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Contact:
Chris Labadie
NDresponse@gmail.com
www.NDresponse.com

University of Notre Dame President Rejects Students' Requests for Dialogue

Jenkins' Tells ND Response Coalition That Conditions For Constructive Dialogue Do Not Exist

In a private letter addressed to a coalition of 12 campus groups and organizations, University of Notre Dame president, Fr. John I. Jenkins, CSC, denied students' requests for dialogue on the issues surrounding the University's invitation to and honoring of President Barack Obama at this year's commencement exercises. Responding to a letter sent to him by representatives of the ND Response coalition on April 7th, the University's president wrote that "conditions for constructive dialogue simply do not exist" and that students could disregard his earlier invitations to meet with him.

In their original letter to Fr. Jenkins, the student leaders of ND Response confirmed their interest in discussing their concerns with the University's president but acknowledged their hesitancy to accept the parameters of a meeting he outlined in an email to ND Response on March 27th. Citing that President Jenkins' offer of holding a closed-door meeting to 25 members of the coalition was not an adequate option, ND Response leaders requested that a meeting be held in one of the largest classrooms on campus and opened to all members of the groups in the coalition. In addition to this request, the students also asked that the University affirm its "commitment to defending human life in its most vulnerable stages" before President Jenkins sat down to speak with students. In particular, the students requested both that the University publicly declare that it would never engage in or collaborate with research involving human embryos or fetal tissue obtained through destructive techniques and that the University appoint a "pro-life ombudsman" to ensure that proper attention is paid to life issues in both Notre Dame's teaching and research. "These requests," ND Response spokeswoman Mary Daly said, "were intended to lead the University into making gestures of good-will that would facilitate our productive discussion and demonstrate President Jenkins' genuine interest in transparent dialogue."

Although his letter indicates that President Jenkins urges the students to "disregard the invitation to meet," Daly says that "ND Response remains open to true and transparent dialogue with Fr. Jenkins on this issue."

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Notre Dame Response Student Coalition
www.NDResponse.com
NDResponse@gmail.com

6 April 2009
President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
University of Notre Dame
Office of the President
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

Dear Father Jenkins,

As students engaged in the activities of ND Response, we wish to thank you for your invitation to speak with us about the perilous position Notre Dame is presently in with respect to the invitation to President Obama to speak at this year’s commencement. We are happy to meet with you on the given date, April 20th, and at the time you specified, 7:00 p.m. However, as we discuss more fully below, after meeting and discussing your invitation as a group, we have come to the conclusion that we cannot concede to meet with you under the parameters you have proposed in your previous emails, namely that it would be a closed meeting limited to 25 student-attendees.

We know that you agree with us that the dignity of human life at all stages and in all conditions is a fundamental moral principle of the Catholic Church. In light of this, you would surely agree that there is no room for dialogue on this principle. Because of this, we propose and prefer to meet to speak with you specifically regarding the appropriateness of a Catholic university publicly honoring an individual who has actively used his public leadership to promote agendas that are opposed to the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church, which this University is sworn to uphold. We are disappointed that overwhelming and vigorous opposition has not persuaded you to rescind the invitation to President Barack Obama to give the Commencement address, nor has it changed your mind regarding the decision to honor the President with an honorary law degree. We believe that these are the proper actions that you should take to repair the damage inflicted on the Catholic identity of the University. We recognize that you are not likely to accede to such requests from students when you have not done so in response to opposition from Bishop John D’Arcy, from numerous Catholic bishops and from Notre Dame alumni from around the country.

Nevertheless, we have certain requests that we respectfully make of you in advance of any meeting with you. We request that you take concrete steps to demonstrate that the University of Notre Dame is “firm and unwavering” in its commitment to defending human life in its most vulnerable stages. We ask that you promise now and going forward to use the moral authority of your office and the prestige of Our Lady's University to speak out on behalf of the cause of life in a meaningful, concrete and sustained way.

More specifically, we request that you promise to take the following actions:

1. The University publicly makes the institutional and permanent promise that the University of Notre Dame will not engage in, promote or allow practices offensive to life (e.g., research involving human embryos in any way, including on biological materials derived from embryo- or fetal-destructive techniques on-campus, or off-campus in collaboration with others);

2. The University will formally support pro-life initiatives on campus through financial and personnel resources. In particular, that you will appoint a pro-life ombudsperson at the level of associate provost to ensure that appropriate attention is paid to life issues at the beginning of life in both teaching and research at the University of Notre Dame. The appointee should be a person who has a deep and demonstrated commitment to the cause of unborn life.

Additionally, we hope that you will consider the following ways in which the University can take up the cause of life as its own by publicly speaking out against the injustices against the unborn: through the “What Would You Fight For?” commercials aired on NBC during football season, by leading the Notre Dame students in the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., by designating the topic of next fall’s forum as a celebration of life in its earliest stages, and by speaking out in other prominent forums.

You are a teacher, and we are students. Therefore, if these proposals are acceptable to you, we would like to meet in a setting that is comfortable for both of us, such as a classroom. We would suggest the McKenna Hall Auditorium or the Jordan Auditorium of the Mendoza School of Business. We anticipate that this meeting will be exclusively with the students of ND Response and select faculty and staff who support us. To this end, there will be more than 25 people at this meeting. We can guarantee that the number of students that will speak or engage with you will be limited to less than ten. The content of this meeting will be available to the public following its event in the form of a transcript and live video recording: True dialogue only comes with accountability.

We are grateful for your invitation to meet with the students of ND Response and we hope that our requests are acceptable to you. We believe that Notre Dame is implicitly committed to the protection of human life from conception to natural death because of its Catholic faith. We ask that Notre Dame improve its public, institutional commitment to this central Catholic teaching on human dignity.

Please let us know if what we have proposed is agreeable to you, on behalf of the University, by Good Friday, April 10, 2009.

Sincerely in Notre Dame,

Mary K. Daly

On behalf of the Notre Dame Response Student Coalition