This is News in :90 for Friday, May 13, 2011.

This is News in :90 for Wednesday, May 11, 2011.

This is News in :90 for Monday, May 9, 2011.

The Dalai Lama will visit St. Thomas for a private event Saturday, May 7. (abhikrama/Creative Commons)

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He will be on campus for an invitation-only religious ceremony for members of the Tibetan community, said Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations.

“They contacted us to see if they could lease some space for their event,” Hennes said. “We worked out an arrangement with them, and they’ll be using the field house Saturday for a religious ceremony.”

The Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex will be closed from midnight Friday until 6 p.m. Saturday to accommodate the Dalai Lama and the rest of the group, Hennes said. The field house will reopen Sunday morning because ROTC has to use it for an event Saturday night, he said.

Hennes said St. Thomas is not participating in the event but is helping with logistics and setting up. It’s similar to how St. Thomas rents the chapel for weddings but is not involved with the ceremony itself, Hennes said.

“They’re not touring the campus,” he said. “They’ll come in and be in the field house for a good chunk of the day.”

The Dalai Lama is visiting the University of Minnesota Sunday, May 8. The visit is part of the “One Heart, One Mind, One Universe” trip sponsored by the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the U of M and the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota. It is the Dalai Lama’s first trip to Minnesota since 2001, according to the U of M’s website.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.

Poetry professor Leslie Miller and student Katherine Dunlop joined director Katie Broadwell in the studio to talk about National Poetry Month.

The alert said the woman was sexually assaulted in her room by an acquaintance sometime on or before Dec. 13, 2010, but in accordance with university policy and federal law, and at the request of the woman, no additional information about the reported crime is available.

Michael Barrett, Public Safety associate director, said Public Safety can’t release details about the incident, but he added, “It isn’t that we don’t want to. We have to balance the rights of the victim and rights of the community.”

He said female undergraduate students have a high probability of being sexually assaulted sometime during their college years, usually by someone they know, as happened in this case.

“Quite a few cases are never reported,” he added.

The alert also said that “because the perpetrator is unknown to Public Safety, it can be assumed that conditions continue to exist that may pose a threat to members and guests of the [St. Thomas] community.”

Barrett said this is the first on-campus sexual assault reported since 2007, but there have been sexual assaults reported off-campus during the past few years. According to the 2010 Campus Security Act Report, the most recent report available, there were six on-campus forcible sexual offenses reported in 2007 and none in 2008 or 2009.

April is national Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Barrett said there is a “pretty good chance” this could have played a role in the female student’s decision to report the assault now, four months after it occurred.

“The campus community is talking about sexual assault, and it’s very likely that there are many women paying attention now versus a couple weeks or months ago,” he said.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.

This is Sports in :60 for Wednesday, April 6, 2011.

This is News in :90 for Tuesday, March 29, 2011.

The Board of Trustees voted at its February meeting to allow Roman Catholic religious or Roman Catholic lay people – Catholics who aren’t priests or members of religious orders – to be hired as president in addition to priests.

The Rev. Dennis Dease, current St. Thomas president, is preceded by a long line of presidents who were also priests. (Dan Fastner/TommieMedia)

Susan Alexander, executive adviser to the president, said the board of trustees was reviewing bylaws and decided it was time to update this bylaw, too.

“The last time we had to recruit for a president, the number of priests available for academic work was a much smaller pool,” Alexander said. “[The board of trustees] decided that they needed to get the best person possible for this job.”

Alexander said the change does not mean the Rev. Dennis Dease, St. Thomas president, is going to retire soon, but the board is making plans before it needs them.

“He has not announced any plans for retirement,” Alexander said. “You need at least a year’s lead time on a presidential search.”

She said priests are needed more in parishes.

“You can substitute a good lay person for the presidency of a university but not for a parish,” Alexander said. “Fewer priests have been encouraged to go on and get academic degrees and Ph.D.s and teach in universities because of the shortage of priests, so that really does limit the pool.”

Michael Galligan-Stierle, president and CEO of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said 60 percent of Catholic schools nationwide have lay presidents.

“In the next 10 years, lay presidents will significantly increase as Catholic schools have the oldest median age of presidents,” Galligan-Stierle said. He also said choosing a president is “not a matter of lay or priest or religious. It is a matter of competence.”

“An unqualified priest-president would not be a good choice for St. Thomas, just as an ill-suited lay person would not be a good decision by the board,” Galligan-Stierle said. “When a good leader is chosen, priest, religious or lay, the school thrives.”

Benefits of a priest-president

The Rev. Michael Becker, St. John Vianney Seminary rector, said he understands why the board made the decision but added that having a priest as president is valuable for a Catholic university.

“From a pragmatic perspective I understand, but from a visionary perspective, I have some concerns,” Becker said. “I want the university to remain strong in its Catholic identity and to grow and flourish.”

He said having priests as Catholic university presidents can lead to more priests in parishes.

“There is a tension, because we need more priests in general,” Becker said. “How shall we obtain those vocations? One of the primary places of investment should be a university setting, especially a Catholic university.”

Having a priest-president at a Catholic university would encourage young men to follow that example and enter the priesthood, Becker said, in addition to creating faith-filled students who later raise their children in the Catholic faith and encourage them to become priests.

He said priests bring something unique to the presidential role.

“A lay Catholic person could be a wonderful person with many personal gifts for leadership, speaking, discernment, practical wisdom for where to put money and for balancing a budget and goods on campus,” Becker said. “But the priest in his own being is a sign and witness of our heavenly calling.

“When we look at the president of a university and see a priest, we’re remembering the ultimate purpose of why we live and study at all.”

Becker said a priest-president is bonded to the archbishop and the archdiocese in a deeper way than a lay person.

“Some universities were inspired by particular religious orders, such as the Jesuits or Benedictines, but this particular university was founded in the spirituality of St. Peter and the diocesan priesthood,” Becker said. “Maintaining a diocesan priest at the helm maintains an intimate connection with the diocese.”

Don Briel, Center for Catholic Studies director, agreed that a lay president would not have the same symbolic relationship with the Catholic church as a priest. He also said a good lay president would need to have the “ability to translate the unique mission of a Catholic university.”

“It will be important as we look at lay candidates that we expect something more than the mere fact that they happen to be Catholic,” Briel said.

Some St. Thomas alumni have asked Briel if he sees the board’s decision as a retreat from St. Thomas’ Catholic commitment, he said. From a public relations viewpoint, he said, the bylaw change could be seen as a move away from the St. Paul-Minneapolis Archdiocese, especially after the board of trustees’ decision a few years ago to no longer have the archbishop automatically serve as chairman of the board.

Briel said he understands the challenges the board is facing as more priests are sent to parishes instead of further academic study. He added he is glad to see a “strong preference” for priests and religious was included in the bylaw change.

Presidential searches will consider many factors

Alexander said a search committee will decide what to look for in future presidential searches, and the “strong preference” for hiring priests and religious will be a factor.

“Any time you’re in a search, there are always trade-offs,” she said. “It doesn’t mean any priest or religious who applies is in. It just means that’s an important factor.”

She said the next St. Thomas president the board chooses will be someone who will carry on St. Thomas’ Catholic traditions.

Galligan-Stierle also said although the bylaw change allows a lay person to become president, it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of another priest-president.

“This does not mean the next president will be a lay person,” he said. “It only means that the board will now be able to choose the most gifted and qualified baptized Catholic to lead the university.”

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.

“We do have one student who’s over there,” Dohmen said. “We’ve actually heard from him, and he’s doing just fine.”

A magnitude-8.9 earthquake hit Japan Friday and triggered a 23-foot tsunami and more than 50 aftershocks, many of which were magnitude 6.0. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds more are missing or injured.

The quake ranks as the fifth-largest in the world since 1900 and was nearly 8,000 times stronger than the quake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand last month.

Dohmen said an e-mail was sent to the student studying in Japan asking if he was OK, and the e-mail included all “interested parties” at St. Thomas.

“He’s in Osaka. He’s about 300 miles southwest of where it happened,” Dohmen said.

The quake hit cities and villages along a 1,300-mile stretch of Japan’s coast that included Tokyo. The epicenter of the quake was closest to the northeastern coastal city Sendai, where an estimated 200 to 300 bodies were found.

Some former St. Thomas Japanese exchange students were in Japan when the earthquake and tsunami hit. Masato Naka, a sophomore who studied at St. Thomas and has returned to Japan, said he felt the quake “a little.”

“It was very far from us, but we felt the shocks for a long time,” Naka said. “I don’t know anyone who was injured. My family and friends are fine.”

He said some people are staying in schools or other buildings instead of their homes because public transportation is not running.

Senior Mimi Watanabe is also a former Japanese exchange student who studied at St. Thomas, and she said, “Japan looks pretty bad for now.”

“We don’t have phone service,” Watanabe said. “No hot water, no gas.”

Tsunami warnings were extended to areas across the Pacific Ocean Friday, including the west coast of the U.S. and Hawaii. Some areas along the west coast were also evacuated in preparation for the tsunami waves, but so far the waves have not caused any major damage.

Tarkor Zehn and Ryan Shaver contributed to this story.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.