Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
The morning before Indiana University won the College Football Playoff National Championship, I wrote a column urging our campus honchos to return Venus’s fish to Showalter Fountain. IU removed the bronze statues a week prior to foil students’ could-be attempts to steal them, a long-kept Hoosier sporting tradition.
These aquatic critters have a history of disappearing on “championship adventures,” largely due to students, the university told us. But after January’s win, students failed to achieve past measures of hooliganism. I grant that some furniture was burned on Kirkwood. But no real harm befell Bloomington of the kind that would summon riot police.
Riot police responding to such large student gatherings has often proven necessary in IU’s history. In 1991, The Herald Times ran a Little 500 week story with a headline that began, “City police storm Varsity Villas.” The headline ended by calling the incident “worse” than the 1988 riot. Evidently, students were a bit rowdier.
Bear in mind, 1988 and 1991 fall within a single class’s IU stretch. If the class of ’92 were transported to IU’s post-championship celebrations in 2026, I guarantee you horses would play, monkeys would enter business, Tom would fool around and several more couches would have burned.
So, I consider my column far-sighted. Even if Showalter Fountain’s fish had stayed put, they would have been safe from students.
But someone did steal the fish. In a Scooby Doo-esque twist of fate, the culprit is...IU itself.
Over a month after their removal, administrators have not yet restored the fish to their fountain home despite a promise tied to their relocation that they would “soon” return, “hopefully with a win to celebrate.”
The win came. So far, the fish have not.
Stranger than their prolonged absence is the fact no one else seems quite so concerned about the stone creatures’ fate. I, for one, am starting to worry. Are the fish being kept in a liquid environment? Is the water the right temperature? How well are their keepers feeding them? Do they miss Venus?
I miss them.
In fairness, Bloomington has faced extreme cold since the championship — and a tornado — that could postpone restoration operations. But winter, like “soon,” is not unending. Indeed, the past week has noticeably warmed, but the fish remain nowhere in sight.
At least, the harrowingly empty fountain allows for renewed reflection. Perhaps a committee on marine reintegration is awaiting a preliminary review of the present state of campus antics. Perhaps a statement is being prepared among university public relations professionals that IU does not comment on piscatory matters. Either way, the “silence on the line” feels familiar.
When former IU Bloomington provost Rahul Shrivastav shifted from that office to a university-wide role — interim vice president for student success — earlier this month, the university did not explain this move in either its initial press release or any that followed. Somewhere, I recall hearing the details were “foggy.” This word choice immediately evoked fond memories of misty early mornings with my fishy friends. Alas, such times are no more.
"Foggy” administrative messaging plagues our university. More recently, for example, the Indiana Daily Student reported that IU’s Common Application admissions portal told prospective students “‘no new admissions will be offered’ for dozens of suspended majors,” including many in the humanities. Faculty, and perhaps applicants as well, found IU’s message here confusing, suggesting the university no longer made room for these interests, even in merged programs.
In a similarly enigmatic case of university opaqueness, you may recall a letter to the IDS editors Chancellor David Reingold authored after administrators fired student media director Jim Rodenbush and cut the IDS’s print edition. In the letter, Reingold said IU’s administration did not handle those decisions as well as it should have, adding, “Communication was uneven and timing imperfect.”
I appreciate Reingold’s repeated efforts to reach out to students and remain accountable. Just this week, he met with members of IU Student Government to answer questions, staying nearly half an hour longer than planned. And I agree with him:
IU’s communication was uneven during the IDS debacle of Fall 2025 and has continued to be in the months since. Silence or miscommunication from a sometimes-distant administration is so commonplace, it now seems an essential feature of the Hoosier experience. By contrast, see how close former university president Herman B Wells approached — gun-wielding! — student protestors to dialogue with them in the ‘60s.
Hopefully, administrative vagueness can be solved soon. A date for the fish’s return would be a great place to start.
Eric Cannon (he/him) is a sophomore studying philosophy and political science and currently serves as a member of IU Student Government.
