A tremendous effort

When more than 40 IU students returned from taking part in the National Equality March in Washington before sunrise on Monday morning, we all eagerly awaited that day’s IDS. We expected that like every major news outlet in the country and a long list of university newspapers, the IDS would cover our failed campaign for a subsidized bus, subsequent organization of a large group of students to caravan and beyond-successful strong Hoosier presence at the march on Sunday.

However, the coverage of this important event has already been too little too late. One picture ran in Tuesday’s World section, not even accompanied by an article recognizing the tremendous amount of effort that went into coordinating an IU delegation to the march.

We hope that in the future the IDS will do a better job of keeping track of important and large initiatives such as this one taking place in the LGBT and other communities on campus. An event and rally that took place here in Bloomington in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of (mostly young) people that marched in Washington also did not receive any press from the IDS.

IU students should have had a chance to be proud of their peers, who sacrificed hours of midterms studying and a weekend in Bloomington to drive many hours, pay out of their own pockets for gas and stand up and fight for the civil rights issue of our generation. We walked past the White House shouting “Hoo hoo hoo Hoosiers!” and many alumni and IU parents came up to us (we had a 9- by 3-foot “Hoosiers for Homos” banner) and shared their stories.

All of us returned home energized and proud to go to a school with such amazing spirit and to represent this community in the growing and galvanized national movement. It’s a shame that the rest of campus didn’t get to share in that with us when they read the paper.

Jillian Sussman
IU sophomore