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Volume 53, Issue 6 | monday, august 27, 2018 | ndsmcobserver.com
Carter, Letterman speak at ceremony Former president and late night host reflect on the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project By TOM NAATZ Associate News Editor
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, David Letterman had a problem. Letterman was watching news coverage of the disaster that had just afflicted New Orleans and the entirety of the Gulf Coast, and he desperately wanted to help out; his only problem was he wasn’t sure how he could do it. “As you see, [there‘s] 24-hour coverage of disasters and horrible things that happen to humans around the globe, and if you’re hooked up properly, you’re drawn to that,” Letterman said. “You want to do something but you don’t know what it is you want to do. And this is the dynamic that occurred while watching
the storm Katrina ravage New Orleans, Louisiana.” Ultimately, Letterman called Habitat for Humanity, the global nonprofit housing organization and gathered some friends and travelled to New Orleans to start building and rebuilding houses. Letterman, the longtime late night talkshow host whose appearance at Notre Dame‘s Purcell Pavilion was not previously announced, introduced former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, at the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project. This annual Habitat for Humanity program, which includes participation and sponsorship from the former first see CARTER PAGE 4
TOM NAATZ | The Observer
Former president Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter speak at the opening ceremony for their work project, a part of the Habitat for Humanity program, which will build houses for those in need.
NROTC students Saint Mary’s professors spend summer plan trip to Met exhibit traveling, training By GINA TWARDOSZ News Writer
By ANDREW CAMERON and MIA MARROQUIN News Writers
The Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) prepares college students to serve as Naval officers after graduation. Eightyfour Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s undergraduates participate in this program. Known as “midshipmen,” students in the program this summer spent approximately a month completing various training courses, including spending time aboard active vessels and aircraft to prepare them to ultimately commission as officers. Rising sophomores, known as third-class midshipmen, participated in the Naval Reserve‘s Career Orientation and Training for Midshipmen (CORTRAMID) program, which served as an introduction to the different communities within or associated with the Navy. Second-class and first-class midshipmen — rising juniors and seniors, respectively — completed “summer cruises,” which entailed
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experiencing naval service firsthand on a ship or submarine. Captain Mark Prokopius, the commanding officer of Notre Dame NROTC, described the purpose of summer training as exposing midshipmen to both life in the Navy and to necessary leadership decisions. “When they’re on cruise, they’re actually on active duty and subject to all the active duty rules,” he said. “It builds valuable experience to see from the enlisted perspective on the second-class cruise, and then [on the first-class cruise] to see from the officer’s perspective, who is the leader in front of those enlisted men.” Kathleen Halloran, a secondclass midshipman and a junior at Saint Mary’s, said she knew she wanted to serve her country from a young age after being inspired by her grandfather, a Marine veteran. Halloran said her summer experience — staying aboard a submarine — was enriched by the see NROTC PAGE 3
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Saint Mary’s students will have the opportunity to travel by bus to New York City on Sept. 22 to see The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” exhibition, a display of fashion and medieval art.
The exhibition aims to examine the effects of fashion on Catholicism over time, the Metropolitan (Met) Museum’s website said. The trip is being organized by religious studies professor Margaret Gower and art professor Krista Hoefle, who said the event would be of little cost to students. The trip was dreamed up after
Gower noticed the overwhelming interest students had in the Met Gala in May. “I saw that students were excited about it, I was excited about it, and there was this moment in my classes during the informal class chatter when we realized all of a sudden that these theologies and see MET PAGE 3
Notre Dame welcomes new ID card technology By MARIE FAZIO News Writer
The future is here and it is contactless. The Irish1Card system — the new ID cards for students, faculty and staff that include contactless technology — is in the final stages of implementation, Daniel Tormey, program director of Irish1Card, said. As of this summer, all
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residential halls, dining halls and on-campus point-of-sale locations are equipped with contactless card readers, Gina Grear, the Irish1Card project manager, said. Some residence hall laundry card machines and vending machines on campus still solely use magnetic strip readers, but those will be updated over time, Tormey said. The Irish1Card system was put in place to provide more
sophisticated functionality, with features such as allowing the card to have different meal plans and the contactless payment method. “We’re trying to get people used to using the contactless reader in this phase because it’s more secure,” Tormey said. “We also recognize that whether it’s a student cardholder or employee there’s still a transition time.”
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