Thought you would be interested to read what a couple of fellow Lead Heads have said in reply to my impassioned email. Jan is owner of a big health care facility in NJ, and Paul is an ER physician.

Date: Monday, November 10, 2008, 2:49 PM

Not that I have any clue how the world works, but it appears that ND is succumbing to the trend in America (and perhaps elsewhere, but here is where I live) in that those with any power at any level please only those directly in their sphere and have little regard for the greater good of those that they should be beholding to. They completely forget who brungʼem to the dance. They screw people and say it is only business, as if business were not made of people, real live breathing folks. They take credit when something randomly happens that appears to be good for the moment and immediately blame others when things go sour. Or worse yet, try to make you believe it wasnʼt so bad.

 

Rationalization rather than realization rules. Let me try to convince you, spin it rather than admit it was a screw up and needs fixing. They talk the talk, but wonʼt and are incapable of walking the walk.

Humans are secondary to amorphous concepts of success. And success is only measured in dollars. Worse yet immediate dollars. Relationships with any depth are getting more and rarer.

Basically it seems that America and our institutions like ND are loosing their soul and are not concerned with fostering genuine creativity and a national or local spirit. The future is defined as this quarter and not our great grandchildren. Tradition goes out the window and as it does so goes the roots that nourished it in the first place.

Getting concrete, having phenomenal athletic teams is not mutually exclusive to having outstanding academics. They are complimentary. Athletics requires its own innate intelligence. Rather than reject athletes who are not quite there academically, why not take a few and help make them improve their academics and benefit from their skills as well. Have ND looked at as an institution that not only helps disadvantaged in other countries like the commercial shows, but to take a handful of real live Americans and help them hone their innate skills and develop other life skills as well. There are tremendous lessons to be learned and taught on the field as well as the classroom.

The most inspired performance the team showed was against Michigan and who was there to light that fire? Dr. Lou.

Like I said at first (if anybody made it this far through my ranting and rambling) I can be way off base here, but that is the way it feels to me over the last few years as I look out over the landscape here and wonder what they hell is going on. Does anyone really give a rats ass about actually doing something great rather than making whatever trivial bullshit they do try to seem great.

And in the famous words of Austin Powers, Iʼm spent.

  Mr. Jan DeBenedetto
Senior Vice President Business Development
Vitaquest International, Inc.
West Caldwell, New Jersey

 

From Paul Gill

Subject: Re: Weis has GOT to be fired, etc.

Monk:   This seems to be a common theme: an administration who sends out pleas for $$ on an almost monthly basis, but has no other use for its alums.  I never received a response from Kerry Temple at ND MAGAZINE (an email and a letter), nor did I hear from Chuck Lennon.  Funny thing is, over the years I wrote Fr.Hesburgh on a number of topics, and he responded to every single one of my letters.  Now if Fr.Ted had time to pen a response to me, how come these other people don't?  I shudder to think what it would take to get a statue of Fr.Lange approved by this group of self-important snobs.  (By the way, Fr.Lange had no use for the ND administration either.)   Paul