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Volume 53, Issue 93 | wednesday, february 27, 2019 | ndsmcobserver.com
College interfaith club fosters dialogue Saint Mary’s Better Together initiative hosts panel discussion featuring religious community leaders By KATHLEEN MEYER News Writer
Members of the South Bend community came together for a discussion about interfaith dialogue and awareness of social justice in a panel hosted by the Better Together club Tuesday in the Rice Commons of Saint Mary’s Student Center. The panel featured four speakers, each of different religious backgrounds — Emily Sipos-Butler, assistant director of Campus Ministry at Saint Mary’s; A. Rashied Omar, faculty member at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International
Peace Studies; Rabbi Karen Companez of Temple BethEl in South Bend; and Robert Stockman, a professor of religious studies and philosophy at Indiana University South Bend. As the panelists introduced their religious traditions, Sipos-Butler, a Catholic, said her faith is the primary lens through which she views justice. “One of the ways that you can think about justice from a Christian perspective is that justice is God,” Sipos-Butler said. “Justice f lows from the fact that see INTERFAITH PAGE 3
SpeakUP spreads awareness of human trafficking
KENDRA OSINSKI | The Observer
Junior Gabby Haff introduces a panel of religious experts from the South Bend community Tuesday. The panelists represented the religious traditions of Baha’i, Judaism, Islam and Catholicism, respectively.
Saint Mary’s leadership club encourages service By COLLEEN FISCHER News Writer
For those looking for service opportunities at Saint Mary’s, volunteering organization Circle K International (CKI) is staged to make a return this semester. According to its website, CKI is the world‘s largest collegiate service program,
CHRISTOPHER PARKER | The Observer
International Justice Mission spreads awareness about the practive of modern slavery at a table in LaFortune Student Center on Tuesday. By CHRISTOPHER PARKER News Writer
The Notre Dame chapter of International Justice Mission (IJM) held their SpeakUP campaign against modern slaver y and human trafficking in LaFortune Student Center on Tuesday. IJM is a nonprofit that advocates for the end of the
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practice of slaver y worldw ide while raising money for the cause. Sophomore Malia Marshall, co-founder and co-president of IJM at Notre Dame, said the organization advocates for justice for the poor. “The poor around the world are obv iously the most see SPEAKUP PAGE 4
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with more than 13,000 members. Recently, however, CKI at Saint Mary’s has been struggling for membership. Sophomore Carina Garza, president of Saint Mary’s’ CKI club, said she was motivated to refocus and revamp the organization’s presence at the College this year. “This academic year, sadly, the people who were in
charge didn’t put it first, so there were no meetings, no events,” Garza said. “Saint Mary’s’ [CKI] was basically inactive, which was very sad because the [CKI] district governor of Indiana … is a Saint Mary’s student. She is a senior. It was sad to see that the governor of Circle K Indiana was in a see SERVICE PAGE 3
Notre Dame recieves largest research grant ever By GRACE McDERMOTT News Writer
Notre Dame recently received a record-breaking grant of $33.7 million to conduct research on the prevention of mosquitoborne diseases using a new spatial repellent product that works to reduce mosquito densities and fight diseases like malaria, dengue, Zika and chikungunya.
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Unitaid, an international health organization, agreed to fund the five-year project after a long and competitive proposal process. For the scientists behind the project, though, the amount of money was not of primar y importance. “We like to focus on the impact of the science rather than the monetar y value,” the project’s principal investigator, John Grieco,
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said. “The value is something the University looks at. For us, it’s more the impact we’re having on human health. W hen you work alongside these communities and individuals, you see the struggles that they have day-to-day. If we can see a product through to reduce disease in these communities, that’s the success for see GRANT PAGE 3
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