Clusterfuck at The University of Notre Dame

I had a brief chance to check out my old uni­ver­si­ty news­pa­per dur­ing a break in the direct­ing over the week­end. I jumped right to the View­point sec­tion to see if the same old was still the same old. And it is. I read a let­ter from two of my favorite pro­fes­sors that frankly and suc­cint­ly illu­mi­nates the cen­tral prob­lem at ND: a stu­dent social life retard­ed by a reac­tionary insti­tu­tion wield­ing an obso­lete moral­i­ty.

Most of the peo­ple who ask me about Notre Dame seem sur­prised to hear that I hat­ed it there. The only thing that kept me from trans­fer­ring to anoth­er school where I could have received an equiv­a­lent­ly excel­lent edu­ca­tion was the fenc­ing team. My main rea­son for want­i­ng to leave was the imma­ture and uncon­struc­tive social life led by the stu­dents. The pit­falls of binge drink­ing have been dis­cussed to death, includ­ing the spec­tre of date rapel; but the caus­es of binge drink­ing itself are rarely touched upon. I’d like to offer my own sup­po­si­tions on this mat­ter.

I was amazed at the sheer num­ber of Domers who had spent their entire lives ensconced with­in the Catholic school sys­tem. Even more amaz­ing to a coun­try boy like me was the fact that many of these same Domers has spent their entire lives ensconced in sin­gle-sex Catholic schools. Twelve years of seg­re­ga­tion and indoc­tri­na­tion in sex­u­al repres­sion by sex­u­al­ly repressed priests and nuns. I’m not advo­cat­ing free love, here. Every­one is allowed to be as sex­u­al­ly repressed as they want to be; but I see an obvi­ous bias and fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nect with allow­ing the celi­bate to tell us how and when we should pork. It should be no sur­prise then, that when young men and women who have had lit­tle to no uncod­i­fied inter­ac­tion with the oppo­site sex and a life­time of sex­u­al repres­sion final­ly come into every­day con­tact with each oth­er that they have no knowl­edge of healthy mech­a­nisms with which to com­port them­selves.

Enter the hookup cycle. The main rea­son my col­lege social life sucked. The week­end hits and every­one gets shit­faced and hooks up and pre­tends noth­ing hap­pened come Mon­day. Girls who have had 12+ years of nun-warn­ings about pro­tect­ing their vir­gin­i­ty have a cou­ple very bad first week­ends their fresh­man year when Boys who have had 12+ years of priest-admo­ni­tions final­ly let their pent up sex­u­al ener­gy go wild. Social life at ND remind­ed me more of Con­nersville Junior High School than one of the top 25 Uni­ver­si­ties in the nation.

And now the new Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty, Fr. Tim Jenk­ins, prob­a­bly as a result of his Bish­op’s direc­tives, is fur­ther­ing and broad­en­ing the scope of sex­u­al repres­sion on cam­pus.

Of all things there are for a priest to get his panties in a twist about, The Vagi­na Mono­logues of all things, should be low on the list. For a brief time in col­lege I dat­ed a strip­per. Who attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame. Who was smart as yeah. Who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a packed house [in DeBar­to­lo 101] per­for­mance of The Vagi­na Mono­logues. I was a mem­ber of the cam­pus Knights of Colum­bus at the time, and the Grand Knight tried to orga­nize a pray­ing of the rosary out­side of the room dur­ing the per­for­mance. I ran into one of my anthro pro­fes­sors, Fr. Gaffney on the way to the mono­logues and dis­cov­ered that he was going to the per­for­mance as well. The Grand Knight saw us com­ing and assumed we were there for the rosary. Woops. As a play I think the Vagi­na Mono­logues is crap, but its use­ful­ness in empow­er­ing both women and men in an exam­i­na­tion of the net­work of rela­tions between sex and gen­der roles is extreme­ly impor­tant. Espe­cial­ly in a repres­sive envi­ron­ment like Notre Dame.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the Uni­ver­si­ty’s pantytwist about a GLBT Film Fes­ti­val is just as stu­pid. For a bunch of [seem­ing­ly] pow­er­ful celi­bate old men, wig­ging out over a movie or two is ridicu­lous. Yet all I have to do is think back to oth­er things that have been wigged out about at ND [The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ, that penis video at the stu­dent film fest, the VM every god­damn year, oth­ers I’m sure I’ve repressed by now] and I real­ize that the more things stay the same, the more they suck.

If the Uni­ver­si­ty aims to teach holis­tic and catholic val­ues, it needs to stop focus­ing on the world­ly inter­pre­ta­tions of Catholic doc­trine, the imper­fect human inter­pre­ta­tions of God’s love for us, and real­ize that appre­cia­tive inquiry and dia­logue can do more to fos­ter Christ-like liv­ing than ostracism and close-mind­ed tra­di­tion. I’m still work­ing my way through a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between the good that the Church does and the harm it has done to me in terms of my own devel­op­ment, my own rela­tion­ships and my own under­stand­ing of the impor­tance of sex in my life. These are all per­son­al choic­es, and while the Church has every right to pro­vide its own guid­ance it should­n’t restrict the expres­sion of dis­sent­ing opin­ions. The Uni­ver­si­ty always hears the rus­tle of mon­ey over rea­soned attempts at dia­logue, so until the stu­dents and fac­ul­ty of the Uni­ver­si­ty take orga­nized action on their own, or fig­ure out a way to make ND’s poli­cies hurt its pock­et­book I expect few things will change. I do know that when­ev­er I have chil­dren, I’ll encour­age them to attend a Uni­ver­si­ty that will pro­vide them with an open and wel­com­ing envi­ron­ment in which to edu­cate them­selves both men­tal­ly and social­ly. If ND keeps on as it has been keep­ing on, it def­i­nite­ly won’t be on the list.