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Gateway 9.0s: Still without a home
Letter to the Editor | Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Dear Notre Dame community,
Last week, members of the Notre Dame-Gateway 9.0 program learned that the student cohort coming after them, to graduate in 2026 — the 10.0s — will be guaranteed on-campus housing beginning their first semester of their sophomore year upon transferring to Notre Dame.
We applaud the Notre Dame administration and the Office of Residential Life for resolving this issue for the next cohort; it’s clear that the Gateway program, which supports the success of Holy Cross College, would not have survived without such a solution, since families choose Notre Dame primarily for its hallmark on-campus residential life community experience.
We are writing to remind the Notre Dame community that 96 of us, Gateway 9.0s, remain deprived of this residential life community as we are without an on-campus home in the fall of 2022, at the start of our sophomore years.
Many of us have felt betrayed by this whole experience and we have learned that some members of the Notre Dame and Holy Cross administration knew of this housing crunch, yet failed to fully disclose this reality while we were making our college selections as seniors in high school.
On Friday, we received an email entitled “Gateway Recruitment Update” which alerted us that future Gateways would be guaranteed on-campus housing. This email thanked the 9.0s for their “enthusiasm to welcome the prospective 10.0s to campus soon and to tell them all about Gateway.”
So, in other words, we are essentially now being asked to recruit future Gateways for a program that can’t or won’t resolve our situation, making us the sole cohort in the history of the program without on-campus housing once we become sophomores. We’d be less than honest if we didn’t say that this latest development particularly stings.
All of us have had to scramble to find roommates and try to secure off-campus leases just weeks into our college experiences, before even knowing if we would be accepted to Notre Dame. While many of us have reluctantly signed agreements, very few of us have confirmation of an actual apartment.
We are proud of how we have pulled together as a cohort, supporting each other and working hard to earn our place into the Notre Dame community.
To Fr. John Jenkins and Fr. Gerard Olinger: Please don’t forget about us. Smart minds employing innovative solutions can figure this out creatively. Many solutions have been suggested. This is a problem that can, and should, be fixed.
To the rectors of the 32 residential dorms: We only need a handful of spots per dorm and we promise you that we will be enthusiastic contributors to dorm life as sophomores if you give us that chance. Please find a way forward for us. Thank you for listening.
Respectfully,
Liam Redmond
Kate Fitzgerald
Christian Farls
Brooke Collins
Robert Corrato
Ella Sundstrom
John Graney
Grace Martin
Michael Manning
Matthew McManus
Grace Kayastha
Peter O’Connor
Olivia Hrivnak
Ben Reifschneider
Anna Merriam
Tommy Toole
Aoife Kelly
Will Miller
Lauren Liebezeit
Pancho Septien
Grace Capko
Finn McClintock
Caroline Donahue
Drew Smetana
Moira Ferry
Drew Vitale
Grace Pugh
Jimmy Collins
Maria Tobias
Nico Schmidt
Sabine Go
Ikaika Van Dyke
Claire McArthur
Kiki Riley
Maire Brennan
Nettie Rooney
The views expressed in this Letter to the Editor are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
