Billboards tout IU accomplishments

Billboards tout IU accomplishments\nINDIANAPOLIS -- IU has started hanging billboard advertisements along the highways running through the state's capital to show what its graduates are doing for the state.\nLast week, 22 billboards that cost $35,000 went up in Marion County and will stay up for a month before another 22 replace them.\nLisa Townsend, IU's marketing director, said the university bought the billboards to raise awareness of its contributions and help increase support for higher education during the current legislative session.\nIU's campaign is another indication of mass media marketing efforts on which many of the state's public and private colleges have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.\nIn the past few years, universities around Indiana have put up billboards primarily to attract students and sharpen their image. Indiana State University has 14 billboards in the state. Purdue University has also begun a small campaign.\nColleges now are targeting the business community and lawmakers to show how colleges benefit the state.\nMost of IU's billboards say the university has 200,000 graduates living in Indiana, while highlighting a teacher, doctor, business-person, forest ranger, research scientist or museum curator.\nNight club owner running for City-County Council \nINDIANAPOLIS -- The owner of the Slippery Noodle Inn, a well-known downtown nightclub, is making a run for a seat on the Indianapolis City-County Council.\nHal Yeagy, who took over the bar from his late father in 1984, is seeking the Republican nomination for an at-large seat on the council.\nYeagy, 45, said he was worried about the city's continuing budget problems and the number of corporate headquarters that have moved from Indianapolis.\nYeagy, whose bar features live blues bands, also says he is bothered by a council proposal to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.\n"If my clientele wants a nonsmoking business, they'll tell me by not coming in here," he said.\nMarshall County hears proposal for cultural center\nPLYMOUTH, Ind. -- A proposal to build an American Indian cultural center in northern Indiana has local officials interested, but they want to hear more.\n"Right now, we have more questions than answers," said Marshall County Council President Fred Lintner.\nMembers of the National Center for Great Lakes Native American Culture formed a nonprofit organization in 2001, with its main goal of preserving the history and culture of the Indian tribes that lived around the Great Lakes, group chairman Greg Ballew said.\nThe group has been looking at several areas in the Midwest for its cultural center and its national headquarters, including the site of former Potawatomi Chief Menominee's village about 25 miles south of South Bend.\nMarshall County is an option for the center because of the history of the land, Ballew told the South Bend Tribune for a story Monday. But he said the group wanted to know it had the support and backing of the community before it selected a site.