Opinion

Butler gets remembered, but legends never die

By The Observer · Thursday, April 8, 2010

Gordon Hayward was channeling Bobby Plump, the last-second hero of the 1951 Indiana Men's Basketball Championship and the inspiration for the film Hoosiers, Monday night when he shot that jumper over Duke's Brian Zoubek. That last-second shot should have arched over the 7'1" center, bounced once on the rim and rolled in. It should have been the greatest NCAA Men's Championship game in our generation. Instead, the ball went long and bricked off the far side of the rim. It was rebounded by Zoubek, handing a perennial dynasty and its insufferable fans yet another championship (yes, I recognize the irony in me, a Notre Dame student, calling other college fans insufferable, but I am writing as a Butler fan). Sports these days don't seem as magical as they used to be. I grew up on a steady diet of classic inspirational movies like Rudy (obvious), Remember the Titans, Miracle, Seabiscuit and Space Jam. They taught me that if you are plucky enough and the situation is just perfect, even I could pull off the upset of a lifetime. What are they going to make movies about in 10 or 15 years when we need to teach our children that the world is a just place where the good guys coached by a lovable — if slightly damaged — mentor always win? Are they going to watch a movie about a plucky Saints team that finished with the NFL's second-best record and top passer finally winning a Super Bowl or how a grossly overpaid Yankees organization purchased a World Series team to beat on a small market team that made it to the World Series? Maybe they can watch the story of two non-BCS teams that went undefeated during the year only to be paired together in a bowl game matched only by class on St.Patrick's Day in its futility. My point is that the magic in sports is dying. When was the last time a true underdog story translated into a championship? The answer should have been last Monday. You could not script the sequel to Hoosiers any better than Butler's journey through the tournament this year. If those mystical forces that create truly great sports stories couldn't allow Butler to finish the greatest story in men's basketball of the past 25 years, then what hope do my Cubbies have this season? Peter Elliott sophomore Siegfried Hall April 6

One book, one Michiana - one Notre Dame

By The Observer · Thursday, April 8, 2010

I am writing to share exciting information in response to the March 31 Letter to the Editor titled "One book, one Michiana" (Caitlin Wilson, Rachel Hamilton). I am pleased to announce that Hesburgh Libraries has joined the One Book, One Michiana project. Hesburgh Libraries will host a presentation by Notre Dame Law professor Thomas Shaffer scheduled at Geddes Hall from 4-5:30 on April 14. The presentation is titled "Atticus Finch: Not Only Gregory Peck But Also Southern Gentleman and County-Seat Lawyer Whose Daughter Is a Whiz-Bang." We are in the process of adding our campus event to the St. Joe Public Library's website. In the mean time, we are asking you to help us spread the word. Thanks for helping us make our first "One Book, one Michiana" project a success. Felicia A. Smith faculty April 5

Sex on the brain: The biology of sexual orientation

By The Observer · Thursday, April 8, 2010

Editors note: This is the second installment in a series of columns by Notre Dame faculty members exploring current scholarly research in sexuality concentrating on sexual orientation and related issues. What causes sexual orientation? What causes us to be attracted to and fall in love with the people that we do? Almost all our behaviors and traits are a product of both nature and nurture. The "Nature/Nurture Debate" actually does not make much sense, because genes and environment have a constant interplay throughout the lifespan. However, whether through genes or learning, there is no doubt that sexual orientation is manifested somehow in our brains. This is because the brain is responsible for all our thoughts, behaviors, personality characteristics — everything that we are. The brain is not a fixed entity — learning changes your brain every day, whether very fleeting changes, like a phone number you forget immediately, or long-lasting behavior patterns, like being shy or outgoing — and, perhaps, like sexual orientation. What is it that changes our brains to be straight or gay? There are probably many influences, but one may be the level of hormones that your brain was exposed to while developing in utero. One of the clues that androgens (testosterone-like hormones) influence sexual orientation comes from a disorder called Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH). In this disorder, the adrenal glands' hormone production goes haywire so that they make too much androgen. This doesn't seem to impact developing male fetuses, since the androgen levels are not much different than what their bodies would normally make. But female fetuses with CAH find themselves swimming in much higher levels of androgens than they otherwise would. The disorder can be easily corrected with drugs once it's discovered at birth, and androgen levels for CAH girls are normal from there on out. However, was there an effect of the extra androgens on the brains of these girls as they were developing in utero? It seems that there is. When CAH girls grow up, 33 percent of them describe themselves as homosexual or bisexual, compared to six to 10 percent of the non-CAH population. So, androgens must play a role in sexual orientation, but they can't explain it completely. After all, 67 percent of CAH women identified as heterosexual. And most homosexual and bisexual women do not have CAH. So androgens in the developing brain play a role in sexual orientation (at least in women), but they're not the whole story. Our next clue comes from differences between straight and gay people in tiny regions of the brain involved in sex and reproduction, found in post-mortem brains by Simon LeVay and colleagues. A region of the hypothalamus called INAH3 turned out to differ in size between straight men and women — men's INAH3 is about twice as large as women's. Gay men, however, had a smaller, straight-female-sized INAH3. Could INAH3 be the "sexual orientation area" of the brain? It's possible. The hypothalamus is certainly an important area for sexual behavior, although what exactly INAH3 does is unknown. But another consideration is the chicken-and-egg problem: What causes what? One possibility is that the size of INAH3 causes sexual orientation: a larger INAH3 means you will be attracted to women, and smaller INAH3 means you will be attracted to men. But another possibility is that being attracted to women for years and years causes the size of INAH3 to increase. Remember that your brain is changing and responding all the time in response to your experiences. And the brains being studied were adult brains, after the individuals had died. We can find out more by looking at sheep, a species which shares with us some reproductive traits. Interestingly, eight percent of rams (male sheep) have a sexual preference for other rams, rather than ewes (female sheep). It turns out that sheep also have an INAH3, and it follows exactly the same pattern as in humans: rams that prefer ewes have an INAH3 twice as big as the INAH3 of ewes, but rams that prefer rams have the smaller, ewe-sized INAH3. We still have the chicken-and-egg problem: Does being attracted to ewes or rams change the size of INAH3? Or does the INAH3 size control the attractions of the sheep? We don't know. But we do know that human cultural experience cannot explain the INAH3 results. Whatever the connection between this brain region and sexual orientation, it is something we share with other species. These are just two studies among an ongoing body of research seeking to find out more about the biology of sexual orientation in humans. So far scientists think that, like most human behavior, sexual attraction is the result of a complex orchestration between genes, early hormone exposures and other environmental factors. There is probably no one thing that determines sexual orientation. But each clue gives us a little more information about human sexuality and how we each come to be who we are. Michelle Wirth is a professor of Psychology. She can be contacted at mwirth@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

A suit, a suitcase and a typewriter

By The Observer · Thursday, April 8, 2010

When my father left his childhood bedroom for the Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical College in the late summer of 1967, he possessed three things: a tailored suit, a luggage set and a typewriter. He had acquired all three at separate times immediately surrounding, but, more significantly, on account of his graduation from high school. So, when my time came to leave the lockers of senior hall behind, my father was insistent that I take careful time in securing my own versions of the three commencement items. My mother tried to explain why they were so important to him, but I just shrugged and rode shotgun on the way to Men's Warehouse. There were way too many graduation parties and salutatory addresses demanding my concentration. Two years later, I find myself checking an over-sized rolling duffel at the airline counter, buttoning up the three-button pinstripe armor before braving formal events and spending a large majority of time with my fingers on the keys of my computer. Look in my room and you will see that these have a special place among my other belongings: right there with my books and the picture of my family and my iPod and my speakers and my sneakers and my futon and my postcard collection and my camera and my snow boots and my posters and those energy-efficient bulbs I have yet to install and that strand of Christmas lights I grabbed off of a tree on the side of the road last winter break. All right, so you wouldn't necessarily be inclined to notice them any more than anything else in my hovel of strange junk. And it would be safe to assume that, on most days, the suit or the suitcase or the computer doesn't strike me either. Truth be told, individually, they are no more than societal necessities, common objects to be found in any one of my neighbors' rooms. However, every once in a while, that little picturesque legend of my father, dressed up, suitcase in one hand, portable typewriter in the other, floats into my mind and I try to understand what those things meant to him. For centuries, higher education has represented a furthering and intensification of individual, intellectual instruction. To a certain extent, this remains and will always remain its function: assimilation of information, profession of the knowledge by some and the demonstration by others of comprehension of such knowledge. Yet, the longer I am here at this University, the more I feel that an equally important (though perhaps implicit or even overlooked) role of college is the social formation of the individual. For most, the university acts as a catalyst for our transition from adolescence into adulthood, a catalyst for independence and autonomy. We (or at least some of us) are pushed from the nest of our parents and made nomads for a time, allowed to roam. We are asked to interact with adults more as peers than as authorities. We are encouraged to develop our own thoughts and worldview. Curse ResLife or the latest assignment for a paper from Philosophy, but college is our society's way of making us responsible for our own thoughts and actions. College forces us to recognize our own person: individual, free and capable. My father steps onto the Louisiana State University campus. He wears a suit, a sign of his age and of his newly earned status as a man, no longer a boy. He carries a suitcase, symbolic of his having no tethers to home, fettered to nothing and no one, able to settle in any land he may choose. And he punches out letters on a little, tan Brother typewriter, the keys that can unlock his means to expression and materialize his thoughts or pin down the world he sees onto fields of 20-pound white. Perhaps this image allows me to better appreciate the profundity of those three gifts with which I left home. Perhaps distinguishing their significance among my room of superfluities allows me to distinguish my necessary significance among this world of banalities. William Stewart is a sophomore majoring in the Program of Liberal Studies. He can be contacted at William.J.Stewart.90@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Being 'anti-union' perfectly legal

By The Observer · Thursday, April 8, 2010

I want to respond to one of the assumptions that appears to underly Sarah Furman's March 31 column about the HEI hotel company ("HEI: Still an issue"). She criticizes HEI for being "anti-union." She seems to assume that being anti-union is either illegal or immoral. It is neither. An employer, at least under current law, has every right to encourage its employees not to form or join a union. An employer is well within its rights, both legally and morally, to think that a union will not be in the best interests of the company or of its employees. While there are those who wish to deny employers the right and ability to communicate with their employees about unions organizing, employers in the U.S. have long been at liberty to speak with their employees about these matters. If an employer goes beyond exercising his constitutionally protected right of free speech, and instead engages in actions that violate federal labor laws, then of course he should be held accountable for those violations. Whether HEI violated such laws is a matter to be decided by the NLRB — though I would caution anyone from assuming guilt merely based on allegations by NLRB staff. My point is that encouraging employees not to join a union is not synonymous with denying them the right to do so. If, after hearing both sides of the argument, employees freely choose to unionize, then that is their right. However, we should not assume that employers who are "anti-union," in the sense that they actively communicate with their employees and encourage them to not join a union, are acting either illegally or immorally. Mark Goodman alumnus class of 1983 April 6

Fall of a power

By The Observer · Thursday, April 8, 2010

In my four years at this wonderful university, I have witnessed many great things. Unfortunately I have also seen the complete fall of a once-powerful baseball program. While I will admit that my coming to the university coincided with the loss of one of the top five coaches in the nation (Paul Mainieri), there is no reason our program should have gone from a Big East dynasty that was a perennial player in the NCAA Tournament to a Big East afterthought that has not made the tournament in four years. While I will admit that baseball at Notre Dame doesn't receive the same amount of attention as basketball or football, there is no reason a team which made the College World Series in the past decade should currently stand at 9-17. From everything I have heard about him, Manager David Schrage seems to be a great man. However, I do not think our university should accept mediocrity in a sport that we had dominated for well over a decade. If Mr. Swarbrick does decide to make a coaching change at the end of the year, I think he should look no further than Brian O'Connor, a former Notre Dame assistant and manager of the No. 4 Virginia Cavaliers. Jordan Carey senior off campus April 7

We owe our gratitude

By The Observer · Wednesday, April 7, 2010

We at Notre Dame are blessed by a large number of prople who provide services which enhance our lives and are sometimes taken for granted. We owe much gratitude to the Grounds workers, the cleaning staffs, our Security people and our Fire Department. Without these men and women, our lives would not be as meaningful as they are. Be sure to say a big THANKS to those who serve us as their ministry to Notre Dame.

Memorial to Matt James

By The Observer · Wednesday, April 7, 2010

To Matt James Love, Notre Dame

Overman

By The Observer · Wednesday, April 7, 2010

"So," I said. "I was thinking that I would give my students John Lennon as an example of the Overman."

Respectful dialogue

By The Observer · Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Two very skilled debaters are going to butt heads on one of the most important questions in a world that is becoming increasingly more secular, and they're going to do it at Notre Dame.

Just the facts

By The Observer · Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Editors note: This is the first installment in a series of columns by Notre Dame faculty members exploring current scholarly research in sexuality concentrating on sexual orientation and related issues.

Hitchens-D'Souza: A Primer

By The Observer · Wednesday, April 7, 2010

This evening, Christopher Hitchens, the famous, and sometimes infamous, British-American journalist and anti-theist will debate Dinesh D'Souza, a star of the Conservative right movement in the states. This event has been billed "The God Debate" at Notre Dame, and certainly should prove interesting for everybody in attendance. However, many students I have talked to don't know too much about either debater, much less what positions they generally hold and should be expected to argue tonight, so I took it upon myself to do a little research and watch some of their past debate.