Observer the
The Independent Newspaper Serving Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s Volume 44 : Issue 41
Wednesday, OCTOBER 28, 2009
ndsmcobserver.com
Students travel to Appalachia in record numbers One-credit course receives most applicants in history, 269 spend fall break in poor areas of Appalachian region By LAURA McCRYSTAL News Writer
Editor’s note: The reporter attended a weeklong service trip in the Appalachia region of the United States to examine the culture of the region as well as the issues that it faces. M c D o w e l l C o u n t y, W. Va , was home to one of the highest concentrations of millionaires in the United States during the peak of the coal mining industry at the turn of the 20th century. Today, it is the most impoverished county in the state and the four main sources of income for its residents are
black lung pensions, miners’ pensions, social security and disability, said Jenny Lee, a missionary with Community Crossing, a McDowell County missionary and home repair organization. Similar situations exist in counties across the Appalachian region of the United States, where the rise and fall of coal mining have contributed to many environmental and economic issues. Last week, 269 Notre Dame students spent a week at 21 different sites in McDowell County and other areas in Appalachia as participants in the Appalachia Seminar offered as a one-credit course through the Center for Social Concerns.
This fall, the seminar received a record number of applicants and accommodated the highest number of part i c i p a n t s i n i t s h i s t o r y, Professor Connie Mick, assistant director of the Center for Social Concerns said. Students began traveling to Appalachia in the 1980s in small volunteer groups, Mick said, but the program has grown more popular over the years. “It’s for students to serve and live in solidarity with people who are surrounded by chronic poverty and challenges,” she said. “By doing that together as a group we get a fuller understanding,
see SEMINAR/page 6
Photo courtesy of Larua McCrystal
Sophomores Analise Althoff and Margaret Millea saw a stud for a wall as a par t of a renovation project in Kimba
Visiting professor recounts horrors of Holocaust Professors organize Finnish conference By LAUREN BALDWIN News Writer
SUZANNA PRATT/The Observer
Jan Tomasz Gross, a professor at Princeton, spoke about the Holocaust at a lecture Tuesday night.
A visiting professor discussed horrifying accounts of the killing and plundering of Polish Jews during World War II. Jan Tomasz Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson ’16 and ’48 professor of War and Society and History at Princeton University, spoke Tuesday in a lecture titled “On Holocaust’s Periphery: Poles and their Jewish Neighbors.” While the Jews in Poland only represent a fraction of the total killed by the Nazis, the firsthand accounts about the fates they suffered are extremely important to historians but have been deem-
phasized, Gross said. The scale of the Holocaust events baffled people and the reports of mass murder were viewed with caution by journalists and government officials of neighboring countries, as the predominant mood of countries during the occupation was antiSemitic, Gross said. While these are victim accounts and only account for half of the story, Gross said personal accounts should not be discarded. “A sense of obligation grew among the Jewish record keepers,” Gross said. “Clearly their aim was just to produce an account of what happened, not to
News Writer
Fall Break proved relaxing and uneventful for many students who stayed in South Bend for the week. For others, the vacation was not exactly boring. Approximately 115 members of The Band of the Fighting Irish were featured in the filming of OK Go’s video for their single “This Too Shall Pass” over fall break. The band, which is best recognized for its song “Here it Goes Again,” also known as “the treadmill song,” selected the University for their video after members of OK Go saw their halftime performance of
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their song at last year’s football game against Southern California in Los Angeles. Assistant Band Director Emmett O’Leary said the band contacted him six or seven months ago and approached him with the idea. “The idea of the video was to take place in a Midwestern, bucolic setting,” he said. “The band also wanted to add a theme of college marching bands.” OK Go’s new album is slated to be released in mid-January and will feature the track recorded with the Notre Dame Marching Band. O’Leary said OK Go was on campus for the week working
see OK GO/page 6
News Writer
Photo courtesy of Aaron Hernandez
Notre Dame students might be unfamiliar with Finland’s geography and its ties to their school, but its capital, Helsinki, served as the site for a major conference on nuclear disarmament last week, an event in which the University of Notre Dame played a significant role. Organized by the Joan B. Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies as well as the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, public policy and security experts gathered from Oct. 22 to 24 in order to discuss ideas to make the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) more effective. According to the Kroc Center Web site, this treaty is one of the most basic and crucial agreements within international efforts to monit o r, c o n t r o l a n d d e s t r o y nuclear weapons. The treaty is expected to receive its next five-year review by the United Nations in May of 2010. “All the nuclear states sent representatives [to the conference],” David Cortright,
Members of the band OK Go filmed a music video with the Notre Dame band over fall break.
see HELSINKI/page 8
see HOLOCAUST/page 9
Band films music video with OK Go By LIZ O’DONNELL
By MEGAN HEMLER
Purcell Pavilion to open page 3 ◆ “Batman” movies creator comes to ND page 13 ◆ Women’s tennis doubles place second page 24 ◆ Viewpoint page