As record snowfall blanketed most of the northern United States, a group of 350 Notre Dame students traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual March for Life. The trip was organized by the Notre Dame Right to Life club, which has led an annual trip to the nation’s capital since the event’s inception in 1974.
The students’ trip began Thursday evening in the Stepan Center, where University President Fr. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., delivered a blessing and message of support for the group. The group then piled into eight buses, driving overnight to arrive in Washington for the protest on Friday.
University President Fr. Robert Dowd, C.S.C. delivered a blessing to students in Stepan Center on Thursday evening before the group departed. Courtesy of Reynaldo Guillén.
While organized by the Right to Life club, the trip is also funded in part by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. However, according to junior club treasurer Jake Struby, the de Nicola Center was unable to fund the trip to the extent that it had in previous years due to budget cuts. Reynaldo Guillén, a junior at Holy Cross College, who served as director for the pilgrimage this year, explained in a statement to The Observer that the club relied on other University sources of funding and initiated a private fundraising effort through alumni to finance the trip.
“Despite internal budget cuts, many departments across the University did all they could to support us financially, and our alumni stepped forward generously to help make this pilgrimage possible,” Guillén wrote.
“We worked pretty hard on getting the word out for private donations, and we had a lot of help from a lot of people,” Struby said.
According to Struby, the club was able to raise tens of thousands of dollars, but still had to cut one bus due to the gap in funding.
“I think those spots would have been filled, because I personally know many people who wanted to go, but there were no spots left,” Struby said.
Struby and sophomore Luke Woodyard, who serves as director of operations for Right to Life, both praised Guillén for his organization of the trip, which began at the beginning of the academic year.
“Reynaldo was such an amazing dude, and his team blew it out of the park,” Woodyard wrote in a statement to The Observer.
Guillén said he has been reappointed to plan the pilgrimage again next year.
After arriving in Washington, D.C., students attended the march on Friday, joined by many students from Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross College, carrying anti-abortion signs and marching with thousands of other protesters through the streets of Washington. Club members held a banner reading “Irish fighting for life,” while individual students held smaller posters with paintings of saints reading “pray for us and the unborn.”
Notre Dame students pose in front of the Washington Monument at the March for Life. Courtesy of Jake Struby.
Senior Eric Gordy described attending the march as “an incredible experience.”
“It was amazing to see hundreds of Notre Dame students sacrificing their weekend in order to provide a witness to the sanctity of life, joining thousands of other pro-life Americans who marched this past weekend,” Gordy wrote in a statement to The Observer. “The energy and involvement of so many Notre Dame students — many of whom were underclassmen — was particularly inspiring to me, suggesting that Notre Dame will continue to serve as a powerful witness to the sanctity of life for years to come.”
Guillén described the march as a unifying experience.
“The March for Life is a moment when people do not gather merely as individuals, but as a unified community drawn from many different walks of life — often from the margins — to remind our leaders that a life is a life. Every person, in any form and at any stage of life, whether in the womb or in their eighties, deserves to be protected,” Guillén wrote.
While in Washington, most students stayed at the St. Charles Catholic Church in Arlington, Virginia. Students said they slept on the floor of the church on Friday night and attended Mass and Holy Hour while there. Woodyard said prayer was central to the trip.
“We made sure to integrate a lot of prayer on the journey for pilgrims after all,” Woodyard wrote.
Although the club has in past years spent two full days in Washington, due to the approaching snowstorm, the group decided to rearrange their travel plans to leave Saturday morning. Guillén said the club leadership was determined to continue with the trip, despite the weather.
“Despite counsel to cancel, we remained resolute in continuing the long-standing Notre Dame tradition of participating in the March for Life,” Guillén wrote. “Notre Dame will continue to March for Life year after year — until abortion and the persecution of all people are not only illegal, but unthinkable.”
