAN THOMAS Sports Editor

I n t h e i r o p e n i n g w e e ke n d o f p l a y, N o t r e D a m e s o f t b a l l g o t o f f t o a 4 -1 sta r t for t he 2023 season. T hey sta r ted of f w it h a statement v ictor y, k n o c k i n g o f f N o. 2 2 A r i z o n a S t a t e 7-1 i n t h e i r s e a s o n o p e n e r. A f t e r a 3 - 0 loss to Sa n Diego State i n t he second ga me of t he weekend, t he Ir ish won t h ree st ra ig ht. T hey took d o w n CS U N , N o r t h e r n I l l i n o i s a n d Me m p h i s .

Ju n i o r c a t c h e r C a r l l i K l o s s w e n t 8 -f o r-16 o n t he weekend w it h t wo doubles, a home r u n a nd f i v e RBI . F r e s h m a n o u tf ielder Mickey W i nchel l k nocked i n t h ree r u ns w h i l e h i t t i n g .41 2 , s t a r ti ng a l l f ive ga mes. In t he p i t c h e r ’s c i r c l e , t h e I r i s h dom i nated, g iv i ng up just eig ht ea r ned r u ns over 34 i n n i ngs of work .

Sophomore Sha n non Becker led t he way w it h 13 .1 innings pitched, g iv i ng up just t wo ea r ned r u n s . S h e p o s t e d a 2-1 r e cord a nd st r uck out n i ne, appea r i ng i n fou r ga mes.

Graduate st udent pitcher Pay ton Tidd posted a 2 . 21 ERA a c r o s s a p a i r of sta r t s. T he newcomer to t he rot at ion, f reshm a n M i c a e l a K a s t o r, a p pea red i n fou r ga mes a nd started one, a l low i ng t wo r u ns over eig ht i nn i ngs of work .

I n t h e o p e n e r, s o p h o m o r e r i g h t f i e l d e r Ja n e K ronenberger d id most of t he of fensive da mage for t he Ir ish. She k nocked i n fou r r u ns v ia a t h ree-h it per for ma nce t hat had t he I r ish rol li n g e a r l y. T h e y p u s h e d across fou r r u ns i n t he second i n n i ng to ta ke a 4-0 lead over t he Su n Dev ils.

K ronenberger k nocked i n a pa i r w it h a si ng le, w it h a t h i rd r u n s c o r i n g o n a n e r r o r.

K ronenberger event ua l ly ca me a rou nd to score on a w i ld pitch. In t he fou r t h inning, a f ter A r i zona State cut t he Ir ish lead to 4 -1, K ronenberger st r uck aga i n, blast ing a t w o -r u n s h o t f o r a 6 -1 lead. Beh i nd a dom ina nt show i ng f rom Tidd, t h e I r i s h c r u i s e d t o a 7-1

v i c t o r y. T i d d f i r e d s i x i n n i ngs, a l low i ng on ly one r u n a nd st r i k i ng out f ive.

T he Ir ish had t hei r oppor t u n it ies aga i nst Sa n Diego State, but t hey c o u l d n’t n o t c h a n y r u n s .

Sa n Diego State entered t he ga me ra n ked just beh i n d t h e I r i s h i n t h e ‘r e c e i v i n g v o t e s’ s e c t i o n o f t he nat iona l pol ls. Not re Da me rapped out n i ne h it s but rema i ned scoreless i n t he 3-0 loss to t he A ztecs. T hey lef t n i ne on ba se a nd Sa n Diego S t a t e g o t j u s t e n o u g h o ffense, a s Becker a l lowed t h ree r u ns, one ea r ned, i n f ive i n n i ngs. T he A z t e c s’ l e a d o f f h i t t e r, Bel la Espi noz a, notched a t h ree-h it per for ma nce, a nd t h ree r u ns i n t he f i f t h i n n i ng were enoug h for Sa n Diego State to win.

Not re Da me rebou nded w it h a t r io of w i ns to f i nish t he weekend. T hey sta r ted by avoid i ng a col lapse a f ter blow i ng a s e v e n t h -i n n i n g 4 -1 l e a d a g a i n s t CS U N .

CS U N t o o k a 1- 0 l e a d i n t he second i n n i ng, but K loss a nd Tidd each broug ht home a pa i r w it h t w o -r u n d o u b l e s i n t h e f i f t h i n n i ng. Tidd f i red a gem t h roug h si x i nn i ngs, a l low i ng just t he

one r u n, but she fa ltered i n t he sevent h. A t h r e e -r u n b l a s t t i e d t h e score a nd sent t he t wo squads to ex t ra innings.

Sophomore desig nated h it ter Rachel A l len sent t he Ir ish home happy i n t h e e i g h t h , h o w e v e r, d r iv i ng home t he w i nner w it h a r u n-scor i ng si ng le.

Ka stor took t he ci rcle i n t he fou r t h ga me of t he weekend, ma k ing her f i rst ca reer sta r t.

T he I r ish gave her plent y of r u n suppor t i n t he ea rly goi ng, scor i ng f ive t i mes i n t he second i nn i n g . K a s t o r ’s c l a s s m a t e , Wi nchel l, started t he s c o r i n g w i t h a t w o -r u n si ng le.

K loss fol lowed by br i ng i ng W i nchel l a nd hersel f home w it h a long ba l l for a 4- 0 Not re Da me l e a d . Ju n i o r f i r s t b a s e ma n Ka r i na Ga sk i ns went b a c k-t o - b a c k w i t h K l o s s , bla st i ng a solo shot for her f i rst home r u n of t he sea son. Nor t her n I l l i noi s st r uck back w it h t wo r u ns i n t he fou r t h, but t hat wa s a l l t hey ma naged of f K a s t o r, w h o p i c k e d u p t he w i n w it h f ive st r i keout s over f ive i n n i ngs.

T he Ir ish pushed across see SOFTBALL PAGE 12

Irish fall short against Duke

By NICOLAS MORLES Sports Writer

Despite a v a l ia nt effor t by t he tea m, Not re Da me men’s ba sketba l l fel l to Du ke 6 8- 6 4 i n a n aw ay matchup i n Du rha m, Nor t h Ca rol i na . A f ter a st rong d r ive i nto t r a f f ic, st a r f resh ma n g ua rd J.J. St a rl i ng w a s able to c ut Du ke’s lead to ju st one poi nt w it h ju st 36 second s lef t to go i n t he ga me. T h i s play c a me at t he pea k of

Not re Da me’s moment u m, a s t he I r i sh had to f ig ht f rom beh i nd du r i ng t he major it y of t he ga me.

However, despite keepi ng up w it h t he Blue Dev i l s t h roug hout t he match, Du ke w a s able to put t he ga me aw ay a f ter a n open t h ree-poi nter gave t hem a fou r-poi nt lead. Not re Da me lost t he ha rd-foug ht contest 6 8- 6 4, t hei r t h i rd loss i n a row by si x poi nt s see MBB PAGE 12

RYAN VIGILANTE | The Observer

Former Irish senior Paul Atkinson Jr. reaches for the ball against Georgia Tech on Jan. 8, 2022. The Irish won the match 72-68 in OT.

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Mind & Heart LECTURE SERIES

“The Life and Witness of Augustus Tolton for the American Church Today” Lecture by Bishop Joseph Perry Date: February, 16, 2023 Time: 7:30 p.m. | reception to follow Location: Driscoll Auditorium The lecture is free and open to the public.

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ndsmcobserver.com | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | The Observer

3

VICE PRESIDENT CHRISTIAN MURRAY

Confidence beyond the ring: VP Christian Murray builds confidence in fellow boxers ever y boxer,” Mu r ray sa id.

“W it h box i ng obv iously t here is t he physica l side of it a nd lea r n i ng a techn ique a nd sk i l l t hat most people have never done before. But rea l ly box i ng more t ha n a ny t h i ng is a menta l spor t. T he con f idence t hat people lea r n i n t he r i ng is u n matched by a ny t h i ng i n a ny ot her spor t.”

Mu r ray enjoys seei ng h is tea m mates g row menta lly a s t hey bat t le t h roug h a physica l ly cha l leng i ng process.

“People step i nto t he r i ng a nd come i nto pract ice t he f i rst day a nd t hey ’re sca red.

T hey m ig ht not be i n t he best shape, but t hey st ick w it h it a nd show up ever yday,” he sa id.

“T h roug hout t he sea son a nd u lt i mately i n t he tou rna ment, you see t h is huge boost i n t hei r con f idence a s t hey prove to t hemselves t h roug h a ver y physica l endeavor t hat t hey a re menta l ly capable of more t ha n t hey ever t houg ht wa s possible.”

Mu r ray k nows t hat t he con f idence ga i ned i n t he r i ng ex tends fa r beyond t he con f i nes of t he tou r na ment or pract ice.

“Not on ly is t hat t r ue i n t he r i ng, but I t h i n k t hat’s t r ue i n l i fe a s wel l. It’s g reat to see a lot of g uys t hat ta ke it a nd t hey add it i nto ot her a spects of t hei r l i fe,” Mu r ray sa id.

“T hey wa nt to be a force for good i n t he world by ta k i ng what t hey have lea r ned i n t he r i ng here a nd t hat t ra nslates for t he rest of t hei r l i fe.”.

Senior and Bengal Bouts Vice President Christian Murray, a committed member since the beginning of his college career, helps lead the club this year as Vice President and serves as a mentor for underclassmen.

lot of t i mes when you f i rst sta r t, you wa nt to devote a l l of you r t i me to get t i ng better as a boxer, but a s you g row i n t he prog ra m, it becomes more about how ca n I help f u nd ra ise t he most money? ” Mu r ray sa id. “You rea l i ze t hat t he hou rs you spend here a nd t he work you put i n doesn’t rea l ly compa re to what people a rou nd t he world a re goi ng t h roug h.”

Mu r ray sha red t hat one of h is memor ies f rom h is fou r yea rs i n Benga l Bouts ca me du r i ng h is sophomore yea r du r i ng t he COV ID-19 pa ndem ic. Because t here wa s no i n-person pract ice, t he club of ten had Zoom workouts or met up i n rea l ly sma l l g roups i n t he ba sement of bu i ld i ngs.

“Not a lot of people showed up to t hese. You wou ld show up to a Zoom workout, a nd t here wou ld be 30 people on it i n a club of 200,” Mu r ray sa id.

Despite t hese cha l lenges w it h pract ice at tenda nce a nd not bei ng able to have a tou r na ment, t he clubs st i l l ra ised $ 200,000 for t he m ission du r i ng t he pa ndem ic.

Mu r ray wa s a ma zed by t he com m it ment of t he club to t he m ission, a nd f rom t hat poi nt on, he sha red t hat he hasn’t m issed a pract ice.

“It showed me just how ded icated t h is club’s members a re to t he m ission.

A f ter t hat, I have never m issed a pract ice si nce,” Mu r ray sa id.

Mu r ray is look i ng for wa rd to seei ng a g row t h i n each boxer’s con f idence du r i ng t he tou r na ment.

“My favor ite t h i ng about t he tou r na ment is seei ng g row t h a nd con f idence i n

leave it in a better place than we found it, which is the goal that you want to have coming into it every year,” Phillips said.

As Bengal Bouts president, Phillips has reinvigorated the club’s relationship with Fr. Tom Eckert and the Holy Cross Mission Center. After a several-year hiatus because of the pandemic, boxers from the club are again able to apply for an eight-week international fellowship with Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh.

“I’ve been working hard this year to send boxers back to Bangladesh for the first time since I’ve been at Notre Dame,” Phillips said. “The Center for Social Concerns is conducting interviews right now of boxers who applied to

spend next summer there and be English teachers … We definitely had a lot of applicants, and we’re excited to get that rolling.”

With all the excitement Bengal Bouts bring to campus, starting Feb. 16 in the Dahnke Ballroom and ending March 4 in Purcell Pavilion, Phillips said the greater social impact of the club is too often overlooked.

“People can get excited by the lights,” Phillips said. “Our mission is two-pronged, right: to teach kids stuff that they’re completely unfamiliar with and test their courage here at Notre Dame. Secondly, boxing is the vehicle through which we achieve a much greater good.”

High-minded jargon aside,

over 50 boxers will be stepping into the ring for the Bengal Bouts preliminaries Thursday night at 6 p.m. EST. Phillips said the club has focused this season on boxing safely, conservatively and defensively.

“We want to raise the level of professionalism and have an elevated technique to deliver the best product that we can but also to keep our guys safe,” Phillips said.

Phillips added that club captains drive home the necessity of footwork, head movement and blocking and defending punches to newer boxers.

“What we don’t want is a backyard brawl,” Phillips said.

By NATE MOLLER Senior Sports Writer

Benga l Bouts V ice President Ch r ist ia n Mu r ray ha s t h r ived a s a leader for t he club t h is season a nd ha s enjoyed ser v i ng as a mentor for u nderclassmen i n t he club.

“Bei ng a mentor is what I see ever yday a s my ma i n role i n t he club,” Mu r ray sa id.

“If t here’s a nov ice boxer out t here who’s ta k i ng t he t i me out of t hei r day to come here a nd to wa nt to bet ter t hemselves a nd better some people a l l t he way a rou nd t he world, I feel l i ke it’s my responsibi l it y to be here a nd help t hem a ny way t hat I ca n.”

Mu r ray descr ibed bei ng t he v ice president t h is

season as a su r rea l ex per ience i n it ia l ly.

“It was a bit su r rea l at t he beg i n n i ng. Last yea r I was a capta i n, but despite bei ng a capta i n last yea r, I was most ly just focused on workouts a nd tech n ique a nd t he rea l box i ng side of t he prog ra m,” he sa id.

Si nce becom i ng t he v ice president, Mu r ray sha red t hat he has had more adm i n ist rat ive dut ies i n orga n i zi ng t he club a nd set t i ng goa ls for t he club to accompl ish.

“My role has def i n itely become more orga n i zat iona l i n hav i ng to lead t he club si nce becom i ng t he v ice president.

Obv iously I a m st i l l i nvolved w it h t he whole boxi ng aspect, but a lot of it has been set t i ng t hese big goa ls

we wa nt to accompl ish a nd t hen t r y i ng to mot ivate t he ot her capta i ns a nd get t he whole club on boa rd to accompl ish t hose goa ls,” Mu r ray sa id.

Mu r ray ta l ked about h is ex per ience as a f resh ma n boxer i n t he club t h ree yea rs ago.

“W hen I f i rst joi ned t he club, I was a l l about t he boxi ng side of t h i ngs. I wa nted to get f it, I wa nted to look cool, t h row good pu nches a nd have my f r iends cheer for me,” he sa id.

A s Mu r ray has become more i m mersed i n t he prog ra m, he d iscussed how t he m ission i n Ba ng ladesh has become more mea n i ng f u l to h i m t ha n t he spor t itsel f.

“A s you get more ex per ience i n t he prog ra m, it becomes less about box i ng. A

Courtesy of Bengal Bouts

President Continued from page 4

it’s hard to explain to those that aren’t a part of it.”

Any renowned boxer, from Ali to Rocky, has got to have a chip on his shoulder. Phillips is no exception.

“I have something to prove as the president, having never competed too much in the bouts,” Phillips said.

During last year’s Bengal Bouts, Phillips was studying abroad in London. The year before, neither a tournament nor any sparring took place because of the pandemic.

“My freshman year I won my first bout against another senior,” Phillips said. “Then before the second round of the

tournament, I had to drop out due to food poisoning against the captain that year.”

While Phillips is perhaps a little untested inside the ring, outside the ring is a different story. Before becoming president of the Bengal Bouts, Phillips served as a junior captain.

Phillips explained that he was asked to take on leadership roles within Bengal Bouts because older members of the club saw his dedication to the greater purpose of the Bouts, which is to raise funds for the Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh.

“The older guys recognized that I had that passion to continue advancing the club, building on the foundation of the last 92 years and hopefully

Contact Nate Moller at nmoller2@nd.edu

Contact Peter Breen at pbreen2@nd.edu

4

The observer | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023 | ndsmcobserver.com

Senior Captains

Motivated by mission, senior captains ready to lead way at Bengal Bouts

By MATTHEW CROW Associate Sports Editor

Courtesy of Bengal Bouts

The Bengal Bouts senior captains pose for in the ring during practice. Top row (left to right): Josh Williams, Jack Phillips, Greg DeFalco, Luke Slahor. Bottom (left to right): Christian Murray, Evan Molka.

Joining Notre Dame’s men’s boxing club as a freshman with no combat sports background can be an overwhelming experience. It’s one that each of the club’s senior captains went through four years ago.

“I started boxing my freshman year because someone just said to do it,” said Evan “Milk” Molka, an aerospace engineering major from Keough Hall. “At first I was like, ’I don’t really want to, I don’t want to get punched in the face,’ but my friend pressured me on.”

In the days leading up to their final Bengal Bouts tournament, Molka and the team’s other captains have never regretted their decision to step out of their comfort zone and give boxing a try.

“Sooner rather than later, I fell in love with the club and I stuck with it,” Molka said.

For young, inexperienced boxers, their time in the club is heavily influenced by the upperclassmen, who serve as leaders, coaches and mentors. That was certainly the case for

Greg “The Hitman” DeFalco, an electrical engineering major from Alumni Hall who was taken under the wing of the veteran boxers from his dorm.

“I was like, ’yeah, I want to challenge myself and do something like this.’ So I showed up my freshman year with some friends,” DeFalco said. “I have to give it up to some of the captains my freshman year who really inspired me.”

Fast forward to today, and the boxers who were once novices now have the opportunity to pass their experience forward and inspire the current freshman. It’s a responsibility that they take seriously and have gotten a lot out of.

“It was a great honor to have the opportunity to be a captain,” said Josh Williams, a finance and ACMS major who serves as a resident assistant in St. Edward’s Hall. “To be able to lead workouts and set an example for guys, be the people they go to for advice and hold mitts for them, was an awesome experience.”

For Williams, who competes see SENIORS PAGE 2

PRESIDENT JACK PHILLIPS

Bengal Bouts president Jack Phillips looks to prove himself in the ring

By PETER BREEN Sports Writer

Bengal Bouts president Jack Phillips came to Notre Dame to develop friendships in his dorm, Knott Hall, and to study finance, data science and sociology — not to relive his high school glory days back in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

But during his first year at the University, Phillips, like many who grow up playing sports, craved that feeling of team companionship upon arriving at college. So, Phillips joined Bengal Bouts his first semester on campus.

“I think a lot of people join Bengal Bouts, and part of the reason I did was I just missed that team feeling of high school sports,” Phillips said.

Phillips did not quite understand all he was signing himself up for, but his inclination about where he’d find his community at Notre Dame was spot on.

“I came in with no expectation, just looking for a group

of guys that had that camaraderie together,” Phillips said.

“I’ve more than found it. It’s developed into so much more than that. I think these guys will be friends for life.”

The sport of boxing teaches lessons of courage and strength. Inside the ring, boxers compete individually against one another. But by stepping up to a challenge, facing a fear and trying something new together, the boxers unite as a team.

“And as much as we’re going in the ring and punching each other in the face a little bit, outside the ring we have our backs,” Phillips said.

Phillips added that he even feels this rare closeness between fellow boxers with alumni of the 93-year-old club.

“All the time now I’m reaching out to alumni, past Bengal Bouters,” Phillips said. “It’s a Notre Dame network within the Notre Dame network, and see PRESIDENT PAGE 3

Courtesy of Christian Murray

Irish senior and Bengal Bouts president Jack Phillips instills camaraderie among club members and acts as a leader of the organization’s efforts. Phillips says he’s ready for his first bout since freshman year.