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Dear Domers,

Happy fall! We hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather, settling into the school year, having a blast supporting our top-10 football team and surviving your midterms as best as possible. It’s truly been a joy to see and get to know so many of you in and outside of the office and at events over the past few months, and we’re thrilled for that to continue in a month filled with exciting programming and policy on our end.

October is LGBTQ history month, and we are proud to be co-sponsoring the month’s events organized by the Gender Relations Center. Especially in light of recent events that have taken place on our campus, it is critical that we stand as allies with the LGBTQ+ members of our community. Every member of our student body should be welcomed, supported and included as true members of the Notre Dame family we hold so dear. For those members of the LGBTQ+ community on campus, know that we love you, we hear you and we will continue to fight with and for you. As a part of this family, we hold a special commitment to uphold the core tenets of Catholic Social Teaching, specifically those of solidarity and the call to be one another’s keepers. At the core of our mission as a Notre Dame community are these words from John: “Love one another; just as I have loved you.” We invite everyone to join us at these important events and conversations this LGBTQ history month, and let us all recommit ourselves to supporting one another and treating one another as family. As our peers Maddie Foley and Alex Bakeis have recently written in “Observer” viewpoints, let us turn to empathy and allyship. Let us turn away from division. Let us turn to love.

In addition to LGBTQ history month, October is also National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Also organized by the GRC, this month will be filled with programming and conversations surrounding relationship violence prevention, solidarity, and support for survivors on our campus. These events, along with the events of LGBTQ history month, are outlined on the GRC’s website (grc. nd.edu), and we invite all members of the tri-campus community to join us in these events, as love should never hurt.

Another important event that we will be hosting this month will focus on gun violence and change in partnership with the Snite Museum of Art. The first of our new Snite Spotlight series, this event will feature conversations over coffee on gun violence in America surrounding a photograph from the Snite by Javier Carlos Ortiz. We hope that this event will help foster crucial conversations about the crisis of gun violence in our community and in our nation, and all are welcome to attend. The event will take place on October 10 at 6:30 p.m. in the Snite.

As always, we enthusiastically welcome you all to reach out with any questions, concerns, suggestions, or hopes to get involved via e-mail at studegov@nd.edu or at our office in 203 Lafun. Please never hesitate to stop by and say hello to us and to our team.

In Notre Dame, Elizabeth & Pat