Six Months Too Late

On October 27, 2010, Notre Dame student filmmaker Declan Sullivan died while filming practicee from atop a hydraulic lift during a windstorm. Yesterday, the university announced that it would no longer use these lifts to film football practices, and would be installing a camera system. Mounted on fifty foot poles, these cameras would record the practices and use fiber optics to relay the images back to the control room across the street, where the films can be analyzed.

Rev. John Jenkins, president at Notre Dame, stated "I said in the days after Declan's death that we would do everything in our power to make changes to ensure that such an accident does not happen again -- here or elsewhere," Jenkins said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press in regards to the new system. What is left out of that statement is that everything in his power involved waiting six months after the tragedy occurred.

What is left unsaid in his statement is whether or not the hydraulic lifts were used after the incident involving Declan Sullivan. For all the handwringing, promises to change systems, and tributes for this student, did it really need to take so long to change the dynamic? These practices were still filmed for the coaching staff - probably by some other student who was placed upon another elevated platform.

This declaration, while dressed up as a positive for Notre Dame in keeping a promise made, is really nothing more than a poor joke. If they were truly interested in 'doing everything in their power' and 'making changes to ensure such an accident does not happen again', then the camera system would have been installed within a couple of weeks. This should not have taken six months. The only logical explanation? That Rev. Jenkins did not want to disrupt the staff of the football team and make them adjust to a new way of obtaining data until after the season.

Notre Dame, the football staff, and Rev. Jenkins failed both Declan Sullivan and his family when he died during the windstorm. Six months later, they have failed him again.