John Jenkins, ND's president, spoke in Dillon for more than an hour tonight. The dude is smart, and he really cares about Notre Dame. He didn't really say anything terribly interesting, except that he essentially said that he wants to be a religious Princeton. He actually did name Princeton, which was neato with Tim Tim there and all.

He is a lot more interesting when he's not talking to a group of parents with their kids. He cracked some jokes, was thoughtful, and didn't speak in platitudes, which was great and somewhat surprising.

Some highlights with my opinion:
-ND isn't going to be adding students any time soon (we'll see)
-There are enough smart Catholic people that we can hire more Catholics and still keep up the academics (yeah maybe. we're going to have to pay new profs more if that's the idea. It'd probably be worth it)
-Picking a political candidate isn't a one-issue deal (duh. Except some people do vote that way.)
-He believes strongly in the b-school, because business runs the world. He wants principled businesspeople who act according to conscience, and thinks ND produces those types (absolutely)
-We need better engineering and social sciences (yeah, probably)
-Not for dropping the drinking age to 21, because of the statistics of more 18-21 auto accidents (well, there are trade offs to everything. GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH)
-Although he didn't explicitly say it, he is going to crack down on a-hole NDSP cops who are giving kids a lot of crap at football games. There has been a lot on the internets about these cops recently, and there have already been results. The number of arrests last weekend at the game dropped to 9 from 31 at the previous game (good for him)

Well, there was more, but I forgot. I feel good about the future of ND