41 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(04/23/12 2:36am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Four laps after the green flag signaled the start of the 62nd annual Little 500, an announcement comes through the speakers: “There’s been an accident in turn one with your defending champions.”Cutters rider Timothy Nixon was boxed in when someone along the gutter fell. As the crash snowballed, Nixon couldn’t avoid it.From their pit in turn three across the field, all the Cutters can see is a messy pile of bikes and people. As the lead pack rounds turn two, their yellow jersey — the jersey of defending champion — isn’t visible anywhere.Immediately, another Cutters rider sprints on his bike across the infield to get someone back on the track. All Cutters coach Jim Kirkham can do is look on.He’s coached riders back from crashes before. He’s coached the Cutters to wins the past five years straight. Nixon, their starting rider, walks slowly back to the pit instead of completing his set of 12 laps. The defending champions are already more than a half lap behind.The plan Kirkham had scribbled in his notebook is already gone in the first few laps of the race. ***Kirkham knew this year was going to be more difficult. His star rider, Eric Young, had gone pro two days after the team won this past year. Kirkham’s 2-year-old son, Teddy, is getting older and needs more attention. The week before the race, he had to cut one of the seniors, whom he had trained since his freshman year, from the final four riders.Then Delta Tau Delta chose the pit next to the Cutters and started watching them at practices, trying to figure out their signals and strategies.At a practice race, Kirkham raised his hands to his mouth and chomped his teeth in the air as he tried to make eye contact with his rider. Watermelon, the Cutters called it. It was their secret signal for an exchange.Standing in his pit, Kirkham talked to the Delta Tau Delta coach in the pit next to them as they watched their teams. But as soon as he finished pretending to eat a watermelon, he realized he’d revealed the code. All teams watch each other to figure out their code words, the fastest riders and their strategies. Kirkham had been keeping an eye on the Delts, and he knew their coach had been watching him just as much. As the Cutters rider came in for an exchange, the Delts had figured out what watermelon meant. “We can’t use watermelon again,” Kirkham said as he walked toward the group.The Cutters circled at the end of their pit and started the debate about what to change their signal to. Someone suggested scratching their balls — it’s at least less noticeable than fake-eating a watermelon. Too natural for a guy, they decided. If someone had an itch, they might have accidentally signaled an exchange on race day. They talked about Kirkham or the other riders raising their caps slightly. It was also too natural, too much of a risk on race day.Kirkham stuck his freckled arm out and moved it like a wave, a salmon swimming in a stream. The team decided on their new code: salmon. It was as obvious as watermelon, but at least the Delts coach wouldn’t know it. But it was not the only adjustment Kirkham has to make to his coaching this year. Without star rider Young, who won all of the races in a sprint at the finish, the Cutters have had to readjust their strategy and game plan of how to win their sixth straight race.Kirkham calls for their new strategy, code-named “Scramble,” for the end of the practice race. Each rider bikes two or three laps at a fast pace to make the exchanges. During an exchange, riders will typically let another team surge ahead if they are switching riders because that time will be lost in the exchange. Kirkham’s idea is that if they do this quickly enough, they’ll gain extra ground in the race.The strategizing is all to find a new way to win this race.Kirkham knows about the pressure on the team to defend the championship, but it’s just one more thing he has to balance on top of coaching the Cutters, raising a 2-year-old and working full-time as a nurse in the emergency room. Come April, he dedicates anywhere between 20 and 30 hours a week to coaching at the track. But growing up, he never realized he could be a part of the race he’s now dedicated decades of his life to. He used to ride bikes through the south side of Indianapolis, perhaps about five miles, to the bike store. He had watched “Breaking Away” and listened to the race on the radio every April. Still, he never imagined he’d be up there on the podium, let alone eight times. His friend joined the Cutters first, and then Kirkham started riding with the team his freshman year in 1991. “They had a really cool us-versus-them mentality, which kind of resonated with me,” Kirkham said. “My coaches really played into that, really fed that. It attracted guys that it resonated with.”By the time he graduated in 1994, he had one win, two second-place finishes and one fifth-place finish to his name. Kirkham moved from Bloomington back to Indianapolis but still hung around the track during Little 500 season. But in 1997, he decided to guide the team. Neither the ’95 nor ’96 teams had done well, and the coaches were leaning toward shutting the team down. Four or five guys were still left who wanted to ride, so Kirkham stepped in as their coach.They won his first year, propelling the team from anonymity to the front of the pack.It was enough to keep Kirkham going, too, and he hasn’t left the track in 15 years.“It’s just one big track practice,” Kirkham said. “No pressure. No expectations.”***The Cutters take nearly 30 laps before they’re back in the lead pack in fifth place.Kirkham stands behind the pit on a makeshift ledge. He balances on a wooden plank suspended by two milk crates that he sawed to fit the curb of the track. Co-coach Jason Fowler is the one in the pit with the riders. He scribbles “work with sig-ep” or “keep up the pace, Tim,” on a whiteboard to push the riders to the front of the pack.“A lot of teams look at our pit every time they come by,” Kirkham says. “We thought we’d do a bunch of ambiguous fake stuff.”They hold up posters saying “NASDAQ” and “DOS.” Instead of meaning exchange, watermelon is their new symbol to go hard and take the lead. It is all a mind game to confuse the other teams and coaches.Kirkham watches the race while he works on who is going in next, how he wants them to ride and for how many laps. A stopwatch and lap counter dangle from his neck. For the next 140 laps, the Cutters ride like they’ve been practicing. For most of the race, it’s just Fowler sticking two thumbs up and Kirkham smiling at the riders from behind the pit. ***Though the team has won the past five years, Kirkham still doesn’t like to hear them talking about the “w-word” (win) or the “c-word” (crash). Instead, Kirkham wants the team focused on having fun. As they warmed up for Qualifications, they traded “Wayne’s World” references as Kirkham jumped on a pink kid’s bike and faked an exchange.They all lied about their names for the team photo for the race yearbook. Everyone has their own nickname: Surge, Mas, Honey Badger and Boobie are the four riding during the race. Then there’s Patches, Doug, Skeeter, Crispy and Smash Bro. 1. Kirkham is Jimmy Cakes or Kirktart. Back when he raced, he was the Colonel. Kirkham, who identified himself as Hale Williams, vouched for them.Most of his coaching is just being supportive. He knows the ins and outs of the race and can point those things out, but most of his memories of Little 500 season are just of being with the guys and being at the track.Kirkham follows the men year-round. He watches them race in the summers and on weekends. He joins them at 8 a.m. for team breakfasts at Scholar’s Inn Bakehouse. He starts training with them for Little 500 in October. He knows the discipline it takes to be able to get out of bed in the winter when you don’t want to go biking in 30-degree weather. He can empathize, but he can coach them through it.By April, it’s all he thinks about, but it’s something he still has to balance with the demands of being a 44-year-old dad.Kirkham and his wife Linda juggle work schedules so one of them can always be there to take care of Teddy. Kirkham works Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. His wife works Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If their schedules overlap for some reason, one of the Cutters will babysit Teddy for them. If he’s not at work, he’s normally at the track or driving the car for motor pacing.“I think about it almost all the time. I don’t really get nervous any more. I get anxious,” Kirkham said. “It’s like your favorite movie is coming up. You just can’t wait to get to the theater and see it.”The week of the race, the boys are antsy at their 8 a.m. breakfast. They watch the ESPN highlight reel of baseball from the night before and wait for Kirkham to get there. They talk about the dreams they’ve been having about the race: Sometimes they win, and sometimes they lose. Sometimes they come in at a close second place.Even Kirkham dreams about it. The weekend before the race, he dreams that the student foundation has made a new rule. Each team could have one alumni rider, so Young came back and rode for Acacia, one of the Cutters’ long-time rivals.In the dream, Acacia wins. ***In lap 175, Cutters rider Kevin Depasse rounds turn four. As he tries to pass Beta Theta Pi to move into his first place, his tires slip. Metal bikes crash against people and the track; jerseys tangle with bike wheels; the crowd gasps. As they realize their competition just hit the track’s cinders, the members of Delt start a cheer. In the pit, the instant reaction is to get a rider out there, but Depasse bounces back off the ground and gets back in the race. As he’s in pain, he circles the track for the caution lap before exchanging.If they had made it a half lap more, they were planning on taking off and trying to exhaust the other teams with their fast pace. But for the second time in the race, the Cutters start clawing their way back. With 10 laps left, Delt rider RJ Stuart starts sprinting ahead. It’s an ending to the race that looks familiar, except it’s not Young in the sprint for the Cutters.Kirkham stands with his arms crossed, watching the last laps of the 2012 race. Next to him, the Delt coach and riders are running up and down the sideline, holding one finger up to show their place in the finish. Kirkham watches as the Delt rider crosses the line first. The Cutters finish fourth.He turns away from the track with a tight smile. Another race done, he closes his notebook and tucks it into his back pocket.“Five is a lot of wins,” Kirkham says as he steps down from his makeshift ledge along the fence. “It’s sad. It’s heartbreaking. Two crashes is too much to overcome.” Cutters fans come up and give Kirkham handshakes or a pat on the back. It’s the quietest the fans have been since 2007. On either side of them are Delt fans, wearing Hoosier drinking crew construction uniforms, chanting as they pour out of the bleachers.“I need to go console my guys a bit. Give ’em some hugs,” Kirkham says before jumping the fence to join the team on the track. Next to them, Delt is celebrating its first-ever win. Its fans push at the gate to enter the field before security lets them rush the team on its way to the podium.The Cutters remain in their pit, hugging and talking to each other before Kirkham ushers them to the infield. As the Delt riders stand on the stage accepting the trophy, the men in the yellow jerseys walk around congratulating everyone else on the race.All Kirkham can do is smile when “We Are the Champions” starts playing through the loud speaker. It’s a hard song to listen to.The Cutters stand in the infield for the first time in six years, giving each other hugs and talking to other riders. Behind them, the Delt riders mount their Schwinn bikes and start their victory lap around the stadium.
(03/12/12 12:28am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>TOKYO, Japan -- Thousands of Japanese bowed their heads in silence before marching in the streets in anger Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people and triggered one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.Protesters crowded Tokyo’s Hibiya Park to pray at 2:46 p.m., the moment the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern Japan on March 11, 2011. The quake, Japan’s strongest on record, buckled roads and launched a tsunami that wrecked the northeast coast.Demonstrators hoisted signs saying things like “Sayonara Nukes” and “Save Our Children” as they marched to the headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the damaged Fukushima-Daichi nuclear power plant. The protestors demanded a stop to nuclear power and blamed the government for shrugging off the risks of putting reactors on the tsunami-prone coast.“I don’t want the energy that comes from nuclear power plants,” said Mariko Hoshiko, 50, of Tokyo. “It’s all of our faults. The government ignored to the warning. It’s everybody’s responsibility.”The nuclear power plant in Fukushima was already partially damaged from the earthquake when 30-foot waves crashed onto the shore, crippling the plant’s cooling systems. Three of the reactors overheated, exposing hundreds of thousands of people to radiation and driving 150,000 from their homes.Saori Kanzawa lived 35 miles from the plant in the village of Koriyama, but said she never considered the danger of living so close before the disaster.“I was never worried. We thought it was safe,” Kanzawa, 33, said. “We thought accidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl only happened in foreign countries. It would never happen in Japan.”Most citizens had relied on the government and energy companies’ information about how safe the nuclear power plants were. Before the nuclear meltdown, 60 percent of the Japanese population favored nuclear energy, according to a government survey in 2009. Now, media surveys show less than 5 percent remain in support, and many citizens, like Kanzawa, no longer trust what the government is saying.Outside of the national parliament building after sun down, demonstrators formed a human chain around the block.“We’re asking them for no more Fukushima. No more nuclear power,” said Yuko Igarashi, 66, of Saitama as she held a sign protesting the nuclear energy and a flickering candle in memory of the disasters.The demonstrators were supposed to continue to the prime minister’s office, but the police blocked their path.The protest illustrated the new attitude of publicly challenging the government in ways rarely seen in Japan. Some people have bought personal Geiger counters to monitor radiation around them because they don’t believe what the government is telling them. All of the data is uploaded to a website for the public to see.Kanzawa didn’t doubt her government’s radiation numbers until after the U.S. warned American citizens within 50 miles of the damaged plant to evacuate. The Japanese required only people within a 12 mile radius to get out. After researching the radiation levels online, Kanzawa decided she had to move away from the area to protect her daughter from radiation exposure.“I’m disappointed that all the time I was living there I didn’t have any doubts about the power plant. I’m angry at myself,” Kanzawa said. “But when the accident happened, I realized the way the government reacts. They’re trying to make fools of us. It’s really humiliating.”For refugees like Kanzawa, life is constantly in flux. Her family is working to negotiate rent as the lease on their donated Tokyo apartment runs out. They still pay a mortgage on their house in Fukushima. She fears her furniture is absorbing the radiation from the atmosphere.Her husband had to close his public relations business in Fukushima and now makes less money working for an undergarment manufacturer in Tokyo. The capital has run out of aid money to support families. To help, Kanzawa works with a group of Fukushima evacuees in the Tokyo area to distribute donated goods and emotionally support other refugees.To Kanzawa, Fukushima is still home. Her family, belongings and many of her friends are still there despite radiation that she says remains at levels 150 percent above normal.“It’s kind of sad. I want to go back myself,” Kanzawa said. “I just can’t feel like it’s safe for my child.”Kanzawa had tears in her eyes as she talked about how uncertain her daughter’s future is. Knowing the consequences of radiation exposure on the survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, Fukushima residents worry about the long-term health effects of last year’s nuclear accident.Kanzawa said she didn’t know whether daughter’s hair would start falling out or her reproductive system would be damaged forever. She worries her daughter may have trouble getting married if people learn where she was from.The future of Fukushima and nuclear power remains unknown. Of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants, only two are operating. The battle to close the plants is being fought with signs and chants from the street: “We don’t need nuclear power! We don’t need radiation! Let’s take care of our children!”Protester Ryotaro Endo the Japanese people should have known better about the dangers of nuclear power after suffering through the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.“We know the negative, the bad sides, of nuclear energy. But we said that if we used it for power then it’s for peaceful purposes,” said Endo, 44, as he marched through central Tokyo. “We tried to make it into a good thing, but that was a mistake.”
(03/02/12 4:08am)
Lauren Spierer is disappearing again.
(01/27/12 9:13pm)
“If you wanted to get in, you’d have to be an acrobat or be
able to catapult yourself,” said Martha Engstrom, director of the Office of
Disability Services for Students.
(11/29/11 2:11am)
(10/11/11 1:04am)
Under
the early morning glow of the stadium lights, the only ghostly reminders of the game the night before
were the abandoned pom-poms, half-eaten hot dogs, and leftover boxes of
popcorn.
(12/06/10 5:52am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>More anti-Semitic incidents occurred during the weekend as Zeta Beta Tau’s mailbox was stolen, swastikas were found on a dry erase board in McNutt Quad and the president of Congregation Beth Shalom received a suspicious jar of jam on his porch.Since Nov. 23, eight acts of vandalism targeted at the Bloomington Jewish community have been reported to Bloomington and IU police.Zeta Beta Tau reported their mailbox stolen Thursday after it had been “torn off its hinges,” fraternity president Sam Chortek said. Members of the fraternity heard people outside at 3 a.m. Thursday morning. After hearing a loud crash, they went outside to investigate and saw people running away.Chortek said he’s not sure if it’s directly related or if it’s a copycat, but the Jewish fraternity could have been targeted in light of the recent incidents. “It’s just a time when we’ve got to watch our backs,” Jordan Silver, vice president of Zeta Beta Tau, said. On Dec. 3, IUPD received a report that swastikas had been drawn on a dry-erase board outside a dorm room in McNutt, according to an IU news release. IU Chief of Police Keith Cash said there were no indications there was an intruder on the floor. The incident appeared to be “an insensitive and hateful prank and not a direct physical threat,” Cash said in the release. In the most recent incident, Paul Eisenberg, president of Congregation Beth Shalom, called police after his son saw an unknown man deliver a jar of jam to their porch around 5 p.m. Saturday. His son described the man as wearing a white surgical mask or a false white beard to obscure his identity, Eisenberg said. The man placed the jar topped with a red Christmas bow on the porch without knocking or ringing the bell and then drove away in a white station wagon.Eisenberg said he didn’t know if it was the same person police are searching for after a previous incident, but after he heard his son’s description, he called the police.The Bloomington Police Department responded and smelled the contents of the jar: raspberry jam.“Maybe it’s just jam. Maybe it’s raspberry jam and urine. Maybe it’s raspberry jam and arsenic,” Eisenberg speculated. Police are planning on running a chemical analysis of the jar’s contents on Monday, and Eisenberg hopes they will also take fingerprints then.“We were disappointed,” Eisenberg’s wife said. “They just opened the jar and gave it back.”None of these incidents have been directly linked to the previous acts of vandalism. First, a limestone rock was thrown through a back window into the main prayer room of the Chabad House Jewish Student Center on Nov. 23. Similarly, a rock was found thrown through a back kitchen window of the Helene G. Simon Hillel Center on Nov. 27.On Nov. 29, eight Hebrew texts were taken from the research collection at the Herman B Wells Library, tossed into toilets and urinated on in eight bathrooms.The next day, Nov. 30, a second limestone rock was thrown through a window of the apartment above the Chabad House at 7 a.m., nearly hitting student resident Maggie Williams. She and the rest of her roommates are not even Jewish, she said. At 7:50 a.m., a second rock shattered a glass case at the Robert A. and Sandra B. Borns Jewish Studies Program office in Goodbody Hall. A witness to the incident chased the man wearing a yellow jacket over a hooded sweatshirt near Ballantine Hall, where he was last seen. The suspect is described as a white male, 5 feet 8 inches with grayish blond hair and a gray beard, according to an IUPD news release. The man is between the ages of 40 to 50 years old.
(11/11/10 5:45am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The finger that flips through the textbook used to rest on a trigger. The hand that rises in class to ask a question once saluted an officer. The feet that walk through Dunn Meadow used to patrol door to door in Iraq. Hundreds of student veterans walk among us on this campus. They sit next to you in Spanish, behind you in W131 or in front of you in finite. We remember the troops. We remember the war. But we’ve forgotten the soldier. The nation never welcomed these men and women home. There isn’t a victory to celebrate. There still isn’t an end in sight. These soldiers come and go through the classrooms in Bloomington, just small drops in the ocean of students. You wouldn’t look twice if you passed one on the street. You probably already have. These are 21st century soldiers.MEET KAYLA NIERMeeting Toby Keith, Jessica Simpson, Carlos Mencia and Gen. David Petraeus would have been a highlight for many of the soldiers serving in Iraq. But for Kayla Nier, it was trying to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi children. As she distributed backpacks of supplies to kids at school, one boy told her that “Americans aren’t bad.” She realized then that the adults are set in their ways, but the kids can change. “Here’s this kid, probably about 10 years old, thinking that everything he has been taught to believe and sees that these troops that are walking around with these big guns and stuff, they must be bad people. And as I handed him this backpack: ‘You aren’t bad; you guys aren’t bad.’ And this is exactly what it’s for: that one kid. If no one else changed, then it was worth it for that one kid.” Nier started a nonprofit called Winning Hearts and Minds to help collect supplies for the children in Iraq and then helped distribute them during her deployment. Last year, the nonprofit sent more than 500 boxes to a school, and each child received a backpack full of supplies for their families.“I knew when I came home that I would have to go back to my normal life that I did before I was deployed. But it was different this time because now. I had seen what most people never see, and it was like a new beginning. I came home, and it was like a brand new life now because I was looking at everything in a different way.”When Nier deployed, her vision of Iraq was long, flat land and dust and sand. But when she got there, she saw what she considers to be progress in the war.“It’s also a win for Iraq. They have electricity there. They have jobs. We built water towers, schools, hospitals, houses. They didn’t have that before, and they have it all now. They have all this there, and that’s because of the military.”Nier said even though there are humanitarian benefits for the people, she still considers Iraq to be a lose-lose situation.“You pull out now and everything that we’ve done in the last nine years is going to crumble and be forgotten about. But you leave us in there for the next 20 years and soldiers are still going to be shot. ... and you pull them out in 20 years and people are still going to go back to their old ways.”She said she thinks it will be up to the Iraqi children to decide the fate of their country — it’s the only way to win the war.“We just do our job. I wouldn’t call us heroes, and I wouldn’t say that we’re not heroes. Just that we did our mission, and we do what we were supposed to do — we came back.”Click to see more profiles of 21st century soldiers.
(11/09/10 12:10am)
Woot woot coming soon.
(11/09/10 12:09am)
For the past seven years, US troops have been deployed to
Iraq to do everything from find weapons of mass destruction, go on door-to-door
foot patrols, construct water towers and pass out teddy bears at a hospital.
(11/09/10 12:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There's no easy way to tell a veteran from an average IU student - a distinction many veterans are thankful for. However, that means Veterans Day (Nov. 11) is often forgotten in the college community. We asked some IU students for their takes on veterans and Veterans Day in the 21st Century:"In elementary school, they made a big deal out of it, but I hadn't thought about it."-Andrew Gridel, freshman, on Veterans Day"Its not really one of the things I
think of of, mostly because they dont fit the stereotype. I think they
don't get enough respect."-Eddie Steinmetz, freshman, on veterans of the Iraq war"It could be observed more, it was a much bigger deal when I was in high school."-Catherine Yarnell, senior, on Veterans Day"Ive had a couple of cousins who've been in Iraq. I see them and I dont think of them any differently. Now, I associate it with the Macey's Veterans day sale. It
just seems like another reason to go buy clothes for 30 percent off. It
shouldn't be but it is."-Kayln Donohue, senior, on Veterans DayJoin the discussion below about your experiences with veterans.
(11/09/10 12:05am)
Another story eventually brought to you by Biz.
(11/08/10 11:48pm)
Sorry, Biz will have a story here soon...
(11/08/10 11:46pm)
And Biz will also have a story here eventually.
(11/08/10 11:45pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The finger that flips through the textbook used to rest on a trigger. The hand that rises in class to ask a question once saluted an officer. The feet that walk through Dunn Meadow used to patrol door to door in Iraq. Hundreds of student veterans walk among us on this campus. They sit next to you in Spanish, behind you in W131 or in front of you in finite. We remember the troops. We remember the war. But we’ve forgotten the soldier. The nation never welcomed these men and women home. There isn’t a victory to celebrate. There still isn’t an end in sight. These soldiers come and go through the classrooms in Bloomington, just small drops in the ocean of students. You wouldn’t look twice if you passed one on the street. You probably already have. These are 21st Century Soldiers. ***Kayla Nier, 24Specialist, Indiana Army National GuardSenior, Human Biology majorMeeting Toby Keith, Jessica Simpson, Carlos Mencia and Gen. David Petraeus would have been a highlight for many of the soldiers serving in Iraq. But for Kayla Nier, it was trying to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi children. As she distributed backpacks of supplies to kids at school, one boy told her that “Americans aren’t bad.” She realized then that the adults are set in their ways, but the kids can change. “Here’s this kid, probably about 10 years old, thinking that everything he has been taught to believe and sees that these troops that are walking around with these big guns and stuff, they must be bad people. And as I handed him this backpack: ‘You aren’t bad; you guys aren’t bad.’ And this is exactly what it’s for: that one kid. If no one else changed, then it was worth it for that one kid.” Nier started a nonprofit called Winning Hearts and Minds to help collect supplies for the children in Iraq and then helped distribute them during her deployment. Last year, the nonprofit sent more than 500 boxes to a school, and each child received a backpack full of supplies for their families.“I knew when I came home that I would have to go back to my normal life that I did before I was deployed. But it was different this time because now. I had seen what most people never see, and it was like a new beginning. I came home, and it was like a brand new life now because I was looking at everything in a different way.”When Nier deployed, her vision of Iraq was long, flat land and dust and sand. But when she got there, she saw what she considers to be progress in the war.“It’s also a win for Iraq. They have electricity there. They have jobs. We built water towers, schools, hospitals, houses. They didn’t have that before, and they have it all now. They have all this there, and that’s because of the military.”Nier said even though there are humanitarian benefits for the people, she still considers Iraq to be a lose-lose situation.“You pull out now and everything that we’ve done in the last nine years is going to crumble and be forgotten about. But you leave us in there for the next 20 years and soldiers are still going to be shot. ... and you pull them out in 20 years and people are still going to go back to their old ways.”She said she thinks it will be up to the Iraqi children to decide the fate of their country — it’s the only way to win the war.“We just do our job. I wouldn’t call us heroes, and I wouldn’t say that we’re not heroes. Just that we did our mission, and we do what we were supposed to do — we came back.”
***Krista Dora, 24Specialist, ArmyJunior, General StudiesEven though women are banned from combat positions, Krista Dora often found herself in the middle of the war from her perch on tower guard. “There are no front lines in Iraq. You’re there.”Dora spent eight hour shifts in the open tower under frequent fire as she watched a notoriously dangerous road, MSR Tampa.“In the Army, we call it IED alley. It’s where all the IEDs and the bombs and explosions go off. You’re watching all the convoys going by and making sure they’re not being blown up. You’re also in charge of watching a huge Iraqi village where there are a lot of people walking around with AK-47s and bombs.”Dora said she expected the war to be what she saw in the news and movies or heard about from other veterans, but as she stood in the guard post she realized it was quite different.“There’s definitely no comparison as far as seeing it and being there 24/7 for X amount of time compared to a video game or a movie,” she said. “I did the real thing.”Dora had dreamed of being a soldier since she was a kid. “I wanted to go because I love our country, and I love the freedoms that we have and I believe in fighting for them.”Now she motions to her black T-shirt that says, “Iraq Veterans Against the War.” After experiencing life as a soldier, she is no longer disillusioned by her childhood dreams.“I support our troops, but I’m against the war.”***Michael Mojonnier, 25Senior Airman, U.S. Air ForceSophomore, Anthropology majorMichael Mojonnier’s job didn’t change when he got to Iraq. He worked as a military policeman issuing citations for driving under the influence and trying to curb the high levels of physical and sexual assaults.“I personally felt kind of like a rat. These guys are supposed to be on the same team, and I was out looking for them to get them in trouble. But our mission was to provide them with a safe environment.”The only difference with that mission in Iraq versus stateside was dealing with the world outside of the walls.“When you go home at the end of the day stateside for a job, you can relax, do whatever. In Iraq, it was like, ‘Oh man, is there going to be a mortar hitting my trailer tonight? Is there going to be rocket attack that I’m going to have to go to? Is a stray bullet going to hit me when I’m sleeping?’ You got those little things in the back of your mind that you’re dealing with.”For the soldiers Mojonnier was policing, it was the build up of stress that led them to take it out on each other. Mojonnier said just knowing that the mission was dangerous and that the people outside the walls wanted to kill you was too much for many of them.“If you keep sending people to fight and kill people and blow things up and that’s their job, it’s going to mess them up in the head. Humans have an aversion to squaring off one-on-one and killing each other. It’s just the nature of war. It’s what happens. People get messed up from it. Some more than others. Some don’t get messed up at all.”***Eric East, 35Lance Corporal, Marine CorpsSophomore, Telecommunications majorEric East was at a bar in Australia on Sept. 11, 2001. He knew then he was going to war. His unit deployed immediately to Afghanistan because they were the closest.“When I was overseas when Sept. 11 happened, it very much seemed like a very important, very necessary war. But then after I got out I started looking into it a lot more in depth because I wanted to know why we’re fighting over there and why my buddies lost limbs and everything. And after what I found I have to say that both are completely unnecessary wars.”East said he began questioning the war in Afghanistan soon after he got there. In one incident, the officers gave the pilot orders to shoot an unknown vehicle. The intelligence officers tried to argue against it because it could have been the allies from the Northern Alliance who had white crosses marked on the top of their convoys and requested that the pilot get a closer look, East said.“The officers in charge said, ‘No, we don’t want to take the risk of putting this pilot in danger’ and wiped out the entire convoy. I still don’t know to this day if they were Taliban or Northern Alliance.”At the time, East was shut off from outside information, including Internet access. He started investigating the incident and the war as soon as he got out of the military.“The entire time between getting out of the military and going here to IU, I spent like seven years just devouring all this information on the Internet. I’ve come to the conclusion that the War on Terror is little more than the holy crusades just in disguise.”***
Frank Linville, 27
Staff Sergeant, Army
Sophomore, Linguistics major
Frank Linville met his wife in Ramadi, Iraq, during his first deployment. She is a soldier, too.They dated long-distance before getting married after his second deployment.By his third deployment, Linville was kissing his six-month-old daughter good-bye. “It was crazy. I’m glad she was as young as she was though when I left, because it was very easy for her to adjust to my coming back.”Linville had heard horror stories about readjusting to family life when returning from Iraq.“When I came back from the airport and we finally met, I think for 20 minutes she was pretty shy. She knew who I was, but was kind of nervous. After that she was friendly, laughing, playing, and within a couple weeks, she was treating me like I had never left.”Now, he is a sophomore at IU with life and love experiences that are very different from his 19-year-old classmates.“I believe I am a much better individual on the whole after coming out of it. The opportunities I had to help others, to guide other soldiers particularly as a sergeant, as a leader, was really rewarding, and I really enjoyed it. It’s probably one of the biggest things I’m going to miss in the long run.”After three deployments, Linville has returned to Bloomington as a veteran, a father, a husband and a student. ***
Tim Whitson, 23
Specialist, Army
Sophomore, Informatics major
When Tim Whitson heard the rounds getting closer and saw the metal shrapnel flying into his guard post, he ducked behind a sand bag.“When they walk them in, they walk them closer and closer until they finally hit you.”The next rocket-propelled grenade landed just outside of his guard post. The bag of sand wouldn’t have helped.“It exploded, and I blew my ear drums immediately. You see stars, and you can’t breathe really well because of that gunpowder smell, like fireworks, getting in your nose and your mouth. You can’t see because there’s so much smoke and dust.”Whitson was lucky at that moment — he didn’t die and wasn’t visibly wounded. His brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder wouldn’t show up until later.“I would have panic attacks, and I wouldn’t really know what it was at first. Your mind goes crazy, and you feel like you’re losing control of yourself.”The change in lifestyle from the military to college exacerbated his PTSD.“The unit that I was in would just keep you on edge all of the time. Jumping out of airplanes is terrifying, jumping out in combat gear really low to the ground. Being combat is terrifying. Being shot at, blown up, it just keeps you on edge. To go from that to a laid-back lifestyle is difficult.”When Whitson enlisted, he said he thought he was doing the right thing. Now, he would never do it again. “What did we really accomplish? I don’t see that the ends justify the means.”***
Stephanie Tremblay, 23
Specialist, Army
Sophomore, Psychology major
Stephanie Tremblay talks excitedly about the 2009 Super Bowl: the Arizona Cardinals versus the Pittsburgh Steelers. She wore her No. 7 jersey and stayed up late, eating pizza and watching her team win with friends.The post office where she worked had a bet going: If the Steelers won, they didn’t have to come in until 10 a.m. If they lost, they had to report at 7 a.m.When the Super Bowl finally ended at 4 a.m. in Kuwait, she was thankful — the Steelers had won so they got to sleep in. What seem to be normal holiday traditions are hard for 21st century soldiers deployed overseas. “Thanksgiving sucked. I’m not going to lie. They actually had a whole turkey, and I was impressed by that. Everything else was kind of bland. Christmas was just as hard.”To help, Tremblay’s mom sent her a 5-foot Christmas tree and decorations, which she put up in the post office in Kuwait. It wasn’t a typical Christmas for a college student. “In my sociology class, we’re trying to relate things to everyday experiences, and for the last five years I haven’t had what people would consider a normal experience. I’ve been deployed.”She added that going back to college has been a learning experience.“It’s a little weird for people when they find out I’m 23, and I’m only a sophomore in college. I wanted to go back to school and, guess what, I’m here. It’s fun.”
***
Chris Hughie, 22Corporal, Marine Corps
Senior, Criminal Justice and East Asian StudiesmajorChris Hughie always has to smile in pictures, even during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.“I want my mom to always think I’m happy and having fun,” he said, pointing out a photo of him eating Fun Dip candy in a humvee. “My parents wanted me to go to college. So I joined the reserves and started going to college, got deployed, and now I’m about to graduate. I’m still in the Marine Corps — I basically got to see the best of both worlds.”Hughie now works on reconciling and striking a balance between his military life in Baghdad and his student life in Bloomington. Hughie’s deployment to Iraq was “mellow” while Afghanistan was “miserable.”“You’re over there and you’re stressed out all the time because you’re in a combat zone, you could die. ...Back home it’s like, oh I got bills to pay. I’ve got all this homework. I’ve got to worry about this or that. Over there, all I’m really worried about is dying and if I do, then alright.”Instead, Hughie concentrated on his mission.“You can’t think about that stuff in order to accomplish your mission properly. If you’re always worried about dying, then you’d be too afraid to do whatever it is you’ve got to do.”***
Samuel Gras, 34
Captain, Army
Non-degree seeking student, foreign languagesSamuel Gras is back.He started studying international security and history at IU in 1997, but joined the Army after seeing Sept. 11.“I didn’t want to watch the war from my couch. I wanted to see it for myself and be a part of it.” However, Gras needed to do more than just fight for freedom. He wanted to bring those experiences back to Bloomington. “If you’re in a social science class and you’re trying to state your opinion, that’s great, but it’s still an opinion. So for someone that’s just read the book versus someone that’s actually done it, I thought that it would give me a little advantage.”Now that he is back in class, Gras said he’s kind of surprised that most students don’t have more questions or aren’t more curious.“It seems like they want out of sight, out of mind about it all, which is OK. It’s a long war. You can’t just think about it every day.”***
Dacia Sachtjen, 21
Specialist, Indiana Army National Guard
Junior, Elementary education majorDacia Sachtjen doesn’t know if she should register for spring classes. The National Guard told her to continue life as normal because sometimes things come up.Sachtjen will be deployed to Iraq in March for a year-long tour working as a paralegal.“My boyfriend at the time had just left 15 minutes before to go back to North Carolina, so I was already upset at that point, and then I find out I’m getting ready to get deployed, so that didn’t make me feel any better. So I called him and I said, ‘I have really bad news or good news, however you’re going to take it.’”She said she still doesn’t know if this is good or bad news. “I’m kind of both ways right now. I’m excited and nervous, and I think its going to be a good experience, but I’m very family and friend oriented, and I don’t want to leave my family or friends behind.”She’ll miss Little 500. It will delay her graduation by one year. She’ll miss spring break and have to celebrate her 22nd birthday, on Sept. 11, in Iraq.“I’ll probably just not mention its my birthday and just let it blow over. Maybe say it was yesterday or the next day.”Either way, she won’t be back in Bloomington to celebrate.“My friends will be like ‘Oh, what are you doing this summer? We should go here and do this,’ and I’ll be like ‘I’ll be gone. I’ll be in Iraq.’”***
Jeremy Degler, 26
Sergeant, Marine Corps
1st year graduate student, Environmental science - ecology/water resources majorJeremy Degler was once a romantic about war. He’d wanted to be a Marine since he was 8 or 9 years old and then sealed the deal watching Sept. 11 unfold on TV. “Really I had no idea. I had this romanticized idea of going off to war. Nothing you can really expect is exactly how it turns out to be. It’s even stranger once you get over there. We train for all of this war fighting and actual blowing stuff up, but when you’re there, you don’t see who you’re fighting half the time because they’re hiding among civilians.” Degler’s opinion about war and America started changing on the ride over to Iraq with the Navy. As they stopped at different ports, Degler said he was saddened when he saw how people would look at him when they realized he was American. “I was telling people I was in the Canadian Navy just so they would get me a drink. Stink eye is an understatement. Some people would just turn around and walk away.” Despite the public’s negative perception of the war, Degler said he does believe there are positive changes coming to Iraq, and he said he’s proud of it. “When I was over there, I saw a lot of good things we were doing, which most of the time didn’t come back to the media here — watching the news all you ever hear about are soldiers dying and roadside bombs. But I saw a lot of people building schools, going door to door helping families get what they needed to survive.”***
Rudy Eckstein, 25
2nd class petty officer, Navy
Sophomore, Secondary Education - Chemistry majorRudy Eckstein always dreamed of working on a submarine.“Before I went in, I thought it was going to be like [the movie] ‘Hunt for the Red October.’ We were going to go out and find commies and shoot them down with torpedoes and shoot guns and kill people.”Instead, Eckstein was in charge of monitoring the nuclear radiation on the submarine and making sure it stayed at the appropriate level. “It’s extreme boredom most of the time, but then you get two or three days of absolute going crazy. And that’s normally because we’re all about to die.”There were a couple times when the oxygen generator broke down or the submarine sprung a leak and the ocean started seeping in, he said.In the end, when he realized the dangers of his job, Rudy decided to leave. Three of his close friends got cancer in their early twenties. The Navy insisted that it wasn’t from the radiation that they and Eckstein were exposed to every day, but still paid for their medical bills during cancer treatment. Two of the three died before reaching their 27th birthdays.“Just watch your best friend die over the course of three years and you won’t want to do whatever it is. Even if it has nothing to do with it, if you think there could have been something you’ll just walk away. Now I’m going to go be a teacher, which is significantly less radiation, although I think a little scarier.”
(11/07/10 3:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When Tim Whitson heard the rounds getting closer and saw the metal shrapnel flying into his guard post, he ducked behind a sand bag.“When they walk them in, they walk them closer and closer until they finally hit you.”The next rocket-propelled grenade landed just outside of his guard post. The bag of sand wouldn’t have helped.“It exploded, and I blew my ear drums immediately. You see stars, and you can’t breathe really well because of that gunpowder smell, like fireworks, getting in your nose and your mouth. You can’t see because there’s so much smoke and dust.”Whitson was lucky at that moment — he didn’t die and wasn’t visibly wounded. His brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder wouldn’t show up until later. “I would have panic attacks, and I wouldn’t really know what it was at first. Your mind goes crazy, and you feel like you’re losing control of yourself.”The change in lifestyle from the military to college exacerbated his PTSD.“The unit that I was in would just keep you on edge all of the time. Jumping out of airplanes is terrifying, jumping out in combat gear really low to the ground. Being combat is terrifying. Being shot at, blown up, it just keeps you on edge. To go from that to a laid-back lifestyle is difficult.”When Whitson enlisted, he said he thought he was doing the right thing. Now, he would never do it again. “What did we really accomplish? I don’t see that the ends justify the means.”
(11/07/10 3:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Stephanie Tremblay talks excitedly about the 2009 Super Bowl: the Arizona Cardinals versus the Pittsburgh Steelers. She wore her No. 7 jersey and stayed up late, eating pizza and watching her team win with friends.The post office where she worked had a bet going: If the Steelers won, they didn’t have to come in until 10 a.m. If they lost, they had to report at 7 a.m.When the Super Bowl finally ended at 4 a.m. in Kuwait, she was thankful — the Steelers had won so they got to sleep in. What seem to be normal holiday traditions are hard for 21st century soldiers deployed overseas. “Thanksgiving sucked. I’m not going to lie. They actually had a whole turkey, and I was impressed by that. Everything else was kind of bland. Christmas was just as hard.”To help, Tremblay’s mom sent her a 5-foot Christmas tree and decorations, which she put up in the post office in Kuwait. It wasn’t a typical Christmas for a college student. “In my sociology class, we’re trying to relate things to everyday experiences, and for the last five years I haven’t had what people would consider a normal experience. I’ve been deployed.”She added that going back to college has been a learning experience.“It’s a little weird for people when they find out I’m 23, and I’m only a sophomore in college. I wanted to go back to school and, guess what, I’m here. It’s fun.”
(11/07/10 3:41am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Dacia Sachtjen doesn’t know if she should register for spring classes. The National Guard told her to continue life as normal because sometimes things come up.Sachtjen will be deployed to Iraq in March for a year-long tour working as a paralegal.“My boyfriend at the time had just left 15 minutes before to go back to North Carolina, so I was already upset at that point, and then I find out I’m getting ready to get deployed, so that didn’t make me feel any better. So I called him and I said, ‘I have really bad news or good news, however you’re going to take it.’”She said she still doesn’t know if this is good or bad news. “I’m kind of both ways right now. I’m excited and nervous, and I think its going to be a good experience, but I’m very family and friend oriented, and I don’t want to leave my family or friends behind.”She’ll miss Little 500. It will delay her graduation by one year. She’ll miss spring break and have to celebrate her 22nd birthday, on Sept. 11, in Iraq.“I’ll probably just not mention its my birthday and just let it blow over. Maybe say it was yesterday or the next day.”Either way, she won’t be back in Bloomington to celebrate.“My friends will be like ‘Oh, what are you doing this summer? We should go here and do this,’ and I’ll be like ‘I’ll be gone. I’ll be in Iraq.’”
(11/07/10 3:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Meeting Toby Keith, Jessica Simpson, Carlos Mencia and Gen. David Petraeus would have been a highlight for many of the soldiers serving in Iraq. But for Kayla Nier, it was trying to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi children. As she distributed backpacks of supplies to kids at school, one boy told her that “Americans aren’t bad.” She realized then that the adults are set in their ways, but the kids can change. “Here’s this kid, probably about 10 years old, thinking that everything he has been taught to believe and sees that these troops that are walking around with these big guns and stuff, they must be bad people. And as I handed him this backpack: ‘You aren’t bad; you guys aren’t bad.’ And this is exactly what it’s for: that one kid. If no one else changed, then it was worth it for that one kid.” Nier started a nonprofit called Winning Hearts and Minds to help collect supplies for the children in Iraq and then helped distribute them during her deployment. Last year, the nonprofit sent more than 500 boxes to a school, and each child received a backpack full of supplies for their families.“I knew when I came home that I would have to go back to my normal life that I did before I was deployed. But it was different this time because now. I had seen what most people never see, and it was like a new beginning. I came home, and it was like a brand new life now because I was looking at everything in a different way.”When Nier deployed, her vision of Iraq was long, flat land and dust and sand. But when she got there, she saw what she considers to be progress in the war.“It’s also a win for Iraq. They have electricity there. They have jobs. We built water towers, schools, hospitals, houses. They didn’t have that before, and they have it all now. They have all this there, and that’s because of the military.”Nier said even though there are humanitarian benefits for the people, she still considers Iraq to be a lose-lose situation.“You pull out now and everything that we’ve done in the last nine years is going to crumble and be forgotten about. But you leave us in there for the next 20 years and soldiers are still going to be shot. ... and you pull them out in 20 years and people are still going to go back to their old ways.”She said she thinks it will be up to the Iraqi children to decide the fate of their country — it’s the only way to win the war.“We just do our job. I wouldn’t call us heroes, and I wouldn’t say that we’re not heroes. Just that we did our mission, and we do what we were supposed to do — we came back.”
(11/07/10 3:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Michael Mojonnier’s job didn’t change when he got to Iraq. He worked as a military policeman issuing citations for driving under the influence and trying to curb the high levels of physical and sexual assaults.“I personally felt kind of like a rat. These guys are supposed to be on the same team, and I was out looking for them to get them in trouble. But our mission was to provide them with a safe environment.”The only difference with that mission in Iraq versus stateside was dealing with the world outside of the walls.“When you go home at the end of the day stateside for a job, you can relax, do whatever. In Iraq, it was like, ‘Oh man, is there going to be a mortar hitting my trailer tonight? Is there going to be rocket attack that I’m going to have to go to? Is a stray bullet going to hit me when I’m sleeping?’ You got those little things in the back of your mind that you’re dealing with.”For the soldiers Mojonnier was policing, it was the build up of stress that led them to take it out on each other. Mojonnier said just knowing that the mission was dangerous and that the people outside the walls wanted to kill you was too much for many of them.“If you keep sending people to fight and kill people and blow things up and that’s their job, it’s going to mess them up in the head. Humans have an aversion to squaring off one-on-one and killing each other. It’s just the nature of war. It’s what happens. People get messed up from it. Some more than others. Some don’t get messed up at all.”