Opinion

Finding the good in finals

By The Observer · Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

Oh, syllabus week. It's an indisputable fact that syllabus week, the first week of classes, is the best week of each semester. Labs are canceled, no one really learns anything, the idea of homework is laughable and teachers mostly just hand out course packets explaining what you are going to do when you actually, you know, start learning. It's such a stark contrast from the last memories I have of Notre Dame coming back from break, which were obviously from finals week. Everyone is stressed out, burned out and frustrated during finals week. People worry about their grades, their projects and wonder why they didn't even attempt to learn during the previous 14 weeks. I, however, have a different view of finals week. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I like it, but I certainly don't loathe finals week as the bane of my existence the way that seemingly everyone else does (I know, I'm weird like that). Personally, I was way more stressed out the last week of class, mostly due to the unending list of projects that were due that week (ask any other junior CE major). However, even if I could coast during the last week of class, there are a number of opportunities that finals week affords that makes it different from all other weeks of the semester. Finals week is the easiest conversation starter in the world. You can go up to any person, stranger or not and just huff, "Ugh, I hate finals" to which the other person will, no doubt, agree enthusiastically and then proceed to bombard you with their remaining schedule for the rest of the week and a countdown until they are done. Seriously, try it sometime. And, like a lot of other people, I allow myself to eat whatever makes me feel good during finals, which is typically a steady diet of Chipotle, Recker's pizza and care package chocolate. When it comes to wardrobe, the entire world of style comes to a screeching halt. Nobody judges what you wear. If it were up to me, I would love to walk around in sweatpants or flannel pants, a t-shirt and moccasins every single day. Normally, though, I make an attempt to look presentable, at the very least, sometimes even classy. But finals week is not one of those times. I walk all over campus looking like I just rolled out of bed and nobody so much as even looks twice and that's because they don't look any different. Finals week is the most comfortable week of the year, if nothing else. More than anything, though, finals week provides me and every single other college student in America the opportunity to find new and creative ways to procrastinate. With the rise of Internet video sharing, it is possible to watch essentially any television show that you want, whenever you want. And when I want to watch TV the most is when I should be studying. The worst part of this year was that I actually ran out of episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" to watch to distract myself from doing actual work. Between fall break and finals week, I somehow managed to watch almost 100 episodes, a fact of which I am not sure whether to be proud or disgusted (maybe a little of both). And while TV is great, the best way to procrastinate is to Sporcle. Constantly. What's Sporcle? Simply put, it is the best Website on the internet and certainly the most addicting. Sporcle is simply a collection of quizzes, set to a timer. Each quiz is a list of blanks and a clue is given to the player to fill in each item on the list, which all follow a common theme, before time runs out. It is an incredibly simple idea that has unlimited potential for creativity and entertainment. Some of them have to do with television shows, some have to do with movies, some have to do with sports and some can't be classified into any one particular category (like words that begin and end with the letter T). There is something for, literally, everyone to do. The reason I like Sporcle so much is that I actually feel like I am doing something productive with my brain while I am procrastinating, rather than letting it rot by watching YouTube videos. If you like reminiscing about old movies, songs or TV shows, Sporcle is full of quizzes that will test your memory and will keep you hooked for hours at a time. And, most importantly, playing involves typing on your computer, so it looks like you are typing a paper to anyone who cares to look or judge you. So when you go back and brag about how you spent eight straight hours at the library, you have on your conscience that you were doing work the whole time. Kind of. Andy Ziccarelli is a junior majoring in Civil Engineering. He can be reached at aziccare@nd.edu The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Saint Mary's Straight and Gay Alliance

By The Observer · Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

To Colin Hofman, Jay Wade, Lauren Rosemeyer and Jenn Metz, Editor-in-Chief: I am writing on behalf of the Saint Mary's Straight and Gay Alliance and all students standing for human dignity. Your comic strip from Wednesday, January 13 was offensive for two very serious reasons. It encourages violence against fellow Notre Dame and Saint Mary's family members and it shows a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of Catholic teaching on the issue of homosexuality. Whether or not you realize it, when you write such a comic, or in the case of the editor, allow it to be printed, you are responsible for the message it carries and what it implies. On October 7, 1998, a young man outside of Laramie, Wyoming was found bloodied, tortured and beaten into a coma. The two young men who committed this crime did so because Matthew Shepherd was a gay man. A few days later, he died from the injuries he sustained to his head from being beaten with the butt of a pistol. You may not like it but Notre Dame and Saint Mary's is a home to lesbian, gay and bisexual students. Your call as both a Christian and as a human being is to respect them. Making light of the very real threat of homophobic motivated hate crimes is a poor excuse for humor and a despicable action. I completely support and defend a person's freedom of belief, expression and speech. However, when expressing that belief takes the form of language which encourages violence against a group of people, you have crossed a professional and ethical line. As journalists, you are expected to maintain a certain level of integrity. As Christians, you are called to truth. This brings me to my most important point; that this comic opposes what the Catholic Church teaches surrounding the issue of homosexuality; Notre Dame is a Catholic school and therefore respects the dignity of all humans as the crown of God's creation. According to the document from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in its pastoral letter Always Our Children, the Catholic Church teaches that, "Nothing in the Bible or in Catholic teaching can be used to justify prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes or behaviors ... We call on all Christians and citizens of good will to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons" (emphasis my own). Further, Jesus preached a gospel of tolerance and acceptance. Our Christian faith can be summarized in a single word- love. Regardless of your personal stance regarding homosexuality, you are called to love your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as children of God. Calling something a "comic" when it suggests beating a homosexual into a permanent vegetative state with a baseball bat is a far cry from Jesus' radical call to love. It may be a joke to you, but to members of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community, it is a constant reality that there are people out there who would harm us for who and what we are. Something like this would never be allowed to be published if it was directed at a religious, ethnic, racial or cultural minority. What makes this any different? Advocating violence toward a group of people and passing it off as a joke demeans the inherent dignity of all people created in the Divine loving image of God.

Saint Mary's Straight and Gay Alliance

By The Observer · Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

To Colin Hofman, Jay Wade, Lauren Rosemeyer and Jenn Metz, Editor-in-Chief: I am writing on behalf of the Saint Mary's Straight and Gay Alliance and all students standing for human dignity. Your comic strip from Wednesday, January 13 was offensive for two very serious reasons. It encourages violence against fellow Notre Dame and Saint Mary's family members and it shows a complete lack of knowledge or understanding of Catholic teaching on the issue of homosexuality. Whether or not you realize it, when you write such a comic, or in the case of the editor, allow it to be printed, you are responsible for the message it carries and what it implies. On October 7, 1998, a young man outside of Laramie, Wyoming was found bloodied, tortured and beaten into a coma. The two young men who committed this crime did so because Matthew Shepherd was a gay man. A few days later, he died from the injuries he sustained to his head from being beaten with the butt of a pistol. You may not like it but Notre Dame and Saint Mary's is a home to lesbian, gay and bisexual students. Your call as both a Christian and as a human being is to respect them. Making light of the very real threat of homophobic motivated hate crimes is a poor excuse for humor and a despicable action. I completely support and defend a person's freedom of belief, expression and speech. However, when expressing that belief takes the form of language which encourages violence against a group of people, you have crossed a professional and ethical line. As journalists, you are expected to maintain a certain level of integrity. As Christians, you are called to truth. This brings me to my most important point; that this comic opposes what the Catholic Church teaches surrounding the issue of homosexuality; Notre Dame is a Catholic school and therefore respects the dignity of all humans as the crown of God's creation. According to the document from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in its pastoral letter Always Our Children, the Catholic Church teaches that, "Nothing in the Bible or in Catholic teaching can be used to justify prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes or behaviors ... We call on all Christians and citizens of good will to confront their own fears about homosexuality and to curb the humor and discrimination that offend homosexual persons" (emphasis my own). Further, Jesus preached a gospel of tolerance and acceptance. Our Christian faith can be summarized in a single word- love. Regardless of your personal stance regarding homosexuality, you are called to love your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as children of God. Calling something a "comic" when it suggests beating a homosexual into a permanent vegetative state with a baseball bat is a far cry from Jesus' radical call to love. It may be a joke to you, but to members of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community, it is a constant reality that there are people out there who would harm us for who and what we are. Something like this would never be allowed to be published if it was directed at a religious, ethnic, racial or cultural minority. What makes this any different? Advocating violence toward a group of people and passing it off as a joke demeans the inherent dignity of all people created in the Divine loving image of God.

How we know our University has failed

By The Observer · Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

I'm not a big fan of mission statements. They usually either just state something that everyone already knew or are so meandering and vague they couldn't possibly guide anything. But a good one can actually tell us something about our aspirations for the outcomes of our work. In the case of this university, one of the most important outputs is the character of our students — and our mission statement says so: "The University seeks to cultivate in its students not only an appreciation for the great achievements of human beings, but also a disciplined sensibility to the poverty, injustice, and oppression that burden the lives of so many. The aim is to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice." Note especially the phrases "a disciplined sensibility to the poverty, injustice and oppression" and "a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good." If students walk away from Notre Dame without these, we have failed. Those failures should both sadden us and strengthen our resolve to work toward a better outcome, especially when confronted blatant evidence of our failures. Case in point: Tuesday's comic "The Mobile Party." In case you missed it, the comic poses the question "What is the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?" And answers, "A baseball bat." The strip can be viewed on the strip's blog as well (themobileparty.blogspot.com). Can the authors (students here at our beloved university) explain how this comic is an expression of a disciplined sensibility to injustice and oppression, or reflecting human solidarity, or concern for the common good? What's worse is that the blog also posts a version that was apparently rejected The Observer in which the response isn't "a baseball bat," but "AIDS." Again, solidarity? Concern for the common good? The post also includes a gmail chat in which the Observer staffer rejects the AIDS version because they "prefer not to make light of a fatal disease." They don't mind, however, making light of beating another human being with a baseball bat until that person becomes a "vegetable." This is no isolated incident on our campus. Last year, for example, during the bookstore basketball tournament, there were two teams whose names referenced Chris Brown/Rihanna ("Unlike Rihanna, we get our hands up on defense" and "Chris Brown's Greatest Hits"). It's no surprise that these kinds of cultural references come up in team names, but it is appalling. Even worse, the organizers chose these names as members of their "Top 10 Team Names" list and presented them at the Captains meeting as if they were exemplary — ones we should think are funny, or appreciate, or, God forbid, emulate! Is this really funny: "The Los Angeles County court affidavit alleges that Mr. Brown, 19, repeatedly punched ‘Robyn F.' [Robyn Rihanna Fenty] — in the face and arms, bit her, held her so tightly in a headlock that she almost lost consciousness and threatened to kill her..."? On this campus many students, faculty and staff work hard to combat violence. Getting a cheap laugh at the expense of the abused, bashed, disabled and even murdered not only belittles these horrific experiences but encourages more violence. Instead, our student leaders — elected leaders, organizers of campus activities and the editors, writers and cartoonists in our main public forum — ought to also be leaders in supporting our mission. If we can't even get these people on board with our core values, then we truly have failed.