Print Edition for The Observer for Friday, Oct. 7, 2022

going into this week it’s going to be just as big as any other week.”

o ver the course of his career, the linebacker forced two fumbles and snagged three inter ceptions. All but one of those turnovers came last season. In both of his 2021 interceptions, Kiser ran the pick for six points, once against Wisconsin and again over Georgia Tech.

Kiser has also been dominant in his tackling. With 26 on the season, 10 of them solo and one of them a sack, he’s had more than half of last year’s total only four games in. h e doesn’t miss them either — Kiser has only three missed tackles in his career, all coming back in 2020.

“When I grab on, I’m not going to let go,” he said. “ b ut it’s three too many [missed tack les]. h opefully this year

we can get that down to zero and be per fect in tackling be cause you have to be.” e ven so, the Irish — Kiser included — have been focused on making sure they don’t lose any one else to targeting calls and are tackling well.

“It’s super tough. They’re on scholar ship, you’re on scholar ship. You’re trying to win the game. At times, they’re 230 pounds and you’re trying to get them down, right? At the same time you have to keep in your head there’s a strike zone. When it’s a bang-bang play it’s tough but you gotta know to keep your head up and you’ve gotta avoid their upper shoulder, neck, head area. That’s some thing that we’ve been emphasizing the last cou ple weeks,” Kiser said.

While he says hon ing the technique has been important, Kiser also said they can’t falter worrying about that call being made though.

“You can’t be scared to make a tackle because you have some thing in the back of your head that tells you not to,” he said. “ b ut you have to be smart and you have to think about it so it’s a tough balance. We’re getting a scholar ship to play football and as a defensive player, you’ve got to be able to find that balance… you’ve just got to trust your self and be confident in your teaching and your ability and your technique to just go out there and play and make the best tackle you can.”

In terms of what else he’s been work ing on, Kiser said in an interview earlier this sea son that he’s focused on “using [his] hands, be ing physical and block destruction.” h e’s still working on those pieces while prepar ing for b YU this week.

d espite not having b ertrand, Kiser trusts the group that will be out there to get the job done this weekend.

They had a test run without b ertrand against the Tar h eels as this is his second game in a row with a targeting call.

“I have complete con fidence in whoever is out on the field that’s on this defense, they put in the preparation, they put in the work and they’re good enough to be out there and com pete. If that’s me, if that’s m arist, if it’s b o, who ever it is, we’re gonna get the job done and we’re gonna fill in and we’re gonna pick up right where J. d left off,” Kiser said.

The defense has their work cut out for them this weekend. A scram bling quarterback with receiving weapons has tripped up the Irish de fense before this sea son. h eading into Las vegas, Kiser said com munication will be key.

“The whole back seven, we’re going to have to be on top of our game, communicationwise you know, we can’t have any breakdowns,”

he said. “ n orth c arolina week unfortunately we had some break downs and we can’t let that happen this week.”

h e added though that the need to play perfectly extends to the whole defense, especially this week end. h e feels like the defense knows what to expect from b YU though and they’re pre pared to answer it.

“If we can get a rush up front, that significantly helps the back seven. If we can cover in the back seven, if we can get home up front, it all comes hand in hand. h aving that preparation, know ing what they like, what our answers are and creating that chaos. We certainly do believe we can create chaos and we just got to get there. If ev eryone is playing dis ciplined football, I think we can do that.”

Contact Mannion McGinley at mmcginl3@nd.edu

Thomas: Seven Irish players who need to step up their game in Vegas after the bye week

By AIDAN THOMAS s ports e ditor

After a sluggish start, the n otre d ame football team has begun to turn things around. A grit ty, if closer than desired, win over c al pushed the Irish into the win column. A week lat er, head coach m arcus f reeman and c o. went on the road as under dogs and decimated U nc n ow, after a week off, the boys in the blue and gold, or should we say white and gold, head to vegas.

The game feels like a make-or-break moment in this season.

If the Irish win and move to 3-2, there’s every reason to believe they’ll be back in the Top 25. Additionally, they have a couple of almost guar anteed wins approach ing on the schedule.

A real chance at being 6-2 and in the top 15 head ing into the c lemson matchup emerges. f rom there, ending in the 8-10 win range feels almost certain, and with a solid bowl game.

With a loss? Well, n otre d ame would fall to 2-3. With c lemson, U sc and a thus-far un beaten s yracuse squad

remaining on the schedule, topping s even wins feels even more unlikely.

s o no doubt the Irish are at a critical point in their season. While it’s not at the halfway point just yet, here’s a look at five Irish players (plus two honorable mention) who need to step it up as the Irish try to continue their renaissance.

Honorable m ention: freshman wide receiver Tobias m erriweather and tight end Eli Raridon

The honorable mentions go to the true freshmen due to a lack of opportunity. m erriweather has barely seen the field, although comments from the coach ing staff seem to imply he’s tracking towards an in creased snap count. h e’s a tall and speedy wide receiv er that could give the Irish a much-needed boost in the passing game.

r aridon was just el evated into a bigger role last week with the sea son-ending injury to ju nior Kevin b auman. The 6’7 tight end emerged in Week 1 as an absolute force in the run-blocking game. It’s not too controversial to say he was an immediate

upgrade in that department. h owever, what remains to be seen is how he can im pact the passing game. r aridon is a match up nightmare, particu larly when opposing defenses are also con cerned with guarding ju nior All-American tight end m ichael m ayer. d eploying both of those guys on pass routes could be a sight to see.

5. Senior corner back Cam Hart

c am h art took a big step forward against U nc , and he’s been service able throughout the year. b ut starting across a true freshman, h art needs to lockdown and be less prone to the big plays that have victimized him through four weeks. h e hasn’t necessarily been bad, but a step up from h art could elevate this secondary to a new level.

4. Sophomore wide re ceiver Jayden Thomas Jayden Thomas received a lot of hype this season, and he feels like a ma jor breakout candidate. h owever, so far, Thomas has played a lot of snaps and made minimal

SARAH

Irish sophomore offensive lineman Blake Fisher, pictured here at the ND game against UNC, demonstrates potential for future games.

Former Croatian president visits ND

Past president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic speaks about Ukraine, geopolitics and peace in Europe

By ISA SHEIKH a ssociate news editor

Kolinda g rabar-Kitarovic, who served as president of c roatia from 2015 to 2020, visited n otre d ame this week to speak to the n anovic Forum on Tuesday evening.

g rabar-Kitarovic, the youngest president of c roatia as well as the first woman to be elected to the office, was a career diplo mat prior to her election and gave an address titled “ war in u kraine, p eace in e urope? g eopolitics, e conomics and s ecurity after r ussia’s i nvasion.” s he spoke to The o bserver for an hour-long interview on wednesday

Tri-campus leaders discuss accountability

By GENEVIEVE COLEMAN a ssistant managing editor

Editor’s note: This story includes mentions of sexual assault. A list of sexual assault reporting options and on-campus resources can be found on the Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross websites.

last Tuesday, a group of students protested on god Quad in the wake of a post from a student on social media claiming the university mishandled their Title iX case regarding an alleged instance of sexual assault.

Following the initial post, at least four more students at notre dame and saint mary’s posted their sto ries of alleged sexual assault on their personal social media ac counts. The posts have sparked discussion, both online and of fline, of how tri-campus students and administration can best han dle this topic.

“we were here because … a stu dent posted a very concerning post on instagram detailing their expe rience with sa, going through the Title iX office and not being sup ported or represented the way that

they had hoped to,” fifth-year Tony perez said of the protest.

The protest had a small turnout, perez acknowledged, but he said the support was still present.

“There are a lot more people who stand with us physically and metaphorically, that are more than happy to believe survivors and are more than happy to make sure that justice is spelled out,” he said. in response to the social media posts, university spokesperson dennis brown stated notre dame cannot discuss specific cases of student discipline.

“in compliance with federal privacy laws, we cannot and do not discuss specific student disci plinary cases, nor do we confirm whether a specific matter is being or has been investigated,” brown said.

he continued by discussing notre dame’s efforts to combat sexual violence.

“sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence can occur any where, and notre dame is not exempt from that reality,” brown

morning, discussing her visit to the u niversity, ca reer highlights and a path forward for e urope and the globe.

The former president’s vis it to n otre d ame was event ful, participating in three classes, attending working meals with faculty and other members of the n otre d ame community and sitting next to u niversity president Fr. John Jenkins for the n otre d ame Forum’s keynote event, a dramatic reading of an ancient g reek tragedy, a eschylus’ “The s uppliants,” in n otre d ame s tadium.

g rabar-Kitarovic offered

Students watch Hurricane Ian destroy homes

By RYAN PETERS news editor

a bout one year ago, p aris

Thompson’s family bought a 100-foot houseboat. The boat, which they rented out as an a irbnb on Fort m yers b each in Florida, was found one and a half miles inland atop other homes following hurricane i an last week.

“ it was completely de stroyed,” Thompson, a

sophomore from Fort m yers on the women’s volleyball team, said.

n ine days after the hur ricane struck Florida, the death toll has risen to 101, according to the a ssociated p ress. The c ategory 4 storm is the second-deadliest hur ricane to hit the mainland u s . this century.

a s the storm barreled to wards the u s ., n otre d ame students from southwest

Florida were forced to watch as their families braced for cover.

“ i just felt kind of help less. m y whole family is back home, there’s nothing i can do, and i felt kind of guilty that i ’m away, but i didn’t do anything wrong,” freshman e than g able from n aples said.

Thompson said she could

Courtesy of Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, former president of the Republic of Croatia, gives the 2022 Nanovic Forum Lecture “War in Ukraine, Peace in Europe? Geopolitics, Economics, and Security after Russia’s Invasion.”

Courtesy of Paris Thompson

Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on the southeastern coastline of the United States, causing mass de struction of homes and property. A boat washed inland in Fort Myers, Florida, as a result of the storm.

631-6900 ads@ndsmcobserver.com

(574) 631-4542 aguffey@nd.edu

(574) 631-4542 aomalle2@nd.edu

(574) 631-4541 mmcginl3@nd.edu, gcoleman01@saintmarys.edu, meastlan@nd.edu

Business Office (574) 631-5313

Notre Dame News Desk (574) 631-5323 news@ndsmcobserver.com

Saint Mary’s News Desk (574) 631-5323 smcnews@ndsmcobserver.com

Viewpoint Desk (574) 631-5303 viewpoint@ndsmcobserver.om

Sports Desk (574) 631-4543 sports@ndsmcobserver.com

Scene Desk (574) 631-4540 scene@ndsmcobserver.com

Photo Desk (574) 631-8767 photo@ndsmcobserver.com Systems & Web Administrators webmaster@ndsmcobserver.com

Policies

The Observer is the independent, daily newspaper published in print and online by the students of the University of Notre Dame du Lac, Saint Mary’s College and Holy Cross College. Editorial content, including advertisements, is not governed by policies of the administration of any institution. The Observer reserves the right to refuse advertisements based on content.

The news is reported as accurately and objectively as possible. Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the majority of the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, Assistant Managing Editors and department editors. Commentaries, letters and columns present the views of the authors and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Viewpoint space is available to all readers. The free expression of all opinions through letters is encouraged. Letters to the Editor must be signed and must include contact information.

Questions regarding Observer policies should be directed to Editor-in-Chief Alysa Guffey.

Question of the Day:

Ben Martin

Gallagher

Today’s Staff

Corrections

The Observer regards itself as a professional publication and strives for the highest standards of journalism at all times. We do, however, recognize that we will make mistakes. If we have made a mistake, please contact us at editor@ndsmcobserver.com so we can correct our error.

Friday

Ailey II Performance

DeBartolo Performing

Arts Center

7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

Contemporary dance show.

Breakfast at Our Lady of the Road Atrium

7:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.

Make breakfast with ministry assistants.

Saturday Women’s Voting March

Le Mans Green 2 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.

Voice opinions on women’s rights.

“TOTE”ally Cool Holy Cross 4th Floor Lounge

2 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Paint a tote and learn to be eco-friendly.

Sunday

Hangul Day 2022 Bond Hall 106 3 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Celebrate Hangul with Korean language faculty and students.

Collegium Musicum Concert Reyes Organ 4 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Concert of Heinrich Sch ütz’s music.

Nikolai Eggleton

Edwards Hall

Mary Elizabeth Stern

Monday

Virtue and Vocations: “Beauty at Work”

Virtual webinar

12 p.m. - 1 p.m.

Led by guest Brand Vaidyanathan.

Conversation with Nury Turkel McCarten Courtroom

12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m.

Talk on Uyghur genocide.

Tuesday

On-Campus Flu Vaccine Blitz Stepan Center

10 a.m. - 7 p.m. Free flu vaccine, appointment required.

ND Votes B101 Jenkins Nanovic Hall

6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

Led by Professor Michael Coppedge.

SOFIA

Sierra Weaver

Roby

Tri-campus

stated. “The University works tire lessly to combat sexual violence through numerous initiatives that seek to educate our students, heighten their awareness and sup port victims and survivors. rape and sexual assault are unaccept able and are not tolerated in the notre dame community.”

saint mary’s vice president for student enrollment and engage ment Lori Johnson also comment ed on the resources the college has created.

“We are aware of our student’s posts on social media and under stand the heartfelt reaction it has generated on campus,” Johnson said. “however, we cannot com ment on the specifics of our stu dent or her story. The college has worked diligently to put resources in place to support our students. These resources and initiatives are available to all students through the office of student Involvement & Advocacy and bAvo (belles Against violence [office]).”

Student leaders respond to multiple claims of sexual violence

earlier this week, saint mary’s student Government Association (sGA) posted a statement on Instagram to show their “love, sup port and advocacy for anyone who has endured hardships pertain ing to sexual assault and sexual violence.”

The post also acknowledged that sGA leaders were in com munication with the saint mary’s administration about these issues, though it would be “a process that takes time.”

sGA vice president Josie haas said she takes pride in the strength of tri-campus community members.

“[sGA president] Angela [camacho martinez] and I wanted to make sure that our belles felt supported by our sGA, wanted them to feel heard and wanted to bring as much attention to their strength as possible because their stories are worth being heard and we need others to see the gravity of this issue in our tri-campus com munity,” haas said.

notre dame student govern ment also posted a guide to supporting survivors on their Instagram page this week.

notre dame’s student body pres ident Patrick Lee said the student government’s stance is centered on survivor support, encouraging stu dents to be active bystanders and bringing student concerns to the office of Institutional equity.

“since everything has been go ing on, student support has always been on the front of our minds,” he said.

belles supporting belles (bsb) president Annie maher discussed her anger about reading how survi vors claimed a lack of support from tri-campus institutions.

“When I first read some of the survivors’ stories, I was angered by the lack of support these stu dents felt,” maher said. “not only did these students go through an extremely traumatic experience that no person should ever have to

go through, but then they received little to no support after that expe rience from institutions that are supposed to have their backs.”

maher also reflected on what she perceives to be a lack of change in how the tri-campus handles sexu al assault cases.

“It pained me to see another group of students have to share their story to try to ignite some ac tion in the tri-campus commu nity,” she said. “Talk to pretty much any student on all three of the cam puses and you will understand that this is an issue.”

Leaders plan initiatives to support students

camacho martinez noted that sGA’s social concerns committee has been working on the annual support a belle, Love a belle (sbLb) week and adapted their plans to highlight campus resources.

“There have been plans on ad justing a few days of sbLb to center more on resources made available to campus, like callisto,” camacho martinez said. “I think this is a valuable resource that assists in the encounter of sexual assault and/or sexual violence faced by not just smc students but also notre dame and holy cross students.”

haas also emphasized sbLb is a time where students in the com munity can support each other.

“overall, the purpose of this week is to show the support and love we have for one another as belles,” she said. “by being an up lifting community, we give each other strength and inspire our selves to be the amazing belles I know we are despite negative circumstances. We can help each other overcome whatever is placed in our pathway.”

Lee said student government has been addressing the situa tion for the past two weeks. he outlined plans for a survivor mass at the basilica, a speak out event supporting survivors, Greendot training for students and a survey gathering information to evalu ate the reporting process for ha rassment and discrimination on campus.

student Government is also cosponsoring the panel “Walking hand in hand: navigating the sex ual assault support system on cam pus,” with the Gender relations center, director of gender relations Lane obringer said.

saint mary’s Feminists United president madison mata said the organization will continue to serve as a place for students to feel safe and become more educated about relevant issues.

“I think for Feminists United as a whole, it’s gonna be being able to open up the floor to people who want to share their stories — whether it’s sexual violence or assault or anything like that,” she said. “In general, just being able to be a safe space for them, shar ing resources, staying educated and making sure that like-minded people are in the club for the right reasons.”

In addition, Feminists United is inviting local female politicians to speak to saint mary’s students on saturday about their experiences in politics and the importance of voting.

Like mata, maher is organizing specific events but encouraged stu dents to use the student concern form on the bsb website to discuss sexual violence on campus.

“belles supporting belles is working towards creating an event to address these stories. our main priority right now is to make sure that students’ voices are heard,” maher said. “right now, we have created a student concern form that is in our Instagram bio that students can fill out regarding their concerns about sexual violence and safety on campus.”

Student leaders call for accountability

camacho martinez referred back to sGA’s initial communica tion with college administrators and called on them to keep creat ing ways to support saint mary’s students.

“For any smc administrators who will read this story, I know we are already working through this process with you, but let’s see what more we can do to be supportive of our smc students, inspire other tricampus administrators to be sup portive of their respective students and hopefully evoke change in the system that fails to believe our sur vivors,” she said.

Lee said the issue of handling sexual violence better will require the whole notre dame communi ty, both students and administra tion, working together.

“If notre dame really is going to be this really amazing community that we all want it to be, we all know it can be, as inclusive as possible, as supportive as possible, then every body needs to take accountability for the safety of others,” Lee said.

It is a large task, but one Lee be lieves the community can do.

“It’s my belief that we absolutely can. I’ve seen it a number of times,” Lee said. “From my point of view, three plus years of being a student leader here, it really does start with us. We can all be responsible for our own actions.”

maher also called for admin istrator accountability, as well as implementing more comprehen sive action steps during an ongoing investigation.

“I am tired, as I am sure many students are, of basic apologies from administrators. students deserve positive action from the administration,” maher said. “comprehensive action plans for when a student reports a sexual assault, immediate probation/ academic suspension when a per petrator is identified, and other solutions are vital in maintaining a safe campus while the investiga tion is underway.”

she also claimed that based on the recent narratives of survivors, administrations are not believing their stories.

“The stories we heard last week are just a few of many survivors who have endured vio lent acts on our campuses,” she said. “our institutions need to believe survivors, and based on the stories that were shared last week, that isn’t happening.”

Genevieve

senate amends constitution

By KATIE MUCHNICK news Writer

The n otre d ame stu dent senate convened Wednesday night in d e b artolo h all to dis cuss upcoming cam pus events and pass an amendment to the constitution.

s tudent body vice presi dent s ofie s titt began the meeting with executive announcements, where she reminded senators that they are required to get Gree nd ot certi fied. s titt also asked all senators in men’s dorms to fill out a survey for the department of health and wellbeing to understand the availability of period products in unisex bath rooms in men’s dorms.

s ophomore Jessica v ickery, the senator from r yan h all, spoke about involving firstyears in student senate. s he brought along two first-years to shadow her and learn how to act as a proxy for future senate meetings.

After approving the min utes, s titt moved to general orders. Jared s chlachet, the student union parlia mentarian, introduced a memo from the c ommittee on the c onstitution. After reviewing a proposed amendment to Article XI v of the constitution — which deals with petitions, initia tives and referendums — the committee recommended that the senate split the amendment into a divided order.

The senate passed the first part of the amend ment order, so 2223-10a. The order changes the sig nature requirements for undergraduate students signing petitions and ini tiatives. Previously, the constitution mandated that students include their name and local ad dress, but the amendment stipulates that stu dents include their name and email address.

s chlachet said local ad dress was already inter preted to mean email address, but this formal izes that practice.

After a brief discus sion on the parlia mentary process, the amendment passed unanimously.

The senators then dis cussed their plans for upcoming resolutions.

s ophomore Keough h all senator d erick Williams updated the group on his work to give band

members and ro T c stu dents access to early registration.

Williams met with c huck h urley, the University reg istrar, but he said most of the decision making pow er lies with the provost’s office.

“I think having a little bit more concrete details could help us put togeth er a resolution [and] help us get a better footing if we were to go in and try to present a plan to the provost and or whoever else could make the final de cision on that,” Williams said.

s enior m egan m ikuen then updated the sen ate on her research into “design-your-own-ma jor” programs at other universities, with the ultimate goal of pass ing and writing a resolution to implement a similar program at n otre d ame. m ikuen found that most self-designed majors are hosted in the equiv alent of the c ollege of Arts and Letters at other universities, but that more research isneces sary to understand what university and college course requirements are applicable.

Finally, students in volved in various orga nizations across campus previewed upcoming campus events.

s enior c onnor Patrick, the president of the c lub c oordination c ouncil, asked senators to stop by the nd c ultural s howcase on o ctober 14. The event will take place from 8:3011 p.m. on Library Lawn and will showcase many of the cultural and per forming arts groups on campus.

Junior class council presi dent Paul s toller previewed the junior class game watch s aturday. c hicken nug gets, wings and an e lvisthemed halftime show will be provided.

Finally, sophomore class council president Patrick s mart asked soph omores and other inter ested students to stop by d uncan s tudent c enter and sign thank you cards for the dorm housekeep ers. s ophomore class council will have a table set up from 12 to 4 p.m. and will provide free Insomnia cookies.

After closing announce ments, the meeting was adjourned.

her expertise on e uropean diplomacy, and as a former head of state, on the cur rent situation in Ukraine in her lecture on Tuesday eve ning. s peaking to a packed auditorium in the h esburgh c enter, she discussed the causes of the conflict and Putin’s erratic behavior. s he shared her takeaways from the crisis, namely that in or der to move forward, those standing against Putin must “maintain our unity of pur pose” and “stand united,” as well as develop a standard of responding to hostile ag gression on the world stage and address strategic vul nerabilities and challenges.

b efore answering ques tions, Grabar-Kitarovic closed with a reflection on freedom.

“The fact that we have peace in our countries and stability does not mean ab sence of threat. It means that there are men and women working out there, so hard, to secure our peace, security and stability and peace can never be taken for granted,” she said.

Grabar-Kitarovic said that in c roatia, there is an annu al theatre festival called the d ubrovnik s ummer Games.

The festival opened with the “ o de to Freedom” by the in fluential c roatian poet Ivan Gundulic.

“To quote part of that ode, in my free translation… ‘all the silver, all the gold, all the human lives and the cost of all of that does not equal the pure beauty of freedom and of peace,’” she said.

Grabar-Kitarovic told The o bserver that her visit to campus had been “wonder ful,” and that she was par ticularly delighted to see the works of c roatian sculptor Ivan m estrovic, who spent time at n otre d ame.

Grabar-Kitarovic was born the daughter of farmers in rural c roatia, then a part of the former Yugoslavia. s he described the burdens of growing up under com munism and a centralized government in b elgrade, the Yugoslav capital city in s erbia.

“It was very difficult be cause there were a lot of tax es and a lot of measures were the government and trying to limit [private business].

In the case of my family, for instance, the land that we could own, the number of people who could work with us. m y parents had to work

hard. They did not have an opportunity. They only fin ished elementary school, both of them because they had to start working very early,” Grabar-Kitarovic said.

“What bothered me in the former Yugoslavia was that lack of accountability. It was always the same old group of people, the so-called po litical elites, who were pro fessional politicians, they lived off politics and off the backs of all the rest of us,” she added.

Grabar-Kitarovic recalled a scheme when the Yugoslav government sold bonds to develop roads, many of which had not been de veloped since the Austroh ungarian e mpire.

“ m y family paid a lot of money for those bonds, not thinking of interests be cause we were not free mar ket minded at the time. We just wanted for those roads to be built for the infrastruc ture to be built,” she said. “ s o we raise a lot of money and of course, it’s central ized. It all goes to b elgrade. And whatever we earn will go to b elgrade and then b elgrade would redistribute the money.”

The bonds were never paid out and the roads were never built, Grabar-Kitarovic said. The centralized redistribu tion in Yugoslavia was un even and ineffective, she continued.

“Projects that were built under communism were use less, such as an aluminum factory in a coastal town in c roatia, where you have no resources like bauxite to begin with. And of course, it failed,” Grabar-Kitarovic said.

s he was able to study as an exchange student in high school, graduating from high school in Los Alamos, n ew m exico. r eturning to study at the University of Zagreb, Grabar-Kitarovic joined the movement for c roatian independence and witnessed the c roatian War of Independence.

s tudying in the United s tates was “an incredibly im portant experience where I learned a lot about individu al rights and freedoms,” she said. r eturning to c roatia, “I was so unhappy with the whole setup of life, with ev erything that was going on. [There was a] total lack of re sponsibility, hiding behind collectivism.”

As the war for indepen dence was waged, GrabarKitarovic said that c roatia

underwent a brutal assault.

“The atrocities committed were really the most bru tal. It wasn’t just guns that were used, it was also knives and things that normally are not used as weapons. The scorched-earth strat egy used to perform ethnic cleansing to drive out all the non- s erb population not in the occupied areas. m ass rape and sexual offenses actually started in c roatia, committed even on a great er scale later in b osnia and h erzegovina. We were losing ground in the beginning,” she recalled.

And yet, there were moments of comfort in solidarity.

“We were sticking together and I remember the times of feeling united with the peo ple. If you were stuck some where during an air raid, in somebody’s basement, they would clothe you, they would feed you for as long as it went on. There was practi cally no crime in c roatia,” Grabar-Kitarovic said.

n onetheless, from Zagreb, the war was palpable.

“As you lie down in your bed, you can hear detona tions from 24 kilometers away, where the front lines are. s ome 24 kilometers, imagine. [That’s] nothing. b ut you know, there were people there, day and night, defending c roatia. You hear those detonations and you’re so grateful for them. And you’re so grateful for the warm beds that you can sleep in because most people in parts of c roatia that were under for weeks and months, they would spend those weeks and months in their cellars sleeping on the floor,” Grabar-Kitarovic said.

s he describes the war as a formative experience in her personal and political development.

“It taught me humility, to appreciate things in life that really matter, more em pathy, being able to under stand conflicts in the world today perhaps a little bit bet ter. b ecause you have to put yourself in the shoes of ev eryone, of those who are at tacking you, of those under attack. As I said, there is no one [size] fits all experience. There is no blueprint for end ing the war, or for reconcili ation. b ut there are things that you will learn through that reconciliation process. When I was sitting listen ing to the news from [the besieged city of] v ukovar, I thought that there was no

chance that we would any time soon, maybe ever live together with s erbs again.

b ut then you know, you start working on reconcilia tion,” Grabar-Kitarovic said. Those experiences shaped her through her diplomatic career and presidency, she added.

Grabar-Kitarovic served in a number of posts, including minister of foreign affairs, ambassador to the United s tates, as well as assistant secretary general of n AT o s he said that interna tionally, she sees a role for c roatia in leadership.

“I’ve always said that when we look at [ e uropean Union headquarters] b russels, we are b russels. We shouldn’t be just following, we should be actively contributing to common e uropean poli cies and so much more, in b russels, in n AT o,” she said.

As a career diplomat, Grabar-Kitarovic says she was hesitant to seek the presidency. “I so much more prefer international work than domestic politics,” she said.

Looking at c roatia, howev er, she says that it faces large structural issues.

“ d omestically, by far the biggest problem is the demographic trends and structure. o ur population is aging. The ratio between actively employed and those who are not in the labor mar ket is becoming smaller and smaller. It’s almost one to one now. s o that was one of the aspects in which I was actively engaged in,” she said.

In her lecture on Tuesday evening, Grabar-Kitarovic discussed v ladimir Putin’s recent actions and motivations.

“ h aving known him for a number of years… he would rather die than to admit de feat, he even has an idea that there is divine power on his side,” she told the audience.

Grabar-Kitarovic met Putin several times in her career, including a lengthy summit in 2017 and a short courtesy visit during the World c up.

“I was traveling with other fans. I was buying my own tickets and flying on charter flights,” she said.

In her lecture, she point ed out how Western leaders had reacted to Putin’s 2014 annexation of c rimea, call ing the response “meek.”

Grabar-Kitarovic reiter ated that western lead ers did not have enough of a desire to hold Putin and

r ussia accountable for such violations.

“When r ussia annexed c rimea, the communique that came out of n AT o was really watered down by a number of players. Those were driven primarily by economic interest of hav ing cheap gas, rather than strategic interests of looking into the future and thinking about geopolitics,” she said, singling out German depen dence on r ussian gas as op posed to other e uropean nations that diversified their sources of fuel.

As someone who has held up the importance of interna tional bodies and alliances, Grabar-Kitarovic says she is concerned by the rising tide of populist e uroscepticism across e urope.

“The closing-in of societ ies, the growing mistrust towards institutions, es pecially towards b russels. Trust is the basis of hu man relationships and trust is the basis of democracy. b ecause in a democratic sys tem, you put trust into the people whom you elect to be able, competent and ethical enough to lead you to where you want to go,” she said.

“I think there was a lack of touch with reality, lack of ac tual human touch with peo ple and lack of emotion in politics. And people are ask ing for more authentic lead ership. s o there is a tendency everywhere to vote the socalled third options, which in some cases are national ist or populists because they appear.”

Grabar-Kitarovic ended the interview with a diag nosis of larger sociological issues plaguing and underly ing the geopolitical tensions she had covered throughout her visit on campus.

“ n ot just the future of our institutions, but the future of relationships, the bond defined in democratic soci eties and of course, around the world you see more and more of these ideological rifts and divides; the world has become a highly contest ed place. And you see fight ing not just for resources, supply chains, but you also see battles for values, a value system, ideologies, etc. And we’re getting increasingly divided. The world economy has been decoupling and it looks like pulling apart and tearing at the seams and between societies, govern ments and regions,” she said.

Contact Isa Sheikh at isheikh@nd.edu

climatologist calls for carbon fees, nuclear

By ISA SHEIKH Assosciate news editor

James h ansen, a renowned climate change scholar and environmental activist, spoke Thursday evening at Indiana University s outh b end (IU sb ) for the annu al b ender Lecture, urging young people to take action to combat climate change.

h enry s cott, chair of IU sb ’s physics and astrono my department, introduced h ansen, the 2022 b ender scholar-in-residence. s cott recounted h ansen’s education and career, particularly his decadeslong work leading the n A s A Goddard Institute for s pace s tudies.

“I suspect everyone here knows that d r. h ansen is of ten referred to as the ‘father of global warming.’ I hope it is also known that, that is deserved for raising aware ness and that no one is here expecting an apology,” s cott joked.

s cott discussed h ansen’s pivot from studying venus and helping to send a satel lite to photograph the veiled planet.

“As you may know, venus is incredible and frank ly, terrifyingly hot. As d r. h ansen worked to improve our understanding of why this is so, he shifted his at tention to e arth and how its atmosphere may change over time due to human in fluences,” s cott said. “ o ver 40 years ago, he was the lead author on a paper which concluded that rising car bon dioxide levels in e arth’s

atmosphere would lead to greater warming that had been previously predicted.

And that was just one of his nearly 170 published jour nal articles over his career.”

h ansen began his lecture by speaking to his larger aims.

“I’m going to skip what I wrote for notes here be cause, you know, we need to get young people to under stand that they can actually influence the future, and they need to do that. And it’s possible,” h ansen said.

In a wide-ranging lecture discussing the legacies of various presidents as well as his upbringing and ca reer, h ansen largely warned about the challenges of reli ance on fossil fuels.

h e also discussed his pro cess and philosophy as a scientist.

“To be successful, you must use all the data. b e very skeptical of your inter pretation and honestly reas sess from scratch when new data becomes available.

And your preference, your ideology, your politics must not affect your assessment. This last point is difficult. For most people, even sci entists,” h ansen said.

Going through the risks of ocean warming, rising sea levels, the threat of spe cies being exterminated and belts of the planet becoming unlivable, h ansen said he was cognizant of the value of fossil fuels.

“ n ow to be positive, plen tiful energy has enormous benefits. Fossil fuels are actually marvelous, and

they have been a boon to humanity. The Industrial r evolution raised living standards in much of the world. The energy source initially was coal and in the 20th century, oil and gas joined the party, and their condensed energy is com parable to that of coal and it’s more convenient. o ne gallon of gasoline contains the work equivalent of 400 hours labor by a healthy adult. s o fossil fuels raise living standards in half of the world and the other half wants to follow that path, and they have the right to raise their living stan dards,” h ansen said. “ s o fossil fuels are wonderful, but they also cause a prob lem. s o what should we do?”

h ansen pointed to the lack of progress on mitigat ing greenhouse gas emis sions, arguing that the quantitative reduction by countries like the U. s . was simply a function of moving production abroad to coun tries like India and c hina. Those emissions now ap pear on other nation’s tal lies, he says.

“The co 2 emissions are not counted in the United s tates total; they’re count ed as part of c hina and other countries. In the fu ture, emerging economies will be the source of most emissions. s o we should work with c hina, India, Indonesia, v ietnam and the other economies that are growing rapidly. In fact, in the West, we have an obliga tion to do that because we use more than our fair share

of the carbon budget,” he said.

Ultimately, h ansen’s plan comes down to two large policy reforms. First, he says it is imperative to in clude the cost to society in the price of fossil fuel, a plan he calls the carbon fee and dividend, previously billed as the carbon tax and dividend.

“The practical way to do that is to collect a fee from the fossil fuel companies at the sources, which are a small number: the domes tic mines and the ports of entry. And to make it work, that money should be dis tributed to the public so that they would have the means to deal with the in creased prices of fossil fu els,” he said.

“ s o if the United s tates and c hina would agree on a rising carbon fee the cli mate problem you would be well on its way to solution,” h ansen added.

s econd, h ansen outlined the need for nuclear power arguing for its promotion and development, as well as for related technologies.

“ h istory shows that once a good design for a nuclear power plant is approved, nuclear power provides the fastest way to decarbon ize because of the massive amount of energy that’s provided by a single power plant. d e facto cooperation between c hina and the U. s drove down the cost of solar panels, wind and wind en ergy. We can do the same for nuclear power,” he said.

h ansen extensively

addressed fears about nu clear power, referring to statistics about the mini mal harm of nuclear energy, particularly in comparison to current methods of en ergy production.

“Ten thousand people a day are dying from indoor air pollution. m any of the deaths are similar to those from smoking, very un pleasant to the victim and his family. Ten thousand people in one day is more than killed by nuclear pow er in 50 years,” he said.

h ansen also discussed his frustrations with the current political system, especially with campaign contributions — which he dubbed “legalized bribery.” h e promoted the idea of a third party emerging, and of ranked choice voting. h e also spoke to the political power of college students and other youth.

“They have tremendous political power, even high schoolers,” h ansen said.

h ansen closed his re marks with a plea for action from youth, before taking questions from audience members.

“It’s going to be depen dent on young people to understand the situation. You cannot simply say, ‘ c limate change is impor tant to us, please fix it,’ be cause then they come up with the fix that the special interests are willing to do. And that’s not going to do,” he said.

Contact Isa Sheikh at isheikh@nd.edu

not contact her family for days after the hurricane made landfall.

“I called my parents 100 times from the day it hit to like s aturday and couldn’t get a hold of them. s o I was seeing on the news bodies [that] are found and I’m freaking out because I’m like, ‘I haven’t been able to talk to my family,’” she said.

All of Thompson’s family members stayed safe during the storm, and her mother and father’s houses avoided serious damage. h er moth er’s house had about eight feet of standing water in the garage but avoided signifi cant flooding inside the rest of the house, she said. h er parents parked their cars by the interstate farther in land to avoid the brunt of the storm surge.

Alexandra c hlumsky, a senior pole vaulter on the track and field team from

Fort m yers, said she did not anticipate the storm to be that devastating. h aving grown up in Florida with the perennial threat of hur ricanes, c hlumsky thought her family was prepared. h owever, as Ian approached last Wednesday, the mag nitude of the storm quickly began to set in. s he said she left her class when her mother informed her of the expected storm surge — be fore they lost cell phone service.

“It was emotional for me because this was so much worse than anyone antici pated,” c hlumsky said. “In the moments leading up to it, my dad, he told me that this is as scared as he’s probably ever been in his life.”

The c hlumskys suffered a better fate than most of the houses in their neigh borhood. The main portion of their home did not seri ously flood, but the garage flooded, leaving the fam ily’s cars unusable. They also owned a condo on Fort m yers b each that was entirely

destroyed.

“I don’t even think it exists anymore,” she said.

c hlumsky said the hurri cane devastated the homes of her friends on s anibel Island and Fort m yers b each.

“Their houses are com pletely destroyed,” she said.

The causeway connecting the island to the mainland collapsed as a result of the storm.

Gable’s family was stay ing in a rental house across the street because his pri mary home is under renova tion. The hurricane ruined the rental home, leaving about five feet of standing water inside, he said. The storm left a few inches of standing water throughout his primary residence but de stroyed the floors that were under renovation. As a re sult, his family is expecting to stay in a condo for about the next nine months, Gable said.

e ven with his mother from Louisiana and his father from naples, Gable said his family had never lived through such

a devastating storm.

“They’ve been through plenty of storms. They’ve lived [in naples] for like 20 years. They did say this was the worst one they’ve seen,” he said.

In the midst of the tragedy left in the wake of hurricane Ian, Thompson said the dev astation has resulted in unity and empathy both at home and on campus.

“

m y professors were reach ing out to me, my old dorm rectors were reaching out to me, so I think this sense of a family away from family was huge to me there,” she said.

“Who do I fall back on when I can’t get a hold of who I need most? And so I think that was huge for me.”

While her parents’ homes were not rendered uninhab itable by the storm, many in their neighborhoods were, Thompson said. n ow, her family has turned its atten tion to trying to help those who lost everything.

“The biggest thing we’ve been saying as a family is just how lucky we were to

get out of this alive and with very little damage com pared to a lot of people,” she said.

Thompson has been work ing with the University to organize a supply drive for schools and families in southwest Florida. The drive would send down items ranging from light ly used athletic gear to clothes and non-perishable foods.

As southwest Florida be gins its recovery effort, c hlumsky said the national attention cast on her home town strikes her every day.

“There’s so many people in Fort m yers, it’s a big city. The entire Fort m yers-naples area encompasses close to a million people,” she said. “ b ut when you start see ing your town all over na tional news, and you see these TikToks that are go ing viral, like it just makes it so much more real, in a way.”

Lunchtime

Peter Breens news Writer

I remember my first day of first grade. I was at a new school and my relationships with the other eight kids in my homeroom were all about the same. All eight had already gone to either m ontessori or kindergarten together. I was the new kid.

After a light morning of introductory material, my homeroom teacher decided to take the nine of us down early to lunch. In the transition from classroom to cafeteria, I somehow ended up in the back of the lunch line.

At the moment, this was no issue; bus rides on the way to my parochial preschool/kindergarten had taught me that it was actu ally cool sometimes to be in the back. And it was not as if I wasn’t talking to the eighth kid in line. I’m pretty sure I put up a decent effort of some laid-back conversation.

As each one of us filtered through the lunch line, we were di rected to the two circular tables that would serve as the eating grounds of my homeroom for the forthcoming year. The table clos est to the exit of the lunch line happened to have eight chairs. First graders also happen to follow the behavior of the kid in front of them

Therefore, when I made it to my homeroom’s section in the caf eteria, I was forced to sit alone, as the eight kids in front of me had gone and filled up the first table.

n ow my homeroom teacher quickly realized what had hap pened and prompted the rest of my class to recognize the injustice they had passively accomplished. s oon enough I had half the class around me at my table and life went on from there.

d id it feel good being made an exclusion case study? n o. Was it personal? Probably not. Am I still harboring resentment? Possibly.

The memories of my school lunchtimes since then could fill volumes.

I remember passing the twelfth second of 12:12 p.m. on d ec. 12, 2012 in that same cafeteria I first enjoyed in the first grade.

I remember how my happiness each day in middle school came to depend on who I was seen eating lunch with in the cafeteria we shared with the high school I never wound up attending.

I remember the tall tales I told at the lunch tables my own fresh man year of high school to attract the attention I desperately need.

I remember taking my to-go lunch out of the cafeteria during the second semester of my senior year of high school to eat behind the library book stacks while reading news articles about some disease that was tearing through c hina.

I remember reading the summer before college about the Zahm table in the north dining hall that would never materialize again due to c ovid.

I remember sneaking in s ubway turkey sandwiches back from LaFun in my backpack to eat at my desk day after day my first-year.

n ow a proud b aumer b uccaneer, I call s outh d ining h all my home. I have even found a little bit of love writing for The o bserver’s news, sports, scene and social media departments in the basement of sdh s till, m onday through Friday this semester, after I get out of class at either 1:40 p.m. or 1:45 p.m., I head to sdh to eat alone. I’m usually wearing boots and trying to get better about not wearing my headphones. If you want to eat with me, let me know.

You can contact Peter at pbreen2@nd.edu.

The views expressed in this Inside Column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Why I ‘worship’ Taylor Swift

Isabella Kause simple beauty

When Taylor s wift first rose to fame, her flocks of fans, passionately known as s wifties, formed shortly thereafter. As a proud member of this group, I can attest to the personal benefit it brought to my own life.

After that first Taylor s wift concert I experienced years ago, my mom bought me a bracelet to commemo rate the special evening. s he never realized this at the time, but that two-dollar purchase would turn out to mean everything to me. o nce I had that bracelet on, I subconsciously decided never to take it off. I wore it every day following that unforget table night, even to middle school dances.

o n one particular occasion — after having just completed my second day of an arduous high school math class — I went to lunch to decompress and ended up randomly sitting next to a girl with blonde hair and bright blue eyes, who also happened to be sport ing the same rubber Taylor s wift bracelet as me. n ervous to strike up a conversation but eager to make a friend, I turned to her and said, “Are you a Taylor s wift fan?” as if the bracelet wrapped around her wrist did not already answer my question. When she confirmed that my as sumptions were true, I couldn’t have been happier, and I know that she felt the same way, too. From that point forward, a friendship like no other blossomed, all thanks to Taylor s wift. b ecause Taylor brought me my high school best friend, one person I have always “worshiped” is her — in a non-literal way, of course.

To a majority of people, hearing that I “worship” Taylor s wift might come across as extremely ironic, es pecially since she and I have never even met and she quite literally has no idea I exist. h owever, to me, she is everything. Taylor is the epitome of kindness and generosity. s he gives to those around her without expecting anything in return, whether it comes in the form of paying for someone’s rent or visiting terminally sick chil dren in the hospital. The environ ment that she creates for her fans is very welcoming. o ne thing that

people who have met her will surely tell you is that when you have a con versation with her, she makes you feel like you are her best friend and the only person in the room who truly matters.

While she is definitely someone I look up to on a personal level, I also respect the way she carries herself in the business world. m ost recently, she had her album recordings stolen out from underneath her. The songs she had spent hours handwriting on her bedroom floor were now gone. The songs that teenage girls like myself related to now belonged to someone else, a person who was hungry to make money off her fame and suc cess. Taylor knew that not only was this a devastation to herself, but also to her millions of loyal fans. s o she took matters into her own hands, announcing that she would be rerecording each one of the albums that no longer belonged to her. I have a deep admiration not only for how she responded from an artistic stand point, but also for the fact that she did not let power-hungry record label walk all over her and steal her pride and joy. s he set an example of right and wrongfor her fans — an example that will surely never be forgotten.

e ven though Taylor does not know who I am, I still consider her one of the greatest people to “worship.” I as pire to be like her, someone who does not back down from a fight while also making sure to live their life acting in kindness and making the world a bet ter place. I worship the humble way in which she carries herself when she interacts with her fans and how she is an example for those within the music industry. n o matter where my life takes me, I hope to act in the way Taylor does with such grace and com passion. And at the end of the day, I know I will never be too tired to turn on a Taylor s wift song.

Isabelle Kause is a sophomore at Notre Dame studying sociology and minoring in journalism. When she’s not busy, you can find her listening to country music or Taylor Swift or trying out new makeup/ skincare products. She can be reached at ikause@nd.edu.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

The forgotten women

Jack Griffiths neurodivergence

In my columns, I’ve primarily focused on my own experi ences to provide insight into neurodivergence. however, while I’ve enjoyed sharing my thoughts and personal history, there are obvious limitations to this approach. neurodivergence can manifest itself differently from person to person, and one’s other identity factors can also contribute to unique experiences. hence, this week I’d like to focus on how neurodivergent women encounter their own specific challenges, challenges formed by the toxic intersection of misogyny and anti-neurodivergent discrimination.

While neurodivergent women have always existed, there are typically let down by exclusionary diagnostic criteria. Autism diagnosis methods were “developed using the ex periences and symptoms of cisgender white males” (Astra). Adhd diagnostic methods are similar; the “early studies were based on the behaviors of white hyperactive boys” (Additude editors). As a result, many of these women have never had their neurodivergence officially recognized, leaving them in an often-lonely position of uncertainty, even when they know that something sets them apart from broader neu rotypical society. This underdiagnosis has had ripple effects, influencing popular conceptions of neurodivergent condi tions, as most people will imagine a boy when considering the prototypical example of a child with something like autism or Adhd more challenges arise when people dismiss potential signs of neurodivergence due to gender stereotypes. If a girl on the spectrum cries due to overstimulation, we say that she’s just being excessively dramatic and emotional. If a girl with Adhd struggles to complete certain tasks in the classroom, we simply shake our heads and call her scattered, and then we tell her that she’s simply not destined for academic success. Instead of considering the possibility of neurodivergence, we crush girls and women under the weight of gendered tropes, producing feelings of stress and insecurity.

because our institutions fail to recognize and dignify neurodivergence, young women are often implicitly forced to “mask,” or hide, their quirks and differences; even if some thing produces anxiety, they’re left with no option other than to internalize their worries and concerns. The editors of Additude magazine note that “society’s long list of ex pectations for women — managing the self, the family and the home — requires consistent coordination of executive functions.” Although “women with Adhd are not well-wired for these demands,” they must conceal their personal con cerns in their attempts to satisfy such standards (Additude editors). Zhara Astra, an autistic woman who is currently a professor at Arizona state University, notes similar struggles, sharing that her peers never “suspected [she] was on the spectrum” partly because she “had become accus tomed to masking [her] quirks.”challenges can persist in adult life, par ticularly in relationships. In a keynote address to the United nations, Autistic self Advocacy network’s Julia bascom discusses how autistic women, and neurodivergent women in general, experience higher levels of domestic and genderbased violence relative to neurotypical women. she explains that due to “lifetimes of behavioral conditioning and compli ance training,” neurodivergent women are often “groom[ed] and victimize[d]” (bascom). even worse, when neurodiver gent women try to speak about the violence they’ve endured, their different communicative tendencies and preferences might result in service providers failing to adequately assist them (bascom).

Indeed, misogyny and ableism can coalesce to create enor mous obstacles for neurodivergent women seeking recogni tion and respect. To remove them will require the efforts of many different societal actors, from academic communities to individual people.

First, the field of psychology must explore and address the under-diagnosis of neurodivergent women. In particular, di agnostic criteria that is currently based on data of white male boys should be updated to acknowledge the different ways conditions like autism and Adhd can manifest in women.

diagnosis can be empowering because it serves as “an an swer and an explanation…a way out of cycles of self-blame and guilt…a passport to an entire community…[and] a con nection to the understanding, supports and services [women] need” (bascom). This empowering tool can help reverse the negative impacts of the insecurity experienced by women uncertain about their diverging minds.

second, families of possibly-neurodivergent girls should cultivate an environment of acceptance. Instead of viewing these girls’ anxieties as inconvenient drama, they should rec ognize them as genuine emotions that demand empathetic responses.

Finally, and most importantly, everyone — including neu rotypical people and neurodivergent men — must actively surround themselves with the perspectives of neurodivergent women. In the process of writing this article, I consulted vari ous articles written by women who have provided me with insights that have broadened my understanding of autism beyond the limitations of my own personal experience. I’m eager to delve further into these female experiences. I hope that in response to my article, you will join me, taking a few moments to look for neurodivergent female perspectives, whether they exist in social media posts, articles or creative works of art. doing so can prevent us from, to use Julia bascom’s words, “tell[ing] narrow stories about autism,” such as ones that suggest that “being autistic and being an adult or a woman are incompatible.”

Jack Griffiths is a senior at Notre Dame majoring in English with a supplementary major in global affairs. His areas of interest include neurodivergence, migration and the intersections between faith and public policy. When he’s not writing, you can find him singing with the Liturgical Choir, walking around the lakes or play ing Super Smash Bros with folks in his dorm. He can be reached at jgriff22@nd.edu.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

A guide to sin and forgiveness in Judaism for non-Jews

since last week, I and other Jews across the world have begun celebrating the high holy days, a period of serious moral reflection for ourselves and our community. We as sess our behavior in the last year in hopes of doing better this year by contemplating topics like forgiveness, redemption, freedom, joy, more through prayer and celebration. The most important period during this time is the high holidays, rosh hashanah and Yom Kippur. The former, celebrated last week, marked the Jewish new Year and the 10 days of repentance when we seek forgiveness from others for our wrongdoings in the last year. only those who forego sin are inscribed in the book of Life, the metaphorical concept meant to encourage Jews to become better people in the new year.

The repentance period culminates on Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement, which concluded yesterday evening. Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, where it is believed that heaven and earth are closest and we are on the level of angels temporarily. Like the angels, we don’t eat or drink on Yom Kippur because our sustenance comes from G-d. The day is spent on intense engagement with repen tance, human frailty and humility before G-d. We participate in communal repentance for sins as the book of Life is sealed.

my earliest memories of Yom Kippur included feelings of starvation and weariness from day-long worship services, not necessarily the holiday’s theological significance. Ironically, it wasn’t until I began catholic school that I seriously reflected on my own religion’s conception of sin and forgiveness. I was never truly confronted with another approach to these issues until my friends had to explain why I shouldn’t go with them to confession. After 11 years in catholic education, I wouldn’t claim to know everything about the University’s religious

tradition. but I do recognize the rich theological discussions and spiritual development I’ve had from learning about catholicism and christianity. seeking to understand other faiths has greatly benefited my own faith life, strengthening my spirituality while developing an appreciation for other religions. Along this sentiment, I’d like to share some reflec tions on my tradition’s approach to sin, forgiveness and repen tance in the hope that it’ll enrich readers’ spiritual journey, like engaging with christianity did for me. At the very least, maybe my explanation will help you review the hebrew bible for Foundations of Theology.

Likely the most startling difference between Judaism and christianity on this subject is that Jews don’t believe in original sin. Judaism does attest that Adam and eve’s sin had cosmic ramifications and created a chasm between human ity and G-d, like christianity. however, our traditions differ on the legacy of that sin. Jews believe that humans are born into the world free of sin, not in a state of sin like saint Augustine wrote. There are some rabbis throughout history who believe that death was punishment for the first humans’ sin, but not that we’re born with sin. rather than be inherently sinful, humans have the same capacity to commit sins or mitzvot, the 613 commandments in Judaism. In Genesis 8:21, we find that the “devisings of man’s mind are evil from his youth.” From here, the rabbis teach of the yetzer, or inclinations. For Jews, life is a constant attempt to resist the evil inclinations and act on the good inclinations. but the evil inclination isn’t actually evil or some demonic influence; instead, it’s the allure of satisfying one’s pleasures, which if left unregulated, can lead one away from G-d. Judaism also teaches that the inclinations are born sepa rately. A child begins life with the evil inclination and doesn’t develop the good inclination until age 13. At this point, sinful acts are countered with moral rebuke that teaches the child the difference between right and wrong. From then on, there’s

a battle between the inclinations for supremacy.

Judaism’s understanding of sin coincides with the image of a merciful, loving G-d. This concept is best captured by the central biblical verse of the Yom Kippur liturgy: “And the Lord said, ‘I pardon, as you have asked’” (numbers 14:20). G-d’s consistent forgiveness of the Israelites despite repetitive sin demonstrates that G-d’s essence is enveloped by mercy alongside his absolute being and absolute freedom. This act of forgiveness is repeated throughout Yom Kippur through various prayers and exercises asking for G-d’s forgiveness. one component is Kol nidrei, asking G-d to absolve us of any vows made in his name. The reasoning is simple: how can an imperfect human ever expect to uphold a bargain with G-d?

The viddui is another important prayer, as Jews gather in a community to seek forgiveness for communal sins. Although one may not have committed the sins listed, the members of the community are intertwined on that day, making everyone responsible for each other. Along with other prayers, Jews exit Yom Kippur forgiven of our sins and resolve to be less sinful in the coming year, drawing closer to G-d’s will.

engaging other religions is an opportunity to enrich one’s understanding of other faiths while strengthening one’s own spirituality. As an elite university that still emphasizes faith, we have a rare chance to have these conversations in mean ingful, informed ways for the benefit of all.

Blake Ziegler is a senior at Notre Dame studying polit ical science, philosophy and constitutional studies. He enjoys writing about Judaism, the good life, pressing po litical issues and more. Outside of The Observer, Blake serves as president of the Jewish Club and a teaching assistant for God and the Good Life. He can be reached at @NewsWithZig on Twitter or bziegler@nd.edu.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

Blake Ziegler news with Zig

Observer Editorial: It’s been 50 years. When will our campuses be safe?

confidential and non-confidential resources, what to expect after filing a report and strategies for helping friends.

Editor’s note: This story includes mentions of sexual assault.

Fifty years ago in the fall of 1972, the University of n otre d ame enrolled its first class of women. o ne hundred twenty-five freshmen and 240 trans fers joined the once all-male student body and, in the half-century since, n otre d ame women have boldly contributed to the accomplishments and community of our tri-campus.

Fifty years, and our tri-campus still isn’t safe. Last week, at least five students between n otre d ame and s aint m ary’s came forward on social media to share stories of alleged sexual assault. Three said they reported their experiences to n otre d ame’s Title IX office. n one believe they got justice.

As leaders of an organization comprised of stu dents from n otre d ame, s aint m ary’s and h oly c ross c ollege, The o bserver e ditorial b oard is troubled by these stories. It is our responsibility to serve this community — that means fostering a safe and compassionate workplace where sexual misconduct and violence are not tolerated. o ur Letters to the e ditor seek to give a voice to that community. We invite you to share your story if you are comfortable doing so. The o bserver can not publish every submission, but at the very least, we will listen.

In the last several months, n otre d ame has hosted several events to commemorate both the 50th anniversary of Title IX and coeducation. b earing these milestones in mind, tri-campus administrators have not met our expectations for communicating about sexual violence — an issue that impacts all three student bodies. While we understand administrators can’t legally comment on ongoing disciplinary cases, students, especial ly survivors and allies, demand acknowledgment from campus leaders.

For example, in the wake of derogatory Yik Yak posts about s aint m ary’s students last fall, s aint m ary’s president Katie c onboy released a statement stating she and her administration “[stood] in solidarity” with students. In addition, she advocated for more opportunities to build tri-campus relations. We commend c onboy for speaking up about how demeaning language hurt the c ollege’s students. h owever, we encourage her, University President Fr. John Jenkins and h oly c ross President m arco c lark to address their respective students about how they will prevent incidents of sexual violence in our community.

The problem is not a lack of resources; n otre d ame, for example, has many s peakUp is the University’s primary online reporting tool, not only for incidents of sexual misconduct but all forms of bias, discrimination and harassment. It is comprehensive and user-friendly, provid ing students with examples of harassment,

b ut in the 2022 Inclusive c ampus s tudent s urvey, the University revealed that only 15% of student respondents knew how to use s peakUp to report harassment, and only 24% of respondents even knew the purpose of the resource. Further, the survey observed that of the nearly 4,400 in cidents of adverse treatment reported by more than 2,000 respondents, only about 300  — a little less than 7% — were officially reported. And then, only 7% of that 7% of reports were filed through s peakUp, less than 0.5% of incidents experienced.

That is the problem. What good can these re sources provide if students don’t know that they exist, much less how to use them? And in the face of the silence of leadership, do students even trust our institutions to listen when they “speak up?”

The survey also pointed to the intersectional ity of this issue. According to the 2022 results, 31% of cisgender women said they at least some what agreed with the statement, “I have seriously considered leaving n otre d ame.” Thirty-three percent of students of color concurred. These statistics correspond to the students who came forward last week: o f the five, four are cisgender women, three are b lack and one is non-binary. These are the students our campus is failing — these are the students who are hurt.

In addition, three of the five students attend s aint m ary’s. b ased on the relative size of the schools in the tri-campus community, we are alarmed by the disproportionate number of s aint m ary’s students who have been impacted by sex ual violence.

In recent years, the c ollege has improved the accessibility of student resources with the revival of the b elles Against v iolence o ffice ( b Avo ) and the student-led group, b elles s upporting b elles. The c ollege also hosted its inaugural sexual vio lence symposium last spring, hosting a variety of speakers and events in a week that culminated with Take b ack the n ight.

While these initiatives are promising steps in the right direction, s aint m ary’s students deserve a more complete set of resources to address the ongoing issue of sexual assault. c urrently, s aint m ary’s students can choose to report to several confidential sources, like the b Avo coordina tor, or submit a non-confidential incident report to the Title IX office. h owever, in comparison to n otre d ame’s s peakUp, the resources for re porting and healing after an incident of sexual violence seem less comprehensive. The s aint m ary’s Title IX website is merely a page in the s tudent Life section of the c ollege’s website — rather than a larger, individual site like s peakUp or n otre d ame Title IX. o n the page, there is no link to n otre d ame or h oly c ross resources, de spite students being required to submit their re ports to the school where the incident took place.

Although the s aint m ary’s student population

is significantly smaller than n otre d ame’s, it is clear that the c ollege needs to continue expand ing avenues for survivors of sexual violence.

b ut, of course, our community includes three schools — h oly c ross students face similar prob lems to s aint m ary’s students and in addition to their own unique obstacles. s imilar to s aint m ary’s, h oly c ross’ online resources are con fined to a subsection of its c ampus Life page, and other than a helpful diagram of reporting options linked at the bottom, they do not of fer the depth of knowledge of s peakUp or n otre d ame’s Title IX website. h oly c ross, in fact, links directly to n otre d ame’s Title IX site, but the h oly c ross resources n otre d ame offers can be broken and contain inaccuracies. o ne link to a P d F of h oly c ross resources returns a 404 error, while the options listed for reporting offenders from h oly c ross link to the Title IX office at the wrong h oly c ross— the c ollege of the h oly c ross in Worcester, m assachusetts. This lack of clarity dis courages h oly c ross students from reporting mis conduct, particularly Gateways, as these students already struggle with navigating resources and reconciling their identities between two schools. And as first-years, Gateways are also at greater risk in their first semester of college.

c lear communication is especially important when the very nature of Title IX is confusing and complex. n otre d ame’s Title IX website ex plains that Title IX is a law enacted as part of the e ducation Amendments of 1972 that bars dis crimination on the basis of sex, including sexual violence. h owever, both the scope and minutiae of the law are unclear to many students, as Title IX is also commonly used in reference to ath letics. m isunderstandings about what Title IX is — and uncertainty about the Title IX process — discourage students from coming forward and allow administrators to hide behind bureaucratic jargon. To increase awareness of resources, tricampus leaders must also increase awareness of Title IX.

b ut mere promotional efforts will not be enough to address what has become a deep wound in our tri-campus culture. The fact that at least five stu dents have taken to their personal social media to share their stories demonstrates a fundamental lack of trust in our institutions to handle cases on their own. The act of sharing these stories itself has only worsened that trust, as students once unfamiliar with Title IX reporting are now most aware of the students who feel betrayed by it. Tricampus leaders must not only promote their re sources appropriately but earn back student trust. o f course, it is also on us, the students, to create a safe campus community. At n otre d ame and s aint m ary’s, for example, you can become gree n d ot certified through a popular bystander inter vention course. h owever, all trainings this fall at n otre d ame have already reached maximum capacity. s tudents, it seems, are eager to combat sexual violence in the ways that we can.

What about the adults?

By NICOLE BILYAK scene Writer

With the new movie “ d ungeons & d ragons: h onor Among Thieves” coming out in m arch 2023, those who love playing the tabletop role-play ing game were thrilled to see new material that would soon be released. o ne thing that players of “ d ungeons & d ragons” were waiting on was a new edition of the game, since the fifth edition was published in 2014.

I recently got my hands on the newest edi tion’s playtest material for “ d ungeons & d ragons” (“ d & d ”), since I myself am a “ d ungeons & d ragons” player. The new edition is called “o ne d & d ” and, according to d ungeons & d ragons b eyond (dndbe yond.com), is said to be an expansion of the game as a whole, which I find very problematic. Players want to be able to play new editions of the game and to see changes to most of the fifth edition’s as pects. s o when Wizards of the c oast (W o T c ) wants to release a brand new expansion of the game, it is very disheartening to hear that they still want to use the fifth edition, just making things more ac cessible with hardly any changes.

The first part of the playtest material for “ o ne d & d ” was released back in August of this year,

but I will be primarily discussing the second part, which is all about the e xpert classes and some of the mechanics of “ d & d ” that are changing.

If you have never played “ d & d,” then it is im portant to know that there are officially twelve character classes that you can play while in a campaign — a continuing storyline or set of ad ventures that typically involve the same charac ters. With “ o ne d & d,” the b ard, r anger and r ogue classes were spotlighted and called the e xpert classes, because they give e xpertise to the skills that are presented on a “ d & d ” character sheet. The creators of “ o ne d & d ” also rewrote all three of these classes and will give insight on what is about to come with the remaining nine classes as new parts are released.

The other main change in the new part of the playtest material is with the spells. In the past, all the spells were separated by specific classes. For example, the b ard class had its own spells, the r anger class had its own, etc. h owever, “ o ne d & d ” has decided to change from spells sepa rated by class to splitting the spells up into three different categories: Arcane, d ivine and Primal.

According to the document, each spell lists the level of the spell, the name and the s chool of m agic. Also, the document went into detail about

different feats and also lists the rules glossary at the very end, which amounts to 37 pages of new material.

I have a lot of problems with these changes. First of all, rewriting the classes is one thing, but now sorting all twelve classes into four dif ferent groups ( e xpert, m age, Priest and Warrior) is going to make things more complicated. It was much easier for everyone to just pick whatever class they see fit and then be limited to the class’ rules. The feats and rules glossary were not so much a problem for me, but the one thing I do not like at all are the spells. While it may look easy to understand, this poses a problem to those classes that are spellcasters. In the document, those that are spellcasters are now going to be limited to ei ther Arcane, d ivine or Primal spells in the future, which is very restricting. In the past, anyone who takes a spellcaster class can take any spell that is within their class.

s o essentially, this has undone what fifth edi tion “ d & d ” had written in the past. b ut I am hop ing to see most of these in action when “ d ungeons & d ragons: h onor Among Thieves” comes out in m arch of next year.

Contact Nicole Bilyak at nbilyak01@saintmarys.edu

By CLAIRE McKENNA scene Writer

d odie is back. r eleasing music for the first time since her debut album last year, the singer-song writer is giving us a look at how the last couple of years have been for her. ( s poiler: a bit all over the place.) Filled with her signature whispering voice, layered vocals and relatable lyrics, we are once again able to find ourselves within d odie’s songs.

“ h ot m ess” the first song off the e P with the same name is about trying to get out of an on-off relationship. The song starts simple as d odie sets the scene. It’s just the listener and d odie’s croon ing voice over plucked strings as she describes herself waking up, breaking up and dancing. b ut as her desperation grows to leave the relationship behind, the song grows with her. Layered hums, strings, drumbeats and chimes all get added as the song moves forward. The climax of the song comes as she repeats the line, “Let me go.” In the end she has to rely on the other person to do what she cannot — end the relationship for good.

“Get Weird” is a groovy song about the

insecurities d odie faces when she tries to date women. Featuring a prominent bass line and beats, she tries to figure out what the right way to behave is on a date. s he sings over the bridge, “ n o one told me / ‘ c ourse I stumbled / Where’s the reference?” and of course there might be some mistakes in dates with other women when there are no notable examples to follow. s o, what do you say to explain away the awkwardness? Promise that next time it won’t get weird.

A prominent shift comes with the third song “Lonely b ones.” A throwback to the d odie of old, the song feels simple and light, but its lyrics be tray the sadness lurking underneath. b elow the wavy back-and-forth beat, d odie croons her lyri cal motif, “ o h, lonely bones, have you forgotten?” again and again. While the listener does not know what the lonely bones might have forgotten, the vagueness makes the song more personal because you can fill in the question however you like. The song is good company for a lonely listener.

The last song “ n o b ig d eal (I Love You)” com pletes this sadder second half to the e P. d odie describes a relationship where love might have

existed between two people but was never stated aloud. d odie is backed by simple piano chords as she describes shared showers and a s unday in each other’s company, but the bridge is the emo tional highlight of the song. The chords transform into piano runs as d odie confesses over the song what she cannot in real life – she loves the person. While each song feels a bit disparate in theme there definitely is a string that ties them togeth er — everyone in all of these situations could be called a hot mess. s o, if you are feeling a little bit like you are being tied together by a fraying rib bon, this might be the e P for you.

Claire McKenna

cmckenn4@nd.edu

MEG HAMMOND | The Observer

MAKAYLA HERNANDEZ | The Observer

Happy Birthday: Stay focused on what’s important, and you will find success this year. keep your spending down and your sights on running a cost-efficient life. Organization and preparation will set you apart from anyone trying to outmaneuver you. Being eager to learn and try new things will encourage you to reinvent something you enjoy doing into a service that has potential. your numbers are 9, 13, 23, 25, 32, 36, 47.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Simplify your life. Stop the madness and start to put things in order. Take the initiative to do something to your specifications, and others will see the merit in your words and actions. Be the one to make a difference.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Take nothing for granted. Oversee whatever you want to achieve. leave nothing to chance, and don’t take a risk with money, health or contracts. use your intelligence to revise what isn’t working for you anymore. hard work will bring about positive change.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Put yourself and your talents on the line and do what you do best. Opportunities are apparent if you show up and present what you have to offer. Share feelings with someone you love. romance is on the rise.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Work quietly behind closed doors. less outside interference will be crucial if you want to get things done. A last-minute change will impact a situation that is causing uncertainty. go over the fine print before you agree to participate. limit spending.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Adjust your life based on the information you receive. Socializing and attending reunions, conferences or seminars will motivate you to lower stress and enjoy life more. Concentrate on updating your look and nurturing meaningful relationships. romance is in the stars.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Take a moment to digest what’s happening, and you’ll find it easier to come up with a solution. Walk away from tense situations that are bound to end in anger. Don’t fuel the fire when a forward-thinking plan is what you need.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Don’t wait for someone to outdo you. Put everything you’ve got into what you are trying to achieve, and you will learn a valuable lesson regarding doing the work yourself. Don’t waste time on deadbeats. Choose your friends and partners based on equality.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Don’t let uncertainty hold you back. Ask questions and discover what’s possible. Don’t let negativity stand between you and what you want. Be willing to compromise if it will help you move closer to your destination of choice.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Don’t send mixed messages. Be frank, offer facts and don’t sugarcoat information if you want to get things done correctly. Put emotions on the back burner and let intelligence be the driving force behind your decisions.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Consider how to make your money stretch. A domestic change that lowers overhead will ease stress and encourage you to find other ways to save. Simplify your daily routine and fine-tune your diet and exercise to reflect better health.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): keep working toward your goal; enjoy the fruits of your labor when you reach your destination. The satisfaction you gain from your accomplishments will make a powerful statement to others regarding what you have to offer. romance looks promising.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Stay focused on what’s important and refuse to let others unnerve you. Temper flare-ups will put a wedge between you and someone you love. Don’t say anything you’ll regret. When in doubt, take a pass and keep your thoughts to yourself.

Jumble | DAvID hOyT AND JEff kNurEksudoku | ThE MEPhAM grOuP

WOrk

MLB Wild Card Weekend Preview

Tyler Reidy sports Writer

They’re all in line, we’re ready for the start. A dozen teams are set to compete for a World s eries title, bring ing the 2022 m L b season to a dramatic close. It all begins this weekend with eight Wild c ard teams playing as many as twelve games in three days. These best-of-three series will set the stage for the division series round, as the top two teams in each league await, enjoying a first-round bye. here’s the tale of the tape for the postseason’s first four matchups.

American League

No. 6 Tampa Bay Rays at No. 3 Cleveland Guardians

Without question, Tampa and c leveland are the most overlooked playoff teams in the league. The r ays have weathered an AL e ast with four 83-plus-win teams, se curing a fourth consecutive playoff berth. With outfielder r andy Arozarena being the only player with at least 60 rbI (89), Tampa’s offense employs a next-man-up mentality that is well-suited for the postsea son. o n the mound, the sixth seed is led by All-star starting pitcher shane mc c lanahan, who pitched to a 2.54 er A overall but an alarming 7.07 er A in his last three starts. h is performance and the ef fort of his fellow rotation piec es will be a difference-maker for the series.

c leveland is back in the postseason for the fifth time in seven years. The AL c entral champions boast a roster with minimal playoff expe rience, yet their 22-5 record to end the season indicates a readiness for the big moment.

Third baseman Jose r amírez (126 rbI) leads an offense that won’t hit many home runs but will attack with a barrage of walks, singles and doubles. The Guardians have a strik ingly high ceiling due to their pitching staff. shane bieber, Triston mcKenzie and c al Quantrill, who will start the Wild c ard series, each has an er A below 3.40. b ehind them, e mmanuel c lase has been the best closer in baseball, re cording a major league-best 42 saves. c leveland went 4-2 against the r ays in the regu lar season.

No.

were each eliminated from playoff contention on the sea son’s final day. In 2022, they meet as two of the hungri est postseason teams imag inable. The mariner offense has leveled up thanks to slug ging infielders Ty France and eugenio suárez (171 combined rbI), star rookie outfielder Julio rodriguez (28 hr , 25 sb ) and surprise power-hitting catcher c al r aleigh (27 hr ). The bats have struggled to uphold consistency, however, and the same can be said for the pitching staff. s eattle has owned the Jays this year, tak ing five out of seven regular season matchups, including a four-game sweep in mid-July.

Toronto has enjoyed plenti ful success down the stretch, amassing four different threegame win streaks since the dawning of s eptember. The blue Jays, yielding one of the league’s most fearsome line ups, lead m L b with a .264 team batting average. six of Toronto’s seven double-digit home run-hitters have a bat ting average of .260 or higher, helping the Jays to a multidimensional attack. The ques tion mark lies within their league-average pitching staff. number one starting pitcher Alek manoah is as reliable as anyone, but the arms sur rounding him must step up to take pressure off the hitters.

National League

No. 6 philadelphia phillies at No. 3 St. Louis Cardinals

For Phillies fans, the elev en-year wait between play off appearances is over. The Phils walked anything but a straight path in the second half, but they found their way to o ctober. o utfielder Kyle s chwarber has cranked 46 long balls to pace a powerful group of hitters, but pitch ing depth is a clear concern. The Phillies have carved out three surefire starters in Aaron nola, Zack Wheeler and r anger suárez, yet there isn’t much to back them up. The bullpen is especially suspect, as Philly has by far the worst relief er A among postseason qualifiers. Philadelphia went 4-3 against st. Louis this year, with five of the matchups be ing decided by two runs or less.

The storybook season has reached its final chapter in st. Louis. o ver the last six months, the c ardinals have celebrated the 18-year ca reer of starting pitcher Adam Wainwright, enjoyed the final

ZeLO: Re-ranking Irish schedule, week 6 picks

Thomas Zwiller sports Writer

This week we have seven previously unranked teams that have jumped into the top 25. s ome of them, like c incinnati or m ississippi state, are foreseeable. o thers, like s yracuse and Kansas, are less so.

The rise of those seven teams came courtesy of sev en teams who lost in shock ing upsets. o f the seven teams that dropped from the rankings, five (Washington, b aylor, o klahoma, m innesota, Florida state and Pittsburgh) were favored on average by nine points. They proceeded to lose by an aver age margin of 15 points.

s o, in other words, it was a chaotic weekend for college football. And ZeL o thrives on chaos.

s ort of. When ZeL o is compared to FPI, in weeks where there is predictabil ity, FPI and its heavy level of certainty is a massive advantage. ZeL o and FPI could pick games at the ex act same clip, and FPI could still easily blow ZeL o out of the water.

In weeks of parity, how ever, like this past weekend, ZeL o picked better than FPI and had more accurate picks overall (as measured by brier Points). ZeL o went 45-18, scoring 323.2 brier Points, while FPI scored 4418 and 296.4 (FPI did not pick the b oise state game this weekend).

As we have progressed through the season and have begun to get actual results, I have been decreasing ZeL o’s weighting of preseason pro jections and increasing the actual statistics from this season. Given ZeL o’s suc cess over the past two weeks, I think it is calibrated just right and it now has a firm understanding of what teams really are.

s o now that ZeL o has a better understanding of what teams actually look like (and to some extent what notre d ame actually looks like), I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit the schedule and talk about which games will be tricky for the Irish and how that has changed from preseason expectations. Instead of listing them out by difficulty,

I decided to make a tier list. Games Notre Dame is still expected to lose no. 5 c lemson (34.5%) no. 16 bYU (39.5%)

The expected news first: notre d ame’s play has se riously decreased their chances against some more formidable opponents. since the preseason, the model has loved bYU and had the c ougars as the best independent team. That was reflected in the Irish’s win percentage, which in the preseason was 44%, but is now down 4.5 points.

I think this is a weird game for ZeL o to predict. This is a neutral site game where bYU has a distance ad vantage, but notre d ame has fans that travel well. I am willing to admit that ZeL o may be overlooking the Irish here. o nly time will tell.

A game that does not get the same excuse is the c lemson game. d espite being the home team, the Irish were still underdogs (at 40.9%).

The only significant change was that notre d ame is now even more of an underdog.

I would expect c lemson to have an even better chance of beating the Irish by the time the game rolls around. c lemson will face bc , a team they should easily beat. They also face Florida state and s yracuse, teams they will likely be heavily favored to beat.

p reseason wins that are now projected losses no. 22 s yracuse (38.6%) no. 6 Usc (38.9%)

This is by far the most exciting category for me. s yracuse, a team I doubt even the most delusional s yracuse fan had starting 5-0, has done exceptionally well this season. In the pre season, notre d ame was a 57% favorite, despite being on the road. now, the Irish are the underdog when they head on the road. This pro jection could easily change. s yracuse plays no. 14 north c arolina state and no. 5 c lemson before they take on notre d ame, so a lot could change.

Usc is different from s yracuse. While ZeL o was reasonably skeptical of Usc early on, the Trojans were expected to be good and af ter their performance thus far through the season, ZeL o

has now swung the other way. o riginally, the Irish were a fairly comfortable road favorite at 66.2%, but with the two teams trending in opposite directions, the Irish dropped 27.3% to be an underdog.

Decreased win chances, but still projected wins bc (70%)

stanford (69.9%)

U n Lv (68.7%) navy (67.5%)

Luckily, the news is not all doom and gloom for the Irish. notre d ame still has four games that they are heavily favored in. These are games I would be shocked if they lost.

stanford and bc were pro jected to be two of the easi est games for notre d ame this season. While that has not changed much, notre d ame’s odds of winning against the c ardinals have dropped by nearly nine per cent. The Irish gave up less than 5% against bc notre d ame should still win these, but it might be closer than you think.

U n Lv also saw a 9% in crease in winning chances against m arcus Freeman’s squad, though I do think this could change somewhat as the two teams play out the rest of their season. I ex pect the same thing of navy. notre d ame should look bet ter as the game approaches, but the slow Irish start has dropped their win percent age by about 2%.

Week 6 p icks

No. 8 Tennessee @ No. 25 LS u

And ZeL o starts with a flaming hot take. After hav ing L s U as a mid to bottomtier sec team, the model has swung the other way, favor ing L s U to upset Tennessee. now, L s U is 4-1 and has had strong showings against m ississippi state and a road win against Auburn. And if L s U had not had inferior special teams play, they could easily be 5-0. s o, while it feels crazy, the Tigers are home and on a roll.

No. 17 TC u @ No. 19 Kansas

You read that right, T c U and Kansas are not only play ing in a top-25 game, but both are also undefeated and both

Near misses turn out to be costly as Irish fall to Indiana with a tight score of 1-0

By MATTHEW CROW sports Writer

on Wednesday night, notre dame men’s soccer traveled to bloomington for a non-confer ence game against in-state rival indiana. The irish came within inches of goals on several occa sions but were ultimately unable to get in the scoring column, suf fering a 1-0 loss. The game had originally been scheduled for sept. 3 but was postponed due to inclement weather conditions. The defeat moved the irish to 5-41 (2-2) on the season, while the hoosiers improved to 5-2-3. notre dame’s attack was fir ing on all cylinders to start the game. it was a continuation of their performance from last week when they defeated Kalamazoo and boston college while com piling an impressive ten goals over the two games. in the ninth minute, junior defender Paddy burns and sophomore for ward matthew roou connected on a give-and-go that culminated with roou lofting a well-timed

ZeLO

con

Ued

sit atop the b12 c onference standings. ZeL o has T c U as a slight favorite, just 56.6%, and this game, as weird as it is to read (let alone write it), could have important conference ramifications.

No. 11 Utah @ No. 18 UCLA Bruins

Uc LA has been seen by ZeL o as a strong team and a dark horse to win the PAc -12. With Washington’s stumble from last week end, the current PAc -12 c hampionship matchup is Uc LA and Usc . This game could very eas ily change that projec tion, as the Utes, whom ZeL o favors winning this game (just slightly) at 52.3%, is on the out side looking in. This game has massive con ference and playoff implications.

A win for Utah would keep them as a 1-loss team, which keeps them as a potential play off team (emphasis on potential). A win for Uc LA would help give them some actual legitimacy.

Contact Thomas Zwiller at tzwiller@nd.edu

The views expressed in this Sports Authority are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

pass to burns inside the box. burns’ volley got past the keeper but bounced off the left post, keeping the score level at 0-0.

After a stretch of scoreless play, a notre dame foul inside the box gave indiana a penalty kick in the twenty-fifth minute. redshirt senior ryan Wittenbrink con verted the penalty to give the hoosiers a 1-0 advantage. ceding penalties has been a re curring issue for the irish, as their most recent defeat, a 1-0 loss against north carolina, was also decided on a first-half penalty for the opposition.

Apart from the costly foul, notre dame head coach chad riley was pleased with the play of the defense, as well as that of junior goalkeeper bryan dowd, who recorded four saves against indiana. riley spoke postgame about the irish’s defensive effort.

“conceding another pen alty, we’re a little bit frustrated with that,” riley said. “As a unit, i thought [the defense] played pretty well and gave us some good performances. indiana’s

L ACEY REpORT

got some quality attacking play ers that were pretty good on the night. i thought, for the most part, that we did a good job containing them and limiting their attacks.”

indiana took a 1-0 lead into halftime, and the irish were the victims of another unlucky bounce early in the second half. With notre dame on the at tack, sophomore midfielder bryce boneau received a pass from sophomore defender Kyle genenbacher just outside of the box on the right side of the field. boneau fired a shot to the left of the diving indiana goalkeeper, but the ball deflected off of the left post for the second time in the game.

Later in the half, the irish ap peared to finally level the score, courtesy of a 71st-minute goal from freshman forward Wyatt borso, but borso was ruled off side. riley spoke positively about the chances that the notre dame offense created, while also noting room for improvement and la menting losing a winnable game.

“it’s a little frustrating anytime you lose a close game because, at the end of the day, we want to be the team that’s winning close games,” riley said. “We had some good moments on the attack. We want to continue to grow our attack more while building on some solid defensive play.”

The overturned goal would be the closest that notre dame would come to evening the score, as indiana held on to take the 1-0 win. Although the irish did not get the result they wanted, they remain focused on their longterm goals. riley discussed how facing a strong opponent in a dif ficult road environment will pro vide benefits that carry through the rest of the season as notre dame looks to turn these close losses into wins.

“it’s the good thing about these games, playing a good team like indiana [on the road],” riley said. “You know you’re going to get bet ter from them. At the end of the day, you want to get better and pick up results as well.”

After the weather-induced

break from their conference slate, notre dame will return home to host no. 11 Louisville (6-2-2) on saturday. The cardinals are currently playing at a high level, having defeating no. 8 Pitt and nc state in their last two confer ence games. The irish will try to put this loss behind them as they return to Acc play.

“i think it’s just about leaving that result. Leaving that game, as far as the details of it, and let ting our frustration be a positive for us and turn it into another performance where we show our growth,” riley said. “on the bus ride home, we’ll lick our wounds a little bit. When we get off the bus, that game is over, we start recovering and preparing for Louisville.”

The irish will aim to improve to 3-2 in Acc play as they host Louisville on saturday at Alumni stadium. Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. and the game will be broadcast on AccnX.

Contact Matthew Crow at mcrow@nd.edu

Lacey enters transfer portal three weeks after two-sack performance

By JOSEPH TUNNEY sports Writer

Three weeks ago, Jacob Lacey was making big-time plays on the field for the notre dame fighting irish. in notre dame’s 24-17 win over cal, the 6-1, 280-pound defensive tackle had two pivotal sacks on a day when notre dame needed all of the defensive help they could get. notre dame football’s twitter account released a vid eo of him being mobbed by his teammates.

on Thursday, head coach marcus freeman said that Lacey is no longer with the team and that he will en ter the transfer portal when it reopens. minutes later, Lacey confirmed the news on his Twitter account, say ing that it was with “lots and lots of prayer and sorrow,” that he finally decided to transfer. it’s a surprising decision, but one that is completely within Lacey’s rights considering the new regulations of the trans fer portal. Lacey will be red shirting the rest of the year, ensuring that he will have two years of eligibility at his new school.

Lacey seems to have seen that his playing time was trend ing in the wrong direction.

Lacey played 24 snaps in his

best game against cal but just nine against north carolina. he was the third-most used de fensive tackle on the roster, be hind graduate student Jayson Ademilola and howard cross. fellow defensive tackle gabriel rubio has also begun to get snaps in multiple games.

freeman said that the gap left by Lacey will be filled by rubio and chris smith, a graduate transfer from harvard. smith has played 46 snaps, com pared to Lacey’s 73 this season. sophomore Jason onye has been elevated from the scout team to see game action.

Lacey graduated from notre dame last spring. he was a four-star, top-200 recruit when he committed to notre dame in 2019 from bowling green, Kentucky. The product of south Warren high school also held offers from cincinnati, clemson and Kentucky. head coach marcus freeman and the irish seem to be at peace with Lacey’s decision.

“he made a decision that ulti mately, he felt was best for him and we respect that. We love Jacob. The best thing about it is that he leaves here with a de gree in hand,” said freeman.

Contact Joseph Tunney at

RYAN

Observer

Irish graduate student and defensive linebacker Jacob Lacey, shown here in ND’s home game against Cal, announces decision to transfer.

Shamrock Series presents unique recruiting opportunities for Notre Dame

By LIAM COOLICAN Associate sports editor

As the Irish prepare to take the field in Las v egas on s aturday, their prima ry focus will be earning a much-needed statement win over b Y u h owever, the annual s hamrock s eries game presents a unique op portunity for n otre d ame to showcase their brand to fans and recruits who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to see the Irish play close to home.

“There are certain parts of the country that n otre d ame doesn’t have the op portunity to play,” Kyle Kelly, a n otre d ame re cruiting insider with r ivals, said in an inter view with The o bserver. “With the s hamrock s eries, that gives n otre d ame the opportunity to pick certain spots within the country that they don’t really have much of a pres ence...going there gives them the ability to show case the program (and) the team.”

s everal of n otre d ame’s commits from the west

coast will be in attendance this weekend, including four-star tight end c ooper Flanagan, four-star wide receiver r ico Flores, Jr. and four-star running back Jayden Limar, according to Kelly.

While n otre d ame is cer tainly a national brand, the recent success of west coast schools such as usc and uc LA means that the Irish are facing increased competition in that area of the country.

“ usc is the hot team right now, Lincoln r iley a brand new coach,” said Kelly. “ uc LA has been do ing well this year, and now n otre d ame is like, alright well, we’re going to go out on the west coast and get in front of people to get our own exposure.”

This weekend’s game will be played in the state-ofthe-art Allegiant s tadium, home of the n FL’s r aiders, which also presents an op portunity for the Irish.

“ n otre d ame can use this as a selling point, that hey, for our s hamrock s eries game, we’re going to play in an n FL stadium,” Kelly said. The Irish will

play in an n FL stadium at least once more this year when they visit n avy in b altimore.

While the location and venue certainly do pro vide unique opportunities for the Irish to showcase their brand, perhaps more importantly, the Irish can prove this weekend that their season is firmly head ed in the right direction.

“I think there was a lot of worry and skepticism when n otre d ame lost week two against m arshall,” Kelly said. “That caused us to check in with commits, see what their stances were, and now that some of these guys, these highly rated prospects, that are also getting courted from other schools, now we get to bring them in person, to an n FL stadium, in Las v egas, in primetime.”

The slow start to the sea son did not dampen the momentum the Irish had built in recruiting over the summer. The only re cruit to de-commit since that m arshall loss is e lijah Paige, a 4-star offensive tackle. While Kelly says that he is uncertain as to

why Paige de-committed, a factor could be that he wanted to play closer to home. Paige, who is from Phoenix, committed to usc earlier this week.

Peyton b owen, a fourstar safety per r ivalsseveral other outlets have listed him as a five-star–headlines n otre d ame’s recruiting class next year. h owever, he has openly been visiting other schools, particularly Texas A& m and o klahoma. “Is there a reason to worry that now this is the perfect excuse for him to leave the class?”

Kelly said. “It almost seems like sometimes he’s been looking for an excuse to decommit from n otre d ame.”

There was concern, af ter n otre d ame’s loss to m arshall, that it would have an effect on recruit ing, but it has not panned out that way. Aside from Paige, b owen and the rest of the class have remained committed to n otre d ame. r ivals cur rently has n otre d ame’s incoming recruit ing class ranked third, behind only Alabama and o hio s tate.

“When you’re losing those types of games, then you maybe see those types of recruits that are on the edge of ‘maybe n otre d ame isn’t right for me, okay n otre d ame loses two games. n ow’s the time to go,’” Kelly said. “ b ut they really haven’t had that, they’ve kept everything together.”

Kelly described most of the class of 2023 as “locked in” at n otre d ame.

“From what we’ve heard, both from n otre d ame, and talking to kids and their coaches and parents, is most of these guys are locked in,” he said. “They are 100 percent, fully com mitted to n otre d ame and there’s going to be no change in their status.”

n otre d ame does not have a quarter back committed in the class of 2023, although there is a push for highlytouted commit c J c arr to reclassify from the class of 2024, although Kelly noted that appears unlikely at this stage. “I think n otre d ame is pretty much

season of legendary catcher Yadier molina and watched future hall-of-Famer Albert Pujols belt his 700th home run. They also have the like ly n L mv P in first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. st. Louis has been arguably the most consistent of the Wild c ard teams, with a fundamentally sound offense and reliable pitching staff. Their playoff success will likely depend on their ability to match other teams when they heat up. The redbirds are looking to get over the hump in this era of contention, having gone 4-8 in the last three postseasons.

No. 5 San Diego Padres at No. 4 New York Mets

This time a year ago, s an d iego was reeling from an epic second-half collapse. 2022 was kinder to the Friars, as they now head to the big Apple with hopes for a massive up set. new York pitches incred ibly well, but s an d iego offers a worthy counterattack with proven veterans Yu darvish, blake snell and Joe musgrove filling out the rotation. To reach the d ivision s eries for the second time in three years, the Padres will need trade deadline acquisitions

Juan s oto and Josh b ell to re turn to superstar form. Third baseman manny machado (32 hr , 102 rbI) has carried the offense all year, but he can only bear the weight for so long without elite protection. s an d iego handled the mets comfortably in the regular season, taking four out of six head-to-head matchups.

new York is back in the dance for the first time since 2016, but not on the terms they were looking for. Atlanta made a late surge to capture the n L e ast, forcing the mets into this weekend as the best Wild c ard team record-wise. The mets’ three-man rota tion of max s cherzer, Jacob deGrom and c hris b assitt in stills fear unlike any other, yet each of them delivered subpar performances in their most crucial starts last week end. new York’s offense, much like Toronto’s, is reliable and combines high levels of pow er, contact and discipline. Therefore, the outcome of the series lies in how much the Padres’ big bats and mets’ big arms can tap back into their potential.

Contact Tyler Reidy at treidy3@nd.edu

The views expressed in this Sports Authority are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

BYU con TInued From PAGe 16

might settle in among the Irish offense and disrupt the offensive chemistry of the team going forward.

2. Win the turnover battle (or at least don’t lose it)

The Irish have been hor rendous at generating turn overs this season. In fact, their only turnover of the year came in the Irish’s last game against unc when graduate student defensive lineman Jayson Ademilola recovered a fumble by unc quarterback drake maye. bY u, on the other hand, boasts a plus four turnover battle and they have scored two defensive touchdowns this season.

The cougars have only turned the ball over once so far this season, so the Irish will have their work cut out for them if they are going to win the battle. That one turnover, an intercep tion by Jaren hall, came in the first game of the sea son against south Florida. since then, hall has at tempted an impressive 144 passes without throwing an interception. While forc ing a mistake from hall seems unlikely, the Irish

should strive to not lose the turnover battle. Although the Irish offense looked significantly better last week, the Irish simply are not an explosive enough team to give up defensive touchdowns to bY u and allow their potent offense to get good field position.

3. Continue to run the football

A notable downfall of the Irish offense this season has been the run game. Aside from the unc game where the Irish averaged an impressive 5.6 yards per carry, the Irish averaged a disappointing 2.5, 3.5 and 3.6 yards per carry in their first three games. In the impressive performance against unc , the Irish ef fectively used a three-back system with sophomore Audric e stime, junior c hris Tyree and sopho more Logan diggs rushing for 134, 80 and 50 yards, respectively. diggs was also utilized effectively in the passing game, record ing 65 receiving yards and a receiving touchdown.

The Irish should continue to use a threeback system going forward.

All three of the running backs are some of the best athletes on the team and all

three players have proved their value over the course of their playing careers. With a second-string quar terback under center, the Irish need to prioritize the run game going for ward. Junior quarterback drew Pyne improved sig nificantly against unc when the Irish started to open up the run game.

The cougars do not pos sess a stellar run defense either, ranking 93rd in F bs in that category. Just last week, they gave up over 200 rushing yards to a 1-4 utah state team. A few weeks be fore that, they gave up 212 rushing yards to oregon. The Irish offensive line has been somewhat of a disap pointment this season, but last week’s performance against unc was encour aging. They should be able to push around a bY u de fensive line that has gener ated just 24 tackles for loss this season, which is 94th among F bs teams. If the Irish prioritize establishing a run game early, their suc cess on the ground should open more passing lanes and big plays for an Irish offense that desperately needs more explosive plays.

Nate

Predictions for Shamrock Series against BYU

Aidan Thomas – sports Editor

After a bye week, I’m try ing to control my optimism and remind myself that unc’s defense is abysmal. but there were a lot of things that looked a whole lot better against the Tar heels two weeks ago, and with an extra week to make adjustments, I like the Irish’s chances in vegas. notre dame has never lost a shamrock series game. They’re also 6-2 against bY u and have never given up more than 23 points.

I think the Irish will jump out to a big lead early, with bY u having some first-half struggles this year. however, the cougars are a good sec ond-half squad and have a ton of depth where notre dame doesn’t so that’s a concern as this battle wears on. my pre diction? notre dame is up by eight before bY u scores late but fails to convert the twopoint conversion. The Irish defense prevails in a big-time moment against a big-time op ponent on a big-time stage. notre Dame 31 BYU 29

nate Moller – s enior sports Writer coming out of a bye week al ways scares me. The Irish have only scored three points in the first quarter all season, and it’s very likely that they come out of the gates slow because of the bye week. I expect the offense to find its groove later on in

the game, though, as they es tablish the run game and con tinue to build off of their stellar performance against unc two weeks ago.

bY u’s run defense is better than unc’s, but they are by no means stellar, and the Irish should be able to exploit the cougars’ defensive line. on the other side of the ball, the Irish will have their hands full with bY u quarterback Jaren hall, who has been sensational this season. I expect saturday’s game to be a back-and-forth battle, but the Irish looked much improved two weeks ago, and I expect them to build off of that performance and se cure their biggest victory of the season so far.

notre Dame 34, BYU 27

Mannion McGinley –Assistant Managing Editor

post-bye week games have consistently gone poorly in re cent notre dame history. This one cannot. I don’t know what kind of fire the Irish need to light under themselves but it needs to be there right from the get. p ull juice from the uni forms, from each other, from the environment, I don’t care but there’s a way for the Irish to win this game and it requires every piece of the puzzle to bring their A-game.

The Irish defense has it in them to make the prolific bY u offense one-dimensional. They did so with unc and regardless of the Tar heel defensive skill (or lack thereof), the offensive

hold-up is something to brag about for the Irish. They need to do it even better this week end. The turnovers have be gun and it’s a matter of doing it again and again this weekend. once the defense takes the ball away, the Irish offense has to kick it into gear. run game. run game. run game. occasional strong pass play to mayer or Lorenzo styles and then more running. The Irish can pull it off if they put a stopper in the cougar offense and go to work on their own.

notre Dame 35, BYU 31

Liam Coolican – Associate sports Editor

notre dame’s offense seems to have finally turned a corner. Yes, north carolina’s defense is among the worst in college football, but the way notre dame went about their game plan was impressive. They dominated the line of scrim mage and established the run early, which allowed them to unlock a vertical dimension that had previously been lack ing. This weekend is an impor tant test for the Irish.

They figured out what they need to do to be successful from a play calling and a per sonnel standpoint last week, but they have to be able to ex ecute against a better defense to prove it is for real. on the other side of the ball, the Irish have been able to limit quar terbacks such as cJ stroud and drake maye to low out puts, and that should provide a

blueprint for the cougar’s du al-threat quarterback Jaren hall. The offense looks poised to continue its upward trend, and the defense will do what it has done all season, as the Irish get a statement win in the desert.

notre Dame 27, BYU 20

Emily DeFazio – Associate sports Editor

before the unc game, I had said that this would be a turning point for the Irish. regardless of the caliber the unc defense, if drew p yne & co. could get some momen tum going and snag two wins in a row, it would be invalu able mentally for the team. If anything came out of the matchup in c hapel h ill, I hope drew p yne realized he could play as Qb1. he will need that confidence heading into the shamrock series.

The Irish cannot afford turn overs or overthrown passes like there were at the begin ning of the season. This is not a Tar-heels level defense they are up against, and they need to achieve the same success against a much stronger bY u line. That being said, the de fense needs to continue to bring their A-game to shut down bY u’s offense and give the Irish some wiggle room on the other side of the ball. I ex pect some early struggles on offense as they adjust to this new opponent, and bY u keeps it close until a fourth quarter passing touchdown to keep the

Irish ahead. n D 31, BYU 24

Maddie Ladd – Associate sports Editor

Are the Irish feeling lucky in vegas this weekend? I like the odds. A shamrock series weekend in the n FL Allegiant stadium will certainly provide an excellent backdrop for an exciting game as notre dame takes on bY u plus, I’d like to think the special-edition uni forms have to give the Irish an extra boost (come on, they’re pretty cool). A victory against unc two weeks ago saw the run game come to life and ma jor development from quarter back drew p yne.

coming off of a bye week will have given the team a chance to regroup and prepare for the big stage. nevertheless, bY u is a talented team and has earned their no. 16 ranking after a 4-1 start to the season.

Quarterback Jaren hall is one to watch after a stellar season so far, though the Irish will surely put up a fight on defense.

I believe notre dame can establish a big run game this weekend, and if Audric e sitme, c hris Tyree and Logan diggs can get after it, they’ll be able to light up Allegiant stadium. The team certainly found something against unc , and they can continue it this week end. I see a victory in the desert happening, and a continuation of a perfect shamrock series record.

notre Dame 28 BYU 17

Recruiting

looking for anything they can get at quarterback right now,” Kelly said.

“They need bodies at that position.”

Kelly noted quarter back Avery Johnson, who is currently committed to Kansas s tate, as a potential target for the Irish. Aside from the quarterback po sition, h e also highlighted running back Jeremiyah Love, wide receiver Taeshaun Lyons and quar terback/safety b randyn h illman as uncommitted targets which Irish fans should keep their eyes on.

o ne thing has been clear to those following n otre d ame recruiting in the last several months: m arcus Freeman approach es recruiting very differ ently from b rian Kelly.

“I think on the surface m arcus Freeman has been recruiting better, he’s cer tainly given more effort to recruiting,” Kyle Kelly said. While he has only been

covering n otre d ame since m arch, he has had the op portunity to hear from recruits about the differ ences in styles between the two coaches.

“From what I’ve heard and what I’ve learned from kids is m arcus Freeman is much more present and he connects better with the kids,” Kelly said.

o ne of the biggest chal lenges for n otre d ame in the past has been mov ing from good recruiting classes to great recruiting classes. “You look at the data, that’s how you win national championships,” Kelly said. “You have to have a certain amount of five-star players and you have to have a cer tain amount of top 100, top 150 highly rated fourstar recruits. That will be the challenge for m arcus Freeman and that’ll be the hurdle he’ll look to over come that I don’t think b rian Kelly was ever really able to get over.”

Contact Liam Coolican at lcoolican@nd.edu

soccer

After the game Albert noted her transition from midfield to for ward helped change her role in the Irish formation, putting her in position to net her first brace of the year.

“ o verall when I moved up to the nine, I just knew I had to get the ball, turn and take my space. s o either I collapsed the backline so I could play it wide or take the shot by myself.”

m oving forward, the road doesn’t get eas ier for the Irish. o n s unday, n otre d ame will welcome n o. 3 Florida s tate to s outh b end, with the s eminoles representing anoth er crucial hurdle on the path to an A cc title.

Albert, however, fo cused on the play of the Irish heading into

the match, not Florida s tate.

“I think we’re just going to go out there and play our best,” said Albert. “I think our team, we look at the next game like any other game. We don’t care about what the name is, or who it is. We just want to go out there and play our best.”

h ead coach n ate n orman remarked af ter the game that n otre d ame’s win just weeks ago against n o. 2 v irginia could give the team a helpful sense of confidence and com posure heading into s unday’s battle with the s eminoles.

“ h opefully that win gives us a bit of con fidence and belief to go into that game, be cause that’s really just something you need to have when you play against the defending national champions,” n orman said. “They’re just a really good team.

b ut I think for us we showed just so much energy from a defensive standpoint, being able to get the ball moving. We put a lot of pres sure on v irginia and that’s something we’ll really try to take into [ s unday].”

With Florida s tate coming off an impres sive 1-0 result against v irginia themselves, they’ll enter Alumni s tadium in impres sive form. The defend ing national champions are still yet to lose this year and now boast statement wins over v irginia as well as an impressive c lemson squad that beat n otre d ame 2-0 in their A cc opener.

The Irish will take on the s eminoles at 12 p.m. on s unday at Alumni s tadium. The match will be broad casted on the A cc n etwork.

Keys to victory against bYU: Will the Irish regain strong offensive start in first quarter?

By NATE MOLLER senior sports Writer

The Irish return to ac tion after their bye week in a shamrock series showdown against no. 16 bYU in Las vegas. The Irish looked im pressive in their road victory over U nc , but they will need to be on top of their game this weekend against a very talented cougars team. Let’s take a look at the keys to victo ry for the Irish this weekend.

1. Find the end zone in the first quarter

The Irish have only scored three points in the first quar ter throughout their first four games of the season, and that came in week one against ohio state. Fortunately for the Irish, their defense has been stellar in the first quar ter as well, allowing the Irish to remain within striking range, but some first-quar ter offense would be useful.

Against a bYU offense that is averaging nearly 35 points per game this season, the

Irish will have to come ready to play out of the gates. bYU quarterback Jaren hall has been spectacular this sea son, completing 70.2% of his passes for 1,438 yards and 12 touchdowns. even if the Irish defense plays well in this one, the cougars are go ing to put up some points. For that reason, falling be hind early against an expe rienced, disciplined bYU team will be difficult to overcome later in the game.

In past years, offensive coordinator Tommy rees has been very successful at scripting successful first quarter drives, but that has been non-existent this year. The Irish must go after the cougars from the start in this one and take some early shots down field. An early Irish touchdown is exactly what the Irish will need to shake off any lingering rust from the bye week. If the Irish start the game with a couple of three-and-outs, frustration

Albert scores twice as Irish thrash Wolfpack

By J.J. POST s ports Writer

Thursday night, n otre d ame soccer moved to 10-2 on the season with a 3-0 win over n orth c arolina s tate.

The Irish started off hot, generating a cou ple of nice early looks at goal before drawing a penalty in the 25th minute. Without senior midfielder and regular penalty taker m addie m ercado on the field, the duties fell to se nior forward Kiki v an Zanten, who made no mistakes sending Wolfpack keeper m aria e chezarreta the wrong way to give n otre d ame the lead.

After resting up at halftime, a refreshed Irish press took con trol of the game in the second half, limit ing nc s tate to just two shots. It was sophomore midfielder Korbin Albert who pro vided the insurance,

firing home a pair of goals to give n otre d ame a comfortable 3-0 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

The first was one of her best this season, curling the ball into the back of the net from just outside the box. The finish was made more impressive by the fact the sophomore was falling down, cel ebrating from the ground after the ball hit the back of the net.

The next came on the back of a setup by graduate student for ward o livia Wingate, who picked up the ball at the halfway line and drove forward, eventu ally splitting the defense with a pass to Albert.

Albert opted not to shoot the ball on sight, deftly dribbling her way around three Wolfpack defenders to find space and fire home.

SARAH GRISHAM | The Observer

Irish sophomore running back Logan Diggs finds three-back system success as Notre Dame attempts to regain traction in the 2022-2023 season. Diggs looks for the ball in ND’s recent away game against UNC.

ND

The Irish women’s soccer team celebrates during their home game against

team will return home to Alumni Stadium to face Florida State, hoping

build

victory.

caused Patterson to switch gears, but he has focused on building continuity. The chemistry seen in that game gave hope to the team, es pecially in establishing the run game. There was much that the offensive line did well against the Tar heels, yet Patterson also stresses the impor tance of focusing on the mistakes.

“It is exciting to see all the hard work pay off,” Patterson said. “but we all agreed, we can never be satisfied with our performance. You can’t let winning mask the mistakes you made during the game. When you lose, those mistakes are bright spots. When you win, it kind of gets hidden.”

According to Patterson, the Irish’s bye week has helped them

with their individual cri tiques. The team has spent extra time at practice focusing on technique and what will allow them to stand up to a competi tive oponent in 16th-ranked bYU this weekend. The Irish are ready for vegas and ready to write the story of the rest of this season.

“If we take care of business the way we aresupposedto,mostpeopleare going to forget what happened in the beginning of the sea son,” Patterson said.

Perhaps this is wish ful thinking on Patterson’s part, but only time will tell. This weekend’s vegas match up will be the litmus test for the Irish and how they have been able to handle a tough beginning of the sea son — both physically and emotionally.

Contact Madeline Ladd at mladd2@nd.edu

impact. d espite starting and playing the majority of of fensive snaps, Thomas is sitting on three receptions for 32 yards in four games. That needs to improve from a player that has the talent to become the W r 2 in this offense.

3. Senior linebacker JD Bertrand

Part of this is on b ertrand, and part of it isn’t. f or the second straight game, b ertrand will miss the first half of the game after a second-half targeting pen alty in the prior contest. The first one was a pretty clear-cut targeting call, and it was really a men tal mistake from the se nior captain. The second call was far more question able, and n otre d ame ap pealed the decision, albeit unsuccessfully. b ut beyond the targeting calls, b ertrand hasn’t been the impact player the Irish need at linebacker.

That unit has been the weak spot of the defensive corps, although they took a step forward against the Tar h eels. b ertand him self has 18 tackles, which ties for fourth on the team.

h owever, he really hasn’t created much in the way of disruption, with zero tackles for loss, sacks, pass breakups, forced fumbles or intercep tions. The Irish need some more dynamic play from their linebackers, and that starts with their senior captain.

Graduate student

Three years ago, Lenzy was the former track star that the Irish plugged into gadget plays. Lenzy utilized his speed well, and he figured to be a weapon at wide receiver. Injuries marred his de velopment at times, but now fully healthy, Lenzy has looked almost lost at times on the field. Whether it’s poorly timed drops, a failure to get open or anything else, Lenzy has simply not made an im pact. h e’s touched the ball eight times in four games for 76 all-purpose yards. b etween him and Thomas, they need to so lidify the wide receiver corps for the Irish.

1. Sophomore offensive line Blake Fisher

The offensive line has improved great ly since the start of the year, but right tack le b lake f isher has con tinued to struggle. h e’s consistently been one of the weak links on the line, and he has missed blocks in key moments that have hurt the Irish. Think back to Week 1, with the Irish up 10-7 at the start of the second half. s ophomore quarter back Tyler b uchner had sophomore wide receiver Lorenzo s tyles open down the sideline but rushed the throw as f isher got beat around the edge. The Irish missed on the potential touchdown, and didn’t score again.

f isher has monster size and potential and he needs to translate that into on-field production in the coming weeks.

‘creating chaos’: Kiser prepared to lead the Irish to victory over bYU

By MANNION McGINLEY managing editor

The linebacker room will be one man short for the first half of this week’s game as J. d. b ertrand got called for target ing again against the Tar h eels two weeks ago. The rest of the squad has practiced filling in for the senior captain, shifting over and run ning different pack ages but a lot of those adjustments have fallen on graduate student Jack Kiser.

The Indiana native has been prepared for a mo ment like this though. s ince high school, he’s played a wide range of po sitions. Then, he played anywhere from quarter back to defensive back. n ow, he trains in ev ery linebacker position and even sometimes in

the vyper role on the line.

h aving played all over the field, Kiser has a clear perspective on the defense as a whole, their goals and what the Irish need to work on to strengthen their defensive presence through the rest of the season. The main fo cus, he says, is turnovers.

“If you want to be a great defense, you’ve got to cre ate chaos,” Kiser said. “We haven’t created as much as we want but we certainly do believe when we get the thing rolling, they’re going to come in bunches. e very day we’re reminding peo ple ‘Punch at the ball, rip.’ Anytime you’re around that ball it has to be some type of attempt to create that turnover. That’s something that’s always on our mind. c ertainly

‘I still love what I do’: Patterson provides leadership amidst start-of-season adversity

By MADELINE LADD Associate sports editor

In a public display of anger and frustration, fifth-year se nior offensive lineman and cap tain Jarrett Patterson stormed off the field after the clock hit zero in notre dame’s devastat ing 26-21 loss to marshall last month. Patterson had a rough game at left guard, only adding to his turmoil. ripping off his jer sey and having to be forcibly pulled back for the alma mater seemed inappropriate to many Irish fans — especially for a captain. nevertheless, as time has passed, Patterson has taken it as a learning situation and described the emotions he felt that day.

“It’s a combination of seeing the disappoint ment on those guys’ faces after seeing how hard they work, Patterson said. “And then individually for me, just all the rehab I’ve had to go to since march and had to push through and get to the point where I could play.”

Patterson’s history makes it clear why he got especially emotional. he postponed nFL plans to return to notre dame for a final season. but he suffered from a torn pectoral muscle in the spring causing himtomisstheohiostategame. coming back for a frustrating marshall loss was the straw that broke the cam el’s back. nevertheless, Patterson continues to remember why he plays the game.

“A big reason why I came back is because of the guys in that locker room,” Patterson said. “I love playing next to them, I love our coaches and everything about that place. At the end of the day no matter what I’ve gone through, I still love what I do.”

As the leader of a young but talented offensive line, Patterson was pleased with their perfor mance at Unc moving from center to guard this season

MAX PETROSKY | The Observer Irish graduate student linebacker Jack Kiser demonstrates preparedness to lead the Notre Dame team against BYU with confidence and valuable perspective. The Irish will face BYU in Vegas on October 8.

SARAH

Irish fifth-year senior offensive lineman and captain Jarrett Patterson regroups during the Notre Dame game against UNC. Patterson recognizes and grows from personal and team mistakes against Marshall.