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(04/25/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I’m not the kind of guy who normally has a problem with police — I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket. But I’m bothered by the sudden increase in the number of citations Excise has been handing out for alcohol violations.Last weekend, Excise issued a record 285 citations. Monroe County Prosecutor Chris Gaal said that his office “can’t determine any reason” for the increase. For comparison, Excise issued 158 citations during Little 500 weekend in 2010. Last year, Excise launched its Intensified College Enforcement program, drastically increasing its presence in college towns such as Bloomington.As it happens, the Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office pays for 37 percent of its expenses with funds from the Pre-Trial Diversion program, which first-time alcohol offenders cited by Excise pay to attend. That’s a difficult number to ignore, and I’m concerned it incentivizes excessively aggressive enforcement.I have talked to underage students who have been cited for possession while driving 21-year-old friends home from liquor stores or for public intoxication while getting a sober ride home from a party.These students’ actions are illegal. But do they really pose a public safety threat or a public nuisance? Are they really worth a large diversion of police resources? When an officer follows two students to their car from a liquor store, asks for their identification and cites one for underage possession of alcohol, he instills a deep mistrust of law enforcement in a young person who probably didn’t even know he was breaking the law.Excise has stated that the goal of its stepped-up enforcement is to “essentially change behavior” related to underage drinking. That’s a pretty far-fetched goal, and my guess is that most people who change their behavior will change it to avoid being caught by Excise. But Excise can still count on issuing plenty of citations, since some of the thousands of new students who will come to campus in the fall are bound to land in trouble.All in all, saturated and aggressive Excise enforcement at major campus events fits nicely into a pretty clever system. Excise can point to more citations, but the Prosecutor’s Office gets more funds from Pre-Trial Diversion. In turn, unlucky students shell out $400 to walk away from their predicaments with relatively clean records. But I have to believe that Excise can pursue more worthwhile tasks than watching who’s putting beer in their trunk at the grocery store. Maybe that would happen if more students were demanding warrants and taking their cases to court.I’m not asking Excise to turn a blind eye to underage drinking. I’m asking them not to antagonize people in enforcing it. I can’t help but wonder if that’s the case when the number of citations issued during Little 500 weekend undergoes a shockingly rapid and sustained increase in a short amount of time and when alcohol citations provide a lucrative source of revenue for local government.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(04/18/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I opened Twitter on my phone during class Monday afternoon. My senioritis turned to horror when I saw reports of a terror bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I didn’t absorb much of the lecture.I felt a distinct uneasiness in the aftermath of the attack. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, this was not a large-scale assault on high-value government and commercial targets. It was a much smaller and perhaps much more unpredictable attack on a relatively mundane event.I find that kind of attack more terrifying in some ways. It doesn’t look like terrorism as we’ve come to know it in post-9/11 America. It looks like the terrorism that other countries experience on an agonizingly frequent basis.It’s new, frightening and leaves us feeling incredibly vulnerable. It left me worrying not only about future attacks, but also about the civil liberties that will be at stake when we begin to discuss how to go about preventing it from happening again.I also feel deep disgust. Obviously, most of that disgust is directed toward the people responsible for robbing athletes and bystanders of life and limb. But I reserve a little bit of disgust for the media personalities and online commentators who shamelessly politicize and speculate about the attack.CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen suggested the culprits could be “right-wing extremists,” and MSNBC host Chris Matthews suggested a similar connection due to April 15 being Tax Day. At the same time, conservative news columnist Erik Rush tweeted that Muslims are “evil” and that we should “kill them all.” In fairness, Rush claimed that he was being sarcastic. But 140 characters are inadequate to express sarcasm, and a media personality should know that.It doesn’t matter whether the speculation comes from the right or the left. It’s baseless and embarrassing. It needlessly stokes the country’s political polarization. It is perhaps only good for revealing certain political partisans’ abject lack of decorum and their willingness to shape their personal narratives of world events around the bodies of the dead.If President Barack Obama is stumped as to the identity of the perpetrator, it should be acceptable for talking heads to admit the same. Is it too much to ask that they not point fingers and play amateur detective? One of the worst side effects of the 24/7 news cycle and the proliferation of social media is that every tragedy tends to turn into a giant and futile game of Clue.As I write, I don’t know who is responsible for the bombing. I don’t know why the bombing happened. I don’t know what the political shakeout of the bombing will be. I do know that Monday’s heroes were not in Congress or on television. They were people like former New England Patriots player Joe Andruzzi, who was photographed carrying a woman to safety, and Costa Rican immigrant and peace activist Carlos Arredondo, who helped save the life of a man who had his legs blown off. They were all of the first responders and bystanders who helped save the wounded at the finish line without knowing whether the danger had passed.Each time a terrorist plot is executed or foiled, we are reminded the danger has never really passed. But in each incident, ordinary people act with calm heads, sound judgment and fearlessness. I hope politicians and media figures will do the same in the coming days.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(04/11/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I’m not normally one to close any doors. I’ll say that my views about IU on Strike are still evolving, even though my politics probably inherently distance me from most of the movement’s supporters.But the more I read about the strike, the less I like it.First, I’ll give the strikers credit for what I think they have done well.The strikers have built a strong community. A reasonably sized coalition of faculty and students support the strikers’ right to protest, even if they disagree with that protest. I recognize some of the names on letters of support to the strike. They are students I know and professors I respect. I will unequivocally support the strikers’ right to lawful, peaceful and spontaneous protest. I hope administrators will do likewise.It doesn’t look good when, during a severe economic downturn, a public university president takes a 22 percent pay raise in two years while University support staff see 1.5 percent pay increases. Or when state appointments dominate the Board of Trustees, even though the state provides less than a fifth of the University’s operating budget.Or when that board’s public meetings do not contain a period for public comments or questions, which would at least allow students who care enough a chance to directly address the University’s decision makers. I don’t doubt the frustrations behind the strike are real. But frankly, I find it very difficult to sympathize with a movement that employs language like “Mass Assembly,” “Red Square” and other slogans that sound like they recently escaped from North Korea.I also find it hard to sympathize with the strikers’ hyperbolic assertions, like labeling pay increases below the rate of inflation a “form of violence.” Actually, I am troubled by the strikers’ willingness to alter the definition of “violence” to suit their purposes. If wage increases below the rate of inflation count as violence, what should we make of the intention to disrupt University operations and cause the University financial harm? One article posted on the strike’s website suggested that pushing, shoving, interrupting classes, turning over desks and locking administrators in their offices is not violence. Does IU on Strike advocate nonviolence? I don’t know. Does IU on Strike know?I think back to 2011, when members of Occupy IU and Occupy Bloomington blockaded a J.P. Morgan recruiting event for students at the Kelley School of Business. Will IU on Strike make the same mistake of inconveniencing and angering the people it claims to be standing up for?I groan at the strikers’ infeasible and contradictory demands, like “Immediately reduce tuition and eliminate fees” and “Stop privatization and outsourcing.” That “immediacy” aspect poses a problem, because tuition and fees have already been set and because falling state funding has caused IU to look to privatization so that it doesn’t have to keep increasing tuition.I understand the demands are meant to “foster discussion” and “encourage action.” But when a movement makes unrealistic demands, that movement loses credibility. We feel less obligated to respond to it with positive discussion and action, because it doesn’t seem serious about finding plausible solutions to the problems it complains about. The astonishing rate of tuition inflation is no big secret. It’s a nationwide problem with many contributing factors. It affects public colleges and universities that receive state funding. It also affects private colleges and universities that do not. Slowing or reversing tuition inflation and addressing the strikers’ other demands will require patience, dialogue and well-reasoned, sober solutions to clearly defined problems. And I’m simply not seeing that from the strike itself.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(04/04/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>By the time this article is published, the proverbial ink will have barely dried on the IU Student Association election ballots. Each year, tickets and their supporters come out in force on election days to advertise their platforms and garner votes.I am all for maximizing the vote, and I recently wrote a column urging students to do so. But I do think it is worthwhile for IUSA and the Election Commission to regularly evaluate the way voting is done and the way IUSA is publicized to students.First, the current way in which voting is done has the potential to harm small tickets. Voting is done online. But tickets, rather than an independent organization, set up tables and laptops at established locations to get passersby to vote. This can create a system where the tickets with the most manpower have a distinct advantage over those with fewer available campaign workers, even if those smaller tickets have great candidates and ideas. Second, the Election Code mandates that there should be a campus-wide call-out during the second week of the spring semester. The Election Commission had its call-out in early February. While that is fairly early in the semester, it does only give students with a recent introduction to IUSA a month to put a ticket together. A month goes by quickly in college time. Given the difficulty of making the decision to run for office, putting together a ticket and platform and organizing a campaign, I believe students could benefit by pushing the election call-out back even further, perhaps toward the end of the fall semester. It may seem like jumping the gun to start organizing for an election barely a semester after one ticket is already coming into office, but it creates more opportunity for students who may be unfamiliar with IUSA to become acquainted with the organization earlier in the year and spend more time making a decision about running for office. Putting the call-out so close to the campaign filing deadline may give an unintended advantage to individuals associated with incumbent IUSA administrations, who will be better prepared to throw their hat in the ring for the same office or a higher one.A final word to anyone considering joining the race next year: It’s hard enough already to figure out a ticket’s principles, platforms and composition for the average student voter. Try to give students a taste of your principles and platforms in your name. Past tickets have been named “Crimson,” “Supernova” and “iUnity.” Sounds catchy, but it’s not informative. As a senior, this is the fourth IUSA election I have witnessed. It’s always great to see a competitive election with great candidates and platforms. But the Election Commission, and IUSA at large, should be constantly striving to figure out how to improve the election process and how to get more students to join in.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(03/28/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Let’s face it. Many students’ only encounter with the IU Student Association election April 2-3 will be pretending to listen to music through their ear buds as they pass smiling, T-shirt clad campaign volunteers beckoning to them from polling places outside Woodburn Hall.Most of the time, abstainers have reasons to pass on the polls. But those reasons often aren’t terribly compelling ones, such as “I like to commit massive electoral fraud.”If you ask an apathetic student why he or she is not participating in the election, you might hear one of the following responses:1. “Student government doesn’t do anything.”If IUSA did what we normally expect governments to do, your meal points would be redistributed, your dorm would be wiretapped and anyone caught trying to steal a fish from the Showalter Fountain would be droned.Student government’s most basic role, as outlined in the Code of Student Rights, is to give students some input into the making of University policies that affect them. It’s unglamorous. But it’s better than no representation at all, and it’s arguably more important than the big-ticket platform items that lack certain success. When you vote for IUSA, you vote for more than an attempt to put a pub in the Indiana Memorial Union, get tax-free textbooks or install solar panels around campus. You also send people to speak on your behalf to University administrators. One ticket will assuredly do that job every year. Your vote can help pick the right one.2. “I’m on my way to class.”Oh, really? Where’s your backpack?In all seriousness, since we don’t live in ancient Athens, you don’t need to travel for days to cast a vote. Polling stations will be located at many high-traffic locations across campus. You are almost guaranteed to bump into one. Filling out a ballot takes mere moments. It’s painless. I promise.By the way, voting is done online, so you can vote from home if interacting with people isn’t your thing. That’s right. It takes less physical effort to cast a ballot than to visit a vending machine for a pack of Skittles. And you feel much better about yourself afterward.3. “I don’t know anything about the tickets.”The only thing worse than a non-vote is an uninformed vote. But how can we possibly inform ourselves about the election without nonstop exposure to vicious attack ads?Luckily, we’re college students. So we know how to do a little research. YOUniversity, Hoosiers 4 Solutions and SPARC all have websites, Facebook pages and extensive coverage in this newspaper. Do your homework before you vote. Don’t make your mind up at the polls.4. “Student government doesn’t affect me.”IUSA’s executive budget alone affects students to the tune of $100,000. True, it only costs you, personally, a couple of dollars in the student fees you pay each year. But if I commit to spending $2 at Kilroy’s on Kirkwood, I still want to have a say in what it gets spent on. I apply the same principle to student government. And IUSA has spent that money on things I find useful. IU bus tracker limits the amount of time I have to spend waiting in the cold for a bus. Zipcar lets me move my stuff in and out of storage each year.Before you head to class April 2-3, please take a moment to get to know the candidates and what they stand for. And when you walk by a voting table, please don’t run away. The campaign workers don’t bite. They just want you to feed them a well-reasoned vote.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(03/21/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Curbing drug and alcohol use on campus has been a major priority for college and university administrators for decades. Because IU is a large, state school with a reputation for partying, administrators must be especially attentive to substance abuse. It is a tricky issue to address. Drinking has been part of college culture since college existed in its modern form. That is unlikely to change completely. For many students, a miniscule age difference separates a good time with friends from a citation. Marijuana use and underage drinking are illegal and against University policy.Such offenses are widespread and generally not as harmful as other crimes. IU must be careful not to overreact to them. It sometimes does.For example, residence hall regulations ban empty alcohol containers in dorms, including “displays that are meant to be decorative.” The “trophy bottle” rule prohibits what is literally a molded piece of glass with a label right alongside firearms, lab specimens and Bunsen burners. Compared to handguns, open flames and engineered diseases, I do not see how empty bottles plausibly pose any of the “health, safety and insurance liability” risks that Residential Program and Services uses to justify its list of prohibited items. Arizona State University, which has a similar policy, provides more clarity. Its empty bottle ban serves to prevent “negative messages sent to minors.” But does stopping “negative messages” justify penalizing students for having functionally harmless vessels devoid of their forbidden contents in their private rooms?The residence hall regulations also state that IU deems everyone in a room where a violation is occurring “complicit” in that violation. The policy amounts to guilt by association. It compels resident assistants who bust a dorm party to charge clearly sober students similarly to rule-breakers. Many students who are found responsible for minor drug and alcohol violations in the campus judicial system face a postgraduate disciplinary record.Drug and alcohol offenders are overwhelmingly sanctioned with Disciplinary Probation. Under Disciplinary Probation, students may be called on to complete a program or provide a service and may also face greater sanctions should they commit additional violations during the period of probation. But Disciplinary Probation generates a disciplinary record that IU keeps for five years after a student graduates. Conversely, students who receive a Reprimand and Warning have their files destroyed when they graduate.Disciplinary Probation can be prescribed for a student caught with a pipe, cited after being hospitalized for alcohol poisoning or cited at a tailgate for underage drinking just as easily as it can be applied to drunk drivers and repeat offenders. Student judicial boards are trained to issue Disciplinary Probation routinely for substance violations. The RPS judicial board manual states that “as a general guideline, first time marijuana/other drug offenses are given a sanction of disciplinary probation. This is also the general guideline for second offenses of the same nature.”Violations of University policy should be punished. That being said minor, victimless, first-time offenses should not generate a record that could jeopardize employment or graduate school.And student judicial boards should take account of the fact that, per their training manual, they can consult with the assistant director for student conduct if they do not want to use a sanction of Disciplinary Probation for such a violation.It is, of course, in administrators’ interest to reduce the incidence and harm of drinking on campus.But the way in which IU handles substance violations should reflect social realities, fair notions of justice and the actual harm caused by the violation.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(03/07/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez eliminated his term limits in 2009, he probably expected to hold onto power for a little longer than three years. But life is unpredictable, and after a 14-year reign of power, the fiery man in the red beret and jumpsuit who drew the ire of President George W. Bush and the adulation of Hollywood dupe Sean Penn is dead of cancer.Chávez prided himself on his vision of “21st-century socialism” for Venezuela, but his strategy of handouts, class warfare and media censorship came straight from the playbooks of the worst despots of the last century. Chávez cast himself as a man of the people, determined to pull many Venezuelans out of poverty. He did, but not before he tanked Venezuela’s economy and stripped away political freedoms.True, Chávez cut the percentage of families in poverty in half between 1995 and 2009. He also halved the unemployment rate. And he provided poor Venezuelans with free education and health care through his “Bolivarian Missions” program. But it will take a growing economy to help Venezuelans sustain themselves and prosper. Here, Chávez failed miserably to deliver. The country is experiencing a shortage of rudimentary consumer goods and grappling with a massive deficit and currency devaluation. Last year, Venezuela experienced a whopping 27 percent increase in inflation. Chávez expropriated oil businesses left and right, creating an unfriendly environment for foreign investors. His reliance on a nationalized oil industry for funding everything from social programs to the military has made Venezuela dangerously dependent on a finite and unstable source of income. Chávez’s Venezuela is still a capitalist country — the state just owns more of the capital and is terrible at managing it.What Venezuela’s poor have in food, education and healthcare, they utterly lack in physical security. Since Chávez took office, Venezuela’s murder rate skyrocketed and is now one of the world’s highest. The vast majority of victims are low-income city dwellers.Chávez routinely intimidated journalists and broadcasters to avert not only political opposition but also embarrassment. For instance, his attorney general imposed an injunction requiring reports on water quality to be based on a “truthful technical report backed by a competent institution.” There’s nothing like chilling the speech of those who inform you whether or not the water is safe to drink. Chávez was no man of the people. He was just another tyrannical, phony strongman. His bombastic personality and cartoonish military garb made him look like a caricature of a 20th-century Latin American revolutionary, much less the poster boy of whatever “21st-century socialism” is supposed to be.Let’s appreciate for a brief moment the fact that Chávez gave poor Venezuelans a leg up with his social programs. But he set them up with a country that cannot give them much more than that. He used them as pawns in his short-lived, so-called revolution. We can’t predict Venezuela’s political trajectory at this early stage, but let’s hope that in the post-Chávez era, Venezuelans find a leader who respects democratic processes, values press freedom and cares about the long-term prosperity of the people.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(02/28/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Indiana General Assembly amended the law in 1975, creating the position of student trustee to represent student interests on the IU Board of Trustees. It’s nice to think that students have a say in IU’s real decision-making body. But student trustees are chosen by the state governor, not by their peers. That must change if students are to have a trustee who is truly accountable to them.Cora Griffin is the current student trustee. I do not criticize her performance here. However, I increasingly question the system that will choose her replacement when her term ends in June.The trustees have the final say on issues that affect students intimately. They set tuition and fees, and they establish student codes of conduct. And as the student trustee is a full member of the board with the same powers as his or her non-student colleagues, it is all the more important that the student trustee accurately represents the wishes of his or her constituents. It would make sense for students to actually choose whom they think would best represent their will on the board. Unfortunately, reality seldom makes sense.Instead, the governor chooses the student trustee from a list of 10 names sent to him by a “search and screen” committee. The governor appoints five other trustees, while alumni elect three.As the General Assembly already allows alumni to elect their trustees, one would think they would agree with the idea that certain institutional stakeholders should have a certain level of control over who represents them on the board. IU’s funding situation has changed dramatically since the student trustee position was created. Students now provide the majority of IU’s funding, while the state provides a small, decreasing amount. The General Assembly should change the way the student trustee is chosen to reflect this.For all the criticism that can be leveled at members of student government, and all politicians, for that matter, they are at least accountable to their constituents through free and fair elections. It’s a problem that the one student with a say in IU’s final authority is not chosen the same way.I certainly don’t count myself among the IU Strikers, but I understand their frustration with IU’s decision-making process. It’s great that we have members of student government sitting on all kinds of campus boards and committees. But we need a real representative chosen by us — not by the state — on the Board of Trustees. We don’t know whether or not the student trustee accurately represents our interests, because the selection process does not allow the student trustee to demonstrate a popular mandate. Opening the trustee position to a popular election will help alleviate the frustration many students feel about their voice in IU’s governance.We are adults, just as alumni are. And we are providing the majority share of IU’s funding. Why can alumni elect their representatives while we cannot elect ours without being subjected to the governor’s veto? The General Assembly must make the student trustee position elected by IU students across all campuses. Until then, the student trustee will not be the students’ trustee.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(02/21/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When I was a freshman judicial board member, I found that one of the most common IU policies to elicit head turns from students was IU’s practice of notifying their parents in many instances if they were under 21 and were found responsible for an alcohol or drug violation. I found the policy to be a head-scratcher, too.Under the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, colleges are prohibited from communicating a great deal of private information to parents, including grades and health problems. But a 1998 amendment to FERPA permitted colleges to inform parents when their under-21-year-old children were disciplined for substance violations. “Red Cup Q&A,” a feature written by University of Arizona health staff for the student newspaper, highlights an important disconnect between the policy’s critics and its supporters. In one issue, “Red Cup” responds to the question of why 18-year-old men and women shouldn’t be solely responsible for their own disciplinary violations.“Red Cup” simply responds that under FERPA, colleges may, but are not required to, notify parents when their underage children have engaged insubstance-related misconduct. “Red Cup” goes on to explain that the intent of the policy is to allow parents to “become involved before their son or daughter gets into more serious trouble with substances,” and that according to a survey by the Association for Student Judicial Affairs’ Model Policy Committee, 72 percent of parents support the policy. These campus health professionals at no point address the very important aspect of the privacy rights of adults head-on.Parental involvement would no doubt help students who are engaging in substance abuse. And it’s unsurprising that most parents support parental notification policies. But it is also important to keep in mind that we are discussing adults who otherwise have a high degree of privacy surrounding their educational records. Would we really want to suggest they have fewer privacy rights than their peers who have not chosen to pursue higher education?I believe that IU’s use of FERPA’s parental notification policy is reflective of an underlying tug-of-war between the notion of the student as a legal adult and as a growing, quasi-dependent person. Yes, we live, work and learn on our own for the most part. But parents still exert a direct force in many of our lives.Still, some students are truly independent from their parents. Some do not rely on their parents to finance their education. Still others have parents who fully respect their autonomy and would want nothing more than for their children to develop into adults who are responsible for the consequences of their choices.For all their desired outcomes, mandatory parental notification policies tread on student privacy rights, as well as the bond of trust between the student and the school. These policies are also rather blind to the fact that there is no universal mold for the relationship between students andparents.Fortunately, there is a middle-ground solution to this quandary. IU already allows students to grant their parents access to financial aid information, grades and even exam schedules. Allowing students to similarly opt-in to parental notification for disciplinary issues would keep them fully in control of their records while still allowing them and their parents to make a decision together about sharing access to deeply personal information.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(02/14/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I accept that the government carries out violence on my behalf. I believe it is frequently justified in doing so. And I know I have a say in changing the government if I disagree with it.That is why the Department of Justice “drone memo” published by NBC last week chills me.The memo says the government can kill one of its own citizens without due process if he is a “senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an associated group, poses an “imminent threat” to the United States and the kill order is given by an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”President Barack Obama asks us to accept some weighty propositions in this memo.He asks us to accept that an individual government official can exercise sound judgment in ordering an extrajudicial killing.He asks us to accept that the government may order those killings without clear evidence of any particular attack on American interests in the near future. And while al-Qaeda is a long-established nemesis, the Obama administration asks us to accept that it can draw up a similar justification to kill members of other groups it deems a threat. But what concerns me even more than the contents of the memo is that the Obama administration repeatedly refused to show it to legislators, journalists and civil rights organizations. John Brennan, Obama’s nominee to direct the Central Intelligence Agency, insisted at his confirmation hearing last week that the president acts legally in ordering drone strikes. The catch is that Obama’s lawyers define “legal.” Brennan, by his own admission, is “not a lawyer.” Brennan uses the same logic the George W. Bush administration used in defending its use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against terror suspects. He’s saying that an administration’s actions are legal so long as that administration’s lawyers whip up a justification for those actions. It’s even better if that administration can withhold its legal reasoning from public scrutiny.The Bush “torture” memos, also crafted at the U.S. Department of Justice, provided legal justifications for American officials to engage in detainment and interrogation techniques that could have otherwise exposed them to prosecution for war crimes. Obama released those memos in 2009 and rejected the use of torture. He was right to do so, by the tenets of international law and, much more importantly, by our Constitution. It is terribly hypocritical that he refused to release his own legal justification for utilizing violence far more permanent than torture against American citizens.There are indeed circumstances in which it is justified to kill American citizens without due process, such as when police kill a criminal who poses an immediate and lethal risk to others, or when U.S. soldiers kill an American national who has taken up arms against them on a battlefield. But it profoundly cheapens the meaning of American citizenship when the government refuses to even come forward with a case for a killing. When that happens, the American people and their elected representatives have no way of judging whether the government’s behavior is unjust or overreaching.Any legal framework created by the government to justify violence is meaningless if citizens are not even able to read it. And as a voter, I want to know when and why my government kills people in my name and in the name of fellow citizens.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(02/07/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Imagine if Gov. Mike Pence rallied the state legislature to slash IU’s funding because the IU Art Museum displayed a painting he found offensive.Such action would be antithetical to the very idea of a public university.But Brooklyn College in New York City is facing exactly that sort of political extortion.Glenn Greenwald reported in The Guardian that New York City officials, led by famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz, are threatening BC’s funding because its political science department is sponsoring an event that features two members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is critical of Israel.While I’d love to use this column to talk about blind jingoes who believe Israel can do no wrong or rabid anti-Semites who believe it can do no right, I’m much more inclined to criticize the 10 members of the New York City Council who sent a letter to BC President Karen Gould threatening her school with funding cuts on account of an event they find to be “offensive” as well as “odious and wrong.” We Hoosiers should care about this, because any school that receives public funding is subject to the same kind of threat.Whether in Indiana or New York, governments ostensibly fund higher education in part because they deem it beneficial for their constituents to be exposed to differing viewpoints and cutting-edge research in the pursuit of truth. Universities also serve as incubators for dissent that would be steamrolled in other public venues.The work carried out by universities may not always please a majority of the public. It may shock and offend those of certain religious and political sensibilities. But universities help facilitate important public conversations, including conversations on uncomfortable subjects. They are not supposed to be echo chambers that parrot the majority opinion and refuse to push people out of their comfort zones. Yet that is precisely what some legislators believe they should be. In 2009, the Oklahoma state legislature investigated the University of Oklahoma for hosting a speech by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The same year, Maryland senators stopped University of Maryland students from screening an adult film that was to be followed by a discussion of First Amendment rights and pornography. Are some politicians so afraid of bespectacled professors discussing international relations, grey-haired scientists talking about animals and pimply kids talking about sex that they are willing to use state leverage to stifle them? It would seem a petty and immature way to express disagreement, and it defeats the idea that universities should be venues of open discussion where adults can live and learn.IU was famously home to Alfred Kinsey while he researched human sexuality during an era in which the topic was taboo. Herman B Wells was IU’s president at the time of the controversy. Wells said, “I had early made up my mind that a university that bows to the wishes of a person, group or segment of society is not free and that a state university in particular cannot expect to command the support of the public if it is captive to any group.” Dershowitz should know better. He is a political liberal and serves on the board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — an outspoken defender of First Amendment rights on campus. He should heed Wells’ words, as should the New York City Council.IU students should stand in solidarity not with supporters or detractors of Israel, but with those who stand up for American principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Politicians all too often show their willingness to use their power to silence those they disagree with. And if it can happen in New York, it can happen here.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(01/31/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>By the time you reach college, there’s little excuse for failing to understand the definition and severity of cheating or plagiarism. Most classes at IU lay down the rules about academic misconduct on day one during the syllabus review. IU takes academic violations seriously, because they damage its reputation as a top public research university, not to mention offenders undermine their own education while cheating their peers who play by the rules.But in the process of holding students accountable to University policy, faculty members must also be accountable to students and to the institution.For example, if professors suspect one of their students cheated on a test, they are required to send an academic misconduct report to the dean of students within 14 days of concluding that the violation occurred. This practice is important to the University, because it allows IU to detect and track offenders, including those who cheat or plagiarize repeatedly. Without it, it would be harder for IU to record academic misconduct in students’ disciplinary files. Students accused of academic violations also benefit. While the reports expose students to further disciplinary action by the Dean of Students, the Dean also sends students information about appealing an erroneous finding or a disproportionate sanction as part of the campus judicial process. Occasionally, faculty members step outside that process when they fail to submit reports or submit them on time. This prevents IU from holding students accountable to the faculty member’s own judgment. Just as significantly, it cheats the student out of an opportunity to seek relief for an erroneous accusation or a draconian penalty. In addition to making sure professors report academic misconduct when it occurs, we should have clearer rules on what happens to students caught in an end-of-semester academic misconduct accusation, where the student’s future enrollment could be affected. According to the procedures governing the campus judicial system, a student can receive an incomplete in a class if his misconduct is not resolved before final grades are due. This would seem to contradict a rule in the same document that states IU will not put sanctions in place until a student exhausts his appeals, and that the work a student performs while he has an ongoing misconduct issue is dependent on the outcome of his hearing. A student can use a grade appeal to retroactively correct his grade if he is absolved of wrongdoing, but if the course were a prerequisite or a time-sensitive requirement, the student’s educational experience could be adversely affected. Thus, faculty members should consistently give students accused of academic violations the grades they would receive if they were not responsible for misconduct, changing the grades as required by the final rulings on the violations.Faculty members are intimately knowledgeable about their work and are rightly trusted to be the vanguard of detecting and punishing plagiarism and cheating. But they, too, are beholden to a set of rules. In dealing with academic misconduct, professors must grant students due process and should be held accountable when they don’t. Additionally, the incomplete, reduced and failing grades they issue in response to academic violations should be treated like any other sanction IU issues and be withheld until a final decision is made about a violation. IU’s academic integrity is of the utmost importance, but so, too, are standards of judgment that engender fairness, consistency and trust.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(01/24/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s common knowledge on campus that IU’s public funding is plummeting, heading to less than 10 percent of the University’s total funding in seven years. Many Hoosiers hope that state legislators will resist the low-hanging fruit of higher education. They hope that Indiana will restore its University’s funding to previous levels. But what if that doesn’t happen? What if IU essentially goes private with a public name? How do we tie down tuition?IU is trying to answer that question by exploring the privatization of its parking operations. At a Nov. 6, 2012 meeting of the Bloomington Faculty Council, Neil Theobald, IU’s former chief financial officer, said the University would need to be “fairly aggressive with tuition” if it did not take other action to control costs.IU has been relying on its students for funding like never before. With tuition and fees providing a majority of IU’s revenues, the University has been trying to attract competitive nonresidents, as described in the Nov. 6 BFC meeting as IU’s “golden goose,” and charging them triple the rates of in-state students. What else can be done? Faculty, administrators and students should be bold and creative in brainstorming solutions to IU’s funding problem.Here’s one idea: IU should reevaluate its myriad construction projects.In 2010, President Michael McRobbie announced a massive building campaign that seeks to take advantage of low construction prices. We talk a lot about investing in the future, but we forget that many investments fail to produce returns. IU should ask itself if all those new buildings will generate revenue or if preexisting space can be utilized more efficiently. Also, the cost of construction goes beyond the ribbon cutting. Even if new buildings are paid for by philanthropy, they must be staffed, maintained and upgraded. IU could also encourage early graduation. In 2010, former Gov. Mitch Daniels urged state schools to encourage three-year bachelor degrees. Facilitating and encouraging three-year degree programs could save students thousands of dollars. Many IU students already graduate early. While some students will certainly need four or more years to finish their degrees, making it easier for others to obtain them in three would spare eligible students a hefty sum that they could put toward other uses.One particularly controversial idea is scaling back merit aid and instead favoring need-based aid. IU currently offers a number of merit scholarships. Some of these are awarded automatically. However, critics of merit aid have said it tends to benefit students from wealthier families who tend to have higher grades and test scores. By shifting some funds set aside for merit aid to need-based aid, IU could make itself more affordable to Hoosiers whose primary concern is affordability. With that being said, there is no doubt merit aid plays a role in attracting high-scoring nonresidents who pay increased tuition.IU could take cues from other schools. The Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Harrisburg, Pa., has abolished tenure and merged departments to cut costs. Vance Fried, a professor of entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University, has proposed scaling back or eliminating unpopular programs. Increased state funding would certainly relieve some of IU’s budgetary woes. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen in the near future, but it’s time for IU to start looking further afield for cost-control options in order to maintain its mission of affordable education for Hoosiers. And in doing that, it doesn’t pay to be timid.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(01/17/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>High school is for children. College is for men and women. While it doesn’t always seem to play out that way in reality, we do expect vastly more choice and responsibility when we transition from the former to the latter. In college, we are wholly responsible for our own success, if we weren’t already — no parental homework help, no “lousy public school system” to blame.Of course, freedom to succeed means freedom to fail, and that’s why professors and departments should stop keeping track of who’s coming to class and who’s not.Is regular attendance truly required for success in a course? If so, why compel attendance at all? A bad grade is a bad grade regardless of whether it is due to one too many absences or failure to comprehend the material. If a student misses a large number of classes and still manages to succeed in a course, there is as much a problem with the course as there is with the student.But wouldn’t a class without an attendance policy allow lazy students to stay enrolled at the expense of studious ones? Unfortunately, that already happens. Simply walk into a lecture and count the number of laptops opened to Facebook, ESPN or YouTube. I would prefer those students not show up at all.No part of a student’s grade should be attendance-based. There are many components that should go into a final grade. Punctuality is not one of them. It does not directly relate to course competency — it’s a life skill. Students who consistently skip class will likely see their grades fall to various other causes.Professors frazzled by counting pupils, making sure attendance lists get to everyone, reconciling and negotiating absences and inspecting suspicious doctors’ notes would be frazzled no more.Perhaps the strongest argument against attendance, however, is that students are consumers. As a nonresident, I pay $15,000 per semester in tuition alone. That’s like buying a Ford Fiesta twice a year for four years. If I want to buy eight Fiestas and float them into Lake Monroe, that’s my call.I’m pretty good about going to class, to the point where I can remember each time I have missed one at IU: once from to illness, once due to forgetfulness and five times to visit my girlfriend.Of course there were other days when I felt ill and days when I had something personal or pressing going on that frankly would have been better uses of my time. But it simply wouldn’t have been worth it to get that dreaded third — sometimes second — absence.So how do you get students to go to class if it’s not required? It’s not difficult. My Greek history professor sprinkles pop quizzes into his lectures. Last semester, my communications professor incorporated his lectures into the exams and chose not to post his notes. Better yet, he didn’t simply lecture from the book. He lectured from his own research and insight. The benefit of self-compelled attendance is still more obvious in the languages. The Spanish department, which has a mandatory attendance policy, should take note of the fact that in order to succeed in its courses, one generally has to use the language on a regular basis in the first place.Attendance policies should reflect the voluntary, purchase-based nature of college and the expected maturity of college students. Doing away with them will allow students and professors more flexibility, encourage professors to improve their lectures and spur students to attend class out of a sense of responsibility rather than compulsion.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(01/10/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Time Magazine recently reported that Florida is contemplating offering discounted tuition to students majoring in science while letting tuition for humanities majors rise.I’m not in favor of tuition increase for anyone, and I think this idea could artificially push up tuition for humanities students and prevent poorer students from being able to attend college in the first place.I do think that its objective — convincing more students to pick promising majors — merits discussion.I wince whenever I meet a science major who wants to go to law school instead of medical school or an accounting major who wants to switch to public relations.Many of us have had a parent or guidance counselor tell us we can be whatever we want, go to whatever college we choose and study whatever makes us happy.If we grew up in an America that boasted affordable higher education and economic stability, this advice might not sound so naïve.But given the cost of higher education and the state of the economy, students must treat their education as the massive financial investment it is and ask how they can most realistically make it pay off.I’m certainly not suggesting that no one should major in English.It can be a promising path for brilliant wordsmiths. But students must understand the difference between a vocation, a career to which one is suited, and an avocation, a hobby. For instance, I am fascinated by aviation, but I am heading to law school this fall because my conviction that I can be a talented and dedicated lawyer is as strong as my conviction that if my abysmal math skills didn’t put the brakes on my aerospace engineering career, my responsibility for the fiery deaths of hundreds of travelers certainly would. So, I’ll be content to build model planes when I’m not buried in legal code.Students who enjoy keeping up with current events and reading Shakespeare but who also have the math skills required for a science, engineering or business degree should take note of this:According to Time, the best-paid majors are in engineering, computer science and healthcare, while the lowest paid are in the arts and humanities.It’s obvious where the money lies. And to paraphrase John Cheese of Cracked.com, money can’t buy happiness, but lack of money can prevent you from being happy. I believe Florida’s proposal is imperfect, and I believe colleges seeking to usher more students into the sciences should consider allocating more scholarship funds toward those fields instead. Twenty-year-olds are notoriously bad at thinking long-term. But financial incentives are powerful stimuli and encouraging students to pursue careers that tangibly benefit humanity by creating new products and improving quality of life while paying dividends on their college investment is a worthwhile endeavor.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(01/04/13 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU students who are suspected of breaking the law don’t just have the Bloomington court system to contend with, they also have to deal with disciplinary action from the University. But IU’s disciplinary action isn’t necessarily subject to the decision of a court.Provision II.H.26 of the Code of Student Rights allows IU to discipline students for a “violation of any Indiana or federal criminal law.” The reason for this charge is obvious. IU wants to be able to discipline students who engage in criminal activity. The application of the charge is questionable, however, because IU often assigns it and finds students responsible for violating it before a court renders a conviction. At first glance, it would seem IU is interpreting the law where it has no jurisdiction and making actionable judgments absent a court making a determination of legal fact.University law consultant Ed Stoner says in his Model Student Code that schools using a charge similar to H26 should cite an additional campus charge. According to Stoner, this helps to avoid the “mistaken notion that the institution is enforcing the criminal laws.” IU follows this practice. For example, a student arrested on campus for smoking marijuana could expect to be charged with H26 and H23, which prohibits the use of controlled substances.One line of reasoning behind the use of such charges is that the University is technically enforcing its own rule rather than a law, even if the rule is against violating the law. Theoretically, a student found responsible for only H23 should face similar sanctions to a student found additionally responsible for H26 in the same situation. In this sense, the charge mostly serves an educational purpose — a reminder that the student has responsibilities as a citizen as well as a student.But students are members of many communities. A Greek student accused of violating University policy may also be in violation of house policy, but the house rather than the University will discipline him for it. Similarly, the University should not dabble in what is the proper purview of the courts, even if it is a well-intentioned attempt to educate the student about his civic responsibilities. Because campus judicial processes and the criminal justice system are separate and use different fact-finding processes, a student may be acquitted in court while the University’s determination that he “violated the rule against breaking the law” stands. But it should be painfully obvious that, as a technical matter, the University is interpreting the law when it decides whether a student is responsible for violating H26. Abolishing H26, or changing its application to reflect legal fact, would reinforce the idea that the campus disciplinary system and the criminal justice system are different entities. At the end of the day, even though H26 is applied with other campus charges, it still goes into the finding that a sanction is predicated on. In reaching a determination that a student is responsible for H26, the University is still doing something that ought to first be done by a court.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(12/10/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Members of the Bloomington community were shocked last week by the arrest of IU student Christopher Gugliuzza for torturing and killing cats. IU Associate Vice President of University Communications Mark Land later publicly confirmed Gugliuzza had been suspended and is not allowed to complete the fall term. This has left some wondering why IU did not expel him in the face of what Land said are “facts that aren’t really in dispute.”The main reasons IU’s summary action did not go further lay with the evolution of due process on campus and the intent behind the suspension.In Ashiegbu v. Williams, a federal court ruled that an Ohio State University student who had been indefinitely suspended on a summary basis had been expelled as a practical matter and thus had a right to a pre-expulsion hearing but not a pre-suspension hearing. A federal court struck down a right to a pre-suspension hearing again in 2001 for a Michigan State University student.That means that Gugliuzza would have a right to a hearing before being expelled, but not before being suspended.IU’s provost is authorized to summarily suspend students who are deemed a serious threat to people or property. The measure takes effect within 24 hours, and challenging it is an arduous process. Students are normally granted a hearing at IU. However, summarily suspended students have a matter of days in which they must ask for one. Nor is university suspension like a week-long high school suspension. Summarily suspended students must wait a year before petitioning to return to IU. In contrast, OSU now uses an interim suspension that allows students to petition for reinstatement within three days. This is not the first time IU’s authority to summarily remove students from campus has been publicized. According to a 2001 IU press release, then-Dean of Students Richard McKaig used the power to suspend a fraternity that had repeated alcohol violations. Sometimes, the degree to which a student poses a legitimate threat to others is not a clear-cut matter. In 2011, a federal judge ruled in IU’s favor in Medlock et al. v. Trustees of Indiana University, a search and seizure case in federal court in which a student found with a large cache of marijuana and paraphernalia in his apartment received a summary suspension. The policy is punitive by nature, but the main focus and justification for any temporary suspension must be maintaining public safety.This, in addition to due process guarantees that include the opportunity for a hearing in which the University has the burden of proving a student responsible for a violation, is why summary suspension rightly remains a limited power.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(12/03/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For those that are still confused, the fiscal cliff is a number of spending cuts and tax increases that will automatically take effect Jan. 1 unless Congress reaches an agreement to avoid them.The Congressional Budget Office predicts another recession and a return to 9 percent unemployment should Congress fail to negotiate a solution.Give-and-take bargaining has given way to intransigence on reaching an agreement to avoid the cliff. Republicans refuse to budge on taxes, and Democrats won’t compromise on spending.The latter is a far more pressing problem. Expiring Bush tax cuts would free up a paltry $80 billion, a figure almost overshadowed by the $50 billion in new spending President Barack Obama has proposed.Raising taxes on the wealthy would score ideological points for Democrats but would not come remotely close to eliminating the deficit. The call from the left to “soak the rich” is misinformed and willfully ignorant. Most of the “rich” are not Warren Buffets. They are self-employed businessmen and small business owners as well as families in the annual $250,000 salary range, often living in high-cost areas in states that already levy high income and property taxes.A couple earning $150,000 in New York owes 7 percent in state income taxes. A couple in California earning $100,000 owes 9 percent. In Iowa, a couple earning $70,000 also owes 9 percent. Yes, we had a top income tax rate of 91 percent during the 1950s, but people still used loopholes to pay a lower effective tax rate, and thanks to World War II, our economic competition had been wiped out.Certainly, Republicans must make their own concessions on spending. The 20 percent of the budget that goes toward the military is far too high. But entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid eat up twice what defense does. Democrats have been throwing around the possibility of up to $400 billion in entitlement cuts, but they won’t kick in for 10 to 20 years.In the spirit of compromise, perhaps Republicans should agree at least partway to a tax hike. But before that happens, Democrats need to acknowledge that mammoth entitlement spending — not lost tax revenue — is the biggest budgetary threat.Democrats need to demonstrate they will not simply renege on proposed spending cuts in the future.— danoconn@indiana.edu
(11/26/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize that student debt and decreasing state funding of IU are serious concerns for Hoosiers. The former is not helped by repeated tuition increases and the latter is plummeting. Recession-driven financial constraints explain the recent acceleration in falling state support for IU, but this alone does not explain the overall trend in decreasing state funding.In all fairness, IU’s tuition increases have remained below the national average and in-state tuition — currently set at about $9,000 per year — compares favorably with other Big Ten institutions. Certainly, all state higher education systems have been squeezed in one way or another by the financial crisis, and Indiana is no different.But while state funding declined significantly during the last several years, it has been declining for much longer than that, sliding from 50 percent more than 20 years ago to 16 percent today, and projected to fall less than 10 percent in eight years. I believe part of the reason state dollars have been so elusive may lie in IU’s success as an increasingly private institution. IU has been a successful private-sector fundraiser in recent years, and saw a 38 percent increase in grants and contributions — from $247 million to $340 million — between 2009 and 2010. Revenue generated by non-state and nonstudent sources contribute more than 30 percent of IU’s budget. Thus as long as IU appears capable of supporting itself through private means, the state sees less reason for sustained or increased funding. As a supporter of smaller government, I applaud IU’s resourcefulness. However, I also stop and consider what it means for a public institution — established by the people of a state to serve them — to be truly public.I additionally believe that “brain drain” has contributed to tepid state funding. According to a January 2012 study conducted by IU, 40 percent of public university students who graduated in 2000 had left the state within five years. Additionally, 30 percent of IU students are out-of-state and 10 percent are international. If all graduates continue to leave Indiana at alarmingly high rates, what more incentive is there for Indiana to assist those students? But tuition increases will surely do the most harm to those in-state students who are least able to pay rather than better-off Hoosiers and out-of-state students.As has been mentioned in this newspaper, IU’s Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald admits the structure of IU’s funding — which for the first time in University history makes up the majority of revenue — is unsustainable. If the ratio of student-to-state funding is to continue unmitigated, surely student-consumers deserve more than their lone governor-appointed trustee representing their interests to the University’s top decision-makers. If the state’s share of funding continues to fall, we might be IU in name only. — danoconn@indiana.edu
(11/12/12 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As states voted to legalize same-sex marriage and marijuana, this election was an exciting time for ballot measures. Referenda engage voters. They offer the electorate a chance to directly influence fundamental political changes and make it possible for any person or organization with enough support to cast an idea to the wind of popular opinion.Student involvement in IU Student Association and the power of students and student organizations to affect change on campus were major points of discussion at the Union Board-IUSA town hall meeting last Wednesday. Attendees wanted to learn how best to communicate their concerns to their student government and to University officials. For instance, Coal-Free IU wanted to know why, after fervent petitioning and lobbying during a number of years, they could not get an IUSA administration to press their concerns with University administrators.Movement for IUSA representatives noted that a large number of student groups with unique concerns vie for IUSA’s attention and that IUSA only has so much capacity to address those concerns. They emphasized the importance of coalition building as an effective way to demonstrate widespread student body support.There are other avenues working toward change through IUSA Congress to pass a resolution reflecting the ostensible will of the student body and actually running a ticket for IUSA. But the congressional process can be slow, running a ticket can be daunting and navigating University administration can be a dizzying and draining task.Here’s an idea for an objective way to gauge student body support for an issue to determine whether IUSA should take it up as its own and press it forward with administrators: create a framework to allow the student body to decide what student-proposed initiatives IUSA adopts. Each IUSA ticket comes up with its own initiative to run on, why not let the students directly select some?Imagine a system where student organizations that collect a certain number of signatures by a certain date get their initiatives put on a ballot. If a measure receives a critical proportion of votes, IUSA takes up the issue as its own. While the onus might remain on the student entity to do a great deal of work in pursuing and raising awareness about its issue, it would have attentive IUSA support and collaboration.Students are notoriously apathetic even toward issues that directly affect them. Student organizations are indispensable drivers of awareness and change. But with so many competing for IUSA’s attention, it’s hard to know which would most benefit the student body. A campus-wide referendum might be an imperfect and incomplete idea, but it’s just one possible way in which student organizations might be able to show a tangible measure of support while getting students more engaged in the campus political process.— danoconn@indiana.edu