Community
director of community engagement and outreach, senior adam moeller co-led the event with director of faith and service junior Keenan White. moeller estimated that about 300-400 students attended the event.
“‘back the bend’ is, at its simplest level, a community service day, but it’s a lot more than that,” moeller said. “We tried to focus it on getting students exposed and into the neighborhoods so that they’ll hopefully think about developing relationships with some of these groups. obviously, these are all organizations who do
which is even less than previously thought, hachen said.
a national study conducted by Jawbone in 2016 ranked notre dame as fourth on the list of colleges in the nation whose students get the least amount of sleep on weekdays, coming in at 6.69 hours. notre dame fell just short of columbia University, who took home the bronze at 6.68 hours.
The Jawbone estimate is at the top end of net health’s preliminary range, hachen said. The lower end of net health’s spectrum, 6.5 hours, would’ve bumped notre dame up to the third most sleepless campus in the nation – only 1 minute and 48 seconds behind the a ir Force academy in second. i n addition, Jawbone’s 2016 sleep study showed college students in general sleep less than seven hours on 46.2 percent of the nights recorded in the study.
six hours and some change may sound manageable to a group of determined scholars,
wonderful things throughout the year and don’t rely on ‘back the bend,’ but it is a day when we can all come together and work on really important projects. i think it ends up being a learning moment for a lot of the volunteers, just seeing all the amazing things that community partners do.”
For the event, students and community members worked together on seventeen different projects, including restoring Leeper Park, cleaning trash from a tributary of the st. Joseph r iver, and a project that moeller organized, “mulch madness” — a project to mulch the soil around homes in the near northeast neighborhood to prevent lead exposure from degrading paint chips.
but sleep expert and associate psychology professor Jessica Payne assured that it is not.
“statistically, that’s sleep deprived,” Payne said. “The vast majority of people need to get somewhere between seven and nine hours a night, aiming to get eight on average.”
senior Keenan centlivre said he tries to avoid sleep deprivation with an unorthodox sleep schedule — sleeping in smaller increments at any time of day or night, as long as it adds up to an amount he feels is sufficient.
“i used to average five to six hours but now it’s definitely more like seven to eight,” centlivre said. ”being a parttime senior has done me some good. many people prioritize their sleep and keep it more or less on a regimented schedule. i don’t really care about when i get sleep as long as i get it when i feel like i need it.”
senior e rin mccune said she has a more regular sleep schedule, but it’s not exempt from
moeller said that this project, involving roughly 100 students distributing 24 truckloads of mulch around affected homes, demonstrates the often-extensive planning that goes into many of the “back the bend” projects.
“it was one day of mulching about a hundred homes, but there was so much more behind that,” he said. “since o ctober, we were meeting frequently, discussing our plans for this. We spent the last eight weeks working with the workers at the [ near northeast neighborhood] to campus the neighborhood and talk to people about the lead issue and how the soil can have very elevated levels of lead.”
moeller said that, unlike
stress.
“i definitely get less sleep if i have a lot of studying to do but try to never go under four hours,” mccune said.
Previously a fellow at harvard, Payne said she observed an interesting difference between the harvard and notre dame student bodies on topics such as stress.
“even coming from harvard, notre dame students seem to be even more overwhelmed and overworked because they have not one, but two majors, tons of extracurricular activities; sports, music and tons of volunteer work,” Payne said.
“What i worry about is the high stress and poor sleep because it can predict depression and anxiety.”
susan steibe-Pasalich, director of the University counseling center, said she has also observed this trend over her 35 years at notre dame.
“it does seem to me that for students at notre dame, there
past years, student government allowed and encouraged students to sign up as groups.
“We had eight teams, and most of them were people who had signed up as part of a group, which was another strategy that we introduced this year,” he said. “We approached dorms, clubs, Tau beta Pi [the engineering honors society] and many other groups. They were all able to work together, and i think that made it a fun group effort to be in a team with people you knew.”
While the event itself is only a single day, moeller believes that it can have a greater and longer-lasting impact on the participants and community.
“i n the immediate sense, the
is a perfectionism piece; for the majority having worked really hard in high school,” steibePasalich said. “They are used to being the best and striving the hardest.”
steibe-Pasalich said 1700 students took advantage of the Ucc’s mental health services last year, and the top reason for seeking that help was anxiety.
“depression had been the most frequent leaning problem that brought student to counseling centers until 10 years ago,” steibe-Pasalich said. “a nxiety evened out with depression, and then anxiety edged up a bit and took the lead.”
Payne said for students and faculty wanting to improve their sleep, a sleep kit complete with lavender spray, a sleep mask and a 21-day online sleep program is available for pickup at mcWell’s in st. Liam’s.
Contact Alex Daugherty at adaughe1@nd.edu
projects that happen are very important because it’s by far the best way these community partners can afford and make these projects happen,” moeller said. “The greater importance of it is that people realize in the work they’re doing that it doesn’t have to be a one-day thing, that there are great people and great organizations doing things every day in the community, … that they should get more involved more and form relationships with these groups and people [and] that they should treat s outh bend as their community, even [if] they are just here for two or three more years.”
Contact Andrew Cameron at acamero2@nd.edu
tournament.
“The competition for the mirror ball trophy in the upcoming season of ‘dancing With the stars’ is sure to be fierce — as the season 26 cast features an all-star lineup of olympic and professional athletes,” the abc report said. in addition to ogunbowale, other stars include Kareem abdulJabbar, and Washington redskins’ cornerback Josh norman, the report said. each celebrity was partnered with a professional dancer and ogunbowale’s is Gleb savchenko. The season will premiere on april 30.
according to the report, ogunbowale will train for the show at notre dame while she finishes her classes for the year.
“i have a lot of stuff going on with school. i still haven’t caught up from the Final Four,” ogunbowale told abc. “but we’re definitely going to have time to do it.”
Paid a dverT isemen T
starting at the saint mary’s Welcome center, the race wound through campus and the saint Joe river trail, ending in front of madeleva hall. visiting members of the sisters of the holy cross opened the event with words of encouragement and the “runner’s version” of an Irish blessing.
sarah Law, a saint mary’s junior and chair of the sgA community committee, said she was happy with the results of the ‘sister sprint.’ Though rain and driving winds made for a muddy nature trail and prevented many runners from participating, Law said she was impressed by those who pushed through the inclement weather.
The race raised about $440,
them go home.”
In addition to professors and advisors, the co-chairs said they worked with students who were part of the academic committee, hospitality committee or publicity committee.
“I think with any event it’s always challenging because obviously not everyone is going to be as excited as we are because we spent the last eight months working towards this,” Prestage said. “I definitely think our committee members rose to the occasion and made sure that what we envisioned the conference to be like not only would go that way but would go so much better.”
This year’s theme was ‘Toward Just Peace,’ a topic chosen by h ascher and Prestage, they said, because of its applicability to other areas of interest outside of peace.
“We were hoping to get more presentations and papers talking about the intersections between justice and peace,” h ascher said. “We had felt that this was something that can be overlooked in a lot of conversations because sometimes justice and peace are not necessarily compatible, and we want to challenge people to think about getting to a place where they are.”
The universal nature of their theme attracted a more diverse group of students to the conference this year, Prestage said.
“I think our theme was so inclusive towards justice rather than just different ways of peace, which is
Law said, which will be used to support the missions of the sisters of the holy cross and aid them in their global efforts to help others.
“I hope that [in the future] more money can continue to be raised through this race in order to support the wonderful things that the sisters do across the world,” Law said in an email.
The unpredictable spring weather and the busy schedule of Junior moms Weekend made planning the event challenging, Law said. The planning committee also required special permission from the sisters to use the nature trail as part of the race course.
As the event is intended to occur yearly, Law said she hopes that the ‘sister sprint’ encourages more interaction between saint mary’s students and the sisters of the holy cross in future
what it has been in the past,” Prestage said. “It focused a little bit more on the compatibility between the two themes; I think it welcomed a lot more majors that otherwise wouldn’t really be interested in just a conference about peace.”
h ascher and Prestage said that although the conference’s goal was to promote discussion about issues related to justice and peace, they hoped it would accomplish more than conversations.
“It’s one thing for us to have these conversations, but we’re really hoping that people will feel compelled to go out and do something,” h ascher said. “ b ecause if we’re just talking about it, if we’re not actually doing something, we’re not showing up, we’re not speaking out, we’re not protesting and organizing and generally engaging with experiences of violence, we kind of lose the point.”
The highlight of the weekend for h ascher and Prestage, they said, was their keynote speaker Alexis Templeton, an activist who they discovered in the documentary “Whose s treets?” when the c enter for s ocial c oncerns sponsored a screening of it last semester.
“Their presentation exceeded all my hopes for this conference,” Prestage said. “They really provided a wake-up call to everyone who was at the conference to that fact that words only mean so much if you’re not showing up and actually putting action to what you’re talking about.”
Contact Nicole Simon at nsimon1@nd.edu
years.
“I think that as a campus, we definitely can benefit from having more involvement with the sisters,” Law said. “for the future, I hope that this event can be a bigger success in terms of student and community involvement. This was the first year for the race, but I think that it could be a new smc tradition.”
natalie dock, a saint mary’s junior who participated in the event, said she enjoyed the ‘sister sprint’ despite the poor conditions.
“The race was really fun … although it was kind of rainy,“ dock said. “It was really nice that everyone stuck together and we finished pretty much together. I think it will be a fun event for next year, as long as it’s sunny.”
Contact Maeve Filbin at mfilbin01@saintmarys.edu
con TI nued from PAge 1
anything — you try to put a load over a longer period, they believe it will help the system rather than it not being as intense, so we’ve added 15 minutes onto the front end of registration … and another 20 minutes on the back.”
To make the registration process as smooth as possible, hurley said, students should be sure to have the course reference numbers (crn’s) for their potential classes ready at the time of registration. Those on campus should also use the eduroam Wi-fi network, as the system will not work on the nd-guest network.
hurley said students should not hesitate to reach out to the
office of the registrar with questions.
“The people in this office care deeply about the students and about the registration experience because they understand that from being in Zahm or cavanaugh and registering themselves as students,” hurley said. “And they’ve had that experience of, for example, in some cases, having a child here who has registered. And they know that it is a stressful experience for students and so we’re here in the registrar’s office to help students as best we can with this and so if students run into problems, they should call us and [we’ll] do everything that we possibly can to help them out.”
Contact Natalie Weber at nweber@nd.edu
Professors, advisors and co-chairs present at the Kroc
Peace Conference. The theme of the conference, which took place April
Photo Courtesy of Elizabeth Hascher
Institute for International Peace Studies’ annual
13-14, was ‘Toward Just Peace’.
