The university informed residents of Stanford and Keenan Halls that their communities would be displaced effective immediately as the university announced plans to construct a gigawatt data center.
Shortly after residents of the affected dorms were informed of the changes, Residential Life sent an email to the rest of campus. It read, “As a Catholic university, we are informed by the universal mission of the Church to serve those most in need of intelligence. Motivated by this mission, we are eager to supply artificial intelligence to the most retarded.”
The university quickly sent a follow up email to the campus community apologizing for their use of the word retarded; it slipped undetected through their AI editor. Grok originally wrote the statement.
“Hell, ever since we went test-optional, many of our students could use a little of this artificial intelligence,” said one AI advocate. The statement and advocate severely misunderstand ‘artificial’ intelligence.
Residents of Stanford Hall will spend the rest of the year in the recently vacant Howard Hall. Although there is not space for all of them, they are expected to “squeeze in,” according to a statement from Residential Life.
Keenan Hall residents will be relocated to Stepan Center. According to university officials, “We just needed somewhere to put them.” The university will be providing cots to residents, but cannot promise running water, as water resources will need to be diverted to the new data center.
Some have argued that the cinderblock construction of Keenan and Stanford was meant to be temporary and the dorms would have to undergo significant renovations, if not demolition, in the coming years.
When asked, a ND Facilities spokeswoman told the Rover, “No, the buildings were totally fine. We purely needed the space for data centers—and the power plant being nearby is a huge bonus.”
The North Quad location was chosen because of its proximity to the power plant. The power plant, which runs on turbo engines, is reported to have sufficient power to keep the datacenter running, so long as the rest of campus stays dark.
North Quad was reportedly the only location on campus with close enough proximity to the plant to draw sufficient power.
Notre Dame originally considered placing the data center off campus in nearby South Bend or a surrounding town, but consistent protest from municipal groups proved too much resistance. Between that and city government red tape, the university gave up and instead decided to relocate the data center to campus, where the university is also the municipal government.
Here, any protests that lasted longer than 15 minutes were quashed with overwhelming force, as the law demands. The first couple protests gained major traction among the student population, but after seven deaths, student spirits were subdued.
One Keenan Knight told the Rover, “I always thought Keenan was worth dying for, but I changed my mind.”
In a ground-breaking ceremony (literally, they already started digging into North Quad), the university president addressed crowds gathered to protest. But by the time the crowd scattered at 14 minutes and 59 seconds, the president hadn’t yet finished his story about how this data center is going to help the new mom in Kenya who smiled one time.
Funded by a 150 million dollar gift from the Lilly Endowment, the project aims to advance the University of Notre Dame as a leader on the frontier of AI research and ethics.
Caleb Vaughan is a senior who could use a little more of this artificial intelligence they’re working on. Send him some of yours at cvaugha2@nd.edu.