Posted on 05/21/2007 10:38:45 AM PDT by NYer
This university has a strong liberal presence. You might remember that The Insurgent student newspaper at the U of O (in Eugene, 40 minutes away) printed pornographic drawing of Jesus Christ about a year ago. This was lauded by some here at OSU. The university has a very strong gay presence (with pride week, featuring "lube olympics" and other vile events). Despite the secularism and liberalism, the Catholic students here are pretty cool.
Well, some friends of mine got the idea to "Saint bomb" campus. Using chalk, hundreds of Catholic Saint names were written all over campus last week. This was done during perhaps the busiest week of spring term. Many events took place this week on the Quad. The Genocide Awareness Project came to the quad, drawing a large number of people. The "Snow in the Quad" (put on by the Protestant apparel designer CIVIL) came to set up the next day. The Relay for Life event happened at night on the quad, which meant hundreds of students were walking by Saint names nonstop all night long. We also used chalk to advertise Mass times. Lots of exposure for the Church!
Here are two videos documenting this event:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yaAM5IpLqU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amsW6p13ofE
The Newman Center had a booth set up inside the Memorial Union building with a "Find your Saint" computer set up. Some non-Catholics came by to find their Saints. Other Catholics who haven't been to Church for a while saw their confirmation Saint name on the ground. Other Catholics got a lot of joy to see the names and to see Christ's presence in a tangible form on campus. And some others were annoyed at the audacity of these students.
We are trying to get more exposure to this project, so if you'd like to link to this video, please do! We'd like to see others get this idea, and maybe do it at their campus, to remind wayward Catholics of their roots and to show a strong presence of Faith! The response we've gotten from people around the community has been amazing, and the priests loved it!
One more thing to note... we got permission from the Memorial Union (the student union on campus) as well as the Church before doing this.
Enjoy!
We only allow a limited amount of diversity. Catholics! The very notion!
Lol ... I was thinking about that movie this morning. It truly is a classic ;-)
** Other Catholics who haven’t been to Church for a while saw their confirmation Saint name on the ground. Other Catholics got a lot of joy to see the names and to see Christ’s presence in a tangible form on campus.**
Wow! These kids have guts! In my state of all places!
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Actually the author’s headline is erooneous. Just saw that. Oregon State is in Corvallis. This took place in Eugene, the home of the University of Oregon. Big difference.
AWESOME!!!
Oops.
erooneous
erroneous
Why would they be annoyed? Isn’t this art?
Chalk art!
Who knows? They are the academic elite in Oregon. There's bound to be some openly anti-religious sentiment.
It is a big difference. At both my daughters graduations there were standing ovations for the military graduates at OSU.
**At both my daughters graduations there were standing ovations for the military graduates at OSU.**
Somehow I don’t think that would happen at the U of O. LOL! This story happening at the U of O, however, is fabulous, in my eyes.
Thanks for the ping S........
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hey cool article!
i gotta do this at my university!!!!!
That was my only objection. Great work!
Since I'm not a member of a religion that teaches of the saints, I don't clearly understand their significance, but I know their stories mean something to a lot of people and I respect that.
So I would not object if something like that did happen in Eugene, though I can assure you there are plenty of folks about who would, and it would have been investigated as a possible hate crime (whatever that is).
I guess I was really surprised since I thought it was in Eugne. LOL! Should have known!
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