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

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Hit of the winter: the Convo Center. The eighth of December and the big skylights enner- vated the chilly air of South Bend at the Athletic and Convocation Center of the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame ' s latest contribution to the well-being of its students and its mother city, the $8.5 million building has managed by its sheer architectural ingenuity to with- stand charges that its real aim is to support professional athletics (at Notre Dame?) and not to provide a skating rink for the underprivileged children of South Bend. A masterpiece of interior decorating, the Notre Dame Irish expanded their ethnic prejudices to include Tartan Turf, the basic material for the playing fields of Notre Dame; list price $35 a square yard. The most outstanding de- sign feature of the building was the one-tenth mile track, which was unbanked. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Otto Preminger, who spoke at Notre Dame December 8: Interviewer: Sir, it ' s said around Hollywood, that you have brilliant elbows. What do they mean by that? Preminger: That I have in-grown elbows? Interviewer: No, brilliant elbows. Preminger: Never heard of that, where did you read this? You know, you also speak always of Hollywood. I don ' t even live in Hollywood. I live in New York. But what are brilliant elbows? Interviewer: I don ' t know, I couldn ' t understand. I just read it. Preminger: I shine them? I shine them every morning? With shoe shine? Interviewer: I guess it ' s something that you outgrow. Preminger: I don ' t know. V Left, above, the ice skating rink at the Convocation Center. Left, below, comedian Bill Cosby during the week of dedication. Above, a wet Georgia Tech game. 23

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Robert Hutchins on dialogue and education: The American university system today is a giant storehouse of miscellaneous information with no sense of commu- nity and no sense of intellectual commitment . . . Dialogue is opposed to a civilization based on power. Education as it stands today is used to promote the pros- perity and power of the state. Education by dialogue is directly opposed to this. Education today is becoming less and less dialectical. On the other hand, society is becoming more in need of centers of dialogue. The future of education depends on the future of dialogue. In a mock presidential election, Notre Dame students chose Humphrey and St. Mary ' s students Nixon. Eldrige Cleaver got four votes at Notre Dame and none at St. Mary ' s. And Richard Nixon was elected President. - A typical comment was that of the Scholastic: In this election year, the Scholastic declines to endorse any one of the presidential candidates representing the major established political parties. We do so not cynically, but numbly, in shock, for we had once wanted to accept the present American political system, to fit into it, to work within it; we had wanted to remain proud Americans. The National Student Association, pride of pompous student leaders from all over the country, decided that Notre Dame should be the site of one of its experiments, an Issues Day program. The notion was that by assem- bling important leaders in politics on the local, national and university levels for questioning by students, a so- called communication barrier would be broken down or at least significantly battered. It didn ' t work: nobody came. Top, Issues Day in Stepan Center. Left, the fieldhouse of the Convo- cation Center. Above, Father Hesburgh and Richard Rossie (left) dur- ing Issues Day at Stepan Center. 22

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Black athletes the Afro-Americans. ! Francois ' Mitterand, on the ideals of the Left speaking at Notre Dame October 28: These things, you know, are of all eras. They were very well expressed in a few words by Blaise Pascal. Order and justice. For the con- servative parties social order comes before all justice. For the men of the Left, the men of progress, justice precedes order. It is for them a superior order. Here is a definition on which one could base the political choice he must make in his life. It is only in modern times, with the large population of today, with the coming of the industrial age, that mechanical conditions have been created. There are laws of economics. Because of posi- tions based on the principles that I have just cited, there are political choices which follow rules that I ' ll try to define for you: I think that the definition of socialism corresponds to the triumph of social justice in our indus- trial society. To give to the working classes the means of living, participating, and of governing. To avoid the crushing of the proletarian masses. There are a certain number of processes which have been explained since Marx by numerous authors, which explain that there are certain absolute rules which must be followed unswerv- ingly, if we can hope to transform contemporary bour- geois society. However, recent events in the universities throughout the world, and particularly in Paris, show that a modern need has appeared beyond explanations rendered by scientific socialism which is, shall we say, from that spiritual part of man, and which finds neither in capitalism nor in communism the answer to its ques- tions. The Notre Dame Afro-American Society gained in strength and influence this year, as the black athletes were embarrassed into joining it, and its members staged a walkout on Strom Thurmond to the chant I ' m black and I ' m proud. The blacks showed at once that they are part of Notre Dame and aware of its way of func- tioning when they chose athletic exhibitions as the scene for presenting their demands. The Georgia Tech game (we won) was enlivened by signs; one of them read God Bless John Carlos and Tommy Smith. The parallel with the Olympics can ' t stand, however. Notre Dame ' s blacks were greeted by jeers of White Power and Get off the field, you dirty niggers! Moreover, they were greeted by the Administration then and after the UCLA game where similar protests were threatened with polite, meaningless promises. The revolutionary gestures of blacks and student ed- itors were isolated cases. The fundamental conservatism of Notre Dame students held firm as the recall of the Student Body President was demanded by close to thirty percent of the students. He was, of course returned to office, but then he was never really radical to begin with. The demands of the blacks were various, including scholarship support for blacks from the university, black admissions recruiters, black counsellors and black fac- ulty members. Contending that while admissions stan- dards are lowered for black students they are left to flounder with better trained students, after admission, Afro-American Society also demanded tutorial programs for black freshmen. The final demand was that 10% of the student body be black by 1972. Hesburgh said: I ' m as interested in these problems as they are. I ' ve done everything I possibly could, I think. Barat College, a small Catholic women ' s liberal arts college in Chicago, which for several years had consid- ered moving lock, stock and barrel to South Bend to join Notre Dame and St. Mary ' s in a university complex, was told not to by the governing body of the Mothers of the Sacred Heart. And so the plan for a college cluster in South Bend faded once more. Left, French Leftist, Francois Mitterand. answer questions during a protest. A hove, Afro-Americans 24