<p>I truly admire the University of Chicago (as I’ve said elsewhere), and members of my family have gone there and flourished, but I have misgivings about it too. Someone who’s very dear to me graduated from the U of C a couple of years back, and a few months ago she told me that three of her friends from there had committed suicide during the past year. Also, several years ago a relative of mine who went there was parking her bicycle outside her dorm (the old hotel they were using on the lakefront) when a student jumped from an upper story and landed at her feet. Now obviously some people dislike a religious milieu, but there is something to be said for the spiritual atmosphere at a school like Notre Dame. I certainly am not claiming that students there don’t have psychological problems, etc., but from my own experience I can say that students are treated in a holistic way- not as automatons or recalcitrant children as has been suggested here. I don’t view this as a kind of safety shield, but rather as something that is wholly positive, and extremely rare.</p>