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(08/26/04 5:41am)
Getting to class has never been so controversial.\nThe Bloomington Transit's Park and Ride program is scheduled to move locations from Bryan Park to the Winslow Sports Complex starting Sept. 6, much to the distress of students who use the transit service and to residents in the neighborhoods that surround the complex. The Bloomington Board of Park Commissioners will vote on the change Tuesday at 3 p.m. in City Hall.\nBloomington Transit general manager Lew May said Park and Ride was implemented 12 years ago to serve as a way for students who lived off campus to get to class. But in recent months, the residents adjacent to Bryan Park have expressed disapproval about the noise, pollution and safety of the transit program that runs past their homes daily every 10 minutes.\nHowever, the residents by the Winslow Sports Park are voicing concerns that echo those who live by Bryan Park. \n"This area is already a very densely populated place," said Rose Mahern, president of the Moss Creek Village Homeowners Association. "We love the students, but the roads were not built for this many cars."\nMahern said the community already deals with extra traffic because of Bloomington South High School and is worried the extra carbon monoxide emitted by the buses will damage the vegetation in the area. \nIU Student Association President senior Tyson Chastain said he has received numerous e-mails from concerned students about the changes to the program.\n"They've been saying to me, 'Tyson, we rely on this. This is something I use to go to class,'" Chastain said.\nBloomington resident Buff Brown, a transport air quality specialist for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said a survey of the students using the Park and Ride program was conducted last year by the city-planning department found that 65 percent of Park and Ride users live on existing bus routes.\nMay said it's true some students who use the service are on existing routes but the Park and Ride system is about convenience, and it may not be convenient to use those routes.\n"I didn't take the shuttle because I'm lazy," graduate student Donna Drucker said. "I took it because it was conveniently close to my apartment and ran frequently enough to accommodate my irregular schedule as a graduate student."\nPark and Ride will run from the Winslow Sports Complex until spring break, when it will move back to Bryan Park to avoid the increased sports traffic Winslow experiences in the spring. The venue change would mean a 17-minute bus ride to campus from the Winslow Sports Complex, as opposed to the seven-minute bus ride from Bryan Park. Also, there will be a 20-minute gap between buses instead of a 10-minute gap.\nMay said the switch to the Winslow Sports Complex is only a temporary solution, but it is one Mahern doesn't understand.\n"It seems logical and sensible to keep it at Bryan Park for one more year, not just to compound the problem by moving it to another neighborhood," Mahern said.\nChastain expressed frustration that this decision was talked about in public forums during the summer, in a transit board meeting Aug. 3 and a park board meeting Wednesday, when the majority of students were not in Bloomington to attend the meetings.\n"I think if this issue had been brought up when the students were here, it would have been resolved easily," Chastain said. "If they were worried about the buses driving too many times on small streets, we might have been able to work something out." \nDrucker said the change will not be beneficial.\n"If there were real problems with the shuttle, the Bloomington Transit should face them with the help and voices of its riders," Drucker said, "not just move it from one neighborhood to another without the input of anyone except homeowners who don't use it."\n-- Contact senior writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(03/24/04 5:41am)
At the end of the long gravel driveway, in a building adjacent to the farmhouse, the tails of horses no longer attached to their owners twitch next to the skeletons of violins. On a shelf across from the tails rests a book titled "How to Rehair a Bow," the masters thesis of Harold Evans, southern Indiana's sole violin maker.\nEvans Violins, 77 N. Sewell Rd. -- the store run by Evans and his son Michael -- fulfills the needs of a large niche of the Bloomington music community. But in telling the story of Evans Violins, it's impossible to separate the shop from the story of the musical family that runs it.\nThe smell of sawdust hanging in the air of the shop is nothing new to Harold Evans, who spent his childhood watching the workers in his father's shop build cabinets, doors and windows.\n"I was always fascinated by woodworking," he said. "It's amazing what you can learn when you're a little kid."\nEvans, 54, started playing the violin when he was 10 years old in his Minnesota public school. But as his skill improved, he outgrew his violin.\n"There are only certain levels you can go to with your own technique if the tools aren't supporting you," he said.\nEvans decided the best way for him to get the quality instrument he wanted was to build his own, since very good violins are also very expensive.\n"I was a bit naïve," he said laughing, "but it had always been one of my dreams."\nOpus 1, Evans' first violin, took him three years to create while he was an apprentice under a master violin maker — but learning the craft was only half the battle. Evans had to amass the necessary tools and pick out the perfect wood for his dream instrument. \nScattered around the shop are Evans' tools, which look like they might have come from a Dr. Seuss illustration. His favorite part of the process of creating a violin is "bending the ribs" -- wrapping a wet piece of wood around a metal oval.\nThe European wood Evans selected for Opus 1 made his fantasy of a dream violin into a reality. He played on that instrument professionally for more than 30 years. In fact, he played it so much the varnish has worn off of certain spots.\nMichael, 23, chimes in: "Each piece of wood is different, like snowflakes. You can have two violins made using the same techniques, even wood from the same part of the tree, and have two violins that sound different."\nBoth father and son said the wood has a huge impact on the sound and tone of the instrument. \n"You're always looking for that better sound," Harold Evans said. "Everybody's striving for that sweet sound."\nMichael said the more you play an instrument, the more fine-tuned your ear becomes to different qualities of tone. To demonstrate, Michael played Opus 1 and then plays the same music on Opus 2, the second violin Evans made. The difference is so slight that it's almost unintelligible to the untrained ear.\n"It is subtle, but the violinist can hear it," Michael said. "Each violin has its own personality, like each person has its own personality."\nViolinists may be able to tell the difference between the tones of two violins but can't quite put that difference into words. The Evanses throw out words they commonly use to describe tone: Bright. Mellow. Sweet.\n"How do you describe something that's subjective?" Michael asks rhetorically.
(03/10/04 6:08am)
The torn denim swung lazily in the wind and left a gaping hole where there once had been a back pocket revealing light gray boxer briefs.\n"There's my hiney," said BloomingKids mentor and IU senior Matt McGovren, examining the sudden change to his faded jeans as his "little buddy" Jared, a second grader, laughed uncontrollably.\nIt was a piggyback ride gone wrong -- a foot unknowingly placed on a small tear, creating a chaotic end to a chaotic afternoon.\nEvery week, McGovren and 59 other IU students take two hours to participate in BloomingKids, a program that provides "at risk" elementary students within the Monroe County school system with an afterschool mentoring opportunity that will ideally increase the students' chances of attending college while giving the mentors a chance to connect with a child. But with all of the program's self-proclaimed success, it shows no sign of expanding anytime soon.\nThe program targets an age of kids previously unrecognized by mentor programs. Head Start focuses on preschoolers, and Big Brothers Big Sisters is geared toward junior high students, leaving a hole for BloomingKids to fill.\nBloomingKids, founded in 1996 at IU, was the first chapter of its parent program, College Mentors For Kids! Now CMFK! has twelve chapters across the state.\n"I think it's fun," McGovren said, "just because (the kids) are so goofy. They have a lot of energy."\nA study conducted by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation with students in grades three through five showed students who had participated in a mentoring program had higher attendance at school, better work ethics within the classroom and had fewer behavioral problems over the course of a year. \nKathy Byers, director of the bachelor of social work program in the School of Social Work, agrees with the Nellie Mae study.\n"They are positive because the mentor is demonstrating an interest in the child and acting as a positive role model," she said.\nThe Afterschool Alliance, a Washington-based organization, surveyed 800 registered voters from across the country. Ninety-one percent said they wanted more afterschool programs offered by communities. And Bloomington is no exception.\nParents are aware when their children may be susceptible to "at risk" behaviors and often seek out the program, said Kelly Frank, the executive director of CMFK! Still, students are selected for CMFK! by school coordinators. \n"My one criteria is that the program serves children who would not be exposed to higher education," Frank said.\nFrank added that 325 potential mentors attended a mentor callout meeting, but only 60 are accepted into the program. One reason for the program's popularity is that it was conceived with college students in mind. The program was designed for volunteers with no car, no money and no time.\nAfter McGovren attended a mentor call-out meeting his freshman year, he had to wait a year to receive a mentor position. During that year, McGovren worked with the program's fundraising committee to better his chances of becoming a mentor his sophomore year.\nFrank said the national cost for programs similar to BloomingKids is around $1,030 per child, but CMFK! provides the program with only $560 per child. The mentors also participate in numerous fundraisers and raise money in partnership with other student organizations.\nBut sometimes the money raised isn't enough. When McGovren wanted to take his group bowling, BloomingKids vetoed the idea, saying it would cost too much. After McGovren couldn't get the bowling alley to give the group a discount, he asked all of his fraternity brothers in Phi Kappa Psi to donate $1 to pay for the group to bowl. Because of McGovren's quick thinking, BloomingKids was able to bowl.\n"A lot of people don't do (BloomingKids) or wouldn't do it," McGovren said. "But they think it's cool."\nMcGovren also got his fraternity involved in the program when he took his group on a tour of his house, fulfilling "campus life," one of the three areas BloomingKids tries to expose the children to each week. The other two are cultural diversity and community service.
(02/13/04 4:52am)
Sitting in the lobby of the Main Library, sophomore Bekka Potter and freshman Beka Sinders look more like best friends than lovers.\n"We're both really 'femme' looking," Sinders said. "We catch people off guard all the time. It's fun."\nPotter chimes in: "Yeah, when I say 'my girlfriend' people just kind of blink at me."\nA comfortable aura surrounds the couple of a year and five months. They are more concerned about whether they should venture downstairs for a smoothie than they are for their plans for Valentine's Day -- or rather the questioning looks directed toward them when they link hands as they exit the lobby.\nLove it or hate it, Feb. 14 is very much a part of American culture -- celebrating both heterosexual and homosexual love -- at least it would appear so by the number of roses sold for the day. According to www.aboutflowers.com, an estimated 156 million roses were sold in 2003 for Valentine's Day.\nSophomore Owen Sutkowski was one who did not buy one of those 156 million roses. He said he's been out six years and in that time he's dated a lot of men, but he's only had a significant other on one Valentine's Day.\n"I always get what I like to call the 'dead dog' expression when I tell someone I'm single," Sutkowski said, "People always say, 'Oh, I'm sorry,' or 'Oh, there's someone out there for you.' That doesn't bother me, but deep inside, I think it'd be nice to have someone."\nBut Sutkowski is looking to change his luck. He made it a personal goal for himself to have a date on Valentine's Day.\n"It's a nice excuse to ask someone out," he said.\nInstead of one person catering to the other, Sutkowski's idea of the perfect evening is to spend time together.\n"We would make a whole dinner together -- appetizers, dinner and dessert," he said. "Then, we would find a nice romantic song and slow dance in my apartment."\nIU sophomore Nick Heck said he is "talking to a guy" who goes to Purdue University, so the two can't be together on Valentine's Day, but Heck told him on the phone what they would do if they were together.\n"When I picked him up, I would have a single rose," Heck said. "When we got to the restaurant, the other 11 would be waiting on the table. Then we'd drive out to Lake Monroe and take off the T-tops on my Camaro and turn up the heat so we could look at the stars. It's fun to do something outside when it's chilly because it's nice to have to be close to someone."\nPerhaps those perfect evenings exist only for those who are unattached. Potter and Sinders struggle to remember how they spent Valentine's Day last year.\n"What did we do?" Sinders asks Potter.\n"I think we went out the week before," Potter answers. "It's too crazy on the actual day."\nSt. Valentine is surrounded by myths, as no one is quite sure who the actual man was. In fact, according to www.thehistorychannel.com, the Catholic church has a record of three St. Valentine's, all of whom are martyrs. One legend tells of an emperor who decided his men would make better soldiers without wives and families, so he banned marriage for the men. Valentine disagreed with the decree and married couples in secret until the emperor found out and Valentine was put to death.\nAnother legend begins with Valentine in prison falling in love with the jailor's daughter. He sent her a love letter before he was sent to death and signed it, "From your Valentine."\nAlthough the myths all deal with heterosexual love, Sutkowski said he believes Valentine's Day is more about celebrating any kind of love.\n"Love is in all capacities on Valentine's Day," Sutkowski said. "I know kids who get cards from their parents. Love has so many levels."\nHeck also believes Valentine's Day is about more than just one specific type of love.\n"It's just geared toward love in general," Heck said. "Anyone can be in love."\nBut the government disagrees. \nOn Wednesday, a constitutional convention begins in Massachusetts, and one of the items on the list to discuss is gay marriages. Currently, an amendment which would define marriage as a heterosexual institution but still allow for gay civil unions seems the most likely to pass, but the amendment wouldn't take affect until November 2006.\nSutkowski doesn't see what the fuss about gay marriages in Massachusetts is about.\n"With all this finger pointing in Massachusetts, it's just silly," he said. "Gay marriage is not harming anyone, it's loving someone. How can someone stand against that?"\nWhile Sutkowski doesn't have to worry about marriage anytime soon, the thought of it lingers in the back of Potter's and Sinders' minds.\n"We plan on getting married someday," Potter said of she and Sinders, "but where it's legal, depends on where we live."\nBut that problem is in the future. For now, the two need to figure out how they will spend Feb. 14 up in Lafayette for a color guard competition.\nBoth appear unworried, as Sinders said, "We'll figure something out."\nSutkowski said he has one potential date for Saturday in mind, but he isn't worried if it doesn't work out.\n"I've always thought of Valentine's Day as a cop-out for couples," he said. "You should show how much you care about someone on a regular basis. Everyday should be Valentine's Day."\n-- Contact staff writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(01/29/04 6:13am)
Art seems to be the first thing cut from a budget, destroyed in a riot or banned for being misunderstood. It's a scene from a popular movie, but it could happen in any school across the country. \n"If I'm forced to choose between Mozart, reading and long division; I choose long division," said the principal in a line from the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus". \nArts and its funding is a controversial and touchy issue -- now as much as in 1995 when "Mr. Holland's Opus" opened in theaters. It appears that due to legislation, the tide is turning in favor of arts education.\nBut the arts haven't always been protected.\nSherry Rouse, curator of campus art said art plays a very important role on the Bloomington campus.
(12/09/03 6:02am)
Sophomore Eboni Gatlin rises at 8 a.m. every day, just as the sun is peeking into the window of her Arlington Park apartment.\nShe gets ready for class and packs her bookbag. Then Gatlin wakes up her roommate -- her 2-year-old daughter.\nWhile the teenage pregnancy rate in the United States is declining, around 40 percent of teenage girls will become pregnant at least once before they reach the age of 20, and only 1.5 percent will have a college degree by the age of 30, according to www.plannedparenthood.org. \nGatlin is an exception to the rule.\n"I never doubted I would graduate high school or go to college (when I became pregnant)," Gatlin said. "It was just a matter of where I would go."\nIn high school, the Kokomo native was a self-described straight "A" student, involved in numerous extracurricular activities. Being 17 and pregnant wasn't part of the future Gatlin had planned.\n"When they first told me I was pregnant, even though I was expecting to hear it, I was in complete shock," she said. "I went through lots of emotions, confusion, anger."\nInstead of going to one of the schools in Tennessee that she had been looking at, Gatlin packed up her belongings to begin her freshman year at IU. \nThe first part of her freshman year, Gatlin lived in the dorms, while her daughter Essence stayed in Kokomo with Gatlin's parents. However, by early November mother and daughter moved into an apartment and Gatlin began a regimented schedule to fit everything in.\n"The days seem extraordinarily long," Gatlin said. "I'm tired by 4 p.m. because I have to pack so much in. But it's extremely rewarding."\nAlong with the basics of life like feeding and bathing, part of what Gatlin packs in is play time after she picks her daughter up at day care.\nLike most 2-year-olds, Essence loves Elmo and reading, Gatlin said.\n"I love to teach her new things," Gatlin said. "She's very advanced."\nAmy Hill is one of Essence's toddler teachers at Penny Lane West Childcare.\n"She's very smart and talks very well for her age," Hill said.\nHill said the "toddler room" at Penny Lane West has 15 children in it, eight which are the children of full-time students.\nShe attributes this to the fact that Penny Lane West accepts government funding, so parents pay slightly less at there than they might at another child care center.\nGatlin said she found the center after getting information about child care from IU Child Care Services, which serves students, faculty and staff. \nTim Dunnuck, coordinator of child care services, said there are about 212 spots allocated for student parents. Of those, about 100 are currently being used by both undergraduate and graduate parents, he said.\n"Child Care Services is here because we need it," Dunnuck said. \nHe said the student enrollment in Child Care Services has increased over the past five years. However, Dunnuck said funding has recently been cut, so he is unsure if the increase previously seen will continue.\nGatlin said although she is in a minority as a student mother, the number is not necessarily a small one.\n"There are more of us out there than you'd think," Gatlin said. "Or maybe I'm just better at noticing them."\nGatlin said she has met other student mothers all over Bloomington. She said she notices those who have children with them when she visits the grocery store, and one time even began talking to a girl in one of her classes and discovered that the girl had a son around the same age as Essence.\n"There isn't a support group (for student mothers)," Gatlin said. "I wish there was, but it's human nature to gravitate toward others like you."\nGatlin said she thinks she has missed out on the stereotypical college experience. However, she was just elected to a Union Board director position and is trying to get more involved with the campus. \nThough it made Gatlin grow up faster than she anticipated, she said having a daughter is a rewarding experience, and she is nowhere near done teaching her daughter new things.\nBy 9 p.m. Essence is safely tucked away in bed and Eboni can begin her homework.\n"She's not a mistake," Gatlin said. "She's perfect. The pregnancy was perfect. I just wish I had her 10 years from now."\n-- Contact staff writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(11/20/03 5:40am)
As finals week approaches across the country, more students will be studying for foreign language exams than ever before.\nAccording to a study released this month by the Modern Language Association, college students have enrolled in more languages than they have since 1972, and colleges and universities offer more languages than they did five years ago.\nThis statement doesn't surprise IU visiting lecturer of German Paul White.\n"If you turn on the radio or watch the news, there's a lot going on and to be a part of it you must have some idea of other cultures," he said.\nGerman was ranked third most popular among college students, a ranking that White says he doesn't think is surprising because so many people are of German ancestry.\nOne such student is sophomore Kathleen Burnett, who said she decided to take German in high school because everyone else in her family took German. She said the family would sometimes throw random German words into everyday conversation.\n"Also, when I was in the eighth grade, some German students came to speak to my class and they seemed fun," she said.\nGerman enrollment has increased 12.5 percent since 1998, according to the study. White said the language's ranking doesn't surprise him because it is slightly harder to learn than Spanish or French, which are ranked first and second, respectively.\n"Personally, I would like to see the interest in Spanish up," White said. "It's becoming a way of life for some people."\nAccording to the study, 53 percent of college students enrolled in a language study Spanish, including junior Melissa David, who was advised by her counselor that Spanish was "easier" than German.\n"I believe that this is the usual assumption by most students," she said, "but those who continue to study Spanish as a major or minor soon realize its importance in the United States as the Spanish-speaking population continues to rise."\nThe 2000 Census report cited the largest minority group in the U.S. as the Spanish-speaking population.\n"I think that students are most likely to choose it as their second language because it seems to be the most relevant in current situations," David said. \nSixty thousand students enrolled in American Sign Language in 2002, a 432 percent increase since 1998, making it the language with the largest increase in enrollment across the country.\nASL student and sophomore Megan Fogarty said she enrolled in ASL to help with her major in special education.\n"I may be working with hearing-impaired children," she said. "Some students use both language and sign language, so I thought it would be a good tool to have."\nFogarty said learning ASL is different from learning another language. She said ASL is a foreign language because it has its own grammar; however, it's different from a language like Spanish because students can't write papers.\n"ASL is not signing word for word," she said, "It's more than that, and it's basically all memorization."\nIU offers about 34 languages, including some less-commonly taught languages like Swahili, Kazak and Twi.\nBurnett said she wants to study abroad in Munich next year, then plans to tackle French when she returns to the U.S., becoming one of a minority of students who know more than two languages.\nWhite said whatever second language students choose to learn, it is important that students at least learn one.\n"A second language teaches a different way of looking at things," he said. "It shows a different way of expressing all kinds of ideas that are just as important as our own. Americans can't escape; the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place."\n-- Contact staff writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(10/16/03 5:26am)
While journalism schools across the country are facing financial problems, the IU School of Journalism is weathering the battle for funding.\nThe Sept. 8 issue of Editor and Publisher outlines the financial woes state journalism schools across the country are being forced to handle -- with the end result for many being closure.\nAccording to the article, "at state colleges and universities across the nation, journalism schools are coping with their worst public financing crisis ever." \nThe article later describes programs where faculty had been laid off and students had been turned away.\n"I think the article was a little overwrought," said Dean of the School of Journalism Trevor Brown, who was quoted in the article. "It suggested somehow that journalism schools were being selected by universities for peculiar cruel and unusual punishment."\nHe explained that as state funding for higher education in general has decreased, funding for all schools -- including journalism -- has declined as well.\nBrown said IU is in no immediate trouble because for the past 20 to 30 years the journalism school has attracted about 40 to 50 percent of its students from out of state. This is helpful since out-of-state students pay much higher tuition.\nAnother reason the IU journalism school is in no danger of closing any time soon is because fund-raising has always been an aspect the dean has focused on.\n"We've accumulated an endowment that makes a big difference in the level of quality in teaching and research," he said. "We've been protected, I suppose." \nEven though the school is in no immediate jeopardy, it's still feeling the pinch. Because IU is an accredited school by the Accrediting Council of Journalism and Mass Communications, it is required to meet certain specifications to keep the accreditation. For example, all skills or lab classes must have only 20 students or less.\nWhile the introductory classes are large, as students specialize, the classes shrink.\nSophomore Emily Boric thought her J110: Introduction to Journalism class was too large, but her current class, J200: Writing, Reporting and Editing, is a perfect fit.\n"It's 14 to 15 students," she said, "My professor is wonderful and any questions and comments we have, we can talk about them in class. Before, there just wasn't room for that."\nJunior Sarah Weiss said while the small classes let students get to know the professor individually, it does make it harder for students to get the classes they need to fulfill the major.\n"I'm not worried," she said about getting the classes needed for next semester, "but I probably should be. Who knows (how much) room there is? It's hard to make sure you can get a spot in them."\nThe smaller lab classes require students to use a substantial amount of expensive technology. This adds to the many expenses the school has to pay for. As a result, Brown said the school has to make the most of the technology it has.\nWhile funding is and will continue to be an issue, Brown emphasizes it is not the only problem that journalism schools face. Currently, the school is struggling to achieve a fair balance of students and faculty members. \n"Do journalism schools represent the multicultural makeup of the nation? The answer is no," Brown said. "There are very significant challenges in ensuring that a field that seeks to prepare people to report or comment on a very diverse population in its student part and its teaching part is appropriately representative of the population."\n-- Contact staff writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(09/17/03 6:59am)
Driving down Jordan Avenue or Third Street after dark, greek letters light up the darkness. But one name heard on campus is absent -- not because the windows of its house are boarded up, but because the house doesn't physically exist. Yet.\nPhi Kappa Tau was founded at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 1906 and the Beta Lambda chapter at IU was started in 1949. The chapter became inactive at IU in 1993. But after a decade of absence from campus, a colony was formed March 31 of this year.\nNow the colony is in the middle of recruiting members.\n"We were worried," recruitment chairman and sophomore Tom Davidson said. "We don't have a house on campus and a lot of guys look at the house as a visual landmark."\nHe said the men looked at some of the other presentations the other fraternities had prepared and decided to do something different to get to know the students recruited.\n"We saw a lot of other fraternities had PowerPoint presentations," Davidson said. "We wanted to keep it informal so our approach was a comedy show."\nVice president and junior Christian Filimon said entertainment played a key role in keeping potential members interested in the house.\n"You could see it in their faces," Filimon said. "We have guys completely full of energy, and the response was overwhelming."\nDavidson said he is hopeful for the upcoming pledge class. Five bids have already been given out, and more are expected in the near future.\nBut the road to this success was not a quick one.\n"Phi Kappa Tau was interested in coming back to this campus," said Eddie Rauen, leadership consultant from Phi Kappa Tau executive offices. "IU has a campus rich in greek tradition."\nWhile he was here last year, Rauen helped to chose the current members. In fact, he said he picked around 95 percent after having in-depth, one-on-one conversations with the men.\nPresident and junior Chris Sweigart went through formal Rush both his freshman and sophomore years, but never chose a chapter to pledge.\n"I didn't see what I wanted," he said. "Phi Kappa Tau offered me a chance to be part of something bigger than myself, to create something I could leave behind and come back to."\nFilimon said he saw the fraternity as a chance to make history.\n"I wanted to build something from scratch," he said.\nThe chapter hopes to get its charter by the beginning of 2004.\n-- Contact staff writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(09/11/03 5:30am)
A majority minority. \nIt sounds like an oxymoron, but guest lecturer Albert M. Camarillo said he believes it is the future of many American cities. \nAs the 16th annual Paul V. McNutt lecturer Tuesday, the Stanford University history professor discussed the changing racial demography of Compton, Calif., painting a hopeful picture for race relations in the future.\nBorn and raised in Compton, Camarillo described to the faculty and graduate audience the area's transitional history, from prosperity to one of "suburban decline."\n"The seeds of change and transition took place in the '20s and '30s," Camarillo said. "That's when the conflict and the competition began."\nA committee of history professors selected Camarillo as this year's McNutt lecturer. \nJames H. Madison, committee member and Thomas and Kathryn Miller professor of history, said Camarillo was an excellent choice for many reasons.\n"We wanted a highly respected scholar who worked in an important subject area and also a historian who could connect that subject to today's issues," Madison said.\nPacing back and forth across the front of the State Room East in the Indiana Memorial Union, Camarillo explained block busting began in the 1950s as the white suburbanites were told to get out before their property value dropped because of African-American neighbors moving in to take advantage of the better quality of life. \nCamarillo said the fear factor was so strong that entire blocks were abandoned within days, quickly changing the prosperous community into one which resembled an inner-city ghetto. But another group was entering with the African Americans; Latinos were also searching for opportunity in the suburbs. The city had become a "majority minority."\n"It's an old story with a new twist of ethnic succession," Camarillo said.\nCamarillo said as the whites left the area, the African Americans gained the political clout they fought for in the civil rights movement. \n"It was a municipality entirely run by African Americans, and it was one run with great pride," Camarillo said. \nHowever, as they rose in power, they left behind the Latino population, causing competition and conflict between the two minorities.\n"The Latinos wanted elected officials too," Camarillo said. "They were saying, 'We want our piece of the pie.'"\nCamarillo said the tension was clear, but below the surface a revolution -- a "new racial frontier" -- was forming.\n"Could we actually have a black/brown coalition?" he asked. "You have to dig down deep to see it."\nFor example, Father Stanley, the pastor of a Compton Catholic church, wanted to end the conflict and create unity between the two cultures by mobilizing Mexican parishioners with those of some of his African-American colleagues in a sort of grassroots cooperation.\n"The idea is to get people to understand their differences and to build a platform," Camarillo said. "Why fight when we can turn this city around?"\nThe two communities are coming together in other ways. Camarillo's son is an eighth-grade teacher of American history in Compton.\n"I planted a spy in Compton," Camarillo said laughing.\nHe said his son has seen the younger generations of both African Americans and Latinos bond over the hip-hop culture.\n"Don't ask me to define it, but it has elements of conformity that the younger kids connect with," he said.\nMadison said he finds Camarillo's study of Compton's transition important. \n"This is particularly important in understanding what he calls 'the new racial frontier,' similar to and yet different from earlier American racial and ethnic experiences," Madison said. "In the specific context of African and Latino experiences, including the relationships between black and brown, it is a subject of immense future importance."\nEric Sandweiss, associate professor of history, said he is interested in the history of cities and believes race is an important aspect.\n"(Race) is one of the measures that Americans have used to measure themselves against one another, in a society that supposedly treats everyone equally," Sandweiss said. "Race plays into the paradoxes of American culture."\nThis is an American culture that Bloomington is very much a part of. Madison said he believes Bloomington is included in the "new racial frontier."\n"The most recent evidence is the increase in the Latino population of Indiana and the Midwest," Madison said. "I think race is America's most troubling and fascinating subject. Nothing is more important to understanding our past and present."\n-- Contact staff writer Kathleen Quilligan at kquillig@indiana.edu.
(04/23/03 4:07am)
For graduate student Theresa Chen, the idea came in the form of a book.\nLillian Casillas, the director of La Casa, the Latino culture center on campus, handed Chen a book on Chinese-Cuban culture, and Chen discovered a new subculture -- Asian-Latinos.\nAs part of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Chen, with the help of the Asian Culture Center and La Casa, will host two programs celebrating these two cultures. \nLa Casa will open its doors to host an Asian-Latino cooking class at 7 p.m. tonight.\n"I have no experience cooking," Chen said, "but it should be fun."\nTucked into her office on the second floor of La Casa, Casillas said the class will consist of two tasty recipes easy enough for an extreme novice to navigate.\n"People love food," she said. "It should be a nice study break before finals."\nThe second event, a Tae Kwon Do demonstration and self-defense seminar, is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday night, also at La Casa. This program is the brainchild of freshman Alonso Mejia, an avid martial artist.\nMejia began studying Tae Kwon Do when he was five.\n"Actually, it was my mom forcing me to do a sport," Mejia said.\nMejia's main purpose for proposing the martial arts event was to present a quick way for students to learn some self-defense moves.\nThe evening will begin with a demonstration from the Tae Kwon Do club and will also include a discussion about Korean culture.\n"We wanted to make sure to involve the Korean cultural aspect with it," he said. \nChen said she is excited to bring the two cultural centers together for the event.\nCasillas said partnership programming with the other culture centers is an important aspect they must make time for. After all, all of the minorities together make up just around 10 percent of the campus population.\n"People assume the various minorities isolate themselves," she said. "But this is not true. People don't need to identify with one culture. These programs celebrate everything that is in your makeup"
(03/13/03 5:00am)
The only way the crazed fan could describe it was "space porn."\nAfter its first show, Eric Gould, bassist for the band Particle, recalls the reaction of a female fan who was amazed by the new sound she had just heard. Gould says he wasn't surprised by the fan's reaction when she said the music was indescribable, and space porn was just the best explanation for it. \n"It kind of made sense," Gould says.\nSo much sense that at its second gig, the band played its form of electronic funk under the name Space Porn, but the band quickly decided that it was more than extraterrestrial intercourse and chose the name Particle. \n"It's a real universal name," Gould says. "It's what it's about. A particle can be completely minute or just greater and larger than you can imagine."\nGould and the rest of the band will bring their tour to the Bluebird for the fourth time on March 24 at 10 p.m.\nDave Kubiak, the general manager of the Bluebird, is ready to have the group play again in Bloomington, citing them as one of the most upcoming and respected jam bands.\n"They are obviously very talented," Kubiak says. "They are great guys and I'm happy to have them back."\nIt is difficult for the band to place a label on its music. Even Gould struggles to come up with a concrete definition, but finally says, "If people like to dance then they're going to enjoy us."\nSeth Eisenstein, an aspiring freelance music promoter from Los Angeles, has been an avid fan of Particle since its inception a little over two years ago. He first saw Particle in a club and has been hooked since.\n"I was totally impressed with the energy of the band," Eisenstein says. "The wackiness of the keyboard player, the goofy grin of the bass player and the excitement of the crowd. I make it a point to catch Particle as much as possible."\nEisenstein says this goal was not too difficult to attain since the band was native to Los Angeles and played twice a month in the city.\nFresh out of film school at Ithaca College, Gould headed Los Angeles to fuel his dreams of both film and music.\n"As I was learning movies, music was taking a role in my life," Gould says. "L.A. was good for both."\nGould spent three years in Los Angeles before he met Steve Molitz and the two jammed on and off together. The duo added drummer Darren Pujalet, and before a guitarist was added, they had their first gig. The group was hired to play on a cruise boat. The three snagged guitarist Charlie Hitchcock and Particle was formed.\n"We had a gig before we had a band," Gould says.\nWhen the group boarded the ship that night, Gould says neither they nor the audience had any idea what to expect.\n"It blew us away. The response was crazy," Gould says. "We were like, 'Let's keep this going,' and we kept going with it."\nSince then, the fan base for Particle has grown like wildfire. \n"They're the ones that we're pouring our soul out to," Gould says. "They are giving us our passions."\nEisenstein is a case in point.\n"For me, Particle is like the soundtrack to my life," he says. "(It's) full of peaks and valleys, tension and release, emotion and excitement."\nA fellow Particle fan, Chris Solloway, an IU alumn and former member of the IDS Editorial Board, says that the music's intensity is one of the band's highlights, and why he keeps coming back to see them play.\n"(It's) lots of free-form improv around a structured core that ebbs and flows, but often increases in intensity at points that move you to believe in the impossible," Solloway says.\nKubiak also says he is not worried about hosting a nightclub tragedy, like the ones which occurred in Chicago and Rhode Island in late February.\n"We don't have to worry about pyrotechnics from Particle," he said.\nPyrotechnics, no, but lights and projections, yes. Recently, Particle added the talents of lighting specialist Justin Halgren and projectionist Scott MacKinnon to enhance its show. Gould says he is excited about the visual enhancement.\n"We wanted some multimedia behind the show," Gould says. "We want to up the ante and take the music to another level."\nGould attributes much of the band's success to word of mouth and the Internet. He says the fact that fans could download \nParticle's music online was good publicity. The fact that the band does not yet have an album may also have contributed to its touring success because fans needed to see them to hear the music.\nThe band began work on its first album before its recent tour began and plans to complete it when the tour is finished. Particle has been together for just over two years and Gould says it has been a whirlwind of festivals, but its fan base is ready for an album.\n"There's a lot of anticipation for it," he says, "and we are excited to give it to them."\nEisenstein is more than ready for the new album.\n"Hell yeah," he says. "The hardcore fans have been waiting for their debut album for so long and they are going to blow people away. I think some amazing pieces of music are going to come out of this album."\nSolloway says he is also excited, but a little skeptical about how the group's music will translate onto an album.\n"The group has the whole package with no weaknesses," Solloway says. "Each time they play a given tune, (it) comes out slightly differently, akin to what the Dead did in their heyday. So, I like listening to their shows and trading CDs with tapers. I'm looking forward to their CD release only in terms of the increase in well-deserved exposure to the mainstream listener."\nThe hardcore fans, also known as the Particle People, are a quickly growing group of music lovers. Unofficial Particle websites and message boards have sprung up across the web as a way for this national community to stay in touch.\n"The Particle People are some of the most creative, talented and adventurous people out there. It really is a family," Eisenstein says.\nCurrently the band performs without vocals but Gould says they are open to change, as is obvious from their love of improvisation. Particle wants the album to have some of the live vibe that has made them famous.\n"We play different songs," Gould says. "Within the structure we leave room for open-endedness. We go with the vibe of the surroundings."\nGould says the beauty of driving through the Colorado mountains might show up in the show in Boulder, Colorado's Fox Theatre and Café, which would give the songs a completely different feel than if they were driving through a city or a college campus.\n"I love playing to a college crowd, its such a different energy," he says. "When you're in college you're in that place in life when you're doing your own thing. It's a different vibe."\nAfter the tour and the album, Solloway believes the best is yet to come.\n"Change is often good," he says. "This band has already made their mark on contemporary musical history and helped other bands become better in the process. This is primal, musical evolution at its finest. Their vision is two steps ahead of the contemporary music paradigm."\nNo one knows for sure where Particle will end up, but Gould hopes to be playing music with Particle well into the future.\n"Going around and making people happy, smiling, dancing and loving it," Gould says. "Playing music is a blast"
(03/12/03 9:03pm)
The only way the crazed fan could describe it was "space porn."\nAfter its first show, Eric Gould, bassist for the band Particle, recalls the reaction of a female fan who was amazed by the new sound she had just heard. Gould says he wasn't surprised by the fan's reaction when she said the music was indescribable, and space porn was just the best explanation for it. \n"It kind of made sense," Gould says.\nSo much sense that at its second gig, the band played its form of electronic funk under the name Space Porn, but the band quickly decided that it was more than extraterrestrial intercourse and chose the name Particle. \n"It's a real universal name," Gould says. "It's what it's about. A particle can be completely minute or just greater and larger than you can imagine."\nGould and the rest of the band will bring their tour to the Bluebird for the fourth time on March 24 at 10 p.m.\nDave Kubiak, the general manager of the Bluebird, is ready to have the group play again in Bloomington, citing them as one of the most upcoming and respected jam bands.\n"They are obviously very talented," Kubiak says. "They are great guys and I'm happy to have them back."\nIt is difficult for the band to place a label on its music. Even Gould struggles to come up with a concrete definition, but finally says, "If people like to dance then they're going to enjoy us."\nSeth Eisenstein, an aspiring freelance music promoter from Los Angeles, has been an avid fan of Particle since its inception a little over two years ago. He first saw Particle in a club and has been hooked since.\n"I was totally impressed with the energy of the band," Eisenstein says. "The wackiness of the keyboard player, the goofy grin of the bass player and the excitement of the crowd. I make it a point to catch Particle as much as possible."\nEisenstein says this goal was not too difficult to attain since the band was native to Los Angeles and played twice a month in the city.\nFresh out of film school at Ithaca College, Gould headed Los Angeles to fuel his dreams of both film and music.\n"As I was learning movies, music was taking a role in my life," Gould says. "L.A. was good for both."\nGould spent three years in Los Angeles before he met Steve Molitz and the two jammed on and off together. The duo added drummer Darren Pujalet, and before a guitarist was added, they had their first gig. The group was hired to play on a cruise boat. The three snagged guitarist Charlie Hitchcock and Particle was formed.\n"We had a gig before we had a band," Gould says.\nWhen the group boarded the ship that night, Gould says neither they nor the audience had any idea what to expect.\n"It blew us away. The response was crazy," Gould says. "We were like, 'Let's keep this going,' and we kept going with it."\nSince then, the fan base for Particle has grown like wildfire. \n"They're the ones that we're pouring our soul out to," Gould says. "They are giving us our passions."\nEisenstein is a case in point.\n"For me, Particle is like the soundtrack to my life," he says. "(It's) full of peaks and valleys, tension and release, emotion and excitement."\nA fellow Particle fan, Chris Solloway, an IU alumn and former member of the IDS Editorial Board, says that the music's intensity is one of the band's highlights, and why he keeps coming back to see them play.\n"(It's) lots of free-form improv around a structured core that ebbs and flows, but often increases in intensity at points that move you to believe in the impossible," Solloway says.\nKubiak also says he is not worried about hosting a nightclub tragedy, like the ones which occurred in Chicago and Rhode Island in late February.\n"We don't have to worry about pyrotechnics from Particle," he said.\nPyrotechnics, no, but lights and projections, yes. Recently, Particle added the talents of lighting specialist Justin Halgren and projectionist Scott MacKinnon to enhance its show. Gould says he is excited about the visual enhancement.\n"We wanted some multimedia behind the show," Gould says. "We want to up the ante and take the music to another level."\nGould attributes much of the band's success to word of mouth and the Internet. He says the fact that fans could download \nParticle's music online was good publicity. The fact that the band does not yet have an album may also have contributed to its touring success because fans needed to see them to hear the music.\nThe band began work on its first album before its recent tour began and plans to complete it when the tour is finished. Particle has been together for just over two years and Gould says it has been a whirlwind of festivals, but its fan base is ready for an album.\n"There's a lot of anticipation for it," he says, "and we are excited to give it to them."\nEisenstein is more than ready for the new album.\n"Hell yeah," he says. "The hardcore fans have been waiting for their debut album for so long and they are going to blow people away. I think some amazing pieces of music are going to come out of this album."\nSolloway says he is also excited, but a little skeptical about how the group's music will translate onto an album.\n"The group has the whole package with no weaknesses," Solloway says. "Each time they play a given tune, (it) comes out slightly differently, akin to what the Dead did in their heyday. So, I like listening to their shows and trading CDs with tapers. I'm looking forward to their CD release only in terms of the increase in well-deserved exposure to the mainstream listener."\nThe hardcore fans, also known as the Particle People, are a quickly growing group of music lovers. Unofficial Particle websites and message boards have sprung up across the web as a way for this national community to stay in touch.\n"The Particle People are some of the most creative, talented and adventurous people out there. It really is a family," Eisenstein says.\nCurrently the band performs without vocals but Gould says they are open to change, as is obvious from their love of improvisation. Particle wants the album to have some of the live vibe that has made them famous.\n"We play different songs," Gould says. "Within the structure we leave room for open-endedness. We go with the vibe of the surroundings."\nGould says the beauty of driving through the Colorado mountains might show up in the show in Boulder, Colorado's Fox Theatre and Café, which would give the songs a completely different feel than if they were driving through a city or a college campus.\n"I love playing to a college crowd, its such a different energy," he says. "When you're in college you're in that place in life when you're doing your own thing. It's a different vibe."\nAfter the tour and the album, Solloway believes the best is yet to come.\n"Change is often good," he says. "This band has already made their mark on contemporary musical history and helped other bands become better in the process. This is primal, musical evolution at its finest. Their vision is two steps ahead of the contemporary music paradigm."\nNo one knows for sure where Particle will end up, but Gould hopes to be playing music with Particle well into the future.\n"Going around and making people happy, smiling, dancing and loving it," Gould says. "Playing music is a blast"
(02/06/03 5:00am)
When their independent album "Strange Fire" debuted in 1987, it probably would have seemed overzealous to think in the future they would have recorded with Sheryl Crow and Joan Osborne and shared the stage with REM and the Grateful Dead.\nBut approaching almost twenty years after their debut, the Indigo Girls have achieved all of this and more.\nNow over a decade since their entrance into the music scene, the Indigo Girls, duo Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, bring their latest tour, "Become You" to the IU Auditorium. The tour promotes the group's new acoustic CD of the same title. The two will play in venues across the country, stopping off in Bloomington on Feb. 10.\nIn Iowa City, preparing for Monday night's concert, Ray says "Become You" is one of their best because of its acoustic nature. \n"It seems more intimate, more rootsy and more organic," she says. \nUnion Board Concerts Director Jake Rohn says this show will be an exciting one for students. \n"One of the significant things about the tour is it is going to be an acoustic tour which is sort of bringing them back to their roots," he says. "So, it will be a unique opportunity for fans to see them."\nAccording to Ray, the Indigo Girls have been on this tour for around a year. But every three weeks or so they return home for a rest and to tie up loose ends. \n"I enjoy it and it gets tiring," Ray says. "Every day is a different town. It's a constant stimulus. It's what I'm used to. It's what I've done since I was 18."\nBecause the two started touring at such a young age, they constantly look for ways to keep life on the road fresh. This portion of the tour is acoustic, described by Ray as "just me and Emily," but about half the time they bring along a band to play with them. Also, the set list changes every night and opening acts are rotated.\nThe band finds a welcome home among the college audience. \n"I love playing on college campuses," Ray says. "I could play on them the rest of my life and be happy."\nShe explains that when the campuses are more liberal, many of the students share similar viewpoints as the band. \n"When they are at their best, they are a hotbed of activism," she says. "It gives us a chance to see what's going on."\nCurrently, the duo opposes the war with Iraq, a view that will ring true with many students here. \n"I have no illusions. Saddam Hussein is not someone I would want as my dictator," Ray says, "but I think we are sending our own people to slaughter."\nRohn says the show should be a hit.\n"We're just catering to the student requests," he says. "We've gotten a lot of requests for the Indigo Girls, and Bloomington is really backing the show."\nDirector of the IU Auditorium Doug Booher said he is excited about the upcoming concert. \n"We expect a strong attendance at Indigo Girls," he says. "IU and Bloomington have had a long history of supporting this band, and the band loves to visit Bloomington."\nMolly Mitchell, a junior, first heard the Indigo Girls music during her freshman year of high school, and since then has become a fan. Mitchell has been to four of the band's concerts. \n"The concerts are really engaging," she says. "Almost everyone who goes knows the words."\nRohn says even though the Indigo Girls' music is often classified as folk, the students who requested the duo were diverse. \n"A lot of different kinds of people have requested it, so it caters to a lot of different demographics," he says. "There (are) many voices that need to be heard and not all of them get the opportunity."\nAlthough Rohn admits that he isn't exactly an avid Indigo Girls fan, he has a deep admiration for them as artists. \n"I respect them a lot, they are very talented," he said.\nMitchell also believes that various kinds of people can enjoy their music. \n"Everyone can find something personal in their lyrics," she says. \nMitchell says the lyrics were what initially attracted her to the music in the first place and held her attention over the years. The songs range from frustrated ("We talked up all night and came to no conclusion/ We started a fight that ended in silent confusion") to hopeful ("I guess that I was hoping that you'd finally understand/ and in a moment of forgiveness/ you'd reach out and take my hand").\nMitchell says she has listened to much of the music on the Indigo Girls' albums and feels that the albums are consistently strong. She says they are solid as a whole, more than just one or two decent songs. \nTouring with the Indigo Girls is special guest, and good friend, Cordero, a Latin influenced rock band from New York. Bloomington is the first of five shows where Cordero and the Indigo Girls will play together. \n"I hope people come early to hear them," Ray says. "They are really fun, really groovy."\nThe music won't stop for the Indigo Girls after the "Become You" tour concludes. \n"I don't know that I'll ever stop playing music. I don't want to be like The Who or The Rolling Stones," Ray says, pausing for a moment. "It's great that they"re having fun, but I want to always reinvent myself. I always want to be young mentally"
(02/05/03 6:37pm)
When their independent album "Strange Fire" debuted in 1987, it probably would have seemed overzealous to think in the future they would have recorded with Sheryl Crow and Joan Osborne and shared the stage with REM and the Grateful Dead.\nBut approaching almost twenty years after their debut, the Indigo Girls have achieved all of this and more.\nNow over a decade since their entrance into the music scene, the Indigo Girls, duo Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, bring their latest tour, "Become You" to the IU Auditorium. The tour promotes the group's new acoustic CD of the same title. The two will play in venues across the country, stopping off in Bloomington on Feb. 10.\nIn Iowa City, preparing for Monday night's concert, Ray says "Become You" is one of their best because of its acoustic nature. \n"It seems more intimate, more rootsy and more organic," she says. \nUnion Board Concerts Director Jake Rohn says this show will be an exciting one for students. \n"One of the significant things about the tour is it is going to be an acoustic tour which is sort of bringing them back to their roots," he says. "So, it will be a unique opportunity for fans to see them."\nAccording to Ray, the Indigo Girls have been on this tour for around a year. But every three weeks or so they return home for a rest and to tie up loose ends. \n"I enjoy it and it gets tiring," Ray says. "Every day is a different town. It's a constant stimulus. It's what I'm used to. It's what I've done since I was 18."\nBecause the two started touring at such a young age, they constantly look for ways to keep life on the road fresh. This portion of the tour is acoustic, described by Ray as "just me and Emily," but about half the time they bring along a band to play with them. Also, the set list changes every night and opening acts are rotated.\nThe band finds a welcome home among the college audience. \n"I love playing on college campuses," Ray says. "I could play on them the rest of my life and be happy."\nShe explains that when the campuses are more liberal, many of the students share similar viewpoints as the band. \n"When they are at their best, they are a hotbed of activism," she says. "It gives us a chance to see what's going on."\nCurrently, the duo opposes the war with Iraq, a view that will ring true with many students here. \n"I have no illusions. Saddam Hussein is not someone I would want as my dictator," Ray says, "but I think we are sending our own people to slaughter."\nRohn says the show should be a hit.\n"We're just catering to the student requests," he says. "We've gotten a lot of requests for the Indigo Girls, and Bloomington is really backing the show."\nDirector of the IU Auditorium Doug Booher said he is excited about the upcoming concert. \n"We expect a strong attendance at Indigo Girls," he says. "IU and Bloomington have had a long history of supporting this band, and the band loves to visit Bloomington."\nMolly Mitchell, a junior, first heard the Indigo Girls music during her freshman year of high school, and since then has become a fan. Mitchell has been to four of the band's concerts. \n"The concerts are really engaging," she says. "Almost everyone who goes knows the words."\nRohn says even though the Indigo Girls' music is often classified as folk, the students who requested the duo were diverse. \n"A lot of different kinds of people have requested it, so it caters to a lot of different demographics," he says. "There (are) many voices that need to be heard and not all of them get the opportunity."\nAlthough Rohn admits that he isn't exactly an avid Indigo Girls fan, he has a deep admiration for them as artists. \n"I respect them a lot, they are very talented," he said.\nMitchell also believes that various kinds of people can enjoy their music. \n"Everyone can find something personal in their lyrics," she says. \nMitchell says the lyrics were what initially attracted her to the music in the first place and held her attention over the years. The songs range from frustrated ("We talked up all night and came to no conclusion/ We started a fight that ended in silent confusion") to hopeful ("I guess that I was hoping that you'd finally understand/ and in a moment of forgiveness/ you'd reach out and take my hand").\nMitchell says she has listened to much of the music on the Indigo Girls' albums and feels that the albums are consistently strong. She says they are solid as a whole, more than just one or two decent songs. \nTouring with the Indigo Girls is special guest, and good friend, Cordero, a Latin influenced rock band from New York. Bloomington is the first of five shows where Cordero and the Indigo Girls will play together. \n"I hope people come early to hear them," Ray says. "They are really fun, really groovy."\nThe music won't stop for the Indigo Girls after the "Become You" tour concludes. \n"I don't know that I'll ever stop playing music. I don't want to be like The Who or The Rolling Stones," Ray says, pausing for a moment. "It's great that they"re having fun, but I want to always reinvent myself. I always want to be young mentally"
(12/05/02 5:00am)
A few stragglers run through the door, their footfalls unintentionally pounding out the beat of the music that blasts from the speakers.\n"How you guys doing tonight?" yells junior Diana Ballas above the music to the group assembled before her, all while her hips keep time. Her question is answered with cheers, whoops and claps, signaling the beginning of class.\nBallas is one of the four Group X leaders who instruct a hip-hop dancing class at the SRSC. \n"Hip hop -- I like it, but it isn't really my favorite musical choice, which is what people would probably normally think," she says. "But I really, really like to dance to it. I like to fool around with it."\nThe class members behind her are just beginning to sweat as they bounce and grind their way through song after song. \n"How far down can you go?" Ballas asks, moving her hips toward the floor. As she watches a woman with a bright green shirt hover inches above the floor and struggle to get back up, Ballas answers her own question. "Not that far down," she laughs. \nHip hop has pervaded American culture with more than just the music that blasts daily from MTV. Both in the SRSC classroom and out on the club scene, students are learning to get down on the dance floor.\nSRSC wellness programs coordinator William Thornton was surrounded by all aspects of hip-hop culture as a child in Norfolk, Va.\n"As for me, (hip hop) is something that I grew up with, and lived with and was all around me," he says.\nThornton began teaching a hip-hop class in 1998 and says hip hop has become a common facet of American society.\n"It's just a part of daily life," he says. "I wouldn't say it's a specific community. It's not just the music that you listen to or the dance. It's also how you dress. How you communicate with each other is different as well. It's kind of a whole culture of how you live."\nIndividualism is a key part of hip-hop dancing simply because hip hop is a means through which dancers express themselves and their feelings. \n"There is a lot of individuality," Thornton says, "because you allow yourself to just express. Sometimes it takes a little time to let go."\nDancing is the main focus at Axis, a local Bloomington nightclub that advertises the best dance and hip-hop music.\nKen Nickos, general manager for Axis, says a main goal for the club is to get the crowd dancing and feeling comfortable. Nickos hires dancers (mostly students) to break the ice and start the dancing. Nickos says his dancers are outgoing and fun. \n"You can't train personality," Nickos says. "We need people who aren't afraid to dance on a box. We find people out of the crowd and ask them to dance." \nThe four current dancers, two men and two women, wear wild clothing and pull club goers up onto the small stages to dance with them. Ballas was once pulled up to dance with the Axis dancers. \n"I have had people come up to me and say, 'Wow, you're such a good dancer.' Sometimes some of the girls that are hired to dance there will let me come up and dance with them," she says.\nThough her talents have been acknowledged, Ballas doesn't dance at Axis or any other club often. \n"I really don't like it when guys try to dance on me," Ballas says. "That's part of the reason that I really don't go to a lot of clubs because I like to dance by myself. If I ever do go to a club I try to get up on one of those platforms where I can be left alone and just dance."\nFellow Group X leader and junior Sarah Liakos, like Ballas, doesn't frequent clubs that often. \n"I've probably been to a club six times in my life," she says, laughing, preferring instead to dance the night away inside the SRSC classrooms, a good starting point for those who don't quite feel comfortable shaking their groove thing on the dance floor.\nBallas comes across many students who are skeptical of the class and their dancing ability.\n"A lot of the people that come don't think they can dance," Ballas says. "Obviously there are people that are better than others, but that's why it's based on putting your own style to it."\nAt the club, in the class, on the street or simply in front of the mirror, hip-hop dancing is about having fun and enjoying the expression and the movement.\n"I think dancing is one of the greatest things in the world. I think music is one of the greatest things in the world," Liakos says. "Dancing is my way of sharing my excitement for music. I get overwhelmed when I dance. I love it so much"
(12/04/02 4:38am)
A few stragglers run through the door, their footfalls unintentionally pounding out the beat of the music that blasts from the speakers.\n"How you guys doing tonight?" yells junior Diana Ballas above the music to the group assembled before her, all while her hips keep time. Her question is answered with cheers, whoops and claps, signaling the beginning of class.\nBallas is one of the four Group X leaders who instruct a hip-hop dancing class at the SRSC. \n"Hip hop -- I like it, but it isn't really my favorite musical choice, which is what people would probably normally think," she says. "But I really, really like to dance to it. I like to fool around with it."\nThe class members behind her are just beginning to sweat as they bounce and grind their way through song after song. \n"How far down can you go?" Ballas asks, moving her hips toward the floor. As she watches a woman with a bright green shirt hover inches above the floor and struggle to get back up, Ballas answers her own question. "Not that far down," she laughs. \nHip hop has pervaded American culture with more than just the music that blasts daily from MTV. Both in the SRSC classroom and out on the club scene, students are learning to get down on the dance floor.\nSRSC wellness programs coordinator William Thornton was surrounded by all aspects of hip-hop culture as a child in Norfolk, Va.\n"As for me, (hip hop) is something that I grew up with, and lived with and was all around me," he says.\nThornton began teaching a hip-hop class in 1998 and says hip hop has become a common facet of American society.\n"It's just a part of daily life," he says. "I wouldn't say it's a specific community. It's not just the music that you listen to or the dance. It's also how you dress. How you communicate with each other is different as well. It's kind of a whole culture of how you live."\nIndividualism is a key part of hip-hop dancing simply because hip hop is a means through which dancers express themselves and their feelings. \n"There is a lot of individuality," Thornton says, "because you allow yourself to just express. Sometimes it takes a little time to let go."\nDancing is the main focus at Axis, a local Bloomington nightclub that advertises the best dance and hip-hop music.\nKen Nickos, general manager for Axis, says a main goal for the club is to get the crowd dancing and feeling comfortable. Nickos hires dancers (mostly students) to break the ice and start the dancing. Nickos says his dancers are outgoing and fun. \n"You can't train personality," Nickos says. "We need people who aren't afraid to dance on a box. We find people out of the crowd and ask them to dance." \nThe four current dancers, two men and two women, wear wild clothing and pull club goers up onto the small stages to dance with them. Ballas was once pulled up to dance with the Axis dancers. \n"I have had people come up to me and say, 'Wow, you're such a good dancer.' Sometimes some of the girls that are hired to dance there will let me come up and dance with them," she says.\nThough her talents have been acknowledged, Ballas doesn't dance at Axis or any other club often. \n"I really don't like it when guys try to dance on me," Ballas says. "That's part of the reason that I really don't go to a lot of clubs because I like to dance by myself. If I ever do go to a club I try to get up on one of those platforms where I can be left alone and just dance."\nFellow Group X leader and junior Sarah Liakos, like Ballas, doesn't frequent clubs that often. \n"I've probably been to a club six times in my life," she says, laughing, preferring instead to dance the night away inside the SRSC classrooms, a good starting point for those who don't quite feel comfortable shaking their groove thing on the dance floor.\nBallas comes across many students who are skeptical of the class and their dancing ability.\n"A lot of the people that come don't think they can dance," Ballas says. "Obviously there are people that are better than others, but that's why it's based on putting your own style to it."\nAt the club, in the class, on the street or simply in front of the mirror, hip-hop dancing is about having fun and enjoying the expression and the movement.\n"I think dancing is one of the greatest things in the world. I think music is one of the greatest things in the world," Liakos says. "Dancing is my way of sharing my excitement for music. I get overwhelmed when I dance. I love it so much"
