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Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025
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Student body campaigning

By lettertotheeditor · Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023

The campaigning period for the student body president and vice-president election has begun. We are very excited to announce that three tickets were able to secure enough of your signatures to officially become candidates for the student body election. Listed in alphabetical order by last name of the presidential candidate, these tickets are:

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Why we need more flex points

By Jane Miller · Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023

Flex points. The time and time again coveted entity. Our lack of them is the number one complaint among students. Why do we have so many meal swipes but hardly any flex points? Why can’t we use a meal swipe at Au Bon Pain?

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Feminism needs intersectionality

By Grace Sullivan · Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023

In the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, the suffrage movement gained momentum and initiated the first wave of feminism: a global movement that has continued to live on for decades. Feminism continues to fight for women’s equality in order to create a more equal society that does not discriminate on the basis of gender. However, not all women are included in the feminist movement since racist suffragists have excluded the voices of Black women. So while feminism claimed to be a sisterhood between all women, discrimination and exclusion were taking place within the very movement that aims to fight against oppression. How can the feminist movement claim to be for all women when it excludes women of color?  

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Blind justice; fangless lion

By Carlos Basurto · Monday, Jan. 30, 2023

Pride is a particularly interesting characteristic of our human experience. It is a double-edged sword with an ambivalent effect in our daily occurrences — too much of it will lead to arrogance, too little will lead to inhibition. Yet where does pride come from? It does not emerge purely from the depths of our souls, but rather, is always rooted on something. It need not be material to begin with, but pride is possible solely as a byproduct of comparison. One can be proud of their achievements, possessions or capacities only if they can be compared to someone else’s. “Rich,” “smart,” “strong,” “fast,” “kind,” “good” — all of these adjectives are relative. You are strong exclusively because someone is not; you can only be slow if someone is faster than you. As there cannot be light without darkness, there cannot be good without bad. Call it a property of physics or a linguistic necessity, much of the descriptive terminology we employ simply denotes the difference between things. It is in this difference where pride sparks. 

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Ranking the mysteries of the rosary

By Peter Breen · Monday, Jan. 30, 2023

I’m not a superstitious person, although I do bring a rosary around with me to fight off potential demons. The rosary I carry is a stretch of blue yarn I tied up one week in elementary school religion class. I’d like to imagine that the untainted soul of a more naïve, the world is your oyster Peter is somehow captured in my rosary’s knots.

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Happy birthday to me! 

By Jonah Tran · Monday, Jan. 30, 2023

My birthday was last Saturday. It was the 19thone to date and certainly the most memorable one. I have had a complicated  past with birthdays. I have never had a birthday party. I can never seem to blow out all the candles in one quick motion. I usually do not love the cake because of excess frosting. For me, each birthday was an uncanny déjà vu, an imitated rehash of the year before. Eighteen felt like 17, 17 like 16, 16 like 15, so on and so forth until my memory fades. I offer you my standard birthday routine.  

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Don’t delay discernment!

By Joey Jegier · Friday, Jan. 27, 2023

Before coming to Notre Dame, I had never heard of discernment. Now, I would be lost without it. Discernment has not only brought joy and clarity, but it has also become the subject of my senior thesis.

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'Impermeably and forever': Reflecting on Rory Gilmore's graduation speech

By Mannion McGinley · Friday, Jan. 27, 2023

“Gilmore Girls” has been a comfort show of mine for years. Through my many watches, I've processed that Rory Gilmore is no perfect character. In fact, she’s one of the farthest main characters from “perfect” that I have come to know in my 22 years of reading, watching and learning. While she and Lorelai didn’t always get everything right, they’ve shaped who I am from some of their best moments and I’ve learned from watching some of their worst. 

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Thank you social justice volunteers

By lettertotheeditor · Friday, Jan. 27, 2023

The University of Notre Dame does an excellent job of reminding us how important it is to reach out to “the least of our brethren” and practice social justice as part of our daily lives. There is the Center for Social Concerns on campus that does an excellent job clarifying this for us. One of the other organizations on campus that also actively practices social justice in our community is the Sacred Heart Parish on campus. They have a Social Justice Ministry that has been active for many years with a number of parishioners who have also been active in such ministries.

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Observer Editorial: The hole in our newsroom

By The Observer Editorial Board · Friday, Jan. 27, 2023

As Walk the Walk week wraps up at Notre Dame, our predominantly white institution is left to think about how to put into practice the ideas we’ve engaged with this week. The University has poured funding and time into curating events with distinguished speakers and alumni and publicly uplifted its diverse students’ stories for the week.  This, of course, is an important first step in championing people of color on our campus and educating a majority white student body but it is, by nature, performative. So, how do we confront the actual problems we face when it comes to including students of diverse backgrounds?

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Snow days

By Isabelle Kause · Friday, Jan. 27, 2023

A few days ago on my way across campus, instead of hurrying to get to where I was going like I normally do, I took time to admire the snow. I noticed how beautiful the Golden Dome looked as the snow fell down and how much people seemed to be embracing the moment. Being from Chicago, I don’t have as much appreciation for the snow as most people do. I love when it snows around the holidays, but not so much when it’s March and nearing April. However, given that we’re still in January, I’ve chosen to embrace the snow for the time being. 

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'You can’t ever say you haven’t been told': My love letter to 'The Sopranos'

By Stephen Viz · Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023

Television, in particular paid programming television, has seen a cinematic revival since the turn of the twenty-first century. While once belittled as the little brother of the silver screen, the current landscape of television has changed drastically. No longer do actors smirk at the idea of taking on TV projects, but rather embrace it in ways not seen before. And while there have been dozens of titles that have received both critical and fan acclaim, all roads lead back to "The Sopranos"(1999-2007), arguably the godfather of modern television (yes, all puns intended).

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Winter blues

By Reyna Lim · Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023

It's that time of year in South Bend where campus freezes over and the permacloud chronically deprives us of sunlight. It’s all about perspective, really, because when the snow on the ground is still white, my morning coffee tastes just bitter enough, and my Spotify shuffles to the right track by The Velvet Underground and I’d waken up on time to put on four or more layers of clothes, I can almost romanticize the cold. Sometimes, at night, when it’s dark, I can even tell myself that South Quad is actually Narnia. But the truth is, most of the time, any 15-minute walk can seem like the last trek of your life when the wind is blowing in your face at infinite miles per hour and you’ve forgotten what your fingers are meant to feel like.

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The truth about Andrew Tate

By Oluwatoni Akintola · Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023

Top G. Cobra. The Professor. The man born as Emory Andrew Tate has many names and many cars. And many supporters, too. In fact, Tate has become something of a messiah to one of the most misunderstood demographics of people in the world, many of whom are angry at the world for one reason or another. I’m not talking about fans of Michigan football (though they do have a lot to be angry about). I’m talking about young men who have been rejected by society.

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