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-Alex Caton | Friday, April 24, 2015
At the risk of closing my Viewpoint career on a negative note, I need to thank my dad for teaching me the tone op-eds require, my mom for teaching me rhetoric and restraint, my philosophy professors for showing me that making arguments is like laying bricks, The Observer’s editors for two years of space, latitude
Alex Caton | Friday, April 10, 2015
In April 2014, the University announced it would replace the freshman PE requirement with a new First Year of Studies class beginning in fall of 2015. Having passed the swim test with flying colors and become a force in team handball as a freshman, I can’t say I was pleased about it. I was less pleased
Alex Caton | Friday, March 27, 2015
One night in January of my junior year, I was roped into a walkover to a dorm on the south half of campus to pick up a passed-out friend of mine. After a fragmented night of hopping dorm parties, he had wound up basically unresponsive on a futon, his head resting eight inches above a
Alex Caton and Andrew Weiler | Friday, February 27, 2015
Early in the movie Shrek, Lord Farquaad looks down from his tower over the town of Duloc and addresses the knights who will go on his behalf to rescue Princess Fiona from the castle where she has been locked away. “Some of you may die,” he laments, “but it’s a sacrifice I am willing to
Alex Caton | Friday, February 13, 2015
I will never forget when my Introduction to Philosophy seminar professor taught me that “which begs the question” was not just a flashy phrase I used to introduce new paragraphs in my ACT Writing section. It turned out that begging the question was a specific kind of circular logical fallacy, and I had been using
Alex Caton | Friday, January 30, 2015
If you are a sophomore or ambitious freshman, then you’ll soon get an email telling you whether, after all the information sessions, recommendation requests and essays you pounded into your MacBook at the last minute, you have Notre Dame’s blessing to spend a semester in this or that corner of the world. “Study abroad” evokes
Alex Caton | Friday, January 16, 2015
I’m having a hard time with the Campus Crossroads project. It’s not because it displaces my graduation ceremony or because the sight of a comically giant excavator claw ripping whole trees out of the ground during my comparative politics class last semester was distracting (although it was quite distracting). These are both bad, but ultimately
Alex Caton | Thursday, November 13, 2014
Just prior to the kickoff of Saturday’s devastating loss to Arizona State, students received the following email: “Around 2 a.m. Saturday morning a Notre Dame student was approached by three men in a silver sedan on Notre Dame Avenue between the Morris Inn and Holy Cross Drive. One of the men got out of the
Alex Caton | Thursday, October 2, 2014
Last week, the Mendoza College of Business announced the Student International Business Council (SIBC) would come under the college’s jurisdiction. It previously had been housed under the Student Activities Office (SAO). Beginning with this year’s freshmen, only students who are enrolled in the business school or have minors requiring classes in Mendoza will be allowed to
Alex Caton | Thursday, September 4, 2014
When our University’s administration makes changes that nobody is going to like, they tend to announce them when the students’ minds are elsewhere. An August football weekend when ND’s newest senior class was occupied with the existentially troublesome series of “last-firsts” was the perfect time for the Office of the Registrar to announce that due