Students ask campus, 'Where is the love?'

The slogan "Where is the love?" is tattooed on walkways in sidewalk chalk, stapled onto bulletin boards in buildings and painted on the sides of bridges blanking significant portions of the IU campus landscape.\nHowever, many campus community members wonder if this so-called "love" can be located, or whether students, faculty, town residents and guests have fallen victim to missionary propaganda? Although a clever rhetorical question engineered to stimulate curiosity, "Where is the love?" has infiltrated the mindset of campus community members because of its graffiti like nature.\nFortunately, the love can be found in many ways at many places within the campus community. Junior Laura Bonano, a food service worker at Sugar & Spice, said some Indiana Memorial Union patrons locate their love in cookies, ice cream and other delicious desserts.\n"It usually takes students one second to decide what they love," Bonano said. "The no-bake cookies are our best seller -- we sell about 22,000 each school year, followed by the chocolate chip. My favorite is the iced cookies, it doesn't matter what kind of icing. We change the icing seasonally, it depends on the decorations."\nFor the current season, campus community members can project their love toward pumpkin-face cookies, peanut butter cookies, cranberry oatmeal cookies, turtle cookies and sugar cookies iced in yellow, green, blue or purple icing, to name a few.\nFor campus community members without a sweet tooth, the IU Main Library offers students, faculty, Bloomington residents and guests the opportunity to locate love in books.\nSenior Adele McCormack, a Main Library assistant, said there are millions of pages of love within the 11 floors of limestone walls.\n"I don't know if students really love the books here," McCormack said. "The graduate students seem to. We have about 6 million books; there is a wide variety for any reading pleasure students may have. I definitely should have read more during my undergraduate career."\nWhen confused with ambiguous questions, campus community members will often look to locate love in problematic places. Anne Reese, director of Health and Wellness Education at the IU Health Center, said the IUHC can assist campus community members in their quest to find genuine love.\n"All of the services at the IU Health Center are confidential and private," Reese said. "We help students with relationship problems: intimacy issues and sexual issues; any 'couple' issue is something you could talk about with a counselor as long one person is an IU student. We can teach students how to communicate better or how to discover what he or she wants. We can also help students work through their sexual relationships."\nAbiding by the principle "no glove -- no love," students can obtain one to four free condoms from a punchbowl at the main desk on the third floor, or in the Health and Wellness office on the fourth floor.\nBehind the scenes of the "Where is the love?" campaign, sophomore Shannon Perkins, who was wearing a yellow shirt with a question mark printed on the front Monday afternoon near the IMU, said the IU Campus Crusade for Christ is responsible for tempting the natural curiosity of campus community members with sidewalk chalk and Web site advertisements.\n"A couple people introduced 'Where is the love?' to (our group) one day," Perkins said. "A good 50 or 60 of us -- Campus Crusade for Christ members, showed up to do chalking and postering last week to spark interest in what's going on. This week, it's getting the Web site out and we're getting people to it. Basically, we are not after fun; we have fun doing this."\nSpotted throughout the borders of campus this week, IU CCC participants are wearing yellow T-shirt costumes to advertise the Web site www.wherelove.com to anyone who looks their direction. Perkins said the IU CCC meets at 8 p.m. every Thursday in Woodburn Hall, room 100. During each meeting, students join in the worship of God and praise of Jesus Christ through song.\nBased on faith driven love, the IU CCC would like to see campus community members forming a closer relationship with God while living in this "hate-filled world," \n"God is the source of our love and that when Jesus came to this Earth, he loved people first and foremost," CCC participant Alexandre Costa said in a statement.\nSenior Cori Boersma, who was also adorned in a yellow costume masked by a question mark, said she was wearing the T-shirt because she's asking herself the question: "Where is the love?"\n"I personally believe that real love can only be found through God and Jesus," Boersma said. "I think that a lot of people here have messed up what the message of Jesus is. I think the real message is love; the real point is that God is the greatest power in the world."\nLove can also be located and shared by the merchants offering business and services to campus community members. \nBloomington resident Chris Toon, who works at Amused Clothing -- a smoke shop and alternative lifestyle retailer, said love can only be located in the hearts of campus community members.\n"Love is inside of you; whether or not you realize it, that's a different story," Toon said. "Love is a form of self-expression that can be experienced by driving across the country, sitting in a hot spring, climbing a mountain, swimming in the ocean or by visiting a redwood tree. It's in you; you have to find your own way. There are a million ways to find yourself: yoga, church or climbing a tree."\nRegardless of God-like love, projected love for Jesus or the soul search for self-love, campus community members can locate love just about anywhere on campus. \n -- Contact staff writer David A. Nosko at dnosko@indiana.edu.