Print Edition for The Observer for Friday, December 2, 2022

Walsh Hall rector abruptly leaves role

Observer Staff Report

Kate Palko, the rector of Walsh Hall, “will no longer serve” in that position, according to an email sent to residents on Wednesday evening by Bre Tornifolio, a director of residential life who supervised Palko and Walsh Hall. Residents reported Palko had already left the dorm.

“I write tonight to share the news that effectively immediately Kate will no longer serve as Rector of Walsh Hall,” Tornifolio wrote. “Please know Residential Life is grateful for Kate’s service, and is fully committed to supporting the Walsh community during this transition.”

The Observer learned from a reliable source the move is “not

related to any kind of wrongful or inappropriate activity.”

The email to residents also announced that until the position is temporarily filled by former rector Carol Latronica.

“Carol will not move into the hall but will be present in different ways, including supervising the staff and offering a rector’s expertise through the rest of the semester,” Tornifolio said.

Tornifolio’s email also said the office of residential life will be hiring a new rector, who will begin in January.

Palko began her term in Walsh Hall this year, and has departed with less than a semester serving in the position. Three months ago,

see RECTOR PAGE 5

Saint Mary’s College hosts Holiday Pop-Up Market Senate installs diversity director

By MEGHAN LANGE and ROSE ANDROWICH Saint Mary’s News Editor and News Writer

With the holidays rapidly approaching, Saint Mary’s College held two Christmas markets on Tuesday and Wednesday, organized by the Office for the Common Good (OCG) and the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative (WEI), for students to shop for gifts.

OCG director Rebekah Go organized the Makers Market which featured vendors from South Bend on the first floor of the student center while the WEI organized the Smick Holiday Pop-up Market which featured student and alumni vendors on the second. The events are separate, but there was some collaboration between the offices, Go said.

“We’ve done it before and we specifically collaborated both years to make sure we’re doing them on the same day and there’s some overlap in time,” she said.

Go explained the events

are held at separate times because of the availability of the makers.

“The challenge being that for the maker’s market, our makers aren’t necessarily available in the evening, which is when students are available and students aren’t necessarily available during the daytime when they have classes,” she noted.

The student vendors featured small businesses owned by students and alumni of the tri-campus community.

Madison Mata, a junior at Saint Mary’s, wanted to start a boutique after looking at Instagram boutiques that are super expensive.

“I think it’s important to make sure that it is affordable because a lot of people, especially college students, work or have allowances that don’t allow them to spend $30 on one bracelet,” she said. “If I can make it and make it five or eight dollars. Then it makes me feel better.”

Mata’s business sells a number of products including custom-made

t-shirts, stickers and jewelry. Mata chose to sell her products at the pop-up because she felt it would be good exposure for her business.

Peyton Stearns, a junior at Saint Mary’s and the owner of Pa’s Print, also decided to sell her products at the popup because she thought it would be good place to sell her products.

Stearns started Pa’s Print over the summer. Her launching point was selling Smick city prints last year. Stearns also makes postcards, poster prints and even takes individual requests on Instagram for products. According to Stearns, her business tries to promote sustainability.

“I’m trying to be as sustainable as possible. I don’t order in advance. Everything is done per quarter, because I’m trying to cut down on waste and I use sustainable materials,” she said.

Mariana Taskey, a sophomore at Saint Mary’s

By KATIE MUCHNICK News Writer

The Notre Dame student senate convened Wednesday night to nominate a new codirector of Diversity and Inclusion, discuss procedures for the upcoming elections and amend senate laws regarding proxies.

Vice president Sofie Stitt opened the meeting with

executive announcements. Stitt introduced the director of sustainability, Nick Albrinck, who updated the senate on the sustainability department’s progress.

The sustainability depart ment successfully reintroduced the Sustainability Cup this year, which awarded points to the dorms for attending

Award-winning author returns

By CLAIRE REID Associate News Editor

Wednesday night in a crowded Eck Visitors Center auditorium, author and South Bend native Tess Gunty discussed her debut novel, “The Rabbit Hutch,” which recently won the National Book Award for Fiction.

The novel has also won the Waterstones debut fiction prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize.

Published on July 21, “The Rabbit Hutch” follows three summer days in the lives of the residents of the La Lapinière apartments, an affordable housing complex in fictional Vacca Vale, Indiana.

Throughout the early and mid-20th century, Vacca Vale was home to the thriving Zorn Automobiles company.

Residential Life emailed Walsh residents Wednesday to inform residents of rector’s departure

Courtesy of the University of Notre Dame Walsh Hall rector Kate Palko departed unexpectly Wednesday night from her role in the dorm. Former rector Carol Latronica will step in until a new rector is hired by the Office of Residential Life in January.

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Friday

Volunteer at Our Lady of the Road

Student Center Atrium

7 a.m. - 9:30 a.m.

Help serve breakfast to the homeless.

HCC Lecture Series Pfeil Center 11 a.m.

Panel on great political and economic movements.

Saturday

49th Anual Christmas Madrigal Dinner

Rice Commons

7 p.m. - 9 p.m. Renaissance-style holiday performance.

ND Chorale presents Handel’s “Messiah” Leighton Concert Hall 8 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. Also presented on Friday evening.

Sunday

Monday

Virtues and Vocations Webinar Zoom Webinar noon - 1 p.m. The CSC will host author Anika Prather.

Tuesday

Book Talk

Hesburgh Center C103 12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m. Kellogg Insittute hosts professor speaking on democracy in Africa.

University Band Concert Leighton Concert Hall 4 p.m. - 6 p.m. Marches and concert band pieces.

Notre Dame Community Choir Rehearsal Coleman-Morse 329 7 p.m. - 8:45 p.m. No audition required.

Pottery

Sale

Riley Hall of Art 122 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. First of three days of sale of one-of-a-kind pieces by faculty.

RYAN VIGILANTE | The Observer

Leprechaun Ryan Coury leads Irish fans in cheering on the men’s basketball team, as they took down Michigan State, ranked 20th, in Purcell Pavilion in the Joyce Center on Wednesday night. The Irish won 70-52, the sixth win of the season for the unranked team.

Irene McNelis senior off-campus “Nov. 21.”

Ian Baker senior off-campus “Jan. 1.”

Emily Hunt senior off-campus “After Christmas.”

Ryan Campbell senior off-campus “I don’t.”

Chris Canizares senior off-campus

Pat Merkel senior off-campus

CSC launches prison education programs

By MARCELLE COUTO News Writer

In August, leaders of the major college-in-prison initiatives within the tri-campus community gathered to create the Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison (NDPEP) housed within the Center for Social Concerns (CSC). The program offers a liberal arts education in prisons as well as expanding research geared toward improving prison education initiatives. NDPEP aids participants as they “reenter their home communities and provide faculty and student opportunities for education and research on issues related to incarceration”, according to a University press release.

“The goal of bringing all these pieces together into NDPEP is to ensure that all the pieces doing similar work can communicate more easily and learn from each other by being housed in one place and being in regular communication,”

James Shortall, associate director of the Center for Social Concerns said in an interview with The Observer.

He continued by talking about how the program represents the University’s mission.

“It contributes to the mission of the Center and Notre Dame by doing justice education and by increasing opportunities for

justice education and research for the common good, where the idea would be to build up research efforts around all these elements that have just come together under the umbrella of NDPEP,” he said.

Managing director Michael Hebbeler described how once different project directors decided their roles within the new program, the work was simple.

“It was, frankly, fairly easy, because each of the programs in existence is strong and robust and have been running well, and so it was a matter of understanding how they fit together,” he said.

For instance, assistant regional director for alumni and reentry services Justin McDevitt and research program manager Lindsay Paturalski were brought onto the initiative because of their respective skill sets, according to McDevitt.

“So rather than each program hiring its own independent person to do these things, we thought we could all work together and support the greater group of programs,” he explained.

The innovative aspect of NDPEP also lies in the capacity for the tri-campus students to become involved in the program, McDevitt noted.

“Both Lindsay and I are making it available for

students to intern with NDPEP, both with research help for Lindsay and alumni reentry support for me,” McDevitt said. “We’ve had more than a handful of students already serve as interns and there are opportunities for Notre Dame students to get involved in helping in the Moreau College Initiative (MCI) office at Holy Cross.”

However, McDevitt explained such opportunities for undergraduate engagement through MCI specifically are “really limited” because the program encourages students inside the prison to mentor each other.

Nevertheless, Hebbeler noted there will be more opportunities for undergraduates to engage with the project, specifically in the “Inside-Out” program, a three-credit course offered in the spring.

“It is a course inside Westville Correctional Facility, where half the students are incarcerated and half of the students are traditional Notre Dame undergraduates. So we take vehicles out from campus to do class once a week inside a facility.”

The class requires an application which is still available for interested students.

McDevitt summarized the goal of the program by is “exposing undergraduates

to inequities in our system and introducing them to the possibility of going inside a space where more marginalized people are compared to the campus.”

McDevitt also described how NDPEP addresses issues of equity and empowerment.

“What Lindsay and I have been doing for years is teaching college in prison as if it were college outside of prison,” he said. “So it’s less about opening people’s eyes to inequity and more of empowering people who wouldn’t normally get a chance to be educated.”

Hebbeler also described how the initiative benefits faculty.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for faculty, at Holy Cross College and at Notre Dame who are teaching the courses — in total about 40 — so it’s a robust college degree program, and many faculty will name it not only a rewarding experience but arguably the most powerful teaching experience they’ve had.”

Paturalski shared some of the research efforts to improve the program, emphasizing the ethics involved in the process.

“Our research is about program evaluation,” she said. “I think that’s really important, again for the equity aspect, that students feel empowered and that they do not think we are there possibly with some alternative motive.”

Paturalski noted the goal is to “make sure that they’re getting a quality education that is valuable to them as returning citizens, so we look at a lot of variables related to student success and academic quality and community-building.”

While NDPEP has focused its study on the all-male Westville Correctional Facility, the program hopes to expand its reach to imprisoned women because of the limited research on that demographic, according to Paturalski.

“While mass incarceration numbers have slowly been going down, the numbers of women being incarcerated have slowly gone up, even though men still are by far the highest number of people being incarcerated,” she said.

“The fact that we’re going to be able to engage with and support women who are reentering society and getting their education is another really important aspect of what we’re doing and are only possible through the partnership, because Notre Dame can’t take our faculty down to Indianapolis to work with the Women’s College Partnership, together with Marian University and the Bard Prison Initiative.”

Shortall summarized the impact of NDPEP as forming “more and deeper opportunities both for justice education and for research

for the common good around education in prison.”

McDevitt added that “even though our students in prison can’t come to campus while they’re incarcerated and our Notre Dame students, except for ‘Inside Out,’ can’t go inside the prison, we are very much the same in this goal.”

In addition, McDevitt stated the program will be a leader among newly emerging programs with similar missions.

“From a historical context, our programs have been around for ten years, in partnership with Holy Cross College, which houses the MCI program, and that’s pretty long compared to a lot of programs in the state,” McDevitt said. “A lot of programs are going to be starting, so NDPEP poises Notre Dame to be a leader in the field, both state-wide and beyond so it’s a really exciting time.”

McDevitt commended the collaboration between all three tri-campus schools.

“Holy Cross College is fundamental to this operation, and without Holy Cross, this does not happen,” he said. And we are excited about the possibility of the Saint Mary’s campus getting more involved. Faculty from all three campuses teach out there.”

James finalized by saying the work of the center, “serves Notre Dame’s mission to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice”. He concluded, “That’s part of the mission that we refer to all the time here, and NDPEP bringing together these programs at the center really does everything that sentence says and more”.

Contact Marcelle Couto at mcouto@nd.edu

Pop-Up

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

is an intern for Campus Christmas. She came to the pop-up because she thought this would be a good chance for her to show off the ornaments in person. Taskey said she loves working with Campus Christmas because it combines several of her interests.

“I mean, it’s artistic,” she said. “It’s fun to look at these pretty ornaments. I get to make videos, take pictures and talk to people about it.”

Contact Meghan Lange at mlange03@saintmarys.edu and Rose Androwich at randrowich01@saintmarys.edu

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However, in the decades since Zorn’s collapse, Vacca Vale has become another dying Rust Belt city.

Gunty, a 2015 graduate of Notre Dame and graduate of Mishawaka’s Marian High School, said South Bend greatly inspired Vacca Vale.

Everything from Vacca Vale’s physical map to the fact that its economy was once dominated by a now-defunct car company — a reference to South Bend’s Studebaker history — reflects Gunty’s hometown.

“When I was younger, I never had read anything that was set in a place like my town, and I think when you never see your home reflected back to you, you assume that stories just don’t happen in the post-industrial Midwest, or there’s no market for that,” Gunty said.

She said when she was in college, she realized “these lives, these kinds of moreneglected places in America are worthy of attention” despite their lack of representation in literature.

Gunty added she chose to set “The Rabbit Hutch” in a fictional city so she could incorporate elements of other Rust Belt cities such as Gary, Indiana, Flint, Michigan, and Youngstown, Ohio, into the story.

Unlike South Bend, “there’s no university in this book, so part of Vacca Vale is a thought experiment to imagine if South Bend had not had another source of identity, employment and economic energy to fall back on when Studebaker closed, what would have happened,” Gunty said.

The road to getting published

Wednesday night, director of Notre Dame’s creative writing program Roy Scranton and dean of the College of Arts and Letters Sarah Mustillo introduced Gunty, who was an English major with a concentration in creative writing while at Notre Dame.

Mustillo described Gunty’s return to Notre Dame as a “celebration” and a testament to the strength of the creative writing program.

“Over the past few decades, the program has become one that we are all very proud of, a program that encourages and develops writing about a variety of themes, among them social justice, spirituality, violence, art, suffering, psychology, philosophy and the environment,” Mustillo said.

Scranton explained that, while a student at Notre Dame, Gunty tutored in the Writing Center, wrote for Notre Dame Magazine, documented the history of the Center for Social Concerns and won a poetry award through the English Department.

Gunty said getting to speak at Notre Dame was the “most meaningful event” she has participated in related to “The Rabbit Hutch.” Notre Dame was where she most developed as a writer, she said.

After graduating from Notre Dame, Gunty earned a mas ter’s degree in creative writ ing from New York University. It was while at NYU that she began developing and writing “The Rabbit Hutch,” a process, she said, that took over five years.

While working on the novel, Gunty worked as a research as sistant and a nanny and didn’t always have a lot of time to write. She said she also started writing many novels and sto ries that she never finished or published.

She said these unfinished works represented an impor tant step in the creation of “The Rabbit Hutch” and formed the “subterranean dirt” upon which the novel was built.

“I really credit my experi ences at Notre Dame with re ally emphasizing process over anything else and emphasiz ing the importance of writ ing as an end in and of itself,” Gunty said. “I never assumed that I would be published.”

‘Entrapment and freedom’

The main character of “The Rabbit Hutch,” is 18-year-old Blandine Watkins, a recently aged-out former foster kid and a voracious reader with a special interest in the works of medieval Catholic mystics.

Blandine lives in La Lapinière apartment C4 with three oth er former foster kids, Malik, Jack and Todd.

In addition to Blandine and her roommates, other La Lapinière residents, who the novel also follows, include Joan, the middle-aged editor of an obituary website; Hope, a young mother struggling to adjust to life with a newborn; and an older couple, former Zorn engineer Reggie and his wife Ida.

“I think that these charac ters are allowed to explore lots of different forms of entrapment and freedom,” Gunty said.

She said Blandine is most aware of her entrapment and most trying to free herself from it.

“Various systems … have been harmful to her, capi talism and the fossil fuel in dustry — which is kind of degrading her town, and also the patriarchy, which has made having a female body extremely dangerous for her,” Gunty said.

Because of this, Blandine has a “kind of visceral, animal” reaction to being “trapped in a cage,” Gunty continued.

“For every character, that’s playing out in one way or an other,” she said.

Contact Claire Reid at creid6@nd.edu

sustainability-related events. Pasquerilla East won the cup “by a lot,” Albrinck said.

“Most of our initiatives are ongoing for the rest of the year, so we’ve made a lot of good progress on material waste, on energy use and on dining sus tainability,” Albrinck added.

Albrinck clarified the University’s current recycling program. He said that there is recycling in every dorm, but only recycling put into the blue toters will be collected. Anything else labeled as recy cling collection (except for flat tened cardboard collection in dorms) will be thrown away. His department is working with administration to correctly la bel the waste bins.

After Albrinck updated the senate, Madison Nemeth, the president of Judicial Council, presented campaign rules for the upcoming Student Union elections.

To those interested in run ning for an enumerated po sition in the Student Union, campaigning and petition ing can only occur publicly in a specified time period. The Judicial Council is set to publi cize the timeline for campaign ing within the next two months.

The senate then listened to the nomination of Eliza Smith for co-director of Diversity and Inclusion – Race and Ethnicity, as submitted by student body president Patrick Lee and vice president Sofie Stitt.

Eliza Smith is a senior from Atlanta, Georgia, living in Johnson Family Hall. In ad dition to working with the department of Diversity and Inclusion, Smith is a member of the Department of Gender Relations – LGBTQ+ Advocacy, a Senior Fellow of Johnson Family Hall and a Building Bridges Peer Mentor.

Smith said that her goals for the department include focus ing on the upcoming Walk the Walk Week and reaching out to multicultural clubs.

“We really want to empow er the multicultural clubs on campus and find ways to fund their opportunities …We’re re ally excited to work with groups that haven’t necessarily had the spotlight in a while, like the Native American Student Alliance and the LatinX club,” Smith said.

Before the senate voted, Stitt voiced her support for Smith.

“Eliza is an absolute force. From the first time I talked to her, her energy was contagious . . . The presence she carries is really strong and we are incred ibly excited,” Stitt said.

The senate voted unanimous ly to install Smith as co-director of Diversity and Inclusion.

Stitt then introduced order SO2223-15, which would amend the senate bylaws such that non-Senator voting members can nominate another mem ber of their organization to at tend senate on their behalf. For example, under this order, if the junior class council presi dent had a class during senate meetings, they could nominate

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their vice president to attend and vote for the junior class council.

Because the senate bylaws do not allow for a long-term proxy, non-Senator voting members with scheduling conflicts could not participate fully in senate. With the unanimous passage of this order, that difficulty was eliminated.

Senators also updated their peers on resolutions currently in the works. Eliza Smith de scribed her work on a resolution which would increase LGBTQ+, racial, and ethnic minority rep resentation in the university counseling center counselors. Smith’s department conducted a survey to fully understand how more diverse counselors would impact students.

Kate Brandin, the sena tor from Walsh Hall, said that though this resolution focus es on increasing visibility for LGBTQ+ and minority students, the increased number of coun selors would benefit all Notre Dame students.

Finally, Lauren Taylor, the senator from McGlinn Hall, up dated the senate on her resolu tion focusing on self-scheduling at the UHS.

“UHS has now implement ed a pilot program, which al lows students to self schedule physical appointments though the portal,” Taylor said. Selfscheduling can be accessed on the student health portal.

After closing announcements, the meeting was adjourned.

Contact Katie Muchnick at kmuchnic@nd.edu

Students, alum respond to FTX’s collapse

By MAGGIE EASTLAND Assistant Managing Editor

FTX, the crypto trading platform that headlined Super Bowl commercials last February, filed for bankruptcy Nov. 11 after using $10 billion in customer dollars to fund risky ventures at the affiliated trading firm Alameda Research.

Once hailed as crypto’s savior, FTX’s 30-year-old co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, quickly resigned and could now face criminal charges.

Investors are learning the hard way that markets move based on fundamental value, not personality. Many who were potentially swindled out of their investments, including several FTX employees, still do not know if they will ever see their money again.

In response to FTX’s sudden collapse, crypto markets remain on edge in anticipation of continued fallout. This week, the contagion reached BlockFi, a crypto lender that declared bankruptcy Monday.

Notre Dame alumni and current students are no strangers to the crypto industry, and many matched the shock experienced by the market. But even as the dust settles, most aren’t stepping back from crypto as a whole.

Crypto fund co-founder and ND alum pins FTX collapse on bad actors

Daniel McGlinn ‘18 cofounded FirstWatch Crypto, a small firm helping investors gain exposure to cryptocurrency assets, with fellow Notre Dame graduate John Hrabrick ‘14. The Philadelphia-based duo also seeks to educate investors on the new asset class.

FirstWatch calls FTX’s collapse “an unfortunate story of fear and greed,” according to a recent newsletter. McGlinn says the situation is complex but boils down to BankmanFried funding Alameda with money customers held on the FTX exchange.

“It’s just so in depth, and there are so many levels to the corruption, but really, Alameda Research and FTX were in cahoots with the FTT token. You have this token that was minted from nothing and used as leverage, and it’s a tricky game,” McGlinn said. “What happened is that FTX minted their token FTT and was using that as collateral to borrow and lend.”

FTX took money people deposited into the exchange and loaned it to Alameda. But even digital value can’t be in two places at once.

He says FTX’s collapse was foreshadowed by similar implosions at Terra and Three Arrows Capital.

Before the bankruptcy filing, FTX promoted an image of redemption, bailing out many

struggling crypto players. Just months later, the firm that once rescued floundering crypto companies was in need of its own lifeline.

“I was very surprised, and I think the whole market was, because you had Sam Bankman-Fried portrayed as this savior, this hero — he came up from nothing over three years and built a crypto empire,” McGlinn said. “Most of the market trusted him, thought what he was doing was great for the whole space, so I was very surprised.”

Bankman-Fried’s persona continues to intrigue those who follow crypto.

“There was an aura about him — even when he was pitching, he would be playing video games. It was built up that ‘Oh he’s this brilliant guy,’” McGlinn said. “We’re realizing now because of his connections and how he’s managing money that maybe he’s not so brilliant.”

McGlinn said many media outlets have been more lenient and forgiving to BankmanFried and individuals involved in the collapse than in past financial firm collapses.

“[Bankman-Fried] was not being transparent and he was not being truthful,” he said. “He was actively doing these things to hide what he was doing behind the scenes, such that even the auditors didn’t see some of the backdoor movements that were happening to move funds.”

McGlinn, who graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in mechanical engineering, separates FTX’s collapse from the blockchain technology behind the crypto space. He entered the crypto industry because he was fascinated by blockchain technology and the possibility for people to “be their own bank.” He remains in the industry after the FTX shock for the same reason.

Though he admits months of an uncertain and rocky crypto space, he’s invested for the long term.

“I look at it at a tech level, what is this industry built on? It’s built on blockchain. It’s built on tokenization of assets, and those have nothing to do with centralized entities. We have the ability now to create decentralized entities that have performed perfectly well and have not been affected. It’s these unregulated, centralized, offshore companies that have collapsed,” he said.

FTX didn’t follow crypto’s decentralization thesis, though new avenues to access the world of digital assets will be needed, McGlinn added.

“There need to be centralized entities as bridges between the traditional finance and crypto worlds, or decentralized and centralized finance worlds. And FTX was that. It was an on-ramp. People could access crypto around the world and

trade. Their token enabled people to do that, but what they were doing behind the scenes caused a lot of problems,” he said.

Already, exchanges like coinbase have started showing customers proof of reserves. McGlinn said increased transparency is central to moving forward.

“That trust has been shattered for so many people that have lost money with FTX. How can we rebuild that and have more transparent entities?” he said.

What’s the biggest lesson from FTX? McGlinn says it’s to “be careful with trust” and “keep building.”

“There’s still a lot of promising products out there that will continue the advancement and be the next generation of tools that people can use,” he said.

Sophomore crypto project builder crosses paths with ‘sketchy’ Bahamian investor

Sophomore Kyle Beerbower has been a core team member for a real estate crypto project — Theopetra Labs — for a little over a year.

Last fall, Theopetra Labs was approached by a Bahamian investor, Beerbower said. This venture was similar to Alameda Research, the Bahamian hedge fund that cannibalized FTX customer funds to fund its risky projects, he explained.

“They offered us a very large sum, in the nine-figure range, to do not-very-ethical and arguably illegal things. Obviously we said no. We kind of just shooed them off,” he recalls. “We had an interesting run in with a Bahamian venture. Immediately — red flags. I was looking at Alameda too, and I thought there’s no way this is a green light legal thing.”

Beerbower says he never determined whether the fund that reached out to his project had any connection to Alameda. He says he became extremely wary when investors wanted “inside access” to pull financial levers but would not disclose their identities. His experience suggests that the buy-out behavior FTX engaged in to purchase other crypto firms might not be uncommon.

“If that happened to us and we’re pretty small, you know we’re not like big shots by any means, I’m curious to see how that unfolds over the next few months when all this basically gets made public from the bankruptcy filing,” he said.

Beerbower uses Coinbase, not FTX as a crypto exchange, though he says he was considering opening an account with FTX before the collapse.

“They had an awesome brand. I don’t think anyone saw it coming,” Beerbower echoed many other investors.

“They actually bailed out most competitors back in June.

A lot of lending platforms went insolvent, and they actually bailed them out. Unbeknown to everyone but three people in the world, they were using wire fraud to bail them out,” he said. Like McGlinn, Beerbower sees the collapse as part of crypto’s growing pains.

“Kind of contrarian, but I’m kind of glad it happened. I mean it sucks that they lost basically millions of people’s money,” he said, calling it the largest fraud in history. “My reaction for the industry is it’s just short-term pain for a longterm benefit of wiping out all these overleveraged bad actors. If you look at the history of any technology, every time there’s a new tech, I think the scale of fraud grows in size, and crypto’s just experiencing some version of it.”

Student crypto investors exit or step back from the industry

Robert Batistich, a sophomore from New Jersey who studies finance and economics, began trading a small amount of crypto holdings his senior year of high school. Last March, he sold his crypto assets and exited the space. The FTX collapse has only solidified his decision.

“I just felt like I got in it for the wrong reasons,” he said. “Like I understand it, but I don’t really see a future use with the current landscape of cryptocurrencies.”

Batistich used Coinbase to trade Bitcoin, but he is confident in his choice to exit.

“It just seemed like speculation … and I didn’t feel like I was in it for the right reasons,” he said.

After making that decision early in 2022, Batistich said he was not surprised when the news broke about FTX.

“I was not surprised at all, just with the whole crypto landscape, it’s totally unregulated or barely regulated, and just seeing that, I feel like something like that was bound to happen because a lot of people are just in it to make a quick buck,” he said.

He said crypto’s unregulated nature makes it a prime opportunity for those trying to make money unethically or buy and sell illicit substances.

“It’s just the crypto industry,” he said. “A lot of people aren’t the most ethical … at least one exchange is going to be headed by some jerk like SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried) or whoever, who is just totally making bad decisions.”

The situation has convinced Batistich that regulation will be necessary to prevent another collapse.

“The whole entire point of crypto is that it’s supposed to be unregulated, and it’s sort of liberating, so people don’t have to go through banks. They don’t have to deal with the government, but I just feel like … at this point, something needs

to be done, like government regulation, otherwise people are just going to keep losing their money,” he said.

Even though he no longer feels confident enough to invest in crypto, Batistich said he thinks there is a future for blockchain technology, even if it isn’t as a currency.

“I totally think in the future Blockchain is going to be used in almost everything just because of how it works, the decentralization,” he said.

Similarly, junior Mitchell Brown, who used to mine ethereum in his dorm room in Duncan Hall, says the situation that occurred at FTX will continue to be a problem in the crypto space.

“It’s incredibly inherent because the crypto space is so young,” he said. “It is unregulated and people aren’t monitoring it, so this is going to happen.”

Brown has made quite a few crypto investments, many of which he lost money on.

“So many things are turning out to be scams,” he said. “Despite the thousands I’ve lost I’m still throwing money out for better or for worse — probably for worse.”

His current trading strategy involves creating an algorithm to buy new crypto coins early in their lifespans and ideally, sell them when their price peaks from popularity.

Though Brown didn’t have any holdings in FTX, he says he will be more careful when choosing crypto exchanges in the future. Despite his grim view on the prevalence of crypto scams, Brown still expresses surprise at Bankman-Fried’s actions.

“He overstepped so many bounds, and it’s crazy that it went unchecked for so long,” he said. “It seems so conniving and back-handed.”

Contact Maggie Eastland at meastlan@nd.edu

Rector

she told The Observer that she was excited to serve as a rector.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Notre Dame, so this is a really cool moment for me. I applied there during high school, and I didn’t get in, and I thought that was like the end of the world,” she explained. “I applied [to be a rector] in the spring of my final year in grad school, and when I got the interviews, I was just flying because it was such an out of body experience.”

She had also expressed her mental preparation for the job.

“I’ve been purposely setting my mind to be open-minded because I can’t imagine all of the things that I’m not even aware that I’m going to encounter yet.”

On saying thank you

Hannah Hebda Viewpoint e ditor

We don’t have many formal Thanksgiving tradi tions in the Hebda household. The holiday is pretty standard for us. I love cooking with my mom, watching football with my brothers and my dad and simply spending time with my family. One very basic tradition we do have, however, is one where each of us says something we’re grateful for when we sit down to eat.

each reflection is usually preceded by a horrible, corny joke. This tradition is obviously nothing origi nal or unique, but it reminds me why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. For how much I have to be thankful for, I rarely actually express that gratitude. Thanksgiving may be over, but the holiday is always a good reminder to be thankful for the blessings in our lives. Obviously, showing gratitude is a nice ges ture to those we’re grateful for, but it also is an easy way to improve our lives and relationships.

Research shows grateful people are happier and more likely to maintain strong relationships with others. expressing gratitude reduces stress and energizes us, instead of allowing negative energy to overwhelm our system. even just saying thank you helps us build trust with those around us.

It’s simple to acknowledge someone who holds the door open for you or a friend who helped you with homework. These simple acknowledgements make a difference, but do we ever really take the time to thank our family, friends, professors, class mates or the people who have deeply impacted our lives? This takes more thought and care.

Regardless of what we’re going through, there will always be things we should be grateful for. Human nature says we think about negative events more than positive events. Thanksgiving helps break this natural tendency. Taking even just a few seconds to appreciate one of your friends, or the snow on the Dome or an above-average meal at the dining hall will improve your mood, at least a little bit. And it’s really easy to do this, all we have to do is remind ourselves.

This is why Thanksgiving is an amazing holiday. every November, it provides an opportunity for me to step outside of my little bubble and appreciate everything and everyone around me. my family ac tually forces me to reflect on my life — sandwiched between those horrible jokes — at the dinner table.

Negative feelings will never go away. People will forever be, at times, anxious, jealous, stressed, irritated and tired, among other things. These emotions shouldn’t be ignored, but we can’t let it consume us. While we should always strive to im prove our lives and the lives of those around us, we only have the life we’re given, and it would be foolish to not regularly appreciate the good things we do have.

So, I know this column is coming a little late, but there is never a bad time to express your gratitude and say “thank you” to those who have made a posi tive impact. Thank your friends for having your back and lending a shoulder to cry on. Thank your family for their love and support, as you grew up and now. Thank your classmates and your professors for help ing you through this semester and thank them in a few weeks as finals come to a close. Don’t be afraid to express gratitude. It’s important, now more than ever as the semester ends, to be a source of happi ness and let others know that they are too.

You can contact Hannah at hhebda@nd.edu. The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Reply all: The greatest delusion in American politics

Carlos Basurto eudaemonic Banter

There is something uniquely shallow about the way we have begun engaging in debate and it is particularly vexing for any person in possession of their complete senses.

Go ahead, I dare you to take one look at the political articles that have been published in Viewpoint preced ing and following the midterm elections. In the event that you have been spared of their content, allow me to surmise it all in but one word: static. Absolute gray noise that has somehow deluded many into believing that these are grand statements of ultimate might and authority, of a completely original realization that will tear down reality as we know it. But when all is said and done, naught will take place as a direct result.

On one hand, we have the Republicans being as psy chotic as ever. This comes to the surprise of literally no one — they have been at it for quite a while now. As I watched the debate between the College Democrats and College Republicans, I found myself incredulous at the arguments coming from the conservatives. No, calling them arguments would be an insult to debate rhetoric, for these snide remarks sought only to instill fear, ignored logic and lacked but an ounce of empathy. I refuse to believe that anyone that has full awareness of what these words mean would follow them. Be it ir rational hatred born out of paranoia or an induced igno rance, it is inexcusable. We can stop pretending there is a debate, a point or even a single iota of integrity in these talking points inflated with the most obvious national ism, transphobia and the dislocation of religion to fit the ever-moving goalpost that they disguise as “family or traditional values.” I understand we want to hear out all perspectives, but when the perspective in question literally believes that an entire subsection of humanity is inferior, why — God, why? — do we even choose to hear them out? Democracy does not die on the ballot (by then it has already perished), it dies when we allow a disfig ured sense of tolerance to blind us into believing that these people would play by the rules of the game.

That is not to spare the response from the lessbloodthirsty side of the community. I am baffled at the complete and utter emptiness that these declarations of condemnation have. Seriously? You are talking about morality and safety to those who reject intellectual ism, that either lie about or somehow genuinely believe that children are being taught to hate white people in schools, or that immigrants are inherently violent? You think that they will listen that hate has no place here and go, “Oh dear, oh my, I am so terribly sorry! I shall change my ways now that I have successfully been called out!” Unreasonable people sadly lie out of reach of words.

And of course, because this has happened a million times before and will happen many more until the les son is learned, the Republicans addressed none of the points when replying to these condemnations and just focused on talking of the topic of abortion to gain holy points from the easily impressed of the community, twisting the words to narrow down the response to a singular point and throw around playground insults to the other side. Why? Oh, what a great mystery! Because their beliefs are inherently based on hatred: a hatred that we all know and are fully aware of, but they can’t say out loud because then even their level of doublethink could not shield them from realizing the evil root of their actions. Their supporters won’t realize how ignorant and empty their reply was; they have long since stopped car ing about common sense, rather preferring to reside in a perpetual echo chamber where their contradicting be liefs of justice can coexist. For they certainly can’t in the real world. Of course, my words won’t convince them, either, but we all know that, and we are equally aware of this as we engage in this so-called debate.

For they never sought to have a conversation, they merely wish to shout their hateful rhetoric as loud as they can under a desperate desire to feel grand and

protected, to defend their selfish interests at the cost of everyone else because they have been deluded enough to believe this is an act worth feeling proud about, rather than ashamed. And yet, you do something similar. You virtue-call their every action, tell the world that they are very wrong, by the way, in case you were not aware, and while you are certainly right, what is your end goal? Who are you trying to convince? Certainly not them, and most of the community has picked a side before a single word was exchanged. Of course, something must be said; to allow them to control the narrative would be madness. But these empty words might as well be a drop of water in a forest fire. The Kafkaesque, hyper-bureau cratic methods of debate work against change. They do not help create democracy — they smother it.

A particular shame should befall the elitist, everenlightened centrists that “call out both sides.” How impressive of thee, to not soil your hands with the fools and with all disagree. You are a very intelligent person.

Nay, to take a kindergarten “let’s listen to both sides” approach or that “both sides are the same” is such a childish, narrow-minded perspective that only nurtures a sense of superiority. Truthfully, I am not a fan of a great amount of the Democrats, either; plenty of them have demonstrated their selfish interests that do not reflect the popular will (simply glance at our healthcare or transportation system, at the blind and endless support for pointless wars, at the lack of protections for labor unions and immigrants, at the way lobbying has the final say in many of the governmental decisions, among others). Yet at the very least, they will pretend to care and not actively seek to advocate for the death of me or my friends for the crime of being born — though, of course, they will never say this last part out loud, even if they mean it wholeheartedly. It is not that compli cated to pick the lesser of two evils, believe it or not. I, as many others, am not content with our options, and it is evidence of how broken our democracy is; we merely wait for a better option to become available once our generation starts obtaining positions of power. Yet, in the meantime, centrism is simply not the answer: It is an evasion mechanic, a blindfold to wear. Although I guess being a centrist is still not as embarrassing as being a libertarian.

We must say the quiet part out loud: We must strip this dull and foolish game of its flowery embellishments that contribute naught but aesthetics. It goes without saying that there is clear nuance on both sides — not everyone falls on party lines — but I am tired of pretending; I am tired of playing this surprised character when we all fol low the script that we were given; I am tired of clapping and crying when the most apparent and glaring state ments are spoken; I am tired of blinding myself and all of those around me.

To you all vexing vermin, shame on you. As for the others, congratulations. We are winning: just take one look at the absence of this fabled Red Wave. Ultimately, the hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. They are scared, as they realize they play a los ing game and lash out, but come on. We can do better. Before typing out your argument, before shouting into the void, realize where and how your energy should be spent and stop playing the part of an empty puppet — change the world for the better.

Carlos A. Basurto is a first-year at Notre Dame ready to delve into his philosophy major with the hopes of adding the burden of a Computer Science major on top of that. When not busy you can find him consum ing yet another 3+ hour-long analysis video of a show he has yet to watch or masochistically completing every achievement from a variety of video games. Now with the power to channel his least insane ideas, feel free to talk about them via email at cbasurto@nd.edu (he is, tragically, very fond of speaking further about anything at all).

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

What makes an icon

Reyna Lim The o vershare

There are a few words in my lexicon that have snuck their way into my lingo much to my woeful resignation. They say the way a person speaks tells you everything you need to know about them — I like to think that I can play at some meek facade of depth and intellect when needed, with lengthy words I credit to sAT prep and the odd Latin saying that I picked up from movies. but the merciless grip of the stampede that is social media introduces at least a dozen outlandish pieces of vocabu lary each month.

It starts with a commitment to irony. In mockery of the way the english language is slowly deteriorating, I’ll begin to use words like slay or dubs to hyper-exaggerate a situation. I swear, the innuendo here is that my use of the word comes with the precedent that I am joking. Until I’m not.

one of the most humbling moments I’ve had in my college career occurred when I was visiting a professor for office hours. he very eloquently provided a helpful explanation for my questions, and between my mental scramble to make sense of what he was saying while jotting down every economic theory he had referenced, I had a eureka moment where the problem I had spent the entire day grappling with suddenly made sense. my ex citement got the best of me. “oh,” I blurted out. “based.”

The incredulous look he gave me is permanently en graved in my memory. Just like these words have a way of etching themselves into my daily dialogue, until one

day you find yourself speaking to your highly-achieved, beyond-respectable professor the way you did last night with your friends while planning your Friday evening. To my professor, based is but a common english word usually used with some sort of subject or predicate. movies are based on books. A company is based in chicago. but by some arbitrary, collective judgment made by pop culture and the internet, another word that started off as an ironic joke is now one I unironcically use by habit.

Another word became a topic of debate for my friends and I at dinner the other day — iconic. The word is beat to death and reminds you of that girl on the Internet who rambles on about overhyped manhattan restau rants that serve you subpar food for insulting prices. You’ll roll your eyes every time you hear it. nonetheless, as we all reluctantly agreed, we can’t stop using it.

What concerns and humors me is the fact that while we have decidedly significant beacons of generations past to refer to as iconic, our very own generation seems to offer very few moments of substance in comparison. This is in no way a belittlement of the strides we’ve made in redefining world views. I would sound like a broken record talking about how impressed I am of our genera tion’s conviction and resilience — that’s not what this is about. during our conversation, my friends and I reflect ed on the defining cultural moments that we could most easily recall from the last few years. While we cite The beatles’ genius messages of anti-war in their music or the grace and elegance of Audrey hepburn as iconic, the tokens of “Gen Z culture” are decisively more offbeat. Perhaps I could argue that we actually live in quite

riveting times. scroll through any one of the seemingly endless variety of media platforms or eavesdrop on the next table’s breakfast chats at the diner, and it becomes all too apparent how fascinated our society is with topics that have arguably zero stake in our daily lives: britney spears, freed at last; Lady Gaga’s meat dress; the reception of bennifer 2.0; the oprah/harry/megan in terview. We are, reluctantly or willingly, in the merciless grip of pop culture and the endless spawning of out-oftouch celebrity moments or reality T v shows that surely cost us a handful of brain cells as we sit through each episode.

It’s the irony and hilarity of the idea of our children one day looking back at Lady Gaga’s said meat dress and calling it iconic, or whatever word would have popped up by then to replace it. or maybe the romanticized, impressionable view we have of preceding times will translate directly to the next generations and they’ll start idolizing the pop culture moments we now find so ridiculous. If you asked me, though, nothing beats waking up in the morning to a new York Times headline debunking whether Lea michele can or cannot read — I wouldn’t change that for the world.

Reyna Lim is a sophomore double majoring in fi nance and English. She enjoys writing about her unsolicited opinions, assessing celebrity homes in Architectural Digest videos and collecting lip gloss. Reach out with coffee bean recommendations and ‘80s playlists at slim6@nd.edu.

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

‘Endlich daheim’: Finally home

These words were tattooed on my high school math teacher’s forearm — to serve as a dual reminder of the time he spent living in Germany, but also to be thankful for his return to his personal home in the United states.

For many notre dame students, in an adjacent way, the acceptance letter serves a similar purpose. First comes the notification online. elation. but when that oversized enve lope comes in the mail, it is an even greater feeling. There you have it. Your own physical notre dame acceptance letter. It begets joy — with the subtle reminder that if you want to enroll, the $800 enrollment fee (or however much it is) is due by July 1st (or whenever it is). What then happens to that acceptance letter? Likely, it is tossed into some file somewhere to save for safekeeping. It’s something that you can be proud of — something to show your grandparents. something concrete.

but then, as a first-year at Welcome Weekend, you’ve truly made the jump. You’ve made the necessary deposits, the necessary loan applications to the federal government, to discover, to sallie mae, to whomever. You’ve journeyed far. some of you have had to change planes a few times. but you’ve all come together here at notre dame, during those hot, but somehow extraordinary, last few weeks of August. You check into the dorm for the first time. The rector greets you. The Welcome Weekend staff unloads your belongings with great haste. music blares. And what awaits you as you enter the dorm? Your own, physical, notre dame Id card. To me, this Id card was a reminder that I had truly made it. I was now a notre dame student. This Id card was what I had worked hard for all of high school. This Id card would open all the doors. And as a transfer, I never received one of those physical letters, so this card meant all the more. much more than just a piece of plastic, the card was sym bolic. It was something that I could keep ad infinitum — maybe, something to show to future grandchildren. not to mention, this card is helpful. It is used for so many things. If I want to go for a stroll in solitude — to take a walk by the lake without feeling my phone in my pocket buzz ing — I can do so. I can pray at the Grotto, just myself and the Lord, without Google/Apple/whomever calculating the number of steps I took, or my heart rate, or my location or whatever else they hope to know about me.

This card is incredibly useful. And yet, the student gov ernment administration is putting its future in jeopardy. The student government lists on their progress tracker a priority to create mobile Id cards, presumably for the bet terment of student life. I argue that this plan has a great number of issues with it, and that it should only proceed if there is assurance that physical Ids will permanently remain.

do not get me wrong. I’m in favor of mobile Id cards. I have no problems with the creation of mobile Ids. however — and call me a cynic — but I also see problems with the arrival of mobile Ids. I fear the advent of mobile Id cards will be a great excuse to eliminate the physical ones. Gone. A brief reason would be provided —similar to the one for mobile ticketing, I’d imagine (if someone wants to explain to me how mobile ticketing is safer and more contactless than physical tickets, then by all means do so. I’m pretty sure you can hold up a ticket to a barcode scanner without another person touching it). even if physical Id cards are still an option, there’ll surely be more bureaucratic hurdles for students who want them. I highly doubt the process of receiving a physical Id will be as simple as it is now.

When I was at my former institution, they had physical Ids. but since I left, they made the decision to go to mobile Ids. I talked with my friend John back east. speaking on the new physical Ids, he remarked, “It’s been an absolute train wreck.” my old school now has a chart on their website which details which students are, and which students are not, eligible for a physical Id doesn’t the existence of such a chart scream absurdity?

There are my reasons, and there are even greater rea sons. Going to mobile Ids comes with the dangerous as sumption that everyone has the latest technology which would support a digital Id. Until I bought a new phone in August, I wouldn’t have had the capabilities for a mobile Id on my phone. I had my prior phone for 7 years, which did not have nFc capabilities. It wouldn’t work at the chick-fil-A. I’m not sure what my fellow stanford man Josh haskell would do.

Further, the University policy currently states: “All students must maintain and carry a current campus Id card for the entire period that they are affiliated with the

University of notre dame.” so, unless the policy changes to “all students must carry with them a smartphone that is charged at all times,” I don’t see how this is possible. The idea that students would now have to carry their phones with them everywhere is unacceptable. I see no reason why I should have to bring my phone to mass. or to the Grotto. or class. but that would be the case if physical Ids were liquidated.

And phones die, too. Yes, maybe the nFc capabilities might still let you into the dorm, depending on how long the phone has been dead. but you still can’t show the pic ture of your Id when the phone invariably dies. I can only imagine the plethora of problems for ndPd

The creation of mobile Ids only encourages more phone use. For a University that seeks to grow students in knowl edge and wisdom, the student government’s policy actively contradicts this goal. We all know that the ability to engage in deep critical thinking has gone down the gurgler since “smart” phones came into existence.

And may I ask: What problem does the creation of mo bile Ids solve? I haven’t heard anyone complaining of the burden of carrying a plastic card around. Yes, people might lose them from time to time, but the people who lose their Id cards constantly are the same people who break their phone 5 times a year. Physical Id cards work just fine. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

my letter in no way seeks to attack the student govern ment or notre dame. rather, I want the student govern ment to ensure that if they pursue mobile Ids, physical Ids remain an option. students should get a choice — and the choice should be equal, too. no gradual phase out of physi cal Ids. no fees for physical Id cards, either. If a student wants a physical Id, it should be just as easy as the process for a mobile Id. If it comes down to only mobile Ids or only physical Ids, I encourage the University administration to go with that is tried and true. Go with the concrete. Please, keep physical Ids for future generations of notre dame stu dents. someday you’ll pull open that junk drawer, discover that old picture of yourself at notre dame and you’ll smile.

LeTTer TO THe ediTOr

An aspie’s gratitude

Jack Griffiths neurod ivergence

Head spectrum is the cognitive carnival. Your neurons have soared off the rails. So hold on to your everything, ladies and gentlemen. Behold the hidden wonder of the world and watch as thoughts bounce on all the cranium walls.

Getting the opportunity to (metaphorically) spill ink about my per sonal experiences and about neurodivergence more broadly has been an immense pleasure. For most of my experience at notre dame, I generally didn’t tell anyone I was autistic. This wasn’t necessarily be cause I felt like I would be discriminated against for doing so. I simply thought that there was no need to, that I could just maintain course, that disclosing my neurodivergence would just make my relationships confusing or complicated. In essence, I didn’t talk about it because I didn’t feel like I needed to talk about it.

Head spectrum is, “Oh shoot I said that thing to that person and tried to say that thing but what if they thought I meant that other thing and what if I become a thing and not a person but just a thing or an other that tries to pass as a person second third fourth-guessing in case the mask has cracks.” Head spectrum is passing passerby and pondering if pass ing puts your personhood in some cell submerged beneath the concrete of cultural acceptance.

Writing the column “neurodivergence” has effectively removed the barrier that exists between my inner self and the world around me, and I firmly believe this is for the better. because I’ve thoroughly de scribed my thoughts, struggles, successes and hopes in my articles, I don’t have to constantly decide whether to tell or not tell a notre dame friend about being on the spectrum. becoming more open about my neurodivergence has also led to many insightful conversations with peers who I previously never knew where also neurodivergent. In sum, this column has fundamentally changed me.

Thus, I thought it would be appropriate to give thanks to all who have made this possible.

To hannah and the rest of the v iewpoint staff at The observer: Thank you for giving me the chance to write paragraphs upon para graphs about the complicated, quirky world of neurodivergence.

To all the people who emailed me kind comments after the publica tion of some of my articles: Thank you for reminding me that none of us are alone in navigating an often-uncooperative society with oftenuncooperative institutions.

To my parents: Thank you for encouraging me in my decision to write this column and for raising me with the moral that I should ac cept all that I am.

To my sister: Thank you for making me smile every time you pointed out one of my articles and said, “That’s my brother!”

To the Writing center: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to travel and meet other neurodivergent individuals with similar aca demic interests, giving me the chance to discuss the concepts I’ve written about with other like-minded people.

To my friends from the Lit choir: Thank you for being one of the first audiences for my columns, and thank you for helping me develop a great soundtrack to ease my nerves as I write.

To notre dame: Thank you for providing me with a fulfilling place where I have learned to navigate some of the most complex social in teractions I’ve ever had. While there are still occasional difficulties, you’ve made me confident enough to find myself within the communi ties I’ve become engaged with.

To all my readers: Thank you for listening to my rants, secrets, poetic tangents and investigations. I hope that my column has been a means for you to dig deeper into the topic of neurdivergence, to recognize that there are myriad neurodivergent people who you’ll encounter in your daily life and that all of them deserve to have their disabilities, differ ences, challenges, strengths and quirks validated rather than ignored or chastised.

Head spectrum is grabbing something from the basket on your desk to tail around as you think about entering a brave new world. Head spec trum is the total acceptance of occasionally ordered chaos. Head spec trum is realizing the universal difference of cognitive composition. Head spectrum is me, but not just me.

Jack Griffiths is a senior at Notre Dame majoring in English with a supplementary major in global affairs. His areas of interest include neurodivergence, migration and the intersections between faith and public policy. When he’s not writing, you can find him singing with the Liturgical Choir, walking around the lakes or playing Super Smash Bros with folks in his dorm. He can be reached at jgriff22@nd.edu.

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

Will Kevin mccarthy be speaker of the house next year?

Blake Ziegler news with Zig

despite pre-election predictions of a “red wave” that didn’t manifest at the polls, republicans will emerge from the midterms with only a slight majority in the house of representatives. based on the latest reports, it appears that the G oP will only enjoy a 5-seat majority in the house. President biden joins the list of exceptions to the his toric rule that a president’s first midterm election is a disaster. With an average seat loss of 28 since World War II and 45 for the last 4 democratic presidents, the president’s situation is much more positive than some anticipated.

still, even with a relatively good outcome, biden and democrats should expect gridlock as a republican-controlled house will stone wall their agenda. even with a slim majority, republicans can disrupt the democrats’ goals by stalling legislation, conducting hearings and more. one major factor in how a G oP majority will affect the biden administration is the leadership on both sides of the aisle. on the democratic side, we’re already seeing major departures as speaker nancy Pelosi ( d c A) and majority Leader steny hoyer ( d md) announced they would not seek leadership positions in the coming term. With that, a new generation of democratic leaders will usher in an era of new leadership for the democratic caucus.

A key question is whether the notably toxic relationship between m inority Leader Kevin mccarthy ( r c A) and Pelosi will spill over into the new democratic torchbear ers. That assumes, though, that mccarthy will himself remain in leadership. h is cau cus did vote to endorse him as speaker of the house, the most powerful position in the chamber. however, with a vote tally of 188-31 and a challenge from protest can didate representative Andy biggs ( r-AZ), mccarthy’s path to the speakership is any thing but certain.

most people likely think that you need at least 218 votes, or half of the chamber, to be elected speaker. however, the process is slightly more nuanced. It’s true that you need a majority of votes for the speakership, but that majority is based only on the num ber of votes cast “for a person by name.” This means that only votes for specific individu als are considered in the calculations. If a representative doesn’t vote or simply votes “present,” their vote doesn’t go towards the majority necessary to be speaker. For ex ample, if 8 of the 435 representatives don’t vote for an actual person (which happened in 2021), then you actually need 214 votes for the speakership.

With these rules in mind, the concern for mccarthy isn’t that he failed to receive 218 votes among his party members. There’s a precedent for not receiving a majority in your conference but still being elected speaker in the official house vote. In 2015, former speaker Paul ryan ( r-WI) was nomi nated with 200 votes before garnering 236 votes on the house floor. In 2019, speaker Pelosi earned 203 votes in the democratic caucus’s internal vote that expanded to 220

on the house floor. The issue for mccarthy, though, is that he doesn’t enjoy the substan tial majorities that ryan and Pelosi had for their elections.

Assuming every representative votes for an individual, mccarthy can only af ford to lose 4 votes before his speakership chances are in jeopardy. Unfortunately for him, 5 republican representatives have already publicly announced they won’t be voting for mccarthy: biggs, matt Gaetz ( r-FL), bob Good ( r vA), ralph norman ( r sc ), and matt rosendale ( r m T). even worse, an additional 15 republicans have voiced privately that they won’t vote for the current republican leader. on that basis alone, mccarthy can’t be speaker. If these 20 republicans don’t vote or vote “pres ent,” mccarthy would need 208 votes to be speaker, which is 6 less than if the other 202 republicans voted for him.

If mccarthy can’t secure his speakership prior to the official vote in January, it would throw the house into turmoil. It’d be the first time since 1923 that a vote for speaker con sisted of multiple ballots. o ver the course of two days and nine ballots, then-speaker Frederick Gillett ( r m A) struck a deal with Progressive republicans to secure his reelection as speaker. A similar situation could be repeated in 2023. members of the house Freedom caucus have expressed interest in changing house rules and procedures in exchange for their support of mccarthy.

An unlikely, although possible, scenario is that democrats manage to elect their own nominee for speaker despite a G oP major ity. With 213 seats, democrats only need 11 republicans to abstain from voting before they have enough votes themselves to elect a speaker. even some moderate republicans could break from the party line and join the democrats. mccarthy has recently warned about this potential outcome as a way to galvanize votes among republicans.

even if mccarthy becomes speaker, as top republicans project despite the mathemati cal hurdles in the way, the question remains whether he can control the republican caucus. With a narrow majority and a sub stantial number of representatives spewing undemocratic, extremist beliefs such as elec tion denial and conspiracy theories, it’s un clear if mccarthy can keep his party focused on a clear agenda. A mccarthy speakership would be defined by constantly balancing the Trump and moderate wings of his roster. We won’t know who the speaker will be until January when the new congress is in session. Until then, though, we can rest as sured that the race for speaker will be as interesting as it is uncertain.

Blake Ziegler is a senior at Notre Dame studying political science, philosophy and constitutional studies. He enjoys writing about Judaism, the good life, pressing politi cal issues and more. Outside of The Observer, Blake serves as president of the Jewish Club and a teaching assistant for God and the Good Life. He can be reached at NewsWithZig on Twitter or bziegler@nd.edu.

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

By ANDY OTTONE Scene Writer

As the sun starts setting later and the wind gets colder, we all need a sunny, summer escape. “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” centers on private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig; “Casino Royale,” “No Time to Die”), returning from the film “Knives Out.” Blanc finds him self on a private island getaway with a billionaire and his influential, famous friends. The only issue? Benoit was never meant to show up. When people start turning up dead, the investigation begins.

I’m not going to touch upon the plot much, because I feel that the best way to go into this movie is blind, without knowing much at all about what will happen. I will talk about “Knives Out,” though. “Glass Onion” is a sequel to the 2019 mystery-comedy “Knives Out,” with writer/director Rian Johnson returning. While the last film was a traditional theatrical film release, “Glass Onion” is a bit more complicated. After the suc cess of “Knives Out,” the rights for two sequels were quickly bought by Netflix. Netflix had a company first with “Glass Onion,” as they teamed with movie the ater chains Regal, AMC and Cinemark to distribute the movie for one week only, a month before the movie’s release on Netflix. I was fortunate enough to see this “sneak preview,” but I cannot wait for the wide release in December to watch the film again.

The film is driven by a smart, witty script bolstered by a great cast that deliver the comedy and tension in equal measures, with standouts being Craig’s Benoit Blanc, the detective investigating the mystery played by Janelle Monáe (“Hidden Figures”) as Cassandra Brand, a scorned former business partner of the getaway’s benefactor, and Kate Hudson’s (“Almost Famous”) Birdie Jay, a former su permodel and current businesswoman who drives some of the film’s best comedic moments. This is just scratch ing the surface of the cast, with Edward Norton (“Fight Club”), Kathryn Hahn (“Parks and Recreation”), Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) and Dave Bautista (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) rounding out the cast. With ensemble films, sometimes characters fall by the wayside. “Glass Onion” doesn’t have this problem, as every actor brings some thing to the table and makes the film stronger as a whole.

The movie is hilarious, but that doesn’t mean it’s a parody of the murder-mystery genre. The movie brings a story filled with twists and shocking reveals that gives the film more complexity than one may initially think. “Knives Out” established traditions that carry over into “Glass Onion,” and I’m sure they will appear in the third film as well: a large, comedic ensemble cast; someone involved in the murder that he ropes into being his as sistant; and lastly, a great soundtrack. The music in the first film drew from rock bands ranging from The Rolling Stones, Gordon Lightfoot and Roxy Music. “Glass Onion” has two prominent musicians utilized throughout the

film: the music of David Bowie and the Beatles, with the film even deriving its title from the Beatles’ song of the same name. The movie features other musicians though, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Bee Gees both having songs in the film.

“Knives Out” is one of my favorite movies, and “Glass Onion” did not disappoint as a sequel. But that’s the thing. It has the same director, a returning star and char acter and a new murder. But is it really a sequel? The events of “Knives Out” are never acknowledged, with only a passing reference to one of the film’s elements. You don’t have to watch “Knives Out” to appreciate “Glass Onion.” If you’re a fan of the first film, I’m sure you’ll love “Glass Onion.” If you haven’t seen it? I’m still confident you’ll have a blast.

“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” comes out on Netflix Dec. 23, 2022.

Contact Andy Ottone at aottone@nd.edu

“Glass Onion”

Starring:

If

By ROSE ANDROWICH Scene Writer

On Nov. 28, the “Fashion Ethics” class at Saint Mary’s showed a movie titled “The True Cost,” which showcases the negative impacts of fast fashion in a number of ways. The countries that are most affected by the industry are developing countries who fall victim to the unethical practices of corporations.

The movie had individual storylines all connecting to a larger theme. The story of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapsing illustrates the greed of these corpora tions. The voices of the workers’ concerns were ignored and they were forced to come into work, leading to the deaths of more than 1,000 individuals. This tragic event shows how far the businesses were willing to go in order to ensure the lowest manufacturing cost possible.

The workers in Bangladeshi garment factories are some of the lowest paid in the world. According to The Borgen Project, these workers make an estimated $25 to $75 each month. The low pay is often defended by corpo rations who say the workers make more money than they could at other places.

The documentary responds to their statement by showing fashion designers who are changing the stan dards of the fashion industry. The stories highlighted the fashion designers who advocated for fair-trade prod ucts, which ensures that products are made to promote

sustainability and in safe working conditions.

The idea of fair-trade applies to everyone who contrib utes to the fashion industry. The documentary focused on rights for the garment workers but additionally for the farmers. Larhea Pepper, a Texas farmer, ended up in this profession because it was what her family did. Her hus band Terry grew up on a chemically intensive farm, and Terry’s father died from leukemia at the age of 57. Terry was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor at 48 and passed away two years later. Larhea advocated for the importance of organic farming due to the loss of her hus band. She calls for a change in the agriculture industry because the switch to genetically modified seeds and further use of herbicides have unknown impacts. These new chemical processes do not have a lot of testing.

The focus of this documentary was expansive, and considering the two years director Andrew Morgan spent creating this film, it makes sense. Still, narrowing the fo cus would have improved this movie.

The Bangladeshi garment workers’ stories were heartwrenching to watch. The impact of their words and ex periences enlightens viewers on how corporations are treating these workers. Often, the rampant consumerism of the West is not our price to pay, but developing coun tries showcase the inequality of fast fashion.

The clothes that are donated to charity are, most of ten, not sold in the stores but instead sent off to develop ing countries. There is a certain unawareness in most

consumers of how they are manipulated into buying these products, because the marketing industry uses the struggles people face as a tool.

In contrast to necessities such as housing and cars, the fast fashion industry produces cheap products. However, the marketing strategy for them is just one aspect of our culture that makes fast fashion so widespread. It is also the media we consume, especially on platforms such as YouTube. The rise of clothing hauls as a popular form of content on social media further empowers fast fashion companies. The scene that struck me the most was the contrast of the suffering faced in Bangladesh compared with the violence of Black Friday sales.

It raised the question of why we are allowing this to continue. Why are we allowing these people to be mis treated for cheap prices?

Contact Rose at randrowich01@saintmarys.edu

“The True Cost”

Director: Andrew Morgan

Starring: Livia Giuggioli, Stella McCartney, Vandana Shiva

If you liked: “Toxic Sludge is Good for You”

Director: Rian Johnson

Daniel Craig, Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton

you liked: “Knives Out,” “Only Murders in the Building”

‘DUM-DE, WENT MY TROCHAIC HEART’ AFTER WATCHING ‘MY POLICEMAN’

the majority of it. The three characters are intertwined in a hopeless love triangle where Marion is unaware or purposely shielding her eyes to the obvious truth that her husband Tom is gay.

In the beginning, they almost form a trio of best friends, al

foreboded the shifting tides of their ideals.

The cinematography is sublime and includes a light beige filter which made it look as if it was a fiction-like fantasy love story — an illusion waiting to be shattered by the harsh real ity of the “tides.” Lighting plays an important role, too – when

vate, just shows how he’s willing to move outside his comfort zone and explore his cinematic expertise. This entire film was evidently a labour of love, commitment and hard work that surpassed any expectations that the viewer could hold.

HOW DOES ARCTIC MONKEYS’ ‘THE CAR’ FARE AFTER A MONTH’S JOURNEY?

in the albums’ lyrical components and structures.

By ANNA FALK Scene Writer

Arctic Monkeys is one of the most well-loved rock bands of the 21st century. Hailing from Sheffield, England, this quar tet has reached international fame over the past two decades. They’ve garnered a loyal fan base, put out albums relatively consistently and have created high expectations for the qual ity of their work — so how does “The Car” measure up?

Released on Oct. 21, “The Car” is Arctic Monkeys’ seventh studio album. Since the band’s massive success with “AM” in 2013, they’ve had a change in the direction of their music, and this album reflects that. Many long-time fans were displeased with the successor to “AM,” “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino,” due to major alterations in the overall sound that character ized the band in years prior.

While many aspects of their music shifted, two of the most notable changes are frontman Alex Turner’s vocal style and drummer Matt Helders’ overall role.

Turner’s voice over the time between “AM” and “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” matured drastically, no longer alluring and suave but rather aggressive and undisci plined. In “The Car,” his voice retains a bit of its aggression, but it sounds more soothing and delicate, reflecting the shift

Helders’ involvement is a different ordeal. Since the band’s origins, they have had a heavy metal influence, from percus sive elements — specifically, the drums. With “Tranquility Base,” it seemed that Helders barely played anything. This is similarly true with “The Car,” but he appears to regain a bit of playing time, not to mention that he photographed the pic ture for the cover of the LP.

Overall, I think the album is solid. Personally, it takes me a long time to decide if I actually enjoy new music released by my favorite artists, and after a month of listening, I’ve come to my conclusion.

The lyrical depth and complexity echoes that of “Humbug,” “Tranquility Base” and one of the albums from Turner’s side project — The Last Shadow Puppets — titled “Everything You’ve Come To Expect.” One aspect of this album that I find unique compared to the others is its self-reflective nature. The band has covered a range of topics over the years, but Turner has very rarely made a retrospective of his work in Arctic Monkeys.

Another thing I enjoy about the lyrics is their balance of seriousness and emotional depth with humor. Despite be ing able to compose music and write lyrics that can be utterly gut-wrenching and tear-jerking, they’ve managed to make

“ur mom” jokes and talk of Lego napoleon movies sound eloquent.

Speaking of such, Arctic Monkeys have continued to use cinema to inspire their work. This album in particular draws from popular film scores and cinematic themes, though a few of their past works have done a similar thing.

My criticisms are few but, I believe, significant. The whole album feels sleepy. There are not many upbeat songs, and the whole album takes on a similar tone. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s definitely not something you can enjoy well unless you set aside time to intently listen.

I also find that their new sound has taken quite a bit to get used to. I’ve been a fan for a while, and I appreciate and enjoy their new music — especially since it means they’re making what they actually want to make rather than trying to con form to certain expectations. For new and old fans alike, this can be challenging.

Regardless of these criticisms, I think this is one of Arctic Monkeys’ most artistic and meaningful pieces of work, and it signals great things ahead. I hope that they continue to hone their divergence from the mainstream and their sonic experimentation.

Contact Anna Falk at afalk@nd.edu

Happy Birthday: verification will be necessary this year if you want to keep everything in order. Don’t rely on secondhand information or anyone who shows signs of inconsistency. keep your eye on your target and your mind on your next move. use the element of surprise; don’t share your plan until you are in the process of launching it into the universe. Pay attention. your numbers are 9, 16, 21, 28, 35, 42, 48.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): visit someone who feeds your mind with possibilities and prepares you to strive to achieve your dreams, hopes and wishes. Changing your surroundings will spark your imagination and connect you with like-minded people. romance is on the rise.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Take care of financial, medical or contractual matters yourself. Don’t share sensitive information or secrets. finish what you start, and move on to something that can add to your qualifications or help you head in a lucrative direction. Avoid a risky situation.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Do what most appeals to you. Put your energy into personal gain, not something that will benefit someone else. use intelligence and facts to keep others from taking over or making you look incompetent. Don’t trust others’ alleged truthfulness.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): use your intuition, skills and talents to get ahead. Don’t expect everyone to be on your side. Prepare to teach anyone who steps out of line a lesson. Stay in the forefront and command attention. A financial opportunity looks promising.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): you can take part, but don’t say yes to something you cannot afford. Make your position clear, what you are willing to do known and how you intend to deal with opposition obvious. Set standards, live by them and make an impression.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): you’ll have to be on guard if you want to outmaneuver the competition. Problems will surface at home if you make changes without getting approval first. Don’t leave anything to chance or up to someone else. A change of scenery will be enlightening.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Put your time and energy into something exciting and challenging. you will rise to the occasion and surpass your expectations. let your mind and body take over, and you’ll discover you have the right of way. Benefits will follow.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Take the path most inviting. Explore new ways to use your skills and knowledge to keep up with the times and stay on top of your game. Embrace change, but don’t disrupt meaningful relationships in the process. Patience will pay off.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “hurry up and wait” will be how your day unfolds. Too many variables and people are interfering to give you a clear vision of what’s coming. use your intelligence and discipline to ensure you finish what you start. Make health a priority.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): leave nothing to chance. If you aren’t specific about your needs or desires, you aren’t likely to have them fulfilled. Don’t be coy; share your thoughts, determine who agrees with you and proceed to make a transformation that improves your life.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): A change that causes uncertainty is best dealt with quickly before situations run amok. use your charm and innovative mind to win favors and ensure that no one takes advantage of you or your generosity. If you love someone, share your feelings.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Back down and rethink your strategy, and you’ll find a way to remain on everyone’s good side. how you handle matters at home and work will determine your popularity. Don’t fuss when understanding, patience and change are required.

Birthday Baby: you are generous, ambitious and enthusiastic. you are unique and influential.

Jumble | DAvID hOyT AND JEff kNurEk

sudoku | ThE MEPhAM grOuP

By J.J. POST sports Writer

n otre d ame women’s bas ketball dropped an instant classic on Thursday night, falling to m aryland 74-72 at Purcell Pavillion.

In a game where it felt like the team holding the ball when the buzzer sounded would get the last word, it was d iamond m iller who provid ed the marquee moment for m aryland. The senior guard got the ball with 15 seconds left and promptly went to work. e ventually, she found her shot, nailing a perfectly timed buzzer-beater to walk the game off for the Terrapins.

Though m iller’s dagger capped the game off, the 39plus minutes that preceded it lived up to the hype of a top20 clash. The two teams trad ed blows from the first tip. n either side ever led the game by more than eight points.

s onia c itron led the way for the Irish. The sophomore combo guard continually beat the m aryland defense both in the paint and from deep. c itron finished with a team-high in both points and rebounds, posting 24 and 10, respectively.

n otre d ame was hampered by the limited use of star sophomore point guard o livia m iles, who was hampered by foul trouble early on and only played 25 minutes. m iles

Irish fall on buzzer-beater to No. 20 Maryland

made her impact in the time she was on the court, though. s he managed 14 points, in cluding a late and-one layup in transition to give the Irish a brief lead. m iles also reg istered a game-high seven assists.

With m iles rotating in and out of the lineup, n otre d ame had to turn to other players to hang around. o ne such player was freshman guard KK b ransford, who played a season-high 26 minutes. And while b ransford didn’t ex plode off the stat sheet with eight points and a pair of rebounds, the rookie guard looked composed in the big gest game she’s played so far in an Irish uniform.

After the game, n otre d ame head coach n iele Ivey praised b ransford for rising to the occasion with her minutes increased.

“ h eading into halftime, I thought we found her,” Ivey said. “ s he made some big buckets … s he really gave us a boost. s he’s been growing, every game looking a little bit more confident, looking a little bit more comfortable with what we’re doing. I’m so pleased with what she’s given us — defensively, she’s get ting deflections, got one in the backcourt today. I can’t say enough about what she’s given, bringing a great spark off the bench on offense and defense.”

For m aryland, it was the backcourt duo of m iller and s hyanne s ellers that led the way throughout. s ellers’ 10 first-quarter points paced the Terrapins early on. Those 10 points represented over 60% of m aryland’s total scor ing in the first frame. b ut as the Irish keyed in more on s ellers, m iller took over. The senior lit up the stat sheet, with her 31 points and 12 re bounds both representing game highs. After the game, m aryland

head coach b renda Frese said m iller’s game-breaking performance was simply the type of moment she expects from her senior.

“We knew the ball was go ing to go to d iamond,” Frese said. “ s he had the hot hand … And she executed to per fection. That’s what your All-American, your senior [does]. I have so much trust in d iamond, she wants to make those plays in the big moment.”

s ellers said after the game

even though the defense likely knew where the gamewinning play was going, she still had faith in m iller to find the winner.

“I have a lot of confidence in d iamond,” said s ellers. “ d iamond hits that [shot] all the time in practice … e ven if you know it’s probably go ing to d iamond … You have a less than 5% chance of stop ping her.”

Contact J.J. Post at jpost2nd.edu

Moller: It’s time to give the Vikings the respect they deserve

By NATE MOLLER s enior s ports Writer

With last week’s Thanksgiving victory over the n ew e ngland Patriots, the m innesota v ikings cur rently hold an impressive 9-2 record. They hold a stag gering five-game lead over the d etroit Lions in the n F c n orth. d espite the v ikings’ impressive record and domi nance in the n F c n orth, the v ikings have received very little respect as a true con tender for the s uper b owl.

In fact, in es P n ’s pow er rankings this week, the v ikings found themselves ranked sixth behind three teams with three losses. This included the b uffalo b ills and m iami d olphins, whom the v ikings have beat en on the road this season. Additionally, the article set a realistic prediction for the

v ikings as splitting their final six games of the season. Four of the five teams ranked above them had a s uper b owl trip as their realistic prediction.

I know the v ikings have been made fun of all year for their close victories. b ut at the end of the day, a 9-2 re cord has to mean something regardless of the path to it. I will concede that the blow out losses to the e agles and c owboys were embarrass ing, to say the least. b ut the v ikings’ ability to find a way to win close games should overshadow these losses.

It’s not like the v ikings haven’t faced a difficult schedule, either. In fact, of the five teams ranked ahead of the v ikings in this week’s es P n power rankings (Kansas c ity, Philadelphia, b uffalo, d allas and m iami), only the b ills and c owboys have a stronger strength of schedule

than the v ikings. The v ikings also have a stronger strength of victory than every team ahead of them except those two.

I’ve been saying this for the last couple of weeks, and I will say it again: The v ikings need to be considered as a se rious contender for the s uper b owl. And v ikings fans must understand, with a record this good, anything less than a s uper b owl appearance is a disappointment. While I will admit that the c hiefs, e agles and c owboys are more se rious contenders than the v ikings at the moment, the v ikings have shown that they have the tools to be consid ered one of the n FL’s best teams, as well.

To really emphasize my point that the v ikings are a s uper b owl contender, let’s look back to the v ikings’ stunning 33-30 overtime win in b uffalo a couple of weeks ago. Although the game was coined as “the game of the year” because of the stun ning back-and-forth ending, the v ikings showed that they could step up in a harsh road environment and still get a victory.

Trailing 27-10 with less than two minutes in the third quarter, the v ikings could have given up. b ut instead, a d alvin c ook 81-yard run put the v ikings right back in the game. After struggling to contain Josh Allen and the b uffalo offense all day, the

v ikings’ defense stiffened up at the right time in the game, which allowed m innesota to edge closer at the end of the fourth quarter.

Yes, they ultimately re ceived some help with Josh Allen’s fumble on the goal line with under a minute left to take the lead. b ut that doesn’t diminish the v ikings’ stun ning comeback in any way. Against all odds, the v ikings were able to battle back and ultimately win a high-stakes game against a great football team in overtime. If that isn’t a s uper b owl-worthy per formance, then I don’t know what is.

That whole game, the

SportS Authority

MARY VOTAVA | The Observer

Irish sophomore guard Sonia Citron handles the ball in Wednesday’s game against then-No. 20 Maryland Terrapins. Citron led Notre Dame in scoring and rebounding on the night with 24 and 10, respectively.

Irish dominate Spartans, earn signature win

By LIAM COOLICAN a ssociate sports e ditor

notre dame men’s basket ball earned a signature win Wednesday night against no. 20 michigan state. behind a domi nant first half from graduate stu dent guard cormac ryan and a suffocating defensive perfor mance, the irish dispatched the spartans 70-52 in front of a rau cous home crowd.

michigan state brought a large contingent of fans with them from east Lansing. They made their presence known early, with their signature “Go Green, Go White” chant ringing out through Purcell Pavilion as the spartans lineup was introduced. but once the game began, they were quick ly drowned out by the boister ous irish fans, which included a packed student section despite the late weeknight tipoff.

“The atmosphere was amaz ing,” freshman guard JJ starling said. “We just fed off of it, we just created our own energy off of that … They helped us win that game.”

“When you have a great crowd and everybody comes, and our students especially, you want to deliver for them,” head coach mike brey said. “hopefully that keeps them coming back.”

after michigan state opened the scoring, notre dame went on a 10-0 run which spanned nearly five minutes, and never looked back. ryan hit a three to cap off the run, which would be the first of many. he scored 20 first-half points on 7-8 shooting, including 5-5 from beyond the arc.

“i think our focus was really good, i think our energy was re ally good and it’s a big game, guys rise to the occasion,” ryan said.

“We wanted it bad, we know how

much this means for our tourna ment aspirations.”

“i’ve got the utmost respect for this guy,” head coach mike brey said of ryan. “he’s the voice, he sets the tone, he knows this is the one to get us going.”

at one point, he went on a per sonal 8-0 run, which gave the irish their largest lead of the night (23 points) and sent Purcell Pavilion into a frenzy. not only was he the star of the game offensively, but he also limited michigan state star Tyson Walker to a rough 4-13 shooting night, all while playing the entirety of the contest.

“i love guarding great players,” ryan said. “he’s a great scorer, so i always like to do my part and make their night hard,” adding that the entire team came togeth er to shut down the spartans.

“We really connected as five. defense is such a team assign ment,” he said. “i think we really put it together tonight.”

The win comes just five days after notre dame was held to just 2-17 from beyond the arc in a loss to st. bonaventure on Long island. in this game, by contrast, the irish knocked down eight of their 13 attempts in the first half alone, while holding the spartans to just four makes all game.

“i think we were due for one,” ryan said. “We have guys who are too good at playing the right way, and i think we were still trying to find ourselves, and we picked a good night to figure it out.”

notre dame led by as many as 23 points in the first half and entered the locker room holding an insurmountable 42-24 lead.

michigan state battled back sev eral times in the second half, at one point cutting the lead to 14. but the outcome was never truly in doubt.

Graduate student forward nate Laszewski highlighted a 9-0 run midway through the second frame with a vicious slam as he found himself unguarded on a cut to the basket. That run, which put the irish up by 23 points with just over six minutes to play, proved to be the dagger.

Laszewski, who came in aver aging a team-leading 18.2 points per game, took a back seat offen sively Wednesday, scoring just nine points. but he was instru mental in anchoring an irish de fense that held the spartans to a season-low offensive output. starling added nine of his 14

points in the second half, and also showcased his impressive defensive potential. he skied to reject a michigan state shot late in the game, showing off the ath leticism that helped him become the highest-rated recruit to sign with the irish in the 247 sports era.

notre dame will look to build on the win with conference play set to begin. syracuse visits south bend on saturday to open acc play. That game tips off at noon and will be broadcast on esPn 2.

Contact Liam Coolican at lcoolica@nd.edu

v ikings also relied heavily on their best player, wide receiv er Justin Jefferson. Jefferson alone is a valid reason for why the v ikings should be in the mix for the s uper b owl. The third-year wide receiver has proven himself time and time again by making crazy highlight-reel catches when his team needs him most. a fter last Thursday’s 139yard performance against the Patriots, Jefferson sits second in receiving yards this sea son, trailing Tyreek h ill by only one yard. Teams that win s uper b owls have guys like Justin Jefferson.

a nother reason the v ikings have been doubted all season is quarterback Kirk c ousins. a lthough i ’ll admit that i am not the biggest c ousins fan, c ousins has been really good this season. h e is cur rently seventh in the n FL in passing yards and is tied for ninth in passing touch downs. h e hasn’t been flashy by any means, but the strong supporting cast has allowed c ousins to find success.

i know there has been some talk about c ousins’ short comings on primetime. b ut his stats against the Patriots during a primetime win on Thanksgiving were pretty good. c ousins completed 30/37 passes for nearly 299 yards and three touchdowns, proving that he can succeed on the big stage.

i haven’t even men tioned the v ikings’ midsea son acquisition from the d etroit Lions, tight end T.J. h ockenson. h ockenson’s ad dition to the v ikings has been huge so far, giving c ousins another reliable target and endzone threat. The v ikings were seriously lacking in the tight end department be fore h ockenson’s arrival. h e has fulfilled every need the v ikings had at that position. That kind of move is some thing you see in s uper b owl contenders. a nd h ockenson’s addition might be the differ ence in the v ikings finally being able to make the s uper b owl.

i am not saying that i would pick the v ikings to make the s uper b owl. i t’s more than likely that in typical v ikings fashion, they trip up in the divisional round or confer ence championships like ev ery v ikings team since 1976. i am saying, however, that this v ikings team needs to receive more respect. They should at least be considered as one of the teams with the best shots at the s uper b owl. Going 9-2 to start the sea son doesn’t just happen by coincidence.

Contact Nate Moller at nmoller2@nd.edu.

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

Paid a dverT isemen T

RYAN VIGILANTE | The Observer

Irish graduate student guard Cormac Ryan during the win against Michigan State. He led the Irish with 23 points including six threes.

Fall in review: Top tri-campus players and performances in 2022

By AIDAN THOMAS sports e ditor

As the fall sports season draws to a close, The observer awarded this year’s tri-campus All-Fall team, comprised of 11 players from teams across all three campuses. In addition, the sports staff looked back at some of the top individual and team performances of the season.

Michael Mayer, Notre Dame football

A PFF All-American, junior m ichael mayer became the notre dame tight end record holder in career receptions, yards and touchdowns. This season, mayer notched 67 re ceptions for 809 yards and a career-high nine scores. he set season highs against bYU with 11 catches, 118 yards and two touchdowns. he added a sec ond two-score game against Usc in the season finale.

Olivia Markezich, Notre Dame cross country

Junior olivia markezich pol ished off a strong fall season with an All-American effort at the nc AA c hampionships. she finished eighth at the event, improving on her 11th-place finish last year. markezich added a first-place finish at the nc AA Great Lakes regional and a top-three finish at the Acc c hampionships. In the lat ter, she earned a personal best 19:29.7 time in the 6K.

Daniel Russo, Notre Dame men’s soccer

Junior forward daniel russo led the Irish men’s soccer team in both goals (six) and total points (16), tying for the team lead in assists with four. he started 11 games for notre dame this season and deliv ered in big ones. h is hat trick against m ichigan gave the Irish a pivotal win. And his game-ty ing strike against Pitt rescued a much-needed draw in the regu lar season finale.

Colleen McCarthy, Saint Mary’s volleyball

colleen mc carthy domi nated in her sophomore sea son with the belles, earning All-m IAA second-team honors. mc carthy notched 321 kills, good for 3.41 per set. she added 309 digs and 28 service aces. her best game came via a 27kill performance on oct. 22 vs. Averett. she led the team in kills and digs and was third in aces.

Joe Alt, Notre Dame football

After usurping the left tackle job last year, Joe Alt has stepped up as the anchor of the Irish

offensive line. Alongside mayer, Alt earned PFF first-team AllAmerican honors. he was second in the country among tackles with a PFF grade of 91.8. h is 99.3 pass-block efficiency tied for second among all F bs tackles, and his 90.8 run-block ing grade tied for first. Alt will return as notre dame’s left tackle next season.

Hattie Monson, Notre Dame volleyball

one of the few holdovers on a roster loaded with freshmen and transfers, junior libero hattie monson delivered an ex ceptional season for the Irish. she finished third in the Acc in digs per set, ending the sea son with a 4.19 mark. her sea son-high came against boston college in a remarkable 27-dig performance. That was during a season-high four-game win streak for the Irish. monson fin ished with at least 10 digs in 27 of 28 games this season.

Claudio Fuentealba, Holy Cross men’s soccer

An all-cc Ac selection, c laudio Fuentealba anchored the saints’ defense in 2022, leading them to a conference semifinal berth. he allowed just 0.93 per game while ap pearing in 18 of holy c ross’s 19 contests. Fuentealba, a sophomore, earned seven shut outs and notched 53 saves. he earned cc Ac player of the week in consecutive weeks and gave up just three goals in the saints’ final eight games.

Korbin Albert, Notre Dame women’s soccer

A semifinalist for the m Ac hermann trophy, Korbin Albert dominated all season for the Irish and came on in a big way late in the year. The sophomore midfielder played for the U20 national team over the sum mer, then returned to lead the way for notre dame. she led the team with 16 goals and added five assists. of those 16 goals, 14 came in a ten-game stretch starting on oct. 6. Albert won Acc midfielder of the year, scored multiple goals on five occasions and delivered a hat trick in the Acc semifinals, scoring three times from long range.

Benjamin Morrison, Notre Dame football

A true freshman cornerback, morrison cracked the starting lineup after just a few games. morrison impressed all sea son, and he began racking up stats in a big way down the stretch. Against no. 4 c lemson, morrison notched his first two interceptions, returning one for a touchdown. Two weeks later,

he recorded three picks to end the regular season with five interceptions, the most by an Irish freshman in at least the last 25 years. It was the most interceptions by a notre dame player since manti Te’o picked off seven passes in 2012.

Olivia Wingate, Notre Dame women’s soccer

A dominant goal-scorer all season, graduate student strik er olivia Wingate finished sec ond on the team in goals with 14. she also tied Albert for the lead in assists with five. she more than doubled her career goal total, entering the sea son with 12 in her previous four seasons. Wingate notched a hat trick early in the year against a ranked Wisconsin team, one of four multi-goal ef forts on the season. she added braces against a top-5 Florida state squad and in the nc AA Tournament versus omaha. her final goal was a game-win ner versus TcU in the sweet 16.

Carter Solomon, Notre Dame Cross Country solomon became the second Irish runner in Acc champion ship history to earn the indi vidual title. The sophomore’s 22:55.9 time in the 8K was a personal best and nearly a twominute improvement from his 2021 effort. Later, at the nc AA championships, solomon fin ished 18th, earning a personal best in the 10K of 29:18.8.

Top Individual Performances

1. Ben Morrison two INT vs.

Clemson, 11/5

It’s hard to make the stakes higher than this. The true freshman morrison came up with a pair of key second-half interceptions. one set up the Irish to take a 21-0 lead against c lemson in the fourth quar ter. The second, he returned 96 yards to seal the result, giving the Irish a top-5 victory over the previously unbeaten Tigers.

2. Korbin Albert hat trick vs. FSU, 11/3 despite notre dame ulti mately falling in penalty kicks, Albert put together a perfor mance for the ages in the Acc semifinals. she scored three times, including twice in 27 seconds in the second half. All three strikes came from well outside the box, two with her left foot from about 22 yards out and a 30-yard right-footed missile to open notre dame’s scoring in the game. Albert was recently named a semifinalist for the m Ac hermann Trophy, given to the top male and fe male college soccer players.

3. Carter Solomon wins ACC Championship, 10/28 on oct. 28, carter solomon became the second Irish cham pion in Acc c hampionship history to claim the individual conference crown, spurring notre dame to a fourth-place finish. solomon blitzed the 8K course in a time of 22:55.9, which was good for the in dividual title by a mere 0.2 seconds. he went on to earn All-American honors at the nc AA c hampionships.

4. Isaiah Foskey 3 sacks, 2 punt blocks vs. UNLV, 10/22 sitting at 3-3, the Irish desper ately needed a big performance against U n Lv to get their sea son back on track. senior de fensive lineman Isaiah Foskey delivered with a dynamic ef fort. Foskey notched a seasonhigh three sacks, which put him back on pace to set the program record, a number he’d achieve on senior day. Additionally, Foskey blocked a pair of punts, giving notre dame’s offense some short fields in a 44-21 victory.

5. Daniel Russo hat trick vs. Michigan, 10/25 notre dame entered a lateseason non-conference clash versus rival m ichigan need ing a win to stay alive in the at-large nc AA Tournament conversation. down 1-0 with under 30 minutes to play, the hope seemed low. however, ju nior forward daniel russo de livered the best performance of his career, striking for three second-half goals to help notre dame beat the Wolverines 3-2. he scored in the 61st minute. Then, after the Irish fell behind again, he scored twice in 1:43, notching the game-winner with under five minutes to play.

Top Team Moments

1. Notre Dame routs Clemson, storms field

In the biggest win of their season, notre dame upset un beaten c lemson for the sec ond time in three years, 35-14. sophomore running backs Logan diggs and Audric e stime combined for 218 yards on the ground, with e stime scoring a touchdown.

Junior quarterback drew Pyne threw for a score and ran for another. The Irish also scored on both defense and special teams, punctuating their victory with benjamin morrison’s second intercep tion, a 96-yard pick-six in the fourth quarter.

2. Irish women’s soccer upsets top-5 UVA

After a 7-0 record in

non-conference play, the Irish lost to c lemson in their Acc opener. They entered a battle with no. 2 v irginia. head coach nate norman had never won a top-10 game in his tenure with the Irish. but that changed on sept. 22. The Irish dominated the cavaliers in the field of play and eventually found the win ner in the 76th minute, courte sy of senior midfielder maddie mercado. notre dame won, 1-0. The Irish went on to later beat another top-5 opponent, Florida state, later in the year.

3. Saints’ men’s soccer hosts first-ever CCAC quarterfinal, dominates

The holy c ross saints men’s soccer squad earned a program-first this fall, host ing a first-round cc Ac play off matchup. They earned the no. 4 seed in the tournament, their first top-four ranking in team history. That brought in a matchup with fifth-seeded Judson, and the saints out classed the visitors. senior mid fielder e lmin ejup scored twice, including 87 seconds into the match on a free kick. The saints dominated Judson, winning 3-0 to advance.

4. Notre Dame women’s soccer earns first No. 1 seed in 14 years

For the first time in 14 years, notre dame women’s soc cer earned a no. 1 seed in the nc AA Tournament. The Irish didn’t lose after sept. 25 and went 4-1-3 against top-25 teams. That included a 4-0 win over Acc champion Florida state. notre dame also won a series of postseason awards, headlined by Acc coach of the Year ( nate norman), midfielder of the year (Korbin Albert) and defenseman of the year ( eva Gaetino). The Irish went on to dominate three straight nc AA Tournament games, outscoring a trio of opponents 11-0, before falling in the e lite e ight.

5. Notre Dame men’s soc cer buzzer-beating win over UVA

In their best win of the 2022 season, the Irish went on the road against v irginia and found a last-gasp winner, cour tesy of freshman KK baffour. With the score tied 1-1, sopho more forward matthew roou gained possession off a late v irginia corner kick and played a through ball to baffour. The freshman went 1-v-1 with the keeper and found the back of the net for the Irish win. It was v irginia’s only Acc loss of the season.

Contact Aidan Thomas at athoma28@nd.edu

The Christmas Lecture

Unwrap the Magic of Science: A Gift to the Community from the College of Science

The first 50 guests will receive a free Notre Dame Science T-shirt!

MATHEMATICAL STORYTELLING FEATURING JORDAN ELLENBERG

Friday, December 2, 2022 | 105 Jordan Hall of Science

5:30 pm Book Sales Begin in the Jordan Galleria 6 pm The Christmas Lecture Presentation: Mathematical Storytelling with Jordan Ellenberg 7 pm Reception & Book Signing

Free and open to the public Parking available in the Joyce and Stadium lots after 5 pm

How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? And why is learning to play chess so much easier for computers than learning to read a sentence?

Math, according to Ellenberg, helps every kind of thinker think better—it hones our intuition, sharpens our judgment, tames uncertainty, and lets us see the deeper structure and logic of our world.

Ellenberg is the author of several books. His most recent, Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy and Everything Else, combines his trademark intellectual curiosity and jargon-free language to transform a long-forgotten subject from our high school days into a powerful tool for measuring the world around us. His previous books include How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking—a beautifully written and refreshingly lucid mathematic exploration—and The Grasshopper King. Recently, he served as a consultant (and actor, briefly!) for the film Gifted, directed by Marc Webb, who cast Ellenberg for the role because, in his words: “he’s just a really charismatic teacher.”

Jordan Ellenberg, the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and New York Times best selling author says, “Math is the science of not being wrong. It touches everything we do.”