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Notre Dame Students Want a Protest-Free Graduation

2 years ago

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Correspondent

Notre Dame, IN -- It could be a first. The University of Notre Dame's commencement ceremony Sunday, featuring an address from President Barack Obama, has become something of a national Rorschach test. The same event provokes widely-and wildly-different interpretations and reactions.

In the abstract, a university campus serves as the arena for airing opposing viewpoints to gain greater understanding of a subject to arrive (one always hopes) at elusive truth. In actuality, here at Notre Dame today, supporters and critics of the president's visit are in no mood for reflection or even listening to the other side-so the same reality sparks divergent opinions.

Most students, their families, and much of the faculty who consider it an honor for Obama to come to the northern Indiana school are thrilled to see the university continue a quasi-tradition. Professorial interest in attendance resulted in lotteries for tickets, something that's never happened before.

Since the late 1970s, three other presidents (Jimmy Carter in 1977, Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George W. Bush in 2001) have delivered commencement speeches at Notre Dame during their first year in the White House. Obama evens up the record with two Democrats and two Republicans.

Opponents of Obama addressing graduation and receiving an honorary doctorate of laws include the Republican faithful, many Americans of the Catholic Church hierarchy and pro-life defenders, whether Catholic or not. Beyond base political partisanship, the animating reason propelling the criticism is Obama's pro-choice stance and support of expanded stem-cell research.

Looking beyond the viral, Web-based campaigns tallying both delight and denunciation of the university's decision, the controversy at Notre Dame dramatizes some central political realities in contemporary America. Single-issue single-mindedness flourishes as a distinct feature in our civic life, and polarization (rather than any sense of pluralism) keeps dividing people with such force that any dialogue about differences becomes next to impossible.

Gone are the days, it would seem, of polite disagreement but overarching respect for the president. However, to a certain extent, what's happening at Notre Dame raises questions other schools might well confront in the future. Is it worth it to have the nation's chief executive as commencement speaker? What price might there be (in terms of criticism and much-coveted contributions) for having a White House occupant come to campus? Does the potential advantage outweigh the possible cost?

With the current case here, of course, the religious identity of the university is a defining aspect of the animus. A certain percentage of devout believers can't comprehend how a school unashamedly committed to its Catholic heritage and mission could honor someone, anyone, who advocates a position in fundamental opposition to the Church's teachings and principles.

More than 70 bishops and cardinals are on the record condemning Notre Dame, though a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 54 percent of Catholics who know about the controversy thought the university was right to issue the invitation.

Alienating a sizable portion of the Catholic hierarchy is antithetical to Notre Dame's character-just last year Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington was the university's commencement speaker-and what this might mean in the years ahead is now a local guessing-game. Tellingly, no bishop or cardinal will receive an honorary degree Sunday, a rarity in the school's recent history.

More visibly, pro-life demonstrators holding graphic, bordering on gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses occupy the outskirts of campus, where ticket scalpers usually transact business on home football Saturdays. Trucks, too, circulate near the campus with similar placards, and a plane, dragging a large banner of the same composition, buzzes overhead delivering its message.

In recent days, campus police have kept busy arresting more extreme demonstrators wheeling baby carriages with dolls covered in fake blood, as they try to perambulate around campus. Over the weekend, hundreds of additional protestors are expected to arrive in vans and buses to lend their voices and posters to the protest. Rumors currently abound about the possibility of disruption, especially for the traffic of people seeking access to the graduation itself.

Although some alumni-to-be who are opposed to the president's visit plan a counter-commencement away from the convocation center to coincide with the event itself, there's one refrain repeated by most students. They are adamant in wanting to be part of a protest-free ceremony.

But whatever might happen on Sunday, larger political-and religious-questions will linger and continue to stimulate debate (as opposed to dialogue) not only at Notre Dame but also throughout America. In a seemingly uncrackable nutshell, reducing the polarization that divides the nation, one of Obama's key objectives as president, might be more difficult to accomplish than correcting the economy, solving the healthcare conundrum or successfully ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Robert Schmuhl is Walter H. Annenberg-Edmund P. Joyce Chair in American Studies and Journalism at the University of Notre Dame, where he is also Director of the John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics and Democracy.

Filed Under: Religion

Tagged: Abortion, Barack Obama, BarackObama, Notre dame, NotreDame

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