"The Notre Dame student must hence be a football fanatic, a political moderate, a Sunday Catholic, and must run the academic rat race and do nothing but bitch about the dating situation"

Beyond Football: Over Thirty Years of Radicals at Notre Dame
Socialists, Pacifists, Feminists, Queers, Black Nationalists, and Anti-Racists, Presente!
by aaron kreider

The following is a scatterred over-view of activism at Notre Dame from 1965 until present. A brief word on my methodology: it sucked. A longer word on methodology: our beloved author painstakingly skimmed every single Scholastic from 1965 until present (not including issues that may have been missing, or articles that were removed – see the later section on censorship). 1965 was chosen because it was the year in which Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized the first large anti-Vietnam War demonstration in DC – and not much happened before then at Notre Dame. I camped by the photocopier in the library and copied a large stack of material. Some years were very sparse in reporting student activism (especially a couple years in the seventies), whereas 1969-1970 was a huge peak. In addition, I used the incomplete Observer index to try to track down activism events, copying stories from the nineties, notably the Spring of 1991 which was a very active time. No way am I going to document the hundred-some articles I photocopied! Most of the errors are due to inconsistencies between articles in the Observer and Scholastic, and errors in the original articles. I suspect that most such errors are minor.

I neither claim to be unbiased, nor would I admit that there can be much worth in consulting (or even worse relying upon) administrators to learn their defenses for suspending students, oppressing minorities, and censoring the student media. This history is not just dates and facts, but a living indictment of an unjust administration which should compel students to resist against practices that go way beyond ‘bad decisions’ and form a veritable pattern of oppression and disrespect. I wrote this because most students don’t know the history and don’t realize until they’re about to graduate the extent of oppression and need for change at ND. (*My comments will usually be in these things and I hope people find that they are at times intelligible, and often amusing.*) But more analysis later, first let us hear the stories of those who stood-up and resisted.

History is a powerful thing. I could tell you that Notre Dame over the past 35 years has contained seeds of radicalism, and you would think about how often you have encountered hostile conservative apathy on this campus and ignore me. But if I tell you that over sixty students occupied the Registrar’s office for eleven hours, a mere nine years ago, I bet your interest will be spiked. So please read this humble informal research paper. If you read it and still believe that activism is futile and progressive social change at ND is impossible, I will be very surprised. For it points towards the opposite.

(*New Left - a term invented in the Sixties to distinguish activists from the traditional communist and socialist left.*)

There came a time in the mid-Sixties when the administration became more worried about socialists and pacifists than it was about panty raids and food-fights in the dining hall. Nothing much happened in 1963 and 1964, and the fact that the Student Government almost banned the twist in 1962 is probably not as important as it seemed at the time. But in the fall of 1965, Lenny Joyce captured national attention when Huntley Brinkley (of TV fame) unexpectedly came to interview him while he was participating in the Farley Fast, organized to protest the Vietnam War. 700 people attended a teach-in on the war in Farley. Lenny later recognized this as a critical radicalizing experience that polarized people.

Lenny Joyce, an English major from Boston, was THE first campus leftist of the decade, and helped bring the New Left to campus. In the Summer of 1965 he had gone to Mississippi with the Freedom Summer program, and had also participated for two short periods in Community Action Centers (*which were likely a part of SDS’s anti-poverty community organizing program*). In short he had a solid "New Left" background. In 1966 he sought to formally bring the New Left on campus through the creation of a Notre Dame Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter. But they were never recognized:

"S.D.S. broke the restrictions. ‘We tried to get official Administration recognition from McCarragher. He said to do so he’d have to have a full membership list which both the FBI wanted and he wanted to give to them. We said no. We wouldn’t subject ourselves to that."

(Lenny Joyce, May 12, 1967 in Scholastic)

"But if the Administration is paternalistic, the student body is also close-minded. Radical thought is not tolerated on the Notre Dame campus, to the extent that, ipso facto, to be radical is to be wrong. Mill’s concept of intelligent opinion formation through the consideration of ‘every variety of opinion’ is here unthinkable. To stand up for pure principle, to challenge a ‘given,’ is unheard of. For at Notre Dame, life is not based on principles independently arrived at by each student. Notre Dame itself has dictated all the principles, and the only alternative is apathetic inactivity. There is an extremely strong emotional involvement with Notre Dame by most of its students. When they come here they become part of more than a school – they are absorbed into an all-encompassing tradition with standards and expectations of its own, and coming to Notre Dame implies that you accept these standards and will try to fulfill these expectations. The Notre Dame student must hence be a football fanatic, a political moderate, a Sunday Catholic, and must run the academic rate race and do nothing but bitch about the dating situation.

...

Whether the administration will or will not develop this University intelligently is largely a moot question. We have reached the point where ‘freedom’ and ‘responsibility’ are meaningless terms as long as they are talked of as conditions granted or imposed. They will continue to be meaningless until they are seen by the student as rightfully his, and demanded by him."

(Thomas Kirchner, Jan 14, 1966 Scholastic,"We Shall Overcome... Today", officer of Young Christian Students, a liberal group)

In the Spring of 1966, Lenny made political waves when he decided that both student body president (SBP) candidates platforms were meaningless given the times. So he ran for office. The newly created Popular Front for Students Rights was the idea of Howard Dooley, leader of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). He thought the name would scare the administration into relaxing its strict rules, like parietals, on student behavior. The front was initially a coalition of the political left (SDS & ADA) and right (YAF: Young Americans for Freedom). YAF dropped their support due to political tensions and Dooley, scared that the front could actually win, reversed his position and addressed the student body the night before the election on the WSND student radio station telling people to vote for the leading candidate. Too late to get on the ballot, and with less time than the others to launch a campaign and facing a split in his coalition, Lenny Joyce stunned campus by polling a respective 20.5% of votes (all of which were write-ins!) and taking third place. Had Seniors been able to vote, as years later show (older students are more liberal), he would have done better. During the campaign his "Seventeen Theses" platform (consisting purely of student rights issues -- Vietnam wasn’t involved) were even adopted by the other two opponents in varying forms. The turnout was an exceptional 74.5%. That May, a Scholastic writer criticized the Front for having a mere 100 members (*which I think is pretty darn good!*)..

In the Fall of 1966 the Action Student Party held its founding assembly and in the technically problematic senatorial elections that followed, elected 6 of their 13 candidates thus gaining 6 of the possible 39 senate seats. This was a victory as the ASP had only expected to win three or four..

Explaining the difficulty in running as a progressive, ASP elected candidate Larry Broderick related, "I spent most of my time explaining that we weren’t Communists or something."

While a SDS chapter never formally materialized at Notre Dame, the ASP, various leftwing-students, and eventually the Coalition for Political Action were all active in the struggle for progressive social change.

The ASP grew quickly. In the Spring of 1967, the ASP elected their vice presidential candidate Tom McKenna, and lost narrowly in the SBP race with candidate Dennis O’Dea taking a very respectable 44% in his loss to Chris McMurphy. Turnout was 85%!!! O’Dea could have won if a third candidate had not dropped-out, and if ASP’s image wasn’t so radical (the party was progressive, but likely their image was more extreme than their actual politics). ASPers celebrated their victory with a small beer bash in the student center lounge where they even took to singing "Hesburgh will get his" to the tune of "We Shall Overcome" (*try it sometime*) and looked forward to pressuring McMurphy (a moderate-liberal) to work on student rights issues. The incoming frosh were so shocked that they tried to recall SBP Murphy, but failed and his popularity was confirmed. An example of the dangers of compromize, McMurphy wasted his term and took to jet-setting raising money for ND’s fundraising "Summa" campaign.

The radicals gradually moved on from ASP to looking at issues like ROTC, the war, and eventually racism. But meanwhile in the next (1968) election Richard Rossie, endorsed by the ASP, was elected on a platform of "responsible student power." Richard won 65%, the largest majority in ND history. Politically he was somewhere between liberal and radical. He was the most leftwing president elected so far.

In the fall of 1968, the ASP won all 5 off-campus seats vs "Off-Campus Independents" (*probably an opposing slate*), electing a total of 14 senators, plus one "stay senator" (*what are those things?*), and could count on support from another 8 liberals on the senate. An ASP supporter figured, "We have at least 20 votes, and probably 23 out of 45, in favor of Richard’s programs. At least we’ve gotten that much." The ASP had made good progress, though they had hoped for a majority. Throughout this entire period other people had tried to form political parties, but without much success.

That fall the Free University (a joint effort of ND and SMC) started, and by the Spring it was offering classes in contemporary marriage, revolutionary theory, Black Power, mysticism, Christian existentialism, the media, the New Left, cooking and bartending, the new music, the stock market, natural childbirth, group therapy, and anything else someone wanted to teach and/or discuss.

The liberal campus mood was confirmed when the 1968 mock Republican convention nominated Vietnam war-opponent Sen. Richard Hatfield.

The fall of 1968, students protested Dow Chemical, maker of napalm, and CIA recruiters who came to campus. Students stopped the CIA by blocking a door, and the next day the CIA recruiter left campus!

I do not know what happened to the ASP in 1969, though I presume they got involved in peace organizing:

"Since the beginning we have worked to free the N.D. student from the stranglehold of a paternalistic university. The job is not over, but Student Government may be capable of finishing it. I personally feel that the A.S.P. must go on to more essential things in the coming year. We must determine the University’s relation to the military industrial complex, including ROTC, the draft, and military contracts, and then we must decide if and how this relation will be modified.

In this regard and many more, we must go beyond Notre Dame, Indiana, in our thinking and start considering our relation as American students to the rest of the nation and world."

(Paul Higgins, Jan 12. 1966, Scholastic, "Action Student Party")

In April 1969 an ad-hoc group of students tried to get the trustees to open their meetings and publish the minutes. Students failed, lacking the means and plans, and probably the will, to break into a closed building to disrupt the trustees meeting. Due to activist pressure, several trustees later met with 400 students in an open forum. That spring Phil McKenna, a radical, was elected SBP, with a platform similar to his opponent.

(*These people were often radicals, but here their pacifism is more obvious.*)

In June 1969, the national Vietnam Moratorium Committee called for a halt to business as usual on Oct. 15 – to educate people and help end the war. They intended to escalate their actions -- each month adding one day to the length of the Moratorium until their aims of substantial withdrawal / peace were achieved. By September, 400 colleges were involved including Notre Dame, SMC, Earlham, Goshen, Hanover, Indiana State, Marian and Purdue. Over the summer the Coalition for Political Action (CPA – note they have booklets they printed in the ND library archives) was formed to organize on campus. Notable CPA members include SBP McKenna, vice-president Fred Dedrick and Brian McInerney.

ND, SMC, and South Bend all held a series of events, including a teach-in. The capping event of the day was a Mass at Notre Dame during which 7 people (including two faculty who were veterans with children, and one woman student) formed the "Notre Dame Resistance," tearing draft cards and placing them in the offering basket:

"We proclaim this truth of life and resistance to concerned Americans everywhere who continue to believe in life and are willing to stand up for it. By our actions here today, in forming the Notre Dame Resistance, and by our continuing to spread this truth of Resistance and civil disobedience to a law of death, we hope we can help to return America to the path of life..."

(Notre Dame Resistance statement)

By their act they faced a possible 5 years and/or $10,000 fine. I never found out what happened to them, though their situation was fraught with political difficulties so their act *may* have been ignored. An estimated 2000 people participated in the day’s events.

For the November Moratorium, over eighty Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s students attended a national anti-war march in DC. Twelve were arrested for participating in a Peace Mass at the Pentagon.

Now Hesburgh had set the following infamous fifteen minute rule in Feb. 1969, a week after students tried to hold a conference on pornography and censorship on campus (explained below in the censorship section).

". . . Anyone or any group that substitutes force for rational persuasion, be it violent or nonviolent, will be given fifteen minutes of meditation to cease and desist. They will be told that they are, by their actions, going counter to the overwhelming convictions of this community as to what is proper here. If they do not within that time cease and desist, they will be asked for their identity cards. Those who produce these will be suspended from this community as not understanding what this community is. (*A dictatorship!*) Those who do not have, or will not produce identity cards will be assumed not to be members of the community and will be . . . treated accordingly by law."

According to Scholastic, then President Nixon "praised" the royal decree. By contrast, Brown University Dean F. Donald Eckelmann remarked, "You would need a completely intimidated student body to make that sort of statement and get away with it." And since it was 1969, Dean Eckelmann was closer to the truth.

The same November of the Moratorium, several students were awoken at 6 AM to find that they had been served an injunction by county sheriffs banning them from protesting CIA and Dow recruiters who were on campus that day. The broad injunction allowed the University to selectively label demonstrators as "disruptive" and they could face a maximum penalty of 3 months and a $500 fine! The administration’s injunction allowed them to go outside of their internal judicial process and take students to court, if they so choose.

Despite the injunction which applied to the recipients as well as to any possible accomplice, 100 students blocked a Dow recruiter (Dow and CIA were recruiting together), most of them staying after the fifteen minute warning. The previous spring student government had passed a motion demanding that Dow and the CIA hold an open forum with students to discuss their activities if they ever came to recruit. But they refused. The administration called in the South Bend police and took selective action against ten protestors (it had no way of determining leaders other than guessing), taking their ID cards. The next morning 75 students returned to the Administration building to continue protesting, and the recruiters left! On Nov. 18, Student Life Council rendered its verdict suspending five and expelling five students who had stayed five minutes after having their ID cards taken. The Board of Appeals called for reduction of sentences, but was ignored since its decision was sent to the same person who had originally set the sentences. In general there was no place students could appeal the morality of the rule, rather than their infraction of the rule itself. Students were assumed to be guilty and had to prove their innocence. Besides the irrationality and total disproportionality of the sentences, Scholastic (Feb 13, 1970) argued that at least two of the sentenced students were actually innocent of the so-called offense, victims of a unfair internal justice system.

That fall Scholastic called for Hesburgh to leave the presidency. (*Though as Scholastic advocated a chancellor-president system, they probably supported him becoming the chancellor.).

Appealing to Hesburgh for redress of their unjust sentences, the students met a brick wall:

Dear (Student’s Name):

According to last year’s judicial code which you ____ for your appeal, there is no appeal to the President provided. However, I assume that anyone can appeal to me at any time.

Your action took place November 18, 1969. You were officially suspended by the Dean of Students on December 16, 1969. I heard nothing from you until today, January 8, 1970.

I have reviewed totally all events, proceedings and written rationales, and am convinced that the decision rendered in your case was just, and I uphold it.

I am generally open to discussion with any students or group of students, when not prevented by previous commitments. However, in view of the ___ decision, I consider this practical matter ___ed. I did discuss this matter in general and in particular with Mark Mahoney who delivered your ___.

Very sincerely yours,

(Rev.) Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.

President

This was sent to all ten students.

(*Missing words are due to an imperfect photocopy.*)

Dow returned in February 1970, and another injunction was issued against five people to stop demonstrations. A committee reviewing the university’s policy on company recruiters decided the CIA could not return since it had a "stated policy... not to engage in discussion in any kind of form, even for the sake of defending its actions and operations." That month CPA released a "Misplacement at Notre Dame" booklet, focussing on the corporate crimes of companies recruiting at ND that week. It was written from an anti-capitalist perspective, indicted capitalism through giving examples of corporate crime, and charged university complicity by letting such companies recruit on campus.

While the University struggled to set-up a Black or Ethnic Studies program, taking two years to do so, over one summer it created a "Program for the Study and Practice of the Nonviolent Resolution of Human Conflict". The program had 500 students and 21 seminars in its first year (1969/70). It was jointly administered by faculty and students (including SMC) who could both vote. It started as one seminar in its first semester, then branched off in its second into different topics. The program was controversial. Conservatives argued it was "revolutionary," while activists saw it as a misguided attempt to calm radicals by pushing pacifist values onto what was a growingly militant student movement. (*It was "misguided" because nonviolent direct action, as shown by Gandhi and King, is an effective tactic for radical change – generally more so than using violence.*) After its first year its two founding professors left and the program eventually died. (*Perhaps pushed out for being too radical?*)

April 1970 was dull (well except for an Antostal panty raid), but on May 1 thirty students ran all over the Center for Continuing Education building to find the Board of Trustees. They then proceeded to disrupt their meeting by pounding on the door! May 1st was also "Free City Day", a day to reflect upon one’s education, discuss education reform, and skip class. On May 4, the National Guard killed four students at Kent State (two protestors and two bystanders) and Hesburgh, a wishy-washy liberal - though never a radical, spoke at a ND rally to protest the deaths. On April 30, Nixon’s announcment that US troops had invaded Cambodia, expanding the Vietnam war, had sparked numerous protests and some schools went on strike. After the Kent State killings, newly elected SBP Dave Krashna (the most radical SBP ever, and the first and only African-American ever elected to that position) called for a strike which lasted until May 15. Classes were all cancelled! During May 20,000 people signed a petition supporting Hesburgh’s moderate, but critical statement of the war. There was a week of Strike activities at ND organized by student government, CPA, African American Society, and others. Hesburgh appeared to be sympathetic with the Strike, at least in public. Four million students across the U.S. participated in some form of protest in May! That month thirty ROTC buildings were attacked (vandalized, attempted arson, etc). It was the biggest outcry of student discontent that America has ever seen.

That spring the Notre Dame valedictorian speech was given by a long-haired English major who provoked uproar, though rightfully so, by giving a highly radical pessimistic anti-war stop-the-killing speech (*which is reprinted in Scholastic, Fall 1970*).

Well this is ND, so you couldn’t really expect this pace of insurrection to keep up (*Did I mention Scholastic actually had a series of articles on guerilla warfare!?!*), could you? A plan for students to get a two week Fall break to do election work, which would allow them to support anti-war candidates, failed. The vote did not reach the required 50% turnout. In the spring of 1971, the moderate president-elect wanted to "communicate[d] with the administration" (*not the students*). It appears that the level of activism sharply plummeted, to the level with which we are more familiar today.

Of course it wasn’t all over. Two recent graduates, Chuck Darst and Maureen Considine, were arrested on Aug 21, 1971 along with three other people for trying to destroy and remove files in a Selective Service and Army Intelligence Offices in Buffalo, NY! Their Scholastic interview is a testimony to how the radical Catholic tradition had affected students and to the value of a late Sixties ND education.

Minority student recruitment finally became an issue. Notre Dame made some progress, though it lacked the neccessary financial aid and minority recruiters. For instance for the 1971/1972 school year, 100 Latinos applied, 67 were accepted, 19 offered financial aid, and 19 came (the nineteen who were offered financial aid). One critique of our minority recruitment program was that ND was recruiting the minority "elite", and unlike other schools (Ex. Rutgers), it was unwilling to provide remedial education for students who had come from poor schools. The campus MECHA chapter played a critical role in recruiting Latinos, as did RAP for African-Americans.

One result of the burst of Sixties activism were the 80 ND/SMCers who petitioned for a $3 voluntary fee to setup a campus INPIRG (Indiana Public Interest Research Group – an organization inspired by Ralph Nader) chapter. A group was established in 1974 using a check-off system with an estimated 75% participation. PIRGs were also started at Earlham and Indiana University. The organization has since disappeared, but you will find PIRGs at a lot of universities doing environmental and public-interest activism.

Reagan’s commencement speech in May 17, 1981 was met with 2000 protestors critical of his support for the military regime (that sponsored death squads) in El Salvador as well as the rest of his fascist foreign policy and his cuts in domestic spending. Most of the protestors bussed-in from outside Notre Dame. Seventy of the students wore white armbands and white motor-boards as they graduated (out of 1977 students).

Notre Dame has constantly done research for the Department of Defense. For instance in 1981/1982, there was over $400,000 of military research (which makes up 4.1% of the total $10.8 million). It varies substantially on an annual basis, so it is hard to estimate, but it is around half to one million dollars currently. If you look at inflation, military research has been declining since the dollar totals are about constant, but the dollars are worth less. In two years in the late Sixties (1968 and 1969) military research was over $600,000. An example of an interesting award (from 1981/82) was to examine "Blast, Fire and Wind Effects in an Urban Setting Due to a Nuclear Explosion" for the Defense Nuclear Agency. Notre Dame claims to frown on doing classified research, which may explain why we have relatively little military projects.

The Freeze movement (a movement to get both the USA and USSR to uniliterally stop building nuclear weapons) was popular in the Eighties, and a Two Campus Freeze Coalition was formed which did some education on the issue and supported, along with Pax Christi, a unilateral freeze referendum in Feb. 1983. The referendum lost, but it succeeded in getting people to discuss the issue. John Blandford, future GLND/SMC co-chair in the nineties, was a spokesperson for the coalition. Hesburgh opposed the unilateral freeze, urging the US to wait until the USSR also agreed to stop building weapons.

Besides Apartheid, many campus activists worked to oppose the CIA due to its involvement in Latin America. In late Sept. or early Oct. 1987, the CIA interviews on campus were leafletted by Pax Christi and Women United for Justice and Peace. The campus was more conservative then the last time CIA recruiting met with opposition. A Scholastic editorial supported education activism, but said Notre Dame should not make moral judgements (*so much for being Catholic!*) and CIA should be able to recruit (*who cares if they support killing peasants in Latin America*). The CIA interviewed 55-60 people.

Referring to the event a Pax Christi spokesperson added a disclaimer, "... we are not, as some would accuse, composed of a bunch of communists. We don’t love our country any less than the average person, simply because we disagree with methods of one of its agencies."

The last time the CIA has interviewed on campus was probably in the early nineties. In 1997/98 they put an advertisement in the Observer that students could fill out. ND was once one of the top schools for CIA recruiting.

The FBI recruited on campus in Jan. 2000. The over thirty students who attended the event were given leaflets by myself and another activist, critical of the bureau’s involvement in infiltrating and disrupting social movements.

Wars are good for peace movements (if nothing else), and the Persian Gulf War was no exception. By mid-November 1990, the Gulf Crisis Action Group (GCAG) had held three meetings, had fifty members, and at its press conference announced it was sending 1819 signatures to Bush urging him to not attack Iraq. Janet Meissner, a peace studies graduate student and officially a co-chair, was instrumental in organizing GCAG. On Dec. 1, nine students formed a human billboard for peace on Grape Rd. (people hold signs) from 3pm until dusk. On Friday Dec.7, 50 – 100 students participated in a protest. That Saturday GCAG sent 8 people to a Chicago protest, which had 4000-5000 people (making it the biggest anti-gulf war rally to date). One of the sponsors was the Progressive Student Network -- a national network of progressive student groups, active from 1980 to the early nineties, and the largest such group since Students for a Democratic Society died in 1970.

From Dec. 14-16, the Michiana Coalition for Justice and Peace sponsored a candlelight vigil. A delegation met with Congressperson (and moderate Democrat) Tim Roemer on the fourteenth. On Dec. 16, from 3-5pm there was another human billboard on Grape Rd.

Returning in the spring, 300 - 400 students attending a demonstration / prayer service on Jan. 15 at the Fieldhouse mall. On Jan. 16 the war started. Jan. 17 - over two hundred people demonstrated at the Fieldhouse mall, and erected a make-shift fifth column for the war memorial for those who will die in Kuwait. Also fifty people protested at the city courthouse during rush-hour afternoon traffic. Three evening teach-ins were organized at ND, followed by one at SMC. On Saturday Jan. 26, 33 students went to the DC peace march.

On Friday, Feb 1. fifty participants joined in a cross planting ceremony at 12:15pm at Fieldhouse Mall as part of a day of actions by the National Network of Campuses Against the War. Crosses contained an estimate of casualties experienced by different countries involved in the war. At 6:30pm there was a candlelight procession from the South Quad flagpole to the Grotto, followed by a vigil that went until 7am the next day (*In February too!*). GCAG organized a blood drive in Lafortune on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 13) as a symbolic act that was open to both pro and anti-war activists.

At a Feb 25 demonstration at Fieldhouse Mall, activists called for a cease-fire and sang "Give Peace a Chance." On April 23, the Democratic Socialists of America, with support from GLND/SMC and Women United for Justice and Peace, held a seventy person rally at Fieldhouse Mall protesting that President Bush had been chosen to speak at commencement. The last demonstration before school ended was on April 29, and designed to remember the victims of the war.

Why train people to love and work for peace, when there’s so much money in guns, missiles, bombs, and killing? Over a hundred years ago President Fr. Sorin realized that parading around with guns and uniforms was so fun that he initiated the formation of the first military "club." The program later merged with the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and many Domers fought in many wars, both dying and killing. It was not until the Sixties that the ROTC faced great challenges and criticism, however most critics stopped short of threatening the program’s existence.

Early in the decade, in Spring 1963 a demonstration against Military Mass led to its cancellation in future years. In the fall of 1967, the ROTC was challenged by the moderately named: "Committee for the De-emphasis of ROTC" which wanted to end ROTC students being given course credit. For instance students could get twelve hours of Arts and Letters elective credit for being in the ROTC. They also sought to reduce its role in freshman orientation, stop the Presidential Review, and end the power granted to ROTC attachments because they were treated as academic departments. In 1968, 500 students demonstrated at the Presidential Review of the ROTC which was subsequently cancelled. One year later some minor changes were made to the ROTC program. Also a non-violence program was started and went for a couple years.

Notre Dame student involvement in the ROTC has typically been one of the highest in the US (at least in the number of awarded scholarships). However it was impacted by the anti-war movement and during the Sixties participation fell from 1300 in 1966/67, to 707 in 1970/71. By 1969, only 58% of students supported ROTC for academic credit – by 1970 it was likely even lower. On May 7, 1969, the Faculty Senate, "Resolved, that academic credit be granted only for courses taught by faculty members holding an appointment in one of the regular (that is, nonmilitary) departments of the university . . . "

Unlike other campuses, where students vandalized and even destroyed ROTC buildings, ND’s program escaped relatively unscathed and was never under serious threat of being terminated.

There was a series of protests around the construction of a new ROTC building, the Pasquerilla Center, in the eighties.

As a side note, in the Spring of 1987, after having completed his presidency, Fr. Hesburgh proposed a national level Peace ROTC to be funded by the federal government. Students would do four years of Peace Corps service in exchange for an equivalent scholarship that the ROTC program provides, though their years of service would pay a lot less. Hesburgh saw this as an alternative, rather than a replacement of ROTC. This never happened, though Clinton’s Americorps might contain elements of the idea.

The strongest argument against the ROTC’s presence on campus is that the program is teaching students to act in contradiction to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The Church follows Just War theory. According to this theory, Christians should make a conscientious decision, not only before each war, but also before every military engagement is initiated and every bomb is dropped, whether the act they are about to do meets the seven criteria that are necessary for the war to be just. The criteria are pretty strict, and many would argue that none of the major wars in the twentieth century come anywhere close to meeting them. The fault of the ROTC in specific and the military in general is that soldiers must obey their commander’s orders, otherwise face court martial (jail and in a time of war possible death). It is possible for someone in the military to refuse to fight, however the institutional structure puts so much pressure on the individual that most people follow orders. Only one in a thousand or ten-thousand refuse.

For the ROTC to follow the teachings of the Church, it must at least teach students about Just War theory and how to refuse to fight. For it to be fully in accordance, the military must be transformed so that conscientious objectors can refuse to fight in wars. As the ROTC will undoubtfully refuse even this first condition, it should not be allowed on campus.

The biggest movement at Notre Dame during the eighties was to get Notre Dame to completely divest from companies doing business in South Africa, thus putting pressure on the South African government to end apartheid. Unlike other some schools where the anti-apartheid movement diminished or collapsed after the activists won divestment, Notre Dame’s movement had the "advantage" of never winning and thus lasted for a very long time. On campuses across the US, students protested, petitioned, and built and lived-in shanty towns (some of which were attacked and vandalized by conservatives) to symbolize the poverty and racism caused by apartheid. Someone who hasn’t read the previous pages of Domer history, might think that a Catholic school would be a leader in the struggle against apartheid and divest immediately. Think again.

As early as 1973, a subcommittee of the trustees was studying the situation in South Africa with regards to shaping how ND should invest the endowment. Initially the administration supported the "Sullivan Principles," named after African-American Rev. Sullivan who was a member of GM’s board (*Do you think GM would have liberals on its board?*). The principles allowed "ethical" investment in South African companies that gave equal pay for equal work, and were desegregated. Early on in the divestment movement, 100 of 350 US companies were following these principles. The board of trustees would agreed to sell investments "only under very limited circumstances" and refused to invest in banks that lent money to the South African government.

By 1984 ND had divested in some companies and supported "some" shareholder petitions (*Though shareholder petitions that challenge corporate management almost always fail.*) The African National Congress (ANC), which later proved its legitimate position as the voice of the majority of South Africans when it swept the first democratic elections in the nineties, was calling for full divestment. But president Fr. Hesburgh constantly opposed total divestment. Scholastic did a "Special Issue" on the divestment on Oct. 28, 1985. The Anti-Apartheid Network (AAN) was formed in April 1984, with support from South African professor Peter Walshe. AAN petitioned the trustees, and initially tried to discuss the issue and participated in the university committee. 400 people demonstrated on the national day of action on Oct 11, 1985. It collected 1200 signatures urging divestment on Feb. 1, 1986 unless companies showed clear signs that they would work for the dismantling of apartheid.

A minority of trustees supported full divestment. The US Catholic Bishops called for total divestment after an expired May 15, 1987 deadline, as did Rev. Sullivan in June, whose principles Notre Dame was initially following. Also students passed a referendum favoring divestment. The previous fall the U.S. Congress had enacted limited sanctions against South Africa, which Hesburgh had supported. In the Fall of 1987, AAN started weekly Friday noon-time vigils on the steps of the Administration building. As of Sept 30, 1987, $21 million of investments in 17 companies were at stake. Basically Notre Dame never fully divested and the administration justified its stance as an attempt at using the so-called progressive influence of multi-nationals to push the country towards equality. It also referred to conservative black spokespeople like Chief Buthelezi who opposed divestment. Buthelezi’s political party did very poorly when South Africa held fair elections.

Common Sense, a progressive newspaper which publishes two to three issues a semester, was founded by faculty and students in 1987 when The Observer refused to publish some articles that were critical of the university’s failure to divest from South Africa.

In the Thirties and Forties, African-American students applying to ND got a letter from President Cavenaugh that "In essence, it said ‘Thanks for your interest, you are qualified and wanted here ,but we cannot accept you for fear of upsetting our Southern students, yours in Christ...etc.’" There are many letters like this in the 1930s and 1940s archives. In 1944 ND took a small step, admitting an African-American priest and two veterans.

Demands for racial equality at Notre Dame hit headlines in the Fall of 1968 when the Afro-American Society (AAS), formed in 1966, demonstrated at a home football game vs. Georgia Tech. and threatened to continue actions at a UCLA basketball game. From Nov. 26, here were their demands:

As the students demanded, Hesburgh formed an ad-hoc committee to handle the issues and the protest was averted. One of the committee’s results was the creation of a course on African culture (only ONE course). In general the committee acted slowly and campus tensions increased. Blacks sharply criticized ND for teaching western civilization and the irrelevancy of the curriculum for blacks.

There was some support for a required course on racism though it was never instituted:

"A proposal for a required course on Minority Groups and Prejudice in American Society has ‘aroused enthusiasm’ from Vice-President for Academic Affairs Father Walsh and ‘high-ranking academic decision-makers,’ claims Locke." (Bill Locke, student government academic affairs commissioner)

(Scholastic Sept. 26, 1969)

A Oct. 10, 1969 survey of 55 black students (90% of the black campus population), showed how militant black students had become. 86% described themseleves as black nationalists, while only 10% were in favor of integration. 96% of students though the riots had helped. There was also a desire to live with people of the same race: 92% of students with white roommates wanted to change, whereas only 3% with a black roommate wanted a new one.

The idea of a requirement came up again in the spring: "The University Committee’s proposal also recommended ‘that all Notre Dame students be exposed to [one of?] several courses stipulated by the Program of Black Studies as a requirement for graduation from the University.’" (Ray Serafin, Scholastic, Feb. 20, 1970)

Black studies didn’t really start until the fall of 1970. But at least it did come, and finally the university committed some of its resources to diversifying. However the university’s action was insufficient. On April 21, 1977, thirty members of Concerned Black Students sat for nine hours on the steps of the Adminstration building! They were protesting a lack of administrative commitment to diversify the staff, faculty, administration and student body. In 1977, African-Americans were only 2.5% of the student body.

During the Eighties, the Black Cultural Arts Council (BCAC) played a major role in organizing African-American students. NAACP was formed in the fall of 1985. Ten years after the sit-down protest, in the fall of 1987, the "Notre Dame report on minorities" was issued. It showed Latino students at 3.2%, African-Americans at 2.5%, and Native Americans at 0.3% of the student body. Thus in the past ten years Notre Dame had failed to increase the percent of African-American students, and was still overwhelmingly white. The committee called for five year goals of 6%, 6%, and 1% respectively -- and a doubling of graduate school minority students. It also urged that ND devote more money, use affirmative action to increase the number of black faculty members, and work on education and support. The then president of BCAC liked the report, however she was rightfully skeptical as to whether it would be implemented. To date, the university has failed to meet this eight year old target for both African-Americans and Native Americans (It has met it for Latinos, which are around 6-7% of the student body.).

"There’s nothing covert about wearing black face, there’s nothing covert about soul food dinner with black balloons and watermelon, there’s nothing covert about a swastika as a symbol at a multicultural festival, or a professor saying that blacks were better off as slaves, there’s nothing covert about those incidents".

(SUFR spokesperson Robert Price, spring 1991)

Students United for Respect (SUFR) raised the most hell on campus in any one semester since the New Left took campus by storm twenty years ago. SUFR was formed in the fall of 1990 and grew out of initial discontent with the lack of a racial harassment policy on campus. Its main spokesperson, was 1990 graduate and former BCAC co-president Robert Price. Another provoking cause was the Fall Board of Trustees report that showed that only 8 of 800 (1%) of faculty were ethnic-Americans (African-American, Latino, or Native-American).

On Nov 19, 1990, nine groups including SUFR, BCAC, and the Democratic Socialists of America wrote a letter to the Observer calling for a racial harassment policy. On Jan. 21 1991 (MLK Jr. Day), SUFR protested on the steps of the administration building and then filled the Office of Student Affairs and got Patty O’Hara to meet with them to discuss their demands. Patty, acting as a lawyer and bureaucrat, found out that SUFR was not an officially recognized organization and cancelled the meeting. She replaced it with a meeting for leaders of recognized ethnic groups. SUFR took this as an insult. SUFR’s demands included 10% minority faculty (proportional to that of the student population), student approval for the two assistants to be hired to aid the Director of Minority Student Affairs (so they would be advocates, not administrators), autonomy of the office of minority student affairs, a multi-cultural center, and increased minority enrolment and faculty. SUFR set seperate time limits for each of its demands, after which students would consider themselves "disrespected" and take unspecified further measures.

On Feb. 5, students protested at the Board of Trustees meeting, while the trustees heard reports on diversity by student government and one from its subcommittee, along with other business. SUFR did not get in trouble for this unregistered protest. A week later the administration announced that, as a short-term solution to the space issue, ethnic clubs could use the Foster Room, on the third floor in Lafortune. SUFR had wanted to use Theodores (a larger room in the basement of Lafortune), which they argued wasn’t being used for anything important.

The last demand deadline expired on March 19, without any of them being fully met. So students chalked sidewalks and NAACP sponsored a demonstration on March 22.

On April 9, Faculty Senate approved a greatly watered-down discriminatory harassment policy and sent it to the Academic Council. This policy, which is in place today, has no difference between harassment and discriminatory harassment except in the wording. Thus someone who makes repeated racial insults at a victim, will be treated the same as someone making non-racial insults. Its one merit is that it includes sexual orientation. On April 16, the Academic Council approved it.

The next day at 8 am, 60 student sat-in the Registrar’s office demanding open negotiations with Malloy while 150 people demonstrated outside! (*Note – Scholastic says sixty students sat-in, whereas The Observer says: "More than 150 demonstrators crowded into the registrar’s office with pillows, blankets, books, music, and food."*) Students were fed-up with meeting with Patty O’Hara and wanted to go to the "top." At 2pm student government arranged a meeting between seven SUFR members and Malloy. According to the chief of Notre Dame Security the demonstration was "illegal" and students could have been removed immediately after it started, however surprisingly the administration did not take such action. Students picked the Registrar’s office, since being on the first floor, it was more accessible and visible than Monk’s office on the third. The administration gave students a 7pm deadline to leave or Security would take their names. They justified this arbitrary deadline by saying that students were not allowed in the building after closing-hours. SUFR first held an inconclusive meeting by themselves regarding the deadline. A second meeting included Fr. Richard Warner (counselor to the president) and Roland Smith (Executive Assistant to the President), who helped discuss the consequences of non-compliance. With advice from great men like those, students filed out of the building shortly after 7pm, rather than face the administration’s wrath. A small group met with Monk in his room that night at 12:30am, where they learnt more about why they disagreeed. Students regrouped at 7:30am in Lafortune to decide whether to do another sit-in that day, but decided on negotiation instead of confrontation and issued a call for third party arbitration. On the 22nd, students agreed to dialogue with the administration based on Malloy’s four point proposal that:

While SUFR moved towards dialogue, many students reacted in outrage that SUFR would go so "far" as to hold a peaceful sit-in (*Note -- administrators were allowed to enter and leave the office.*): the nerve! The student reaction showed how SUFR had failed to communicate with the predominantly white conservative student body, and the general ignorance showed that SUFR was correct in calling for change on campus to end racism.

SUFR’s demands were well-known due to media coverage and received moderate levels of support, however the peaceful sit-in was too radical for most.

April 23 -- The Observer survey (by telephone, 200 people, random)

Malloy refused to address SUFR’s request for a third party facilitator and he insisted on having the final say on who would sit on the committee (after consulting with groups and persons including SUFR). On April 29, Malloy had a two page paid ad in the Observer on cultural diversity. A day later SUFR was recognized with only one officer: a secretary for correspondence. (*SUFR was intentionally non-hierarchical.*)

The committee, called the "task force on cultural diversity," filed its initial report on Jan. 28, 1992, and its final one on May 1, 1992 – just before students were to leave campus – of course.

That summer, Director of Minority Student Affairs Ken Durgan was given the ultimatum, held responsible for the rise of SUFR and forced to resign. He was replaced by Iris Outlaw, who had experience with community organizations and was a graduate student while SUFR was active. However, as she related to Scholastic she wasn’t asked to join, didn’t join, and refused to give her opinion on their demands.

"You’re looking for the final result, essentially, so you may have to change that shape and form a little bit to get the final result, but you have to be willing to work with that. And [students] have to learn that they have to within the system, because once they leave the golden walls of Notre Dame, they have to go through the same process... So I feel that my position is to show them the rules of the game, and help them work within that system to get that final result."

(Iris Outlaw, in Scholastic)

Ken Durgan guessed at Patty O’Hara’s motives when asked to resign, "[she was] blaming the office for what went on with SUFR and thought she could control the students better if I wasn’t there." Durgan denied he was involved with SUFR.

That fall SUFR debated tactics and what the organization should do. They tried to use dialogue and waited for the committee’s report. Many of SUFR’s leaders were seniors and when they graduated, and the group became institutionalized (it was recognized and members included on the cultural diversity taskforce), the organization lost its momentum.

Unfortunately in the 1990/91 school year, student activism was racially divided. White students were organizing a substantial movement against the Gulf War. If the two movements would have united, they would have been much stronger. SUFR failed to educate the white student body. Teach-ins, speakers, and a petition would have helped white students to understand their anger.

While SUFR dealt with a lot of administrative junk because they weren’t recognized, they did manage to pull off a substantial number of events without getting in any trouble, despite their obvious violations of duLac. My guess is that the administration knew that it had failed to promote racial diversity. Thus it felt justifiably guilty, and did not use direct repression. Harsh action would have justified charges of racism as well as have hurt minority enrollment.

Seven years later, in the Fall of 1997, after a racist student-drawn cartoon was printed in The Observer, students again mobilized in a SUFR-like effort forming a group called PEACE. They put up posters all over campus to protest the cartoon and developed a series of demands to increase racial diversity on campus. At an open meeting with Malloy in the spring of 1998 which was sponsored by the taskforce on cultural diversity, after many students had voiced complaints about the university’s failure to take strong action, over half of the room stood-up, held hands, and demanded that Malloy attend a meeting organized by student leaders in which he would discuss their demands. It was incredibly moving! After some flustering, Malloy agreed. Unfortunately the student organization that was planning the meeting with Malloy (PEACE), fell apart due to communication problems and difficulties in getting people to attend meetings. So the meeting with Malloy was never held. Some of the main organizers graduated (Ex. John Fernandez, president of L’Alianza), and PEACE died.

Notre Dame is about 85% white. It is still over 2% below its own target of being 6% African-Americans. And this target was for 1992! If you realize that Notre Dame is 85% Catholic, and that 40% of U.S. Catholics are Latino (according to Dir. of Notre Dame’s Center for Latino Studies, Gil Cardenas, The Observer, Fall 1999), then Notre Dame should be over 34% Latino (0.85 * 0.4 = 0.34). The actual figure is between 6% and 7%. Clearly Notre Dame is not representative of the Catholic Church or the United States. It is a white (upper-middle class) bubble which does not prepare students for the global economy.

Notre Dame is a private school, so nobody has the first amendment right of free speech. Interference with the student press is an administrative prerogative that has been repeatedly exercised. The following are but some of the more blatant incidents of censorship. Student journalists were well aware of what they could print, and what they could not and often censored themselves. We do not know how often.

A 1962/63 debate over whether to switch to a "stay-hall" system led to firing of Scholastic editor, McCabe, who offered to print a pro-stay-hall opinion of an administrator who favored it. Hesburgh disapproved. The opinion was not printed in Scholastic, however an underground group of students copied and distributed it.

In February 1969, the Student Union Academic Commission sponsored a conference on pornography and censorship. They originally planned to show a pornographic movie called "Kodak Ghost Poems," but later cancelled it. Independent students agreed to show it, however a South Bend group, "Citizens for Decency in Literature," called in the police who raided the Nieuwland auditorium and took the film from "underneath the dress of a St. Mary’s student." Students pelted the police with snow balls, but the police retaliated with mace and found refuge in O’Shaughnessy. Eventually a thousand copies of a magazine discussing censorship were published with student government funds and the issue died down.

On October 1985, GLND/SMC sent the following Public Service Announcement (PSA) to campus radio stations WSND (88.9 FM) and WVFI (640 AM):

"The Gays and Lesbians of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s is an organization whose membership consists of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni and concerned persons from the surrounding community. The organization seeks to provide a basis of support for those who have identified themselves as gay or lesbian or are in the process of exploring related questions. If you are interested in learning more about this group write to Gays and Lesbians at Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s, P.O. Box 195, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556."

WSND played it, received four complaints, and additional ones were sent to the administration. After the PSA had run, the administration informed station manager Eileen Ridley about the controversy that it had caused. In response, she wrote-up the station’s PSA policy, gave it to the administration, and heard nothing further. GLND/SMC sent-in the same PSA in February for re-play, in accordance with the station’s rules. Eileen notified the administration before broadcasting it to prepare them for a reaction and ended-up meeting with Fr. Cafarelli, Vice-President for Student Affairs for two hours. He was against it. Eileen offered to do a disclaimer either when the station signed on or off, or after reading the PSA -- but the administration refused. So Eileen felt she had no choice, and resigned. The WVFI station manager also resigned. Soon afterwards the acting manager of WSND was fired for telling people they could run the PSA, and temporarily replaced by the Assistant Director of Student Activities.

In the fall of 1986 a Juggler art work was censored for being too erotics, and the issue included a "Original choice censored by the Office of Student Activities" disclaimer. Scholastic printed the story and the art work, however "The Office of Student Activities then closed Scholastic (*Changed the lock on the door!*) and removed all copies of that issue of the magazine from distribution". Even the library’s copy has the offending art-work ripped out. (*Check it out for yourself!*)

Dialogue, a new conservative magazine (without ND funding), started in the spring of 1990, was subject to a form of censorship when janitors tossed out a thousand copies thinking that the publishers didn’t have the right to distribute it. Joe Cassidy, evil director of Student Activities from 1990 to date, argued that the issue was one of not consulting with building managers.

Scholastic, the Dome, WSND, and WVFI are under supervision of the Office of Student Activities whereas the Observer is the responsibility of an assistant to the President. Generally the Observer has enjoyed more freedom.

In January of 1990 a former Scholastic editor tried to survey the Board of Trustees and got called in to see Joe Cassidy. The administration sent faxes to all the trustees telling them not to respond. After three years of work (finding addresses and having meetings) he got two responses, a meeting with Chairman McKenna, and learned that students are not allowed to try to communicate with the Trustees (*Yes, it’s in duLac.*).

The issue after the Gipper (*The Gipper is an anonymous member of the Scholastic staff, traditionally male."*) wrote a column focussing on the administration, his Feb 9, 1995 column was replaced with a notice saying that Scholastic was under pressure from Student Activities to reveal the Gipper’s identity and would not be running a column this week. It gave Joe Cassidy’s name and address for readers who had any questions about why the column was censored. The next issue, despite the sentiment that they would be closed-down, Scholastic published Gipper’s column regardless of possible consequences. But after intensive negotiations, and a singing telegram and flowers to Joe Cassidy on Valentine’s Day from members of the Glee Club, the Scholastic managed to continue their operations unhindered.

In 1995, after GLND/SMC was kicked out from meeting in the counselling center, Amnesty and Pax Christi organized a pro-GLND/SMC demonstration and got letter from Asst. Vice-President of Residential Life William Kirk saying they didn’t follow rules and would be in trouble if they did it again. He was worried that their groups’ names were being used as a front by GLND/SMC.

"Amnesty was fully aware of the university regulations. But the whole purpose of the demonstration was to bring voices together in opposition to the university’s decision. Because of that, we did not see the need to get permission from the very institution we were opposing."

(Faye Kolly, Amnesty co-president)

"They’re very slippery. They went out of their way to find a reason to send us that letter. It was a very intimidating letter designed to make us wary of doing anything else in support of GLND/SMC."

(Erica Effler, president of Pax Christi)

"The university is very tight with its sources. In general, it is tough to get anyone in the administration to comment on anything that doesn’t reflect well on the university."

(Observer News Editor Dave Tylor, spring 1995)

After many years of GLND/SMC or GALA (Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association) advertisements in The Observer, sometimes being accepted, and sometimes meeting with administrative repression – the university agreed that The Observer has full editorial control over its advertisers. Thus with the new policy, unrecognized groups, like OUTreach ND (student-run lgb group) are allowed to advertise.

For a brief period in the fall of 1999, student-run and student-programmed AM station,WVFI was available to anyone in the world by real audio. Internet broadcasting was a boon, because the station used carrier current could only be heard in some of the dorms. However when the administration found out, they blocked off-campus users from listening to WVFI. This is amazing as you do not need a license to broadcast audio over the Internet. There are even sites, like www.live365.com, which let you do it yourself for free.

In doing activism with the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA), I have repeatedly come up against duLac rules that, if followed, would have prevented a lot of activism. When I came to Notre Dame, there wasn’t any group that was doing a significant amount of activism. So I started one. I did not know many people, so I decided to do a publicity blitz. About five people organized a massive publicity blitz. We put up around 700 posters, chalked all of campus, and passed out (and slid under dorm doors) a thousand or so flyers. On Feb. 9, 1998, 58 people attended a meeting and we formed the Progressive Student Alliance. If Student Activities had its way, we would have not been allowed to do any publicity, nor to hold any meetings. Even after we had 58 people at our first meeting, they wanted us to put our group on hold until we were recognized (and this did not happen until six months later).

But PSA did keep meeting. We organized a teach-in and protest on Iraq (the US was threatening to bomb it), played the largest role in organizing a 275 person demonstration in support of Fr. Garrick (see below), held a teach-in on gay rights, and sponsored the National Day of Silence. However during those events, we did not mention that the events were organized by the PSA, because we did not want to antagonize Student Activities and risk losing our chance of becoming an official organization. It was quite annoying.

Most women’s groups have not lasted long at Notre Dame. For instance in Feb., 1982 the Notre Dame Women’s Caucus was formed, succeeding 5 or 6 feminist groups that had existed since 1972! On Jan 20, 1988 the Women’s Caucus was formed again with 22 people attending its initial meeting. They planned to work on having a discussion space for women, women’s studies, and separate faculty, undergraduate, and graduate sections. The caucus didn’t last that long, and in 1991/92 the Feminist Forum was created, though only given $25 of funding by Club Coordination Council. Two years later it was replaced by the Women’s Resource Center (WRC), which emerged out of a student plan for a center that would be funded and staffed by the administration. Patty O’Hara rejected the plan and gave the students group status instead. The WRC opened on Oct. 4, 1993 in a section of the student government office, where they remained until moving to a larger space in the fall of 1998.

In April 1998, one or two pro-life students went into the Women’s Resource Center (WRC) to see if the center had any information that went against the university’s (and Catholic Church’s) pro-life position. Someone took a Planned Parenthood pamphlet and a pamphlet listing abortion resources. The WRC’s members were both pro-life and pro-choice and the center takes no position on the issue. The pamphlet listing abortion resources came from the group’s files and was not meant to be distributed. The campus far-right newspaper, Right Reason (started in 1995 and subsidized by conservative foundation money), did an issue with the main focus of using the pamphlets to attack the existence of the WRC – the closest thing Notre Dame has to a feminist student organization. At the end of the semester, the WRC’s leaders had to meet with Director of Student Activities Joe Cassidy. After final exams were over, The Observer had stopped publishing, and most of the student body had left, the WRC was put on a two-year probation for daring to be neutral on the issue of abortion. It was also told to remove all pro-choice materials, and to have a meeting each semester with Student Activities to ensure compliance. The scariest point was when Cassidy informally told the WRC to remove all of its materials that were against Catholic teaching (as this would include material on homosexuality and contraception), however this threat was later dropped. The Faculty Senate supported the WRC, and the probation was lifted a year early.

Rape is a major problem everywhere, possibly aggravated since ND is so patriarchal, and definitely way under-reported. Students are often very critical of the internal judicial process handling it.

"Alcohol is involved in some way in every rape case reported to Residential Life." (Scholastic Feb. 29, 1996)

Eating disorders, primarily among women, are also a major problem on campus. The WRC and other groups (like CARE – Campus Alliance for Rape Elimination) works to educate students about these issues.

All of the studies, and committees, commissioned since the seventies have recommended co-residentiality. In March 1988, a task force called for a co-residentiality option for upper-class students. In a March 1990 referendum, over 80% of students supported an option, almost 70% would live there, and even over 60% supported converting their own dorm.

(*Queer is the radical word for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people.*)

Paradoxically the best evidence of barriers and the best source of activism at Notre Dame has been the administration's refusal to recognize a student run gay-lesbian-bisexual organization, or even to stop discriminating against homosexuals. The barriers that the administration has created have so enraged students that they face a constant and growing wave of student activism backlash.

The Catholic teaching on homosexuality is one of the prime motivators for this cultural of intolerance / homophobia. It says that orientation is moderately acceptable, but activity is sin. The catechism says both that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered", but also calls that "Every sign of unjust discrimination in their [homosexuals] regard should be avoided." As with many issues, not all Catholics agree on one position neither do many Catholic institutions agree that refusing club recognition logically follows from the Church's teachings. Over twenty-five Catholic universities and colleges having recognized gay-lesbian-bisexual (and ally) student groups, so the administration of Notre Dame can make a choice without violating Catholic teaching.

The initial Gay Society was started in 1970, though they really tended to be unobtrusive. It was not until 1986 that they first applied for equivalent rights of a recognized organization (meeting space, right to

advertise, etc). Vice President of Student Affairs Fr. David Tyson turned them down writing, "I must inform you that we cannot grant your six requests . . . it is our judgement that formal recognition of GLND/SMC (Gays and Lesbians of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College) carries with it an implicit sanction for a homosexual lifestyle which is not in keeping with the values of the University or the teachings of the Church". Tyson referred them to the Counseling Center and Campus Ministries.

Student support has always been mixed. On the one hand students seem supportive of GLND/SMC recognition, but they also seem to be homophobic. Student support was measured for a Student Government Report to the Board of Trustees in the fall of 1990, and they found that 73% of frosh and 82% of seniors supported GLND/SMC recognition. Students’ view of homosexuality was more negative with 54% of frosh and 41% of seniors having a negative attitude towards it (Sept. 20, 1990, Scholastic: 12). The report recommended that:

"That the University publish a clear statement of its position on various issues of sexuality, including homosexuality. If sexual activity of the students is seen by the University as a problem, then the University’s obligation is to educate, not to ignore.

That the University add ‘sexual orientation’ to its nondiscrimination policies, which already include

‘race, color, national and ethnic origin... [and] handicap.

That the University recognize and grant club status to the group Gays and Lesbians at Notre Dame / Saint Mary’s College or a similar group.

Dissenting Opinion: That the University grant GLND/SMC all the privileges of a recognized club with the exception of funding. The concern here was that such an organization is inherently in conflict with Catholic doctrine."

The Administration did no such thing.

A telling example of the administration's policy of trying to suppress GLND/SMC was an advertisement that GLND/SMC ran in the Spring of 1991 which managed to circumvent the ban on advertising. Half of the ad was a large disclaimer saying, "This Group Is NOT RECOGNIZED By The University Of Notre Dame," and the other half implied what the group was, without giving its name, "No name. No logo. No 'semblance of an organization'. That's alright. You already know who we are. You already know we have monthly General Meetings and Discussion Groups. And you already know that our address and our phone numbers are listed below." But in general advertising was and still is difficult.

Possibly the first pro-gay rights demonstration was a coming out day rally / meditation on Oct. 11, 1991. About thirty people attended the event that was organized by World Peace Action Group and included at least one speaker from GLND/SMC. The organizers of the event received the following threatening letter from Asst. Vice President of Residential Life, William Kirk,

"Under the provisions of du Lac, an unrecognized student organization does not enjoy the privilege of sponsorship of activities. If the event for which the World Peace Action Group has sought approval is in fact a vehicle for sponsorship by an unrecognized student group, the World Peace Action Group, as sponsors of the event, would be in violation of du Lac" (qtd. in Wiegand).

That same month, a GLND/SMC sponsored resolution urging Hall Presidents to declare their dorms 'safe havens for homosexuals' created much debate, but mostly failed to muster support. Stated Hall President Council

co-chairperson Charlie James who was suffering from denial, "It (harassment of gay and lesbian persons) was never a problem in the dorms. I didn't think it happened. They way I see it is that it's not a problem, but that by bringing it into the light, it will become a problem." (qtd. in Tate, Oct. 31, 1991). Late that spring, it was business as usual as the GLND/SMC application was denied, though it succeeded in receiving support from Faculty Senate!

All the while the University did not completely shy away from issue of sexuality. Asst. Vice-President for Student Services, Fr. Rocca, argued for individualized treatment, "the university is ready to assist them as individuals through ordinary channels, for example Campus Ministry and the University Counseling Center" (qtd. Crouch, 8) .By individualizing the 'problem' the administration was denying the right and need for students to organize on their own, reducing the chance of a movement and maintaining its control over the definition of accepted homosexual behavior.

The greatest uproar occurred when GLND/SMC was expelled on Jan. 23, 1995 from the Counseling Center where they had been meeting informally for nine years. On February 1, Graduate Student Council voted 21-0-2 against the expulsion and in favor of club recognition. On Feb. 8, Student Senate agreed and voted 14-1-1. And later the Campus Life Council voted 13-2-1. The Hall President's Council voted unanimous support. Clearly there was wide student and faculty support for recognition, though students and faculty lacked the power to make the decision so it did not happen.

On the ground, sixty students demonstrated on Feb. 2 and on Feb. 10 almost three hundred marched from Debartolo to the Main Building. Both demonstrations were not registered, and William Kirk reacted by writing a

letter to Pax Christi and Amnesty warning them that their organizations could be put on probation or suspended if they held another one. He also remarked that they "may have served as a vehicle for sponsorship by an unrecognized group" (qtd. Tyler 4), implying that they were acting as a front for GLND/SMC.

Pax Christi president Erika Effler commented, "We knew there were regulations, but we felt our way was the best way to do things. We felt that if we asked permission, the university probably wouldn't let us march, and we thought it would be a little ironic to ask for permission to disagree with the object of the protests" (qtd. Tyler 1). "They went out of the their way to find a reason to send that letter. It was a very intimidating letter designed to make us wary of doing anything else in support of GLND/SMC" (qtd. Mudry 5). And Amnesty co-president Gregg Behr voiced his concern, "It's shocking that the University would send a letter of suspicion, basically a threatening letter prior to talking to us. We had no forewarning of the letter" (qtd. Tyler 1, 4).

As a result of the pressure, Amnesty and Pax Christi decided to register the next protest, though promising to hold it whether or not they got permission. Four hundred students rallied on March 2. Days later, Vice-President of Student Affairs Patty O'Hara wrote "An Open Letter In Response to the Campus Life Council Resolution Calling for Recognition of GLND/SMC." She refused recognition and formed an ad-hoc committee to

"advise me on how, apart from the recognition of GLND/SMC or another student organization, we can do a better job of meeting the needs of our gay and lesbian students."

Meanwhile on March 7, Faculty Senate voted 30-3-4 in favor of recognition.

In a break with the tradition of banning GLND/SMC ads in the Observer, on March 24 they were able to print a full-page "An Open Letter to the Notre Dame and Saint Mary's Community on Administration Policy towards Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals," responding to the recent series of events.

That fall the Ad Hoc Committee made a series of recommendations that O'Hara accepted including,

"That the Vice President for Student Affairs should raise to the University officers the issue of modifying the nondiscrimination clause that appears in University publications to include sexual orientation." In her

response she deflected the issue: "Raising this issue for discussion is obviously not a decision on the merits of this issue. I am sure that the officers will give this issue and all of its attendant complexities full analysis and discussion." With the word 'complexities' she indicated the difficulties proponents of nondiscrimination would find over the next several years, lasting up until the present.

As a result of the committee's work, the administration formed a Campus Ministry run group (Notre Dame Lesbians and Gay Students). NDLGS is run by a priest and a nun, and students interested in going must be

pre-interviewed. Interestingly, NDLGS has at times been one of the biggest advertisers in The Observer, running several ads a week. In terms of competition, the official university group which gets unlimited advertising (advertising is just a transfer from one university department to another - and does not cost the university much since students are subsidizing the Observer anyway) has a clear institutionalized advantage over GLND/SMC. Yet despite administrative efforts to funnel possibly rebellious gays, lesbians, and bisexuals into the well-controlled group, most students go to the unofficial one which has a history of doing activism.

In September 1996, the College Democrats were refused the right to hold a demonstration for Coming Out Day, because their proposal came right after a GLND/SMC proposal was refused. They held the rally anyway. Activists published Intersection, and independent newsletter on issues of sexuality, on April 23 1997. The next day 400-500 students, still waiting for the Administration to address the issue as previously promised, demonstrated in support of including sexual orientation in the nondiscrimination clause.

Because of this rally the university made a compromize. It released the Spirit of Inclusion in the fall of 1997, which called for acceptance, but did not grant any form of legal protection from discrimination.

"...equal rights without legal rights are no rights at all."

(Fr. David Garrick)

Then in March 1998, the most openly gay priest on campus, and advocate of nondiscrimination and GLND/SMC recognition, Fr. David Garrick, resigned to protest the University's discrimination against himself and failure to include sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination clauses. It was interesting that he felt so discriminated against and unable to continue his ministry, that he was driven from the university. In response to his resignation there was an outpouring of support. 275 students attended the March 24 rally and 1300 people signed a petition in his support. On April 8, the Faculty Senate voted 33-3 in favor of chaning the nondiscrimination clause. On Sept. 30, the Student Senate voted 18-6 (with two abstentions). In October, PSA and other activists collected over 1100 signatures in favor of adding sexual orientation to the nondiscrimination clause. Also PSA organized two rallies. On Nov. 17, 1998, the Academic Council voted in favor of including sexual orientation in the nondiscrimination clause by one vote (19-15-2). However President Fr. Malloy voted against it.

Activists then were under the impression that the issue would be voted upon at the Board of Trustees meeting, which was from Feb 4-5 in London, England. So PSA organized a week of action, from Feb. 1-5, including a newsletter, a second appearence by Phil Donahue who spoke on our behalf, a gay and lesbian film festival, and most notably a three day fast / hunger-strike. Over 120 students and alumni participated in the fast, ranging from a water-only, to juice, to skipping food for a day or limiting oneself to one meal a day. The fast succeeded in its goal of getting national media attention, and thus putting pressure on the administration.

On Feb. 5, 1999, students were shocked to learn from a press release that the Board of Fellows (the highest body in the university) had already met in private on Dec. 1, and had voted unanimously against changing the nondiscrimination clause. The Trustees merely rubber-stamped this previous decision (which they had no power to overturn). That Friday afternoon thirty-five people held a sit-in in the front lobby of Hayes-Healy, which at the time served as the administration building (because the Main Building was under renovation). We stayed there for over three hours, received some local media coverage, had a lot of discussion, and left after learning that Malloy was in England and would not be returning until the next week. There were several security officers who walked by us, however despite the fact that our protest was in violation of duLac, we were never asked to leave. The movement subsequently declined as this campaign had used up a lot of students’ energy. However it is almost inevitable that someday the nondiscrimination clause will be changed and OUTreach ND (GLND/SMC changed its name to OUTreach ND in the Fall of 1998) will be recognized.

In 1969, according to the Coalition for Political Action’s booklet on Sexism, Notre Dame was paying some of its women workers less than the legal minimum wage (then $1.50/hour, roughly $6.70 in curent dollars), by calling them "unskilled."

The Observer’s top story of 1977/78 was the Teamster Local 364’s campaign to organize a union on campus. During the campaign ND threatened to fire 21 groundskeepers, and then after pressure, changed its mind. The administration fought the campaign and took it to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB ruled against separate section campaigns (unionization of all groundskeepers, all cleaners, all laundry workers, etc). Instead it decided that all of the workforce must unionize, or not, together. That ruling pretty much killed the attempt.

Also in 1978 a campaign to start a faculty union got one third of the faculty to sign cards. This was enough to hold a vote, however the campaign was called off when the administration made major changes. Provost and later caught sex-offender Fr. Burtchaell went from provost to theology teacher. In 1988, an administrator claimed that Notre Dame paid 102% of the regional average for wages. I’m not impressed.

(Excerpted from "Paternalist Charity or Justice? – Fighting Sweatshops at Notre Dame," by Aaron Kreider)

At Notre Dame, PSA started working on this in the Fall of 1998. However it didn’t become our primary focus until we concluded our campaign to include sexual orientation in the nondiscrimination clause in February, 1999. Since March 1999, PSA has focussed on sweatshops and we’ve been trying to engage and mobilize the student body around this issue.

Initially the Admnistration REFUSED to form a committee on sweatshops, despite Bill Hoye’s request. After three student sit-ins (at other universities), it became clear that the student movement meant business so the Administration set-up an anti-sweatshop taskforce chaired by Bill Hoye. Now the Administration has intentionally excluded PSA from the committee because we’re too radical, and most likely because we had just succeeded in getting the university negative national press for its homophobic policies (*our campaign to include sexual orientation in the nondiscrimination clause which received national coverage in February, 1999*). The vast majority of taskforce members wish PSA was represented on the taskforce, but Malloy is against it. Two of them even volunteered to resign their seats so that someone from PSA could join. Malloy also excluded the most radical faculty advocates of labor rights.

In March 1999, Nike CEO Phil Knight wrote a letter to university presidents telling them to join the Fair Labor Association. Four days later Notre Dame joined and seventeen other universities joined the FLA as founding members.

So what are the key issues in the anti-sweatshop debate?

Full Public Disclosure: we want our university to require that its licensees give the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all the facilities that produce ND apparel. Ten universities will implement in Jan. or Feb. Whatever monitoring system we use, this allows for independent organizations to check whether factories are sweatshops.

(*Notre Dame "recommended" full public disclosure in November, 1999, however is not "requiring" it. We do not know yet how important this distinction is.*)

Living Wage: workers should be paid enough for food, housing, health-care, transportation, clothes, education, and other necessities. One common definition is: a living wage is the amount of money a family needs, divided by the average number of wage earners per family.

(*Notre Dame has participated in a Living Wage symposium held at Madison last fall. However Notre Dame has not committed to paying workers a living wage.*)

Right to Organize: workers should have the right to form unions without being fired or otherwise intimidated.

(*As of Jan. 19, the University announced it will include this provision. Implementing it by June 2001.*)

These three things, as well as rules about child labor, against forced over-time, pregnancy testing, etc, would be included in a Code of Conduct. However without a strong system of enforcement, these rules are meaningless. The code of conduct is enforced by a Monitoring System.

Firstly, everyone needs to remember that the Administration fought off groundskeepers and cafeteria workers’ attempts to unionize in 1977/78. Also we’re outsourcing work (like "giving" Follett the bookstore) so we can reduce workers’ wages and benefits. There are no unions on campus, and one could argue based on past university actions that Notre Dame workers are effectively denied the right to organize.

The administration is pro-business. They see sweatshops as a rare exception to the general rule that corporations are good. The administration believes in capitalism and corporations. They think that we only need to make a couple small adjustments to the apparel industry and then we can keep on doing business as usual. However sweatshop corporations have proven that they cannot be trusted!

The difference between our administration and the anti-sweatshop movement is that they want to offer charity and we want justice. Charity comes from the powerful and rich, who offer a small fraction of their power and money to the poor to alleviate their suffering. Justice requires a transformation of relations between the powerful / rich, and the powerless poor – which will not just alleviate a small part of the suffering, but build a movement that will end ALL of the oppression (or inequality).

Charity makes rich universities like Notre Dame feel good, and ease their conciousness. It also helps them avoid getting nasty press all the while continuing to make $2-$4 million per year off the oppression of sweatshop workers.

Charity comes from the initiative of the rich and powerful, whereas justice prioritizes the needs of the powerless.
The most scary thing is that charity is often used as an attempt to buy-off the powerless, and to AVOID justice.

So what evidence is there that the Administration has been supporting charity over justice?

The anti-sweatshop movement wants all monitoring to be done by local religious, labor, and human rights organizations. In many countries $1200 could employ one local person full-time to monitor a factory. Or for the cost of monitoring a dozen factories, you could form an entire organization with several staff. Here are some advantages of using local NGOs (non-governmental orgaizaitons) instead of corporations:

Animal testing happens in the Reyniers Germfree Life Building. As of 1989, space in the building was rented by American Biogenetic Sciences Inc, which handles the experiments! That year the principal victims were ‘germ-free’ mice and rats and there were twenty researchers. Research was divided into molecular biology and immunology. Bone marrow transplants were done. Researchers played with the animal’s diets, "There were nutritional studies done to reduce caloric intake, the result being to prolong lifespan." Animal testing is very often unnecessary (trivial purposes), or unapplicable to humans.

The Radiation Research Building has been under the direction of the Department of Energy since WW II.

"During the war, while a group of scientists worked on the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon, the government assigned one of the Project’s scientists, Milton Burton, to study the effects of radiation on people. The facilities at Notre Dame were the most suitable for the study, so that facility was ‘given over to government service," said Dr. John Bentley, associate director of the institute." The facility is funded by a yearly governmental grant. There are 16-17 researchers (senior scientists) who work solely at the institute and do not teach, 12 visiting researchers, and 10-12 grad students. "One project consisted of chemically altering dioxin to make it less toxic," another one was "dealing with solar cells," and an additional one simulated nuclear reactor core meltdown to see if explosive hydrogen is released. Most of the current work involves substances of very low radioactivity, however the overall purpose of this building bears investigation.

In the 1989/1990 school year, the Environmental Action Club circulated an anti-styrofoam petition, tried pushing power plant to switch to natural gas, tried to get Notre Dame to do an environmental audit, wanted Notre Dameto sign the environmental "Valdez Principles," created Recylin’ Irish to run a voluntary recycling program, and got 650 students to sign Green Pledge to follow only sound environmental practices and give small donation to catholic relief services for environmental work. EAC also sponsored Earth Week, and SUB and the Earth Day committee brought a series of speakers to campus including Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!

The next year, EAC changed its name to Students for Environmental Action (SEA) and 40 ND/SMCers attended "Catalyst" at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Catalyst was organized by the national Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) and was the largest student environmental conference in the history of the US with 7600 in attendance! SEA has remained active to this day, sponsoring an annual Earth Week and other activities.

A year or two of observing ND administrators in action will raise minor, though suppressible, doubts in the mind of the average student observer as to whether the administration truly works for justice. The less observant and better indoctrinated will fail to observe these at all. Often the more observant and politicized student will see these as but random irrational failings, that just "happened by mistake." After several years of seeing these "mistakes," students start to realize some, though not all, of the "systemic" nature of the injustice. This is particularly true for those courageous students who are involved in the resistance. However if one studies the past 10 or 20 or 30 years of history as a whole, one realizes that there is no chance in hell that the University administration has the best intentions of students in mind. Rather one is able to detect a very noticeable pattern of patriarchy, bureaucracy, committee-formation, censorship, meaningless "compromise," resistance to change, and often harsh uncalled-for repression. All of these practices stand in sharp contrast to the value of academic freedom and the social justice message of the Christian Church.

Despite Notre Dame’s conservative nature, students have time and time again rebelled and fought for justice. Students have won gender parity in numbers, we have a WRC and an (under-funded) Gender Studies program, and now are working on parity in power (of the sexes) and issues like co-residentiality. Student unrest has forced concerned administrators to rapidly setup committees and not-so rapidly implement programs that have led to important gains in minority enrolment and faculty, and an African Studies program. Pacifists have repeatedly raised the community’s conscious and participated in national movements to stop war. Students have tried to change the university from a place teaching war, to one working for peace. For over 25 years queers have met on campus, and are now more than ever demanding equal rights. Students and faculty support OUTreach ND by overwhelming margins. The administration’s refusal to recognize OUTreach ND and their reservation of the right to discriminate on sexual orientation has, more than any activist group could, shown thousands of students the true nature of this school and compelled hundreds to act.

Whether out of a belief in God, justice, humanity, themselves or damn frustration – as students have shown in the past, they will act again. Justice shall roll down like a mighty stream and Babylon shall fall. It is not normal for racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression of the poor to be able to persist in an institution of learning. Not without the possibility, and with time perhaps certainty, that things will change. For over thirty years students have proved by their acts that they are willing to take risks to follow a higher law, whereas the administration has acted as a self-interested conservative power elite serving the interests of its rich donors dealing with naughty children. Students, along with faculty and members of the general catholic and local communities, should run this place. May this history speed that time but a little and it’s role will have been served well.