sao: the student life

Bookstore Basketball is the largest outdoor, five-on-five basketball tournament in the world. More than 700 teams comprised of students, faculty and staff from the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College participate in one of the most exciting annual events on campus. The month-long competition features creative team names and a range of skill sets. An open tournament for all participating teams is run concurrently with a women’s tournament. Registration fees for Bookstore Basketball also support a great cause, the Jumpball Programme, a series of youth sports camps held each summer in Jamaica.

Visit the Bookstore Basketball website for more information on Jumpball and the tournament. Team registration for the 2012 tournament is now open until 11:59 pm on Friday, March 23rd.

Each year during the spring semester, the Notre Dame undergraduate student body participates in the student election process. Once potential candidates are deemed eligible by the student-run Judicial Council, campaigning and debates are organized. Online elections are conducted for the positions of Student Body President and Vice-President, the officers of each Class Council, the Off-Campus Council, and Senators from each residence hall.

Visit the Judicial Council website for more information on the student election process, and for information about Judicial Council’s Peer Advocacy program.

One of the most popular student groups on campus will be embarking soon on their trip to Washington D.C. to participate in the annual March for Life. The event draws more than 100,000 participants from across the country and is the largest student group trip sponsored at Notre Dame, counting hundreds of students, faculty and staff among its participants.

Visit the ND Right To Life website for event details and photos, plus information and resources for the many other projects ND Right to Life sponsors throughout the year.

Clubs and Organization Leaders: Student Activities is sponsoring a contest to identify some of the most creative design, advertising, and promotion for events and activities on campus. There are four categories for the contest:

• T-Shirts
• Black and White Posters
• Full Color Posters
• Websites

A panel of Student Activities staff members will evaluate submissions, and winners of each category will receive $75 for their club or organization.  In addition, the top submissions will be entered into a national contest to compete against print and web design pieces created by student organizations on other college/university campuses. We’ll also feature some of the best designs here on our blog.

TO ENTER: Email the design (pdf, eps, tiff or jpeg) to mhavlik@nd.edu no later than the last day of class (Thursday, December 9) at 5pm. Please include the name of the student who designed the work.

We were popping up all over campus this weekend checking out all of the FYO events coordinated by the residence hall orientation staffs. Without a doubt, ND students are at their most creative when they are devising new and interesting ways to challenge one another with icebreakers and contests on the quad. Check out the photos below and click on each to view a larger version.

Four years ago, SAOnline was launched. On Friday morning last week, the 10,000th request was fully approved in the system. It is a remarkable milestone, albeit one that will receive little to no public fanfare.

Every day, students log-in to SAOnline and complete requests for approval for the myriad activities that populate student life throughout the year. A request to reserve a weekly club meeting space for the semester. A request to imprint a scarf adorned with a residence hall mascot and the ND monogram. A series of requests that result in the to invite hundreds or even thousands of participants to a fundraising benefit on the quad. Nearly every organized student life event was developed by student leader planning and execution, and the first step in the process was often an SAOnline request.

Through SAOnline, we know how involved you are in cultivating student life on campus. It isn’t a small number of students that actively participate in clubs and organizations at Notre Dame. More than 2,000 individual students were responsible for at least one of our 10,000 approved requests to date.

We just updated the system to better serve you as well, so check it out. The entire SAOnline system was built based upon feedback from student leaders and our resources and services for students will only grow if you continue to provide that feedback. Keep letting us know what you think and make suggestions about how we can improve.

Welcome back to campus and have a great 2010-11 year.

Welcome to the student life, a blog created by the Student Activities Office. We’re taking some time this summer to work with this new blog platform in preparation for the fall semester. We are looking forward to using this space to introduce a variety of discussion topics:

• SAO, student group and other campus-wide programs
• Student leadership opportunities and resources
• Reflections on daily student life experiences
• … and more

If you have an idea for a new topic or just want to get to know more about SAO and our programs, leave a comment here or email us at sao@nd.edu. As always, find out about the latest campus-wide events at sao.nd.edu/events. Go Irish!