A Day in the Life Through the Decades

As I set out interviewing alumni to get a better grasp on what an ordinary day at Notre Dame looked like throughout the decades, I expected to find transformation. Shockingly, I continued to find ideas that have stuck around for generations — but that’s not to say Notre Dame hasn't changed.

I found change when interviewing Notre Dame alum Paul McCandless, class of ’69. He remarked on a time in which women were not allowed on campus and where maids were responsible for making the boys’ beds each morning. I found it when talking to Notre Dame alumni Janice Englehart and Peter McManus, both of whom graduated in 1986. They told me about a vibrant culture in South Bend that students once partook in and maids that were (still) offering laundry services to exclusively male dorms. I found transformation in talking to Veronique Guillermety, class of ’02, who recalled ice sculptures in the dining hall before winter break and the Boat Club bar just off of campus. Yet what stood out to me most were underlying and conflicting themes of social justice and simultaneous apathy.

The question I asked that continued to prove this to be true was, “Were there any major national or international events that occurred while you were a student here, how did the student body react?” Each alum attended Notre Dame at critical turning point in history, yet the student body, it seemed, remained in a bubble. McCandless, for instance, attended Notre Dame during the Vietnam War; he had to watch one of his fencing teammates get sent to war and die within ten days of leaving home. He recalled how ready access to news was sparse and how all information had to be received through the radio; he would use transistors and climb up trees in hopes of picking up a signal from a Chicago radio station. During his senior year, he passed groups of students protesting a war that had resulted in the deaths of their classmates — 74 students who never made it home. He stopped to listen and bore witness to Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., declaring that each protester hand their student IDs over in order to expel each student participating — he stated that refusal to do so would result in jail time.

Englehart and McManus attended Notre Dame while AIDS was putting American in a chokehold of fear, where parents of students expressed fear that their children may contract the deadly virus from gay students in their hall. It was the largest and most controversial topic in the nation and yet McManus recounted how there was “absolutely zero acknowledgement of AIDS on campus, ”how it was “as foreign to the student body as whatever was going on in Western China.” Apartheid in South Africa was similarly an issue gripping the nation during Englehart and McManus’s time at Notre Dame. This time, students came out and actively protested — but with a certain dissociation.

McManus remarks protest signs that read, “yabba dabba doo, Fred Flintstone says away with apartheid.” Both, however, remember a collective student uproar at the removal of Captain Crunch cereal in the dining hall. 

Despite a certain underlying apathy that seems to show itself during times of strife, each of the alumni told a tale of a strengthened morality upon graduating — an unshakeable feeling of responsibility towards our communities. From our Catholic center, we have instilled a “line of social justice” that McManus states has made him “stronger throughout life.” Our mission of “creating a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good” is fundamental to the lives of Notre Dame students — during my short time on campus I have failed to meet a single person without genuine love and empathy to be (seemingly) at the forefront of their character. And yet, time and time again, our student body can’t seem to get angry.

It is easy to forget that a commitment to service can often entail outrage when most of us have grown up lucky enough to not be surrounded by gut-wrenching issues that would cause such anger. Guillermety, who grew up abroad, stated that Notre Dame was “magical but [could] also feel exclusionary if you grew up as [she] did.” There is a distance between our student body and the rest of the world — and it seems to be growing.

McCandless, however, stood as living proof into how our Catholic commitments can be used to bridge that gap. McCandless’s uncle — Servant of God Bishop Vincent Mc-Cauley, C.S.C.— dedicated his life to bridging that gap. According to the Congregation of the Holy Cross, Bishop Vince served as a missionary in Eastern Bengal from 1936 to 1944 before leading the Congregation’s mission in Uganda in 1958, eventually becoming the first Bishop of the new Diocese of Fort Portal in 1961. Bishop Vince dedicated his life to building schools and parishes, to creating unity amongst Bishops in Eastern Africa, to the care of refugees, orphans and widows. Bishop Vince did not choose to remain comfortable nor complacent in his hometown of Council Bluffs, Iowa — he opened himself towards suffering and responded with limitless generosity.

In a time of division, poverty, hunger, grief and war, it is no longer enough to show love to the people only directly beside us. Notre Dame students, I am not asking you to travel to Africa nor devote your life to service, but simply to care and accept the anger that may come with that. Being uncomfortable with the state of our world is how our Catholic mission can truly thrive and grow: It is what drove Mother Teresa to create dignity in death within the slums of India, what drove Dorothy Day to create lasting houses of hospitality in an economically devastated nation, what drove Saint Maximilian Kolbe to die in place of a stranger in Auschwitz.

In my interview with him, McManus remarked how so many Notre Dame students “[come] from families where you [don’t] stir the pot.” I believe that to be a Catholic in this society is to do what we are all so intimidated by and stir the pot. I also believe that this generation of students has the power to tear down a history of distance and apathy, to embrace suffering with simultaneous love and anger and to demonstrate what it means to be the Fighting Irish.