An article in the Boston University Daily Free Press says that the The University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Norwich University in Vermont have come up with plans to expand the school cemeteries so alumni can be buried there.
Although Notre Dame's Cedar Grove Cemetery has been reserved for faculty and staff since the university was founded in 1843, the "Coming Home Project," initiated this past spring in response to alumni requests, will expand the cemetery to allow for alumni burials and funeral services.
"So many [alumni] said to me, 'Notre Dame is home for us now, Notre Dame is where we gather, so this would be like coming home, if we could be buried there,'" said Rev. William Seetch, the university's alumni chaplain. The name of the project represents the sentiment behind it, he said.
Seetch emphasized the university's role in creating solidarity among family members who are geographically dispersed.
"Our society is so mobile," he said. "People no longer have the family center back where they and their grandparents and parents may have lived. As careers and jobs move away, those centers break up, and what many families have in common is the place where they were educated."
