University of Notre Dame - Dome Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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Top, Father Hesburgh addressing the Student Life Council. Left, the Freshman Orientation held in the Convocation Center. Above, Strom Thurmond at Washington Hall. 20

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YEAR IN REVIEW

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Pat O ' Brien, Revolution, SLC. Father Hesburgh often says that he feels Notre Dame is a special sort of place; one of the things that makes it unique is the way that it is starkly unmoving. In the most frantic press of events, students in the main quad and old CSCs in Holy Cross House and the faculty in the basement of the library never change. The situation is one governed by the daily pattern of each group; and those patterns all somehow mesh in the dull daily busi- ness of classes and meals and sleeping. Some people have said that the sameness is oppressive; others have said that it engenders a real critique of the values we all hold in common. Notre Dame has celebrated her 1st, 25th, 50th, 75th, 100th, and 125th anniversary in wartime. Notre Dame has survived so much that one might conjecture that it would survive its own death. We cannot, however, as- sess the effects on the people here because we are among them; in the next pages we present a few of the events that have shaped Notre Dame this past year. Twenty days after Hubert Horatio Humphrey was selected as the Democratic National Convention ' s can- didate for the presidency; the sense of Chicago, the smell and the flowing blood all lingered into a year where student politics reached a fruition that simply didn ' t make any more difference. Moral outrage and frustration were brutalized into the same insensibility as the bodies of the few people who care about Amer- ica anymore. And the University of Notre Dame opened to 1,549 freshmen, as Edmund Muskie pleaded for an attitude of trust among men in the Stepan Center. The revolutionary spirit was picked up by Notre Dame students in a kind of mock-manifesto issued late in September. Richard Rossie. Student Body President. William Luking. editor of The Observer, and William Cullen. editor of The Scholastic led the charge, sum- moning up non-existent prestige in their inflated rhetoric. We have no faith in the present administrative and academic structure of this university . . . Because of the critical nature of the situation, our guide to action can only be visible, undeniable, even intrusive result . . . Action must be our style. The preface to a scenario for revolution but not at Notre Dame. Notre Dame beat Oklahoma. Michael Zagarell. Vice-Presidential Candidate of the Communist Party of Amercia; speaking at Notre Dame September 16, 1969: We are living in a time of funda- mental crisis; in the cities, in the financial realm, in our foreign policy, and in our race relations. . . . We ' re not in Vietnam to defend national security. We ' re there to defend private interest and private property. . . . Black suppression is a profitable business. . . . George Wal- lace is not an alternative. Wallace is the same as Hum- phrey and Nixon in double doses. Pat O ' Brien as Knute Rockne, speaking at the Pur- due rally, September 27, 1968: Sometimes, Rock, when the breaks are getting the boys down, and the going gets tough, tell them to go in there and win just one for the Gipper. I don ' t know where 111 be then, Rock, but m know and I ' ll be happy. Notre Dame continued on its plodding way toward the final conflict between the university community and the city it feeds off of. During the summer, the area around Notre Dame went through the final stages of shifting from white middle class to black lower middle class. And the fights in Frankie ' s and the Senior Bar between blacks and Notre Dame students provided fur- ther testimony to the fact that the University is indeed an ivory tower with neither necessary nor possible connection with South Bend. Notre Dame lost to Purdue. Outside the University, the calm assurance about the Great Catholic University. Dan Lyons, S.J., of Twin Circle magazine, informed the public that in recent years Notre Dame has developed ultra-liberal tendencies and seems to be falling prey to forces on the New Left. Some of the influence springs from secular foundations in the hands of ultra-liberals; some of it comes from leftist elements among a small minority of students. Peter Michelson, Assistant Professor of English, on Notre Dame: This is an intimidating campus in many ways; the pressure is so great for sameness. Individual- ism is hampered by the gorgeousness of the spectacle of Notre Dame. I mean, a football stadium packed with 60,000 screaming people, all of single mind, is a pretty awesome thing. St Mary ' s College, a small liberal arts college for women, hi Notre Dame, Indiana, eliminated compulsory dormitory hours for upperclasswomen. No noticeable behavioral changes resulted. The systems of student influence reached a new level of pointless complexity in mid-October with the insti- tution of the Student Life Council. The Administration, composed of about eighty men, had eight representatives on the council. The faculty of six hundred had eight representatives on the council. The student body, at last count numbering close to six thousand, had eight rep- resentatives on the council. They did allow first semester seniors to have cars. The exciting River City culture parade socked it to us with Gone with the Wind for three months, Alaskan Safari for three weeks, Bullitt for five, and Camelot for ten. You ' ve got to admit it ' s getting better, getting better all the time. 21