There is no doubt about it, Notre Dame feels like home. We love our teachers, we love our classmates, and we love our school,but what if it really was your home?
Until the 1970s, Notre Dame had students living on campus full time. Where students currently take courses upstairs used to be boarder’s bedrooms where girls slept every night, English teacher Peggy Brady said in an email. The larger classrooms were dorm rooms with multiple students living in each one. Girls had curtains separating their beds and small dressers. The smaller rooms, now faculty offices, were shared between two juniors or seniors. Pay attention to the inside of the offices – some still have two closets leftover from Notre Dame’s boarding school years.
The boarders came from different parts of the world – the majority being from Hong Kong, South America and the Philippines. However, there were also some from Hawaii and closer places like San Mateo and Fresno, Brady said.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t just girls from abroad that boarded at Notre Dame. Non-boarding school students would also board at Notre Dame for short periods of time if their parents were leaving for a business trip or vacation. During their short stays, they got to experience what the resident students did everyday.
On Saturday mornings, boarders in groups of six or seven could be seen walking down Ralston Avenue, catching a bus to Hillsdale Mall. Although they were allowed off campus during weekends, they were not allowed to go home. Even local boarders could not go back home unless their family was having a special occasion, said Brady.
Boarding students left behind a more memorable mark than just their old closets. The first ever Aquacades was started by boarding school students from Hawaii. The tradition lives on to this day and remains a unique cornerstone of Notre Dame’s identity.
Overall Notre Dame was a successful boarding school. However, there are some traumatic events hiding in its history. One of the boarding students drowned in the swimming pool. Three girls went into the pool on a hot day and one girl simply never surfaced. Sister Frances Charlton, the principal of the school at the time, said they were lucky that the school didn’t get sued. There was also an incident where two girls said they were going home for a birthday party, but in reality they were going to a hotel in San Francisco. However, they left evidence behind in the form of a yearbook. The hotel found it, called the school and the girls were caught. As a result, they were expelled, Brady said.
Notre Dame officially closed as a boarding school in the early 70s, a decision made by Sister Frances Charlton due to staffing issues and other problems.
It’s hard to believe that we walk the same floors of a school that girls used to call home. After a long and busy day at school, they would walk up the same stairs that we walk to get to their rooms. The boarders have also left behind a legacy that will never fade – Aquacades. It is a monumental Notre Dame tradition and hopefully every time it comes to mind, you think of the boarding school students who started it.
