Notre Dame Football is supposed to be a program set apart from all others. For this reason, I vehemently disagree with Corey McNeilly's dismissal of the alma mater and its importance to Notre Dame ("Post-game conduct no big deal," Sept. 15). Our team strives to be a part of the Notre Dame community. Nowhere else in major college football, it's often said, do the players live, eat, study and pray with the rest of the student body like they do at Notre Dame.
Part of this show of community and solidarity happens at the end of every football game where all the students stay and the players join them in singing "Notre Dame Our Mother." The players and (most of the) students stayed after every game in 2007. They stayed after that awful Syracuse game last year. It's part of what makes Notre Dame special.
Our Alma Mater isn't just a song, Corey McNeilly. It's not Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling." It's a tribute to the Blessed Mother, the glue that holds our community together. We play and sing it after every game, win or lose. There are perfectly reasonable explanations for why the team didn't or couldn't stay after Saturday's game. However, there is no reasonable explanation for calling "Notre Dame Our Mother" merely "a song." It is what we stand for - literally and figuratively - at Notre Dame and nothing less.
Brian Wysocki
senior
Fisher Hall
Sept. 15
