#97: Hating the other dining hall

When it comes to eating meals, Notre Dame Students like to do what is fastest and easiest.  Even though plenty of them have cars on campus, they rarely go to off-campus restaurants to eat, and even though there are two dining halls on campus, Notre Dame Students rarely switch between the two. 

Most students typically go to the dining hall that is closest to their dorm because it is most convenient.  They can walk there for lunch on their way to class, and they can get there quickly and without hassle for dinner.  In the winter, Notre Dame Students do this because they also like to walk through the snow from their dorms to the dining hall in athletic shorts, just to show how little the weather affects them (even though it does).

By only going to one dining hall, students grow accustomed to sitting in the same area and seeing the same people.  Students from West Quad and South Quad consistently go to South Dining Hall (referred to by saying “South” or “SDH”).  These students yell out either “right-right” or “right-left” to tell their friends where they will be sitting, and before long groups of friends know exactly what side of what aisle to look to and walk down in order to find their friends.  These groups will instinctively know second and third choice seating areas in case their chosen area is occupied or closed. 

Students from North Quad and Mod Quad consistently go to North Dining Hall (referred to by saying “North” or “NDH”).  These students will determine where to sit before they get their food, and will leave coats, flip up chairs, and place IDs on their chosen table in order to mark their territory.  While both halves of campus have their different customs in their chosen dining hall, the one thing all Notre Dame Students share is a hatred for the dining hall in which they do not regularly eat.

Students who regularly eat at South complain constantly about the “modernism” that exists at North.  They hate the fact that the dining hall has multiple levels almost as much as the televisions that exist inside it.  Furthermore, South regulars hate the fact that they can never find their friends when they eat at North.  Why, they wonder, would you waste time saving a seat with your ID, when long lines are forming in the food distribution areas?  South regulars spend inordinate amounts of time looking for their friends when they eat at North.

The biggest complaint that South regulars have about North, however, is the food distribution system.  Food stations at North are seemingly spread throughout the dining hall in a maze of doorways that is akin to a funhouse.  South patrons are used to the single room in their dining hall where they can quickly make a loop and see what the options are for dinner.  At North, most students know what they are going to get before they enter the building and make a beeline towards the room of their choice.  Because it is impossible for Southies to find food in North, they pretty much only go there when they are looking for two specific menu items unique to North: pasta stir fry and make-your-own-pizza.

North patrons have similar complaints about SDH.  They find it impossible to find their friends in the large crowded rooms of tables that all look the same (see #36), and since they aren’t regular Southies, they don’t have a proper system in place to find their friends.  Their biggest complaint, however, is the abomination that is the SDH food distribution system.  When Northies enter the center part of SDH (where the food is distributed), they see a crowded and congested mess of confusion.  There are people EVERYWHERE, with lines pushing into other lines, and people waiting in two lines at similar times.  If peppered flank steak is the meat entrée, the salad bars become engulfed in the line of steak-eaters.  If there is a particularly enticing pasta dish, there will be an impenetrable line preventing hungry eaters from getting to the pizza or waffle-making sections.  Making matters worse are the indecisive Southies who don’t intricately plan their meals ahead of time by checking the menu online.  They add to the congestion by wandering around the food area looking through all of the options before they make a choice.  If NDH is overly organized with rooms for different food, SDH is an underorganized mess of confusion that Northies will never be able to understand.

The ironic thing about dining hall loyalty at Notre Dame is that both dining halls generally serve the same food.  Sure there are some notable differences like make-your-own-pizza, but when push comes to shove, students can pretty much get the same food at either dining hall.  Because of this, while Notre Dame Students will always loathe eating in the dining hall they don’t frequent, eventually all Notre Dame Students will come to hate the repetition at BOTH dining halls, and will begin to have more trips off-campus to places like Rocco’s, Bruno’s, Chili’s, and even Red Lobster.

#94: Only riding with one cab driver

When Notre Dame Students leave the friendly confines of their campus for drinking purposes, the sensible choice that most make is to take a cab from campus or between off-campus locations.  Notre Dame Students take cabs to bars and house parties every weekend, and they have particular opinions about them.  While some younger students mainly just go to Main Circle and flag down any cab that comes their way, older students discover that they should have their own cab driver with whom they regularly ride.

Notre Dame Students like consistency and the comfort that comes with it.  They like knowing what is going to happen on any given night, and they like being able to dictate when and how things happen (see #25).  Because of this, Notre Dame Students love to have phone numbers for cab drivers in the area and they like to ride between bars and off-campus locations always with the same cab driver.

Students like their cab drivers because they get to know them.  They love the eccentricities that these cab drivers exhibit and the crazy stories that come with them.  They like listening to Christian rock in Jesus's cab, smoking (even though they don’t smoke) with Tony, hearing rumors about other cab drivers from DeeDee, and hearing ridiculous stories from Charlie Chin.  Notre Dame Students like their cab drivers because of the stories they tell and the experiences they can share.

Notre Dame Students also like cab drivers for any knowledge they can share on any given night.  Cab drivers always know where the parties are, and they always know which bars have the longest lines and which bars have been raided by the police.  Many cab drivers might even have some inside information about the football team to share (see #8).  Cab drivers hear things from all around town and they share them with the students who have become their friends.  

Ultimately, Notre Dame Students love their cab drivers because they are really the only locals with whom students have a chance to become friends.   Cab drivers tell their student friends about their lives during the brief trips around town, and students ultimately have a desire to continue riding with the same cab driver every night so that they can develop these relationships, as bizarre as they sometimes might be.

#90: Looking down on locals

Notre Dame Students hail from all regions of the country, but most of them come from similar suburban areas.  When they first arrive at Notre Dame, students don’t really notice the major differences between their hometowns and South Bend because as freshmen they don’t have many reasons or avenues to stray too far outside the Notre Dame Bubble.  As they get older and bring cars to school, have more meals away from the dining halls (see #53), go to local bars, get jobs or volunteer positions, and move out of the dorms, Notre Dame Students spend a lot more of their time off-campus.  As a result, they also spend more time interacting with the local residents of South Bend, and usually formulate negative opinions of the residents they not so flatteringly refer to as “townies.”

The relationship between Notre Dame Students and local residents is a tense one that goes back a lifetime for the locals, and less than four years for the students.  Local residents often become upset with students for a variety of reasons usually related to collegiate debauchery.  Residents complain about loud noise at parties, they complain when students urinate on their property, and they complain that students take up too much space at their favorite bars like The View. 

However, the biggest complaint that locals have of students is the Notre Dame Students’ immense sense of self-importance.  Notre Dame Students take one look at the city of South Bend and immediately think they are better than everybody who lives there.  The students come from wealthier families, they wear nicer clothing (see #5), and they drive more expensive cars.  Students see the quality of their expensive education (see #3) and believe that they already have more success than the majority of South Bend residents will ever have.

These opinions of the students are somewhat justified.  South Bend is a dying rust-belt city that is rampant with crime and poverty.  Students rarely feel safe walking home at night from bars, and off-campus students become accustomed to hearing sirens in their neighborhood.  With the University and its football weekends serving as the singular force behind the local economy, Notre Dame Students believe they are more important than the typical South Bend resident and this gives them a sense of entitlement.

Because of this attitude, South Bend residents sometimes go out of their way to be hostile towards Notre Dame Students.  They report the loud parties that are simply collections of Notre Dame Students trying to be SO College (see #11), they strictly enforce drinking laws in the area, and a few residents even get dangerous and violent towards students.

For their part, the students do try to use the dire economic situation in South Bend as a way to quench their thirst for helping people and making themselves feel like better people.  Notre Dame Students take it upon themselves to seek out service opportunities throughout the city by volunteering to tutor and mentor local youth and constantly raising money for the Center for the Homeless (among other institutions).  While these certainly are noble causes, these volunteer opportunities simply do more to show at least some South Bend residents that Notre Dame Students are arrogant, and confirm Notre Dame Students’ beliefs that they are better than the townies of South Bend.

#72: Talking About How Awesome London Was

One of the great experiences that many students have while attending Notre Dame is studying abroad.  During their junior year students can spend a semester or even a year studying in many far-reaching corners of the globe at locations such as Shanghai, China; Toledo, Spain; Santiago, Chile; Dublin, Ireland; and Fremantle, Australia.  These (and other) locations are interesting because of how their programs are set up.  Many feature students living with host families and taking classes with students from around the world.

Of all the abroad programs, however, the most unique and important is The London Program.

The London Program is unique because it is operated entirely by the University.  Students live in flats filled with other Notre Dame Students (in a building dominated by Notre Dame Students), they take all of their classes with only Notre Dame Students (classes that are taught by Notre Dame professors, in a building owned by the University), and they spend much of the semester travelling around Europe with other Notre Dame Students.

While other abroad programs grant students the opportunity to live and learn with students of different cultures, the London Program gives students the opportunity to create a miniature version of Notre Dame in a city that is decidedly more interesting than South Bend, Indiana.  These students embrace this opportunity by making new groups of Notre Dame friends and expanding their part of the Notre Dame network (see #85).

When these students return to campus from London, they continuously talk about how awesome London was.  They talk about going to clubs that aren’t named Fever.  They talk about going on weekend trips to Prague and Sweden and about drinking Ice Dragon in their flats.  These students talk incessantly about how awesome their booze cruise was on the River Thames, and they have seemingly added the word cheers to their everyday speech.

These students are able to talk about how awesome London was because they have other people to reminisce about it with.  While students in other abroad programs might have known a handful of other people from Notre Dame at their location, students in The London Program literally come back with new groups of friends who they can discuss their adventures with—and all of their old friends will have to sit through their stories again and again (especially the stories about the booze cruise).

However, students that didn’t study in London will eventually learn that the great thing about all of these stories is that it makes an entire class of students more tightly knit.  The 200 (or so) people that go to London each semester might come back with new friends, but these new friends will be linked with old friends and each class will seemingly become smaller. 

For this reason, the students that didn’t go to London tolerate all of the chatter about London because they will have made new friends because of how awesome London was.  

#66: Christmastime

Like most good Catholics (or Protestants, or uncomfortably jealous Jews for that matter), Notre Dame Students love Christmastime.  They love this period between Thanksgiving and the end of finals when they get to celebrate the holiday season on campus with all of their friends, and they love all of the festivities that come with it.

Immediately upon returning from Thanksgiving break, Notre Dame Students will begin the process of transforming their dorm rooms or off-campus homes into their own private winter wonderlands.  Students will put up stockings and ornaments, and they will hang Christmas lights everywhere they can possibly hang them.  These lights will remain hanging in their rooms for the entire second semester.

The decorations that won’t remain into the New Year are those that students organize for the outside of their dorms.  While years ago these lights and decorations were simple and elegant, the competitive nature of Notre Dame Students has brought dorm decorations to new levels of excess while wasting away all the credibility of the University’s attempts to ‘go green’ (although, they do look pretty sweet).

During Christmastime, Notre Dame Students feast on the best dining hall meal of the year (the Prime Rib Candlelight dinner) and they oftentimes break out into Christmas carols on a whim.  They exchange gifts with their closest friends and watch Christmas movies as a respite from exam preparation.  They will watch Home Alone, Elf, Bad Santa, The Santa Clause, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Love, Actually (more on that later).

Students will then throw more Christmas parties than any rational person could anticipate.  Those living in the dorms will be booked with multiple SYRs on the lone weekend between Thanksgiving and study days, with certain dorms lucky enough to host their SYR around the Christmas tree under the dome.  These SYRs will undoubtedly feature hundreds of Notre Dame Men wearing the timeless combination of a suit and a Santa hat. 

Meanwhile, off-campus students will throw ‘ugly-sweater parties’ like it is their job.  Because every student has a desire to plan his or her own party (see #25), their social calendars will be booked with such events on every Thursday-Saturday for three weeks straight.  With egg nog, ugly sweaters, and the perfect Christmas playlist that will prominently feature Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas is You (see #39) and Do They Know It’s Christmas?(see #51) these parties will happen over and over again until everybody goes home for Christmas break.

#62: Tailgating at Actual Tailgates (as opposed to houses or frats)

Notre Dame Students love football and they love drinking.  Therefore Notre Dame Students love tailgating.  However, tailgating at Notre Dame is different than at most schools because students rarely tailgate at off-campus houses and there are no fraternities to host game day parties.

Students at schools across the country enjoy the pageantry of college football with tailgates.  Most of these tailgates occur within a system of houses and Greek life, however, and rarely involve a vehicle with a legitimate “tailgate.”  Students at these schools wear dress clothing that can’t be comfortable for the games, they play beer pong on porches, they do multistory beer bongs, and they yell obscenities at any fans of the opposing team that happen to walk past their house or fraternity.  Ironically, most of these students will never actually make it anywhere close to the stadium as game time approaches. 

At Notre Dame, however, students enjoy tailgating at actual tailgates where they can complain about the shirt while wearing it (see #2), claim to have inside information about the football team (see #8), be nice to opposing fans (see #13), form small circles (see #24), complain about the weather (see #43), network with alums (see #85), and of course, do things that are SO College (see #11)

As freshmen they like to wander the Joyce and Stadium parking lots hoping that random alums will offer them free food and stories about the good old days.  As sophomores they will seek out tailgates hosted by distant relatives of minor acquaintances where they will get free food and potentially sneak a beer or two.  As juniors, Notre Dame Students will now be friends with these distant relatives of minor acquaintances and they will confidently go to the tailgates knowing that they will be offered plenty of free food and alcohol. 

As seniors, some students host their own tailgates.  While some of these students live close enough to campus where they can attempt to throw a state-school-style house party before the game, other students obtain parking passes and throw tailgates in parking lots such as the infamous Radio Tower (or X) Lot. 

Students who throw these tailgates do everything that they can to make sure that their tailgate is the best tailgate.  They get ridiculous amounts of beer and meat.  They play terrifying drinking games such as full beer flip cup, and they shotgun beers at regularly scheduled intervals.  These students will try to convince underclassmen to come to their tailgates, but the underclassmen will be too scared to show up.

Ultimately, Notre Dame Students love tailgating.  Unlike their peers from other schools across the country however, when the game starts the tailgates end.  Nothing is more important than the game.

#60: Staying on One Level of Club Fever

On Thursday nights throughout the school year many Notre Dame Students (some that are over 21 . . . some that aren’t) like to frequent “Michiana’s most versatile night club” for drinking, dancing, and everything a person could ever want from the largest nightclub in northern Indiana.  When they go to Club Fever, however, they refuse to take advantage of all the 16,000 square feet of space it has and instead act like squatters on their level of choice.

When some students enter Club Fever, they immediately retreat to the basement where they can find pool and shuffleboard tables, regular lighting, and a decidedly more rock based playlist.  The basement of Fever is frequented by students that typically go to Finny’s on Thursday nights, but go to Fever because somebody in their group suggested that they need a ‘change of pace’ or are ‘getting into a rut.’ 

Many of these patrons will drunkenly make their way outside and down the alley to Finny’s before 1 AM.

[One important aspect of the Club Fever basement is the bathrooms.  Because the basement is attached to a very mediocre restaurant, the bathrooms are the nicest that can be found at any South Bend drinking establishment.  Ultimately this is unimportant.]

The main level of Club Fever is probably one of the most diverse places in South Bend.  There are drunk girls with the mindset of “F*** guys, I just want to dance” dancing with their girlfriends.  There are local residents who will oftentimes interrupt their dancing for unexpected fist fighting.  There are creepy guys walking around the dance floor trying to act cool but knowing that their best move is to come up at a girl from behind and begin dancing with her before she sees them.  There are also Notre Dame Basketball players.

These people love the main level because the darkness, occasional smoke, incessant strobe lights, and tightly packed crowd create an excellent opportunity for Dance Floor Makeouts.  The $1 Natural Lights also make this one of the least expensive public drinking locations . . . anywhere.

While the main level of Club Fever is one of the most diverse, the upstairs is probably the least diverse.  More open than the basement and better lit than the main level, the upstairs of the bar is enjoyed by the Notre Dame Students that wish they had attended state schools.  These students tend to go out every night of the week and see Thursday nights at Fever as the best of them all.  They kind of know each other well (but kind of don’t); they live off-campus as juniors; they’ve had fake IDs since freshmen year; they’ll spend lots of money on mixed drinks, but they probably won’t get too drunk.  People come to the upstairs of Club Fever to pick up girls/guys and go home with them, something students on the other levels are just not interested in.

***

All three levels combine to make Club Fever one of the most out of place bars in the entire South Bend area.  With three distinct areas (and stairs between them where people are rarely seen) Club Fever is a place that Notre Dame Students love, but for a variety of reasons, and a place where they will continue to go on Thursday nights (at least until it inevitably gets shut down).

#53: Chipotle

By the end of their freshmen year, Notre Dame Students will look for any reason to go off-campus for meals.  Having tested every possible combination of food in their dining hall of choice, Notre Dame Students get into the cars that they weren’t allowed to have when they first arrived and seek out eateries on and around the Grape Road corridor (because that’s the only place students know how to get to).

Of all the eateries that Notre Dame Students frequent, none is as popular or beloved than Chipotle.  Notre Dame Students love the taste of their overly processed fake Mexican food just as much as they love any of the items on this list, and for many years they had been more than willing to take 90 minutes out of their busy days to drive to Mishawaka to satisfy their craving for burritos. 

This week, however, a new Chipotle location is opening in the Eddy Street Commons.  Because the Chipotle is the one place within this overly sterilized downtown area that Notre Dame Students will actually frequent, it is the only place that they have been waiting for. 

Because of the degree to which Notre Dame Students love Chipotle, it goes without saying that this location will quickly become the busiest Chipotle in the world (just like the Subway in LaFortune . . or not) because Notre Dame Students will now be able to ride their bikes or even walk to the location. 

Before long, this eatery will be so successful that the dining halls will have to examine their profit margins, Rocco’s will have to increase their already exorbitant prices, and off-campus students will do far less cooking than the trivial amount they currently do.  With a Chipotle closer to campus than Carroll Hall, Notre Dame Students will see little to no reason to explore other dining options. 

#25: Planning Things

Because Notre Dame Students were all considered ‘leaders’ in high school, they all became accustomed to being followed by their peers in whatever they did.  These students were also used to planning events for student groups, classes, and social activities.  At Notre Dame, planning things takes on an entirely new level as Notre Dame Students overly plan every activity they do.

These activities can range from the trivial (dinner at the dining hall) to the complicated (travelling in Europe over Spring Break) to the unnecessarily complicated (planning dorm parties).  No matter what the activity is, there are usually multiple students in the group that want to take up the mantle of leader and do more planning than would ever be necessary to properly plan the event. 

Oftentimes these activities have something to do with drinking (see #11) where students constantly feel the need to make complicated plans about what they are going to do.  Drinking plans become take on a life of their own due to conflicting pregames, overly complicated party themes, bar crawls, party playlists, finding rooms for dorm parties, money collection, and the mere task of deciding which bar to go to.

Planning events for Notre Dame Students has become an even more complicated task because of technology.  Even a low key night might involve scores of text messages, emails, and Facebook wall posts.  A party (whether it be in a dorm or off-campus) will certainly involve several meetings, multiple ‘epic-length’ emails, a money collection process, debate over playlist options, and almost certainly the creation of a Facebook event.  These parties will certainly be fun for those that attend, but there is an abnormally high amount of planning that goes into a bunch of college students getting drunk.

While football weekends and special events bring out some fairly elaborate plans, the most over-planned times of the year are the weeks at the end of each semester.  In the winter everybody and their roommate feel the need to throw some sort of Christmas themed event.  Usually this entails cheesy sweaters, egg nog, and peppermint schnapps, and sometimes these events even include caroling and Christmas movies.  Off-campus students especially must be prepared to attend between four and eight Christmas parties just because each and every house or apartment that their friends live in will need to plan a party of their own (despite the fact that each of these parties will be the same).

However, the most overly planned time of the year is the end of Spring Semester when everybody wants to throw their own ‘Last Party of the Year’.  This planning reaches its climax at the end of Senior Week when each and every senior needs to plan an event for their friends and family.  Because these Seniors know that tendency of Notre Dame Students to overly plan events, they are sure to get their event on the calendar early (possibly as early as January) so that all of their friends will commit to it before others events are planned.  This inevitably ends with Notre Dame Seniors shuffling their parents from event to event the nights before commencement just so all of their friends are happy (on the plus side, they get really drunk in the process).  

#17: Bitching About Kramer

Despite the fact that most Notre Dame Students live in the dorms, there are a surprising number of off-campus options that seniors (as well as some of the more badass juniors) have to choose from.  Some students choose to live at apartment complexes such as Turtle Creek, Clover Ridge, or Castle Point, but many Notre Dame Students that live off-campus choose to live south of campus in the ever-dangerous northeast neighborhood; in houses and apartments that are almost singularly owned by one Mark Kramer.

While Kramer began his student housing empire with houses on streets like Washington and Corby, recent years have seen him take control of student housing complexes such as Lafayette Apartments, Notre Dame Apartments, and East Race Townhomes.  Because his empire has become so large, most Notre Dame Students who live off-campus encounter Kramer at one point or another and for those who choose to live in one of his properties, most students love to bitch about his service.

Notre Dame Students bitch about Kramer for any number of things.  They bitch about things that are broken in their houses, they bitch when the people who come to fix said things arrive at inopportune times, they bitch because they don’t get their security deposit back, and they bitch because of the manner in which they pay rent.  While some of these complaints are valid, for the most part they just amount to Notre Dame Students bitching.

One notorious Kramer act that caused many students to bitch was a rent payment reminder at the end of the first semester.  Students are encouraged by Kramer to pay their rent by the semester (even though they know this is not the ideal payment method) and many use this method.  Kramer provided these students with the perfect opportunity to bitch when his secretary sent rent payment reminders several days after the payment was due.  While this act, which included assessment of late fees, was hardly polite (but also far from unethical), tenants saw it as Kramer being Kramer.  Many students bitched about it, and some even refused to pay said late fees.

Have no fear, however, because Kramer will be certain to take everything he can out of the student’s security deposits (namely, everything); because with such a domination of the off-campus housing market, does he really need to worry about bad publicity?