Wanted: Scandal

This has been a good couple of weeks for us here at the paper: a new basketball coach, a crooked IU Student Association election, the run-up to Little 500 ... \nBut there are only about three weeks left in this semester’s edition of the Indiana Daily Student (our last Spring ’08 issue is on Monday of exam week), and you know what would really cap things off? What would make this the best semester ever? If we could close it with a sex scandal.\nLook, for example, at the coverage of not just former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation following the exposure of his patronage of high-price call girls, but also the dirt dug up about his replacement David Paterson’s affairs – not to mention the allegations that former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and his wife had a ménage-a-trois with their driver. If we just applied ourselves here in Bloomington, we could share in this excitement!\nNow, I know this is IU. Sometimes – say, while reading the “Overheard at IU ...” Facebook group – it seems like it would be difficult to still scandalize the campus community. But we’ve managed it in the past. Take, for instance, the furor last year that stopped “Girls Gone Wild” from sponsoring an event at Jake’s Nightclub. Or the 2004 controversy over the IU student who posted on her Web site semi-nude pictures of herself in her dorm room and the Briscoe-Shoemaker showers. Or the brouhaha over the porn film shot in Teter Quad six years ago. And, if I might say so, all these were pretty lame – we can certainly do better.\nBringing Former President Bill Clinton to campus last week was a good start – sort of a prologue, perhaps, a nod to the past. But we need to come up with something original. The idea of the student-professor affair is pretty tired, as is the fraternity-sorority orgy. No, we need something that will get pundits roiling. Something that incites water cooler debate. Something that touches upon hot-button issues in American society. Something that will get the resultant IDS article linked to the Drudge Report. \nWhile, for reasons of preserving journalistic distance, I can’t determine what shape this scandal will take, I have faith in the vast stock of imaginative minds populating IU’s campus. I would, however, note that the past scandals have been rather tacky and sexist, whereas we have the potential to come up with something tawdry and titillating. This scandal needs to be as much about high ideas as nether regions. \nBut see here: This isn’t just about helping the newspaper move copy or pushing the envelope on societal mores. At present, IU rests at number 75 in the U.S. News and World Report College Rankings; the Hoosiers were beaten in the first round of the NCAA tournament; and we didn’t even make the Princeton Review’s top five party schools. At the present, we have to ask ourselves: If not for a big dirty sex scandal, what will we be notable for?