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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

Editorial: Indianan lines on a map

What makes Indiana special

You are not an Indianan, at least not anymore.

You see, unbeknownst to most residents of Indiana, the federal government considered us Indianans for the longest time — that is, until Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, and Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Indiana, cosponsored a bill to rectify this travesty.

This is, to say the least, not a very controversial bill.

It is a simple designation for the inhabitants of a somewhat arbitrarily drawn landmass in the middle of the country, yet, as evidenced by this widely accepted bill, there is a widely-accepted term for these people — Hoosiers.

The existence of a name implies the existence of an identity. We don’t, after all, generally call ourselves North Americans, Western hemisphereians, NAFTAites, or whatever other clever demonymns escape me currently.

The residents of Indiana therefore have decided to separate themselves from those of their neighboring regions. The good people north of the river choose not to be Kentuckians just as the people east of Cincinnati choose not to be Buckeyes (hopefully we can change that one next).

All this begs the question of what the difference is and if it is justified.Cutting to the chase, it is. While it is probably true that the values, experiences, and general outlook of one residing in Terra Haute, Indiana, are not all that different than 150 miles and one dividing line away in Champaign, Illinois, there is still that dividing line. That line produces differences.

Ask citizens of each town where the city is, and you’ll probably get sent in different directions. Ask what they are proud of about their area, and the answers will likewise differ.

Essentially, the reason there are differences may be long forgotten (boundary lines drawn a long time ago) but that does not mean the differences themselves are arbitrary. Being a Hoosier is about exactly whatever we Hoosiers want it to be about, and that’s the amazing part. We have about 36,000 square miles in one of the wealthiest countries that has ever existed to define exactly as we please.

So far, we have decided that involves racing cars, amber fields of grain, sycamores, Joe Donnelly and Todd Young, basketball, IU and Purdue, and lots and lots of corn. The beautiful thing about it all is that we are the ones defining ourselves and get to do so forever. This process recently marked its 200th year with our state’s bicentennial. This is a way of acknowledging our history. In other words, it is how previous generations choose to define the state.

This is a process that our generation will soon be embarking on in full. Just as our grandparents decided on fewer log cabins and Lincoln beards and more paved roads and high-tech farming, so too will we get to leave our mark. That is what I like most about being a Hoosier. Precisely because our borders and differences with those in Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, etc. are trivial, we have full liberty to make our defining factors whatever we want. We can’t wait to see what they will be next.

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