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Sweater weather

By The Observer · Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

While lounging beside the pool in the middle of July, autumn is viewed with longing. Being welcomed back to our gorgeous campus by our best friends consumes the minds of many Notre Dame students. We look forward to "sweater weather" with all the enthusiasm of our beloved cheerleaders.

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Notre Dame's Coming Out Day

By The Observer · Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

As you may or may not know, National Coming Out Day 2010 is next Monday, Oct. 11. This is an internationally recognized day of civil-awareness that encourages discussion of GLBT issues. And recently, there has been much to discuss. (Just to name a few: Nationally, the recent disappointment in repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and on campus, AllianceND was again denied club status while the non-discrimination clause still excludes homosexuality.)

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Go ahead and judge me

By The Observer · Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

Here is a cold, hard truth about college: everyone judges. People judge others while walking on the quad, while eating in the dining hall, while studying and while sitting in class. In fact, someone is probably judging you right now as you're sitting and reading this. Most of the time, snap judgments are based on petty, superficial things like what you're wearing, or a really short quote that someone overheard out of context. Now, a lot of the time, those snap judgments are right (isn't that the best when you finally meet someone who is exactly like you pictured in your mind?), but sometimes they're not. Obviously, we can't stop this from happening, as there is no way that you could truly get to know everyone that you come in contact with. It's just not possible. But the fact that people will always be making silent decisions about personality and character frightens some, and that causes them to act or dress differently than they normally would.

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When The Breaks Are Beating The Boys ... '

By The Observer · Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

Look, upperclassmen, I understand. I know that I wasn't here for the 3-9 season; I know that I have not lived through the disappointment of the past three years from the student section. I don't know what, if anything, I could reasonably expect from you in terms of confidence in or enthusiasm for our football team. But that doesn't mean that anything less is expected of you in terms of being Notre Dame students.

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Cloud Machines

By The Observer · Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010

There is a cloud machine that rises up behind what was my one-room apartment this summer in Mannheim, Germany, a factory belching out fluffy whiteness into the blue expanse above. It doesn't rain much during the summer in the Rhine Valley, so one begins to question if the clouds whose only purpose is offering the occasional, passing shade onto a lazy Sunday nap along the river, really are clouds. Walking back home in the early afternoon, I would watch the wispy cotton puffs progress slowly past overhead and smile at the smokestack from which they came.

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My cold dead hands

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

Mr. Ryan Williams attempts to argue in his viewpoint entitled "A Safer World Without Guns" (Sept. 30) that we should have stricter gun control laws to eliminate the chances of shooting tragedies across the nation from happening. He claims that there is a causal relationship between taking automatic weapons away from the hands of citizens and a decline in gun violence. Quite simply, that is ridiculous. Removing any semblance of a threat posed to criminals by ordinary citizens will only make the problem worse by allowing the perpetrators to hold the most firepower. Outlawing automatic weapons will have little effect on the ability of criminals to obtain them on the black market. If they want a gun, they'll get it somehow. I want to have a proportionality of force equal to any criminal I may encounter.

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Call for compassion

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

What started as scattered Facebook statuses on my homepage has erupted into an international news story. Tyler Clementi, a boy from my high school and a freshman at Rutgers University, committed suicide on Sept. 22. Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate and a friend of his roommate streamed a live video of him having a private encounter with another male, broadcasting the video to 150 followers on Twitter.

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Invasion of privacy

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

During the Tiger Woods fiasco, some people (myself included) were outraged at how much the media was allowed to invade the privacy of a person of celebrity status. I wrote for my high school newspaper: "NPR commentator Frank Deford said it best that the media is protected by the ‘First-and-a half Amendment: a combination of freedom of the press and the right to shoot from the hip.' I am ashamed that the American people are hearing more about Tiger Woods' personal life than of matters of national and international importance to the safety and security of our world. I am ashamed that the tabloid media can record a chip shot at the 16th hole of the Masters and then turn and use the cameras to invade Tiger's privacy off of the golf course."

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Are the fans tough?

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

A Notre Dame fan since 1944, a grad student ‘56-'58, I well remember going to pep rallies because, even though my loud voice worked as an undergraduate cheerleader's in Madison Square Garden, in the old Navy fieldhouse when cheering at the top of my lungs next to undergrads, I could not hear my own shouting. Is it like that any more?

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Arms offer protection

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

This letter responds to Ryan Williams' Sept. 30 editorial column "A safer world without guns." Mr. Williams concludes the United States would be safer if government disarmed citizens of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and handguns.

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We still are ND

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

Dear Jocelyn and the other Notre Dame Students who snuck into the Boston College Student Section,

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Fear is the only thing to fear

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

The moment I heard that there was a gunman on the University of Texas the cacophony of the law school commons faded away. All hope of catching up on my reading was forgotten.

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Exciting week for A&L majors

By The Observer · Monday, Oct. 4, 2010

I went to college in a recession. I was a history major and graduated during the economic downturn of 1982 in the midst of chaos in the real estate market. Interest rates were 18 percent, my dad lost his job in Lorain, Ohio and I took out more college loans to make it through my senior year. I experienced stress, anguish, loss of confidence in my career and wondered why the job market was so brutal for people like me.

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Thank you, Stephen Colbert

By The Observer · Friday, Oct. 1, 2010

On Friday, Stephen Colbert, comedian and host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration to give his testimony on being a farm worker for a day.

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Kid's Kingdom

By The Observer · Friday, Oct. 1, 2010

When I was a little girl, I used to pester my mother to take me to Kid's Kingdom.

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Homefield advantage, alive and well

By The Observer · Friday, Oct. 1, 2010

With all due respect, I disagree with your opinions about the student section during the recent Stanford game ("Homefield Advantage, R.I.P" Sept. 29). You faulted us on our silence during Notre Dame's offensive drives. Instead, I urge you to look on this as a positive sign. Offensives traditionally need silence to function well, you yourself point out that volume can disrupt audibles and snap counts. In a perfect stadium, the offense would be able to hear every time Notre Dame snapped the ball, and never when the opponent did. To that end, it is of the utmost importance that we don't cheer when Notre Dame has the ball.

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Public Service

By The Observer · Friday, Oct. 1, 2010

Yes, it's me. I'm back. And this time I have an axe to grind with all the barbarians that somehow slipped out of ancient times and into Notre Dame. First of all, welcome to the 21st century. Here you will find many useful amenities such as sporks, razors to groom your hair (don't do it in the showers!), sprinklers that water the sidewalks, bikes that hang out in trees, and backup quarterbacks. But, the most useful invention you will find here that you probably didn't have back in your time is ... wait for it ... wait for it — the sink! Yes, you heard me Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, it's the sink. Imagine, a place where you can wash your hands after you use the restroom! What a novel idea, right? That's exactly what the sink is! You probably don't know what a restroom is either but don't worry about that, we'll cover that next week. In fact, I know that yall don't do well with words so I'm gonna draw a picture for you. Hang it up inside your cave...right next to the pinup from the Fall of 30,000 B.C. That was a good year for pinups.

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Students lack winning tradition

By The Observer · Friday, Oct. 1, 2010

The tradition of Notre Dame football is on full display to anyone who walks around Notre Dame Stadium. Each gate is named for a championship-winning coach, whose likeness is etched in stone at his particular entrance.

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Please Stop Nagging

By The Observer · Friday, Oct. 1, 2010

Let me preface this by saying that I have the utmost respect for the importance of tradition on this campus. I refuse to walk up the stairs of the Main Building, I stay off the grass on God Quad, and I have managed to avoid taking a young lady for a walk around the lakes. However, I believe our greatest tradition is an immense gratitude to the alumni, the gracious benefactors of the University and friends to all current students. That said, I'd ask for your understanding.

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