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What's in a meme?

By The Observer · Wednesday, Feb. 29, 2012

Good Guy Greg. Scumbag Steve. Courage Wolf ­— we find resonance with these and other characters and meaningful expression in creating their episodes.

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Take it personally

By The Observer · Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

As I sat and read The Observer in South Dining Hall during a lunch break this past Monday, a fellow diner-reader at another table exclaimed to her friend, "If I were black, I would be very offended by this."

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The best women for the job

By The Observer · Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

Of the two tickets running for student body president and vice president, the duo of juniors Maureen Parsons and Meghan Casey shows the most promise for improving the future of the Saint Mary's Student Government Association (SGA).

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Santorum's words unnecessary, unproductive

By The Observer · Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

Of the things that we as voters ask of candidates for public office, a couple stand out among the rest. However futile our requests may be, we hope that office seekers will "tell it like it is" and maintain a sense of civility in the process. We don't ask Candidate X to give us a narrative of his time in the Peace Corps when he was asked to explain a past mistake. Nor do we care to hear Candidate Y publicly call her opponent a bozo.

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Hedge your SYR date

By The Observer · Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

Think hedging is important only for the British gardeners and Warren Buffets of the world? Think again, because knowingly or not, you hedge all the time.

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Loyal Daughters and Sons

By The Observer · Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

For months now, you've seen the banners in LaFortune, the dining halls, down Notre Dame Avenue and even on your way to class — "To Heal, To Unify and To Enlighten." They are beautiful, concise expressions of the aims that should guide our actions both here at Our Lady's University and in the world beyond this campus. However, it is our concrete projects and experiences that truly help us to profoundly internalize these abstractions.

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What's in store for the White Sox

By The Observer · Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2012

As spring training has opened all across Major League Baseball, I cannot help but be excited for the upcoming season. While basketball has always been may favorite sport to watch, I have always had a deep affinity for the game of baseball. Opening Day, the All-Star Game, the trade deadline, the pennant chase, the playoffs and the World Series are all events that I look forward to each year.

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Words with friends

By The Observer · Monday, Feb. 27, 2012

We are exactly one week into the season of Lent this year, and you may be feeling worn out already. The initial charms of striving to challenge yourself with your fasting and prayer perhaps even now feel tedious, and you face heading into midterms next week without caffeine or desserts or alcohol; or you are realizing that with two papers and a project due, it's just not as easy as you thought to close your computer and get to Mass or to Stations of the Cross.

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Single girl swag

By The Observer · Monday, Feb. 27, 2012

I am writing in response to the column "Dating and relating" (Feb. 26) by David Moss. As a student who is enrolled at Saint Mary's and at Notre Dame, this article is particularly appealing to me. First of all, to all Notre Dame and Saint Mary's women, this stigma between us has got to end. We are all adults and we have all worked endlessly to be where we want to be. This so called "rivalry" between us is old and is too similar to high school (coming from an all-girl's high school myself). Notre Dame ladies, where is this pressure from Saint Mary's students coming from? You have all worked so hard through high school to come to your dream college and to earn a degree that is second to none. There are thousands of people out there who would have killed to have your spot. Think of those who were accepted but could not afford to come to Notre Dame at all. Please don't take the gift you all have for granted.

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A Lenten proposal for all

By The Observer · Monday, Feb. 27, 2012

In the aftermath of an undeniably ignorant act of racial hate, we as a campus must reflect on the efforts we make to ensure all students are treated with equality and respect. With that thought in mind, I ask this: Are we truly trying our best to be accepting of diversity by only adhering to our Catholic students' points of view? While I have the utmost respect for Catholic tradition and I fully understand its place in our beloved institution, I believe that there are changes that must be made to foster a more accepting environment for all students to enjoy.

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Eulogy for 922

By The Observer · Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012

The Observer ran an article last Friday ("State seizes student houses," Feb. 24) detailing how the Indiana Department of Transportation has claimed 922 South Bend Ave. under eminent domain and plans to raze the house as part of a larger project improving state Route 23. As the former residents of 922, we must share our collective disappointment that such a prominent Notre Dame institution will be lost on future classes (slight-to-moderate hyperbole). To many of you, 922 will seem to be just a house. But the truth is that 922 became much more than that. 922 became a state of mind.

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Don't regret, laugh it off

By The Observer · Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012

Laughter is the best medicine. If there's one thing I have learned my senior year, it's that. While laughter won't heal all wounds — it can't physically heal a stress fracture, unfortunately — it really helps dealing with situations of all kinds, whether tear-inducing, blush-causing, soul-crushing or some combination of the three.

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Fried chicken does not celebrate Black History Month

By The Observer · Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012

It's 2 a.m. on a Saturday night, last semester. I am walking back from Mod Quad and I happened to walk by LaFun. Three belligerent Caucasian students are talking to each other and aimlessly shouting the N-word. I call them out on it. They shout back, disregard my comment and keep on using the word. I let that pass; I wanted to go to sleep.

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The shoes of our lives

By The Observer · Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012

We get up on our feet, look ahead in front of us and take a giant leap forward in our lives. Slip on shoes, tie the laces, walk forward. It's such a simple daily ritual that we don't even think about it, but the ways in which we move in the world tell a compelling story of how we grow as people.

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Duh. Pinning.

By The Observer · Sunday, Feb. 26, 2012

Toward the end of January 2012, a web service designed after the bulletin board exploded after spending two years in relative obscurity. By February, every major news outlet was talking about Pinterest and its meteoric rise to success.

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Dating and relating

By The Observer · Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012

Things happen very fast in the current generation. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, there is a good reason why top chefs do not prepare elegant meals in a microwave. Clearly one of our issues on campus is the sometimes frantic pace with which we build relationships. There is no one to blame for the demise of the dating ritual on this campus. It is what it is. In my curiosity to understand why men and women have abdicated ownership of this social norm, I engaged ten students (5 women; 5 men) in single-sex conversations about their opinions around this issue. Although I cannot extrapolate these comments to all men and women on campus, this is what I discovered.

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Draft day

By The Observer · Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012

With spring training underway, pitchers are working off the rust in their shoulders, hitters are stepping back into the batter's box and new faces populate the baseball fields in their respective major league parks across the country, preparing for opening day. At the same time, fantasy baseball managers are re-evaluating strategy, combing through stats and preparing for draft day.

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Not a post-racial society

By The Observer · Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012

In recent days, both the Black Student Association and the African Student Association have been the targets of racially motivated crimes. The nature of these transgressions? Placing fried chicken wings in the LaFortune mailboxes of both organizations. When they hear about this, many Notre Dame students will likely react with exasperation. "It's just a joke!" people might say. "A joke in poor taste, but a joke all the same."

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