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Volume 53, Issue 9 | thursday, august 30, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com
College hosts annual Involvement Fair Activities event gives Saint Mary’s students opportunities for advancement, connections in clubs By COLLEEN FISCHER News Writer
Glittery posters adorned lines of folding tables as the Angela Athletic and Wellness Complex bustled with the excitement for a new year and new friends at the Saint Mary’s Student Involvement Fair on Wednesday. “From the student government perspective, it helps us recruit new committee members,” senior and student body president Madeleine Corcoran said. “SGA sponsors the event and it brings everyone together. First years find their niche and their passion — it helps this place feel a little bit more like home.” Coming to the fair was a
simpler choice for first year student Maria Del Real. “I came here to find something to do that is better than being in my room sleeping or eating,” Del Real said. The Student Involvement Fair was partially organized by Tena Johnson and her team. Johnson is the coordinator for student organizations with the Office of Student Involvement. “[The office] hopes for all students to find an organization to join and connect with other students with like interests,” Johnson said in an email. Planning for the fair began in the spring, when clubs registered for the fair. Throughout the process, see FAIR PAGE 3
COLLEEN FISCHER | The Observer
Students sign up for clubs, sports and activities at the Saint Mary’s Student Involvement Fair on Wednesday in the Angela Athletic and Wellness Complex. This year was Saint Mary’s biggest fair yet.
SMC Campus Cursive club ND to host prayer night to end slavery spreads ‘love letters’ By KELLY BURKE News Writer
Over the summer, Saint Mary’s seniors Katie Franz and Katie Shaffer began collecting stationary. Their goal? To begin leaving handwritten “love letters” for students to find throughout campus. The letters are a part of a new club called Campus
Cursive. The group stems from a larger organization called More Love Letters that allows students to start a chapter of this project at their own school. After being approved by the College and the More Love Letters company, Franz and Shaffer began their mission to promote kindness and positivity within the lives of students through the club.
Franz and Shaffer said as seniors, they want to positively impact Saint Mary’s before graduating. As roommates last year, Franz and Shaffer said they used to write “little love notes” to each other throughout the school year. This experience of exchanging words of affirmation inspired see CURSIVE PAGE 4
Engineering program earns accreditation By SERENA ZACHARIAS News Writer
Notre Dame’s environmental engineering program has now earned accreditation from the Engineering Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and
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Technolog y (ABET). “There’s a process by which you first have to go through several years of your program, collect materials and information about your students and graduates, present that [to ABET] and then they consider you for accreditation,” said
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Robert Nerenberg, associate professor in the College of Engineering. Incoming sophomores in the fall of 2013 were among the first students who participated in the environmental engineering see ENGINEERING PAGE 4
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By THOMAS MURPHY News Writer
The International Justice Mission of Notre Dame (IJMND) will be holding a “Grotto Prayer Night to End Slavery” prayer service Thursday evening. Founded in the spring semester of 2018, the organization is a chapter of International Justice Mission (IJM) and seeks to bring an end to modern slavery through prayer, advocacy and fundraising. IJMND co-presidents and sophomores Ella Wood and Malia Marshall said the club hopes in its second year to solidif y its place on campus and begin holding regular events. “We’re hoping to gain a solid membership base, to have a lot of people who are regularly coming to club meetings, basic club stuff like that,” Wood said. “To have people interested, have people talking with their friends, raising awareness … is really
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important.” “Hopefully through our events we can also start fundraising more for IJM and the work they’re doing around the world,” Marshall added. The work of ending modern slavery receives little attention in a country that formally ended slavery over a century and a half ago, Marshall said. “General slavery now is not something we see in front of us every day,” she said. “In the past, before the Civil War, it was just around people and what they lived around. But now slavery is underground. It’s a huge industry that makes millions of dollars, but it’s underground, at least in the U.S.” W hile slavery is still prevalent, “we tend to think of it as a past thing,” Wood said. “We think the U.S. has been done with slavery since all slaves were emancipated a long time ago. We think see SERVICE PAGE 3
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