University of Notre Dame betrayed values: Protesters 

W = Wrong

The President's Visit 

Wayne Falda / South Bend Tribune 21may01

Protesters cross Leeper Bridge over the St. Joseph River en route to the University of Notre Dame, where President Bush delivered the commencement speech. Tribune Photo/REBECCA BELLING

SOUTH BEND -- The "W" stands for "wrong" to those who marched and protested at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday afternoon.

President Bush's appearance at the commencement exercises at Notre Dame generated a lively protest from those who consider him wrong on a broad range of issues: wrong on the environment, wrong on labor rights, wrong on the death penalty, wrong on tax breaks for the wealthy, wrong on nuclear power and wrong on the militarization of space just for starters.

But to Notre Dame graduates Joe Napolitano and Tom Ogorzalek, the appearance of America's most famous "W" or "Dubya" at their graduation ceremonies could not have been more wrong for a Roman Catholic Church-affiliated university like Notre Dame.

"After spending four years at an institution that teaches Catholic values, for Notre Dame to turn around and bring President Bush here is in contradiction ... of those values," said Napolitano, a graduating senior from Tampa, Fla., with bachelor's degrees in English and philosophy.

Ogorzalek, a senior from Chicago graduating with a bachelor's degree in government, believes the Notre Dame administration invited the president solely for the purpose of image and prestige.

"The urge to touch Caesar's hem" was Notre Dame government professor Peter Walshe's description of Notre Dame's invitation to Bush for the event.

Hundreds of Notre Dame faculty, staff, students and alumni objected to the Bush appearance in a petition that gathered momentum over the past three weeks.

"We referred to his huge tax refund for the rich, his reduction in programs that provide health care access for the uninsured, his abandonment of the environment to the predatory drive for corporate profits, and his revived version of the Strategic Defense Initiative," Walshe said.

Walshe's comments came in his speech to a crowd of about 150 gathered across Juniper Road from the Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center, where the president delivered his speech.

"Commencement is a time to celebrate the values of our university," Walshe said. "This is something George W. Bush is incapable of doing."

English professor Valerie Sayers led the crowd in the chant "the Catholic vote is not for sale."

"I am one of those Catholic faculty members who came to Notre Dame believing that this university should stand up for the poor, and the weak, and the struggling and for the least among us," she said.

"A Catholic university does not have to invite the president of the United States when it knows that the president ... is giving voice to the powerful and the wealthy at the expense of the poor and the vulnerable."

To others like Rene Trilling, the 152 executions of criminals in Texas while Bush was governor was an affront to the "compassionate conservatism" theme that Bush campaigned on during last year's presidential election.

"King George. Prince of the Rich; Executioner of the Poor," read one sign in the crowd.

Trilling, a graduate student in the English department at Notre Dame, and her husband, James Hansen, a post-doctoral member in the department, were part of a long line of protesters who gathered before noon at Leeper Park to march to the university campus.

The march to Notre Dame drew anti-Bush people from Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.

Global warming and the Bush administration's tepid response to serious carbon dioxide cutbacks in the United States is the reason why Elizabeth Forest, 33, who came from Kalamazoo for the protest.

"I have children. I have a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old, and in 50 years I hope to be a grandmother. The way things are going right now, that is not going to happen," she said.

"The emissions and the toxins that we are putting into our environment are affecting our genetic capabilities to reproduce."

Elizabeth Piedmont and Peter Drake were among a contingent of environmentalists who got up early Sunday in Bloomington to trek to Notre Dame to say their piece against Bush environmental policies.

"Bush has pretty much ignored the catastrophic issue of global warming," Drake said.

"If we don't make drastic changes in our lifestyle, we could render the world unable to support life in the manner that we know.

"This is what the mainstream scientific community is saying will happen in our lifetime," he said.

Chicagoan Joann Wright joined the mile-long march carrying the sigh "Bush Loves America, But Hates Americans."

"That means he likes the idea of America and corporate profits, but he doesn't like the people," she explained. "Look at his policies so far. He has only been in office a little over 100 days. He is trying to destroy our water, poison our food and poison our environment."

The long procession reached Edison Road and Eddy Street on the outskirts of the Notre Dame campus, where the American atheists started picketing an hour before noon.

Mike Suetkamp, Indiana State Director for American Atheists of Elkhart County, said Bush's faith-based funding initiatives to fund social programs is in violation of the constitutional directive to keep church and state separate and is tantamount to public funding of religion.

Nuclear power opponents who decried Bush's call for a new generation of nuclear power plants reminded that America is already in a crisis created by the disposal of spent radioactive material from the old generation of plants. Steelworkers used the occasion to draw attention to the loss of steelworker jobs in America to free trade and globalization.

But should Bush have been invited at all, Walshe asked.

"At the very least, the university should have waited to see if the Bush presidency would unfold as one of compassionate conservatism," Walshe said.

"The unseemly haste calls into question the judgment of Notre Dame's president and his advisers, suggesting that they succumbed to the lobbying of wealthy, corporate alumni on whom they are dependent in an obsessive drive to increase the university's already vast endowment."