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(10/26/09 2:32am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Before he visited, Jill’s House was the last place Mike Baxter said he wanted to stay while receiving cancer treatment at the Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute.“When you sign up at the treatment center, they have a list of places you can stay at nearby,” he said. “I just wanted to be alone.”Students, community members and former patients such as Baxter attended the 10th-annual Jill Behrman 5k Run/Walk on Saturday at IU’s Memorial Stadium. The run attracted 1,250 registered participants and raised an estimated $17,000, said Chris Geary, race coordinator and director of research and programming at Recreational Sports, in an e-mail. Half the money will go to Jill Behrman Emerging Leader Scholarship, which honors selected student leaders who work for Recreational Sports. The other half will go to Jill’s House. Baxter said he rented a house to live in during his two-month stay in Bloomington, but it flooded before he got the chance to move into it. On his way to the airport, he stopped by Jill’s House.“It turned out to be one of the best places of my life,” he said. “There are six photon treatment centers in the U.S., but none of them have Jill’s House.”IU student Jill Behrman went missing in May 2000 while riding her bike to work. The first race in her honor was in October of that year, Geary said in an interview.“The first year we had to keep pushing the start time back because so many participants kept showing up,” she said. “I thought the event would slowly fade off as students who knew Jill graduated, but it’s stayed universal. It’s stayed between 1,300 and 1,500 participants each year.”Jill always liked exercise and fitness, said Eric Behrman, Jill’s father. Jill was more of a cyclist than a runner, he said. She rode in the Hilly Hundred and participated in the deCycles bike ride from Bloomington to Atlanta.“I know this is something she would have enjoyed,” Eric Behrman said. “I hope it continues to go on as long as people enjoy it.”Bloomington resident Karlee Wyatt said she used to work for MPRI and treated many of the patients staying at Jill’s House. She said she has participated in the race every year but last year.“Jill’s House is close to my heart,” she said. “Jill’s House is just always going to get bigger.”Before the race, which was organized by Campus Recreational Sports and sponsored by several community organizations, participants joined in a warm-up routine. At 10 a.m., the racers lined up in 45-degree weather, ready for the start.“I recognize a few of the participants,” said Stacey Hall, program director for intramural sports, club sports and student development at Recreational Sports. “If they’re running together they push each other. The first person will probably finish around 17 minutes.”Senior Lionel Montenegro rounded the corner with a time of almost 17 minutes flat, beating the second-place runner, who came in at 17:22.Montenegro said he was not going to participate in the race, but a friend convinced him to run with him. He said the cold weather made the race less than optimal.“It was a pretty bad day, but I think I made the most of it,” he said.
(10/22/09 3:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Dining Services at the Indiana Memorial Union have stopped accepting credit cards for a short period of time as a result of high merchant rates, said Steve Mangan, general manager of Sodexo, which operates the food services in the IMU.Members of the Sodexo management team decided to shut down credit card machines last Friday when the rates had become too high for the company to afford, Mangan said.Sodexo is currently renegotiating the rates through the University and expects to have a solution shortly, Mangan said.“We hope to have it resolved as soon as possible,” he said.While credit cards will not be accepted, Mangan said students can still use ATMs located at the Union as well as CampusAccess cards or Union Plus accounts.Mangan said he has not seen a significant decrease in sales at this time.“But a few students is more than I want to lose,” he said. “We’re pushing to get it fixed.”
(10/21/09 1:26am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU ranked in the top 10 colleges for the use of the social networking site Twitter in a recent study conducted by Universitiesandcolleges.org.“We were kind of curious and saw that Twitter was taking off and getting lots of attention,” Scott Johnson, editor of Universitiesandcolleges.org,said. “We thought it would be a good thing to look into and see how it’s utilized.”Listed as an “early adopter” in the survey, IU was ranked sixth for its number of university-affiliated accounts, fourth for number of Twitter followers and eighth for total “tweets” per day. Administrators of the survey used the top 100 colleges established by the U.S. News and World America’s Best Colleges 2010 to conduct the study.According to the study, each of the top 100 colleges has at least one Twitter account, with the majority of colleges falling into a few categories, such as official school accounts, schools and departments within universities, student services and outward-facing bodies.Filippo Menczer, an associate professor of informatics and computer science at IU, said some details are missing in the study, such as size of the university and number of students who attend each university.“If you take it at face value, the only conclusion I am able to draw is we have a tech-savvy population,” said Menczer.Johnson said organizers of the study discussed taking into account the number of students at each university and the size of the university but discovered there would be too much information to complete the report.“We tried to narrow it down a bit to see how the schools themselves were trying to use it,” he said. “Bigger schools are going to have more different departments, and that should definitely be taken into account. But it’s not a competition for who’s best.”Schools within IU and other universities are using Twitter and other social sites to reach their constituents, Menczer said.As part of the Web site redesign for the School of Informatics and Computing, Menczer said focus groups were gathered to discuss better ways of communication. During the discussion, he said some current students brought up the idea of putting information on Facebook instead of maintaining a Web site.“We analyzed student traffic, and Facebook was by far the most popular site,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we’ll stop having a Web site. But if that’s where they are, then that’s where we need to be.” Freshman Sarah Orth said she does not use Twitter and feels like the site is “stalkerish.”“It’s a good way to get information out there,” she said. “But it could change from being about the school to being unnecessary.”Technology can be a good thing, Orth said, but students need to learn how to communicate face-to-face.Putting information on social networking sites instead of sending it through e-mails is less formal, Orth said.“E-mails are a more direct way to communicate,” she said. “I like to keep school separate from my social life.”However, Menczer said the trend of informing students through networking sites has already begun.“Just like 10 to 15 years ago when everyone started getting a Web site,” he said. “Now you can’t even imagine a department without a Web site. As we have a broader diversity of media, we adapt.”
(10/16/09 5:15pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This year the greek community is bringing back the old, forgotten tradition of lawn decorating.The tradition began in the 1970s or 1980s and was reinstated last year, said Kim Kushner, graduate assistant for the Student Alumni Association.“It had always been a big tradition in the past,” said Kristin Burt, co-director of the Greek Homecoming Committee. “Houses used to get so into it. I don’t know how they got away from it.”Each pair of houses is given the same supplies, Kushner said, including a blank banner, pinwheels and large cornhole boards that will also be used in the cornhole tournament on Wednesday.The greek community has always been involved in Homecoming Week, but with different degrees of involvement, Kushner said.“The greek values of philanthropy, spirit and tradition go along with the values of Homecoming,” she said. “We’re trying to expand Homecoming and getting the community more involved.”The greek houses will pair-up and compete for points throughout the week, Kushner said. Points will be awarded to each pair for each homecoming event they plan or attend. The top three pairs with the highest points will be recognized on the field when IU plays Illinois, she said.Katie Wickham, vice president of communications for the Panhellenic Association, said different chapters have different events to celebrate homecoming as opposed to planning multiple events as an entire community.The greek community is trying to get more involved in activities with other campus groups and project a more positive image around campus, Burt said.“Homecoming is something we look at as an entire school event,” Wickham said. “We try to participate as IU students instead of as greek students.”
(10/16/09 2:54am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Slackers and scholars gathered over cardboard pizza at a bowling alley to discuss essays about the major themes in the Coen brothers’ film, “The Big Lebowski,” during Louisville’s Lebowski Fest three years ago.Ed Comentale, an associate professor in the IU Department of English, took the discussions and turned them into a book about the film.Comentale discussed the book, set to come out at the end of this month, along with the film in Collins Coffeehouse at Collins LLC on Wednesday.Comentale said he hated “The Big Lebowski” when it first hit theaters. The film was the Coen brothers’ first release after “Fargo,” and in relation, he said, a lot of the comedy seemed cheap.“The Big Lebowski,” which chronicles slacker Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski’s journey to discover who soiled his rug, is a “grower,” Comentale said. The film grows on people in interest and affection with subsequent viewings, he said.Since the film’s release, it has gathered a cult following of people calling themselves “the achievers” and celebrating the “dudely life,” Comentale said.Two friends in a freelance T-shirt retail business came up with the idea to arrange a festival dedicated to “The Big Lebowski,” Comentale said. The festival has since expanded to a number of other major cities across the country, as well as in London.“It’s the laziest carnival you’ll ever be at,” he said. “But the fans do seem to work like academics. A lot of the fans at the festival were recently graduated English majors looking for something to do with their degrees.”The organizers of the festival were looking to add an academic dimension to the event, Comentale said, and invited him and fellow scholar Aaron Jaffe, an associate English professor at the University of Louisville, to give a talk about the film.“We decided to put on a conference,” he said. “We received about 200 paper ideas from people across the country and narrowed them down to about 30. We rented out a bowling alley for only 100 bucks and exchanged papers and talked about the film. It was great to deliver papers to the background of pins crashing.”After the festival, Cometale and Jaffe realized they had a lot of interesting material, Comentale said. They decided to coauthor a book presenting the material gathered at the festival to a larger audience, he said.“A Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies” includes 21 essays written by both fans and scholars, Comentale said. The book is structured around a quote from the movie, “A lot of ins, a lot of outs,” he said. The first part of the book includes essays concerning influences that went into the making of the film, he said, while the second half, the “outs,” revolves around events that surround the film.“The book is a connection between academic culture and fan culture,” Comentale said. “We want it to be fun, but not condescending. It’s difficult with fans. They think you’re destroying the pleasure of it. But academics are trained to talk it more.”Sophomore Natasha Cowan said she has only seen the film once and thought it was “OK.” She said she does not know the academic side to the film, but only the quirkiness of it.“There’s so much to the movie,” she said. “I didn’t like the ending. It was probably the worst part for me. It just ended. I need closure.”Graduate student Andrew Barrett said he would not classify himself as a big fan of the film. The first time he saw it, he said he thought it was complex and silly. However, it was interesting to see how Comentale and other scholars analyzed the film, he said.“The Big Lebowski” is a generative text for which conversation seems endless, Comentale said. The Coen brothers began with images for the film – a severed toe, homework in a baggie, a suitcase full of whites – and then think of ways to link them together, he said.“If you begin with a singing cowboy and a bowling alley, how do you connect that process?” Comentale said. “Someone e-mailed me saying they had an idea for an essay comparing ‘The Dude’ to Rip Van Winkle. I thought it was impossible, but he did it.”
(10/15/09 4:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The entire bunk bed shakes at about 3 or 4 o’clock every morning, waking up Ali.“I skipped my first class at nine in the morning once because I was woken up four times in the middle of the night,” she said.For the past five weeks, Ali, a freshman who asked to not be identified by her real name because of possible ramifications from Residential Programs and Services policies, said her roommate has allowed her boyfriend, a non-IU student, to live in their McNutt Quad room. Her roommate proceeds to wake her up each night by having sex in the bunk above her.Junior Sadie Martens’ story is similar to Ali’s. As a freshman at IUPUI, Martens said she would be banned from her room for two-and-a-half hours every other Saturday so her roommate and her boyfriend could have the room to themselves.“I would go do homework,” she said. “And if I forgot something and had to get it, she would get mad at me.”This year Martens said she lives in a triple room where she has her own space to focus.“She did it in the room I had to sleep in,” she said. “I thought it was thoroughly gross.”“Sexiling,” the exiling of one roommate so the other can partake in sexual activity, has become a common term used by students across college campuses and has recently been banned at Tufts University.Tufts’ guest policy states that students “may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room. Any sexual activity within your assigned room should not ever deprive your roommate(s) of privacy, study or sleep time.”Laura Eads, assistant director at the Office of Student Ethics & Anti-Harassment Programs, said IU does not have a direct policy on “sexiling.”However, IU’s 2009-10 Housing and Dining Contract Terms and Conditions states: “Occupancy for more than four (4) consecutive nights more than once a semester by any other person, shall constitute a breach of this contract unless prior written consent is obtained from your residence manager.”RPS tries to prevent such behavior with the Roommate Agreement contract that every student living in RPS housing is requested to complete.Under section 3 of the agreement, “Privacy, Visitation, and Safety,” students are asked to answer the questions: “How do I feel about my roommate(s) being intimate with his/her significant other in the room? Does this need to change if I am in the room?” and “If visitors are bothering me, how will I tell them?”The agreement asks students to “sit down together” to fill it out and informs students to discuss problems with their RA.“Once you tell people how you feel, some people will take that into consideration,” Martens said. “If the other roommate is severely uncomfortable, RAs can deal with it.”Eads said resident assistants would suggest roommates begin with mediation. If the issue becomes more severe, she said it could be taken through the campus judicial system.Ali said she does not want to tattle on her roommate and hopes the boyfriend will leave before she has to say anything.“Maybe people just want to be friends with their roommates,” she said. “That’s why I haven’t said anything. I want her to like me. But she doesn’t do her homework. I think she’ll fail out, so maybe I’ll have a single.”If RPS had a policy on “sexiling,” Ali said she felt like the only people who would follow RPS rules in the first place would tell their RAs.“Most RAs don’t know what’s going on now,” she said. “There are so many rules in the RPS book, no one would know about it. No one actually reads the book.”During junior Brittany VandenBossche’s freshman year, she said her roommate would bring her “sex partner” to their room in Collins LLC after a night out drinking.“Our room was connected by a half wall,” she said. “She knew I was awake because I had a light on.”Despite asking her roommate to stop, VandenBossche said her roommate continued to bring the guy back to their room.“Eventually he came so drunk that he fell down the stairs and got arrested,” she said. “She realized he was a loser and stopped seeing him.”VandenBossche said that in a way, she is glad her roommate did not kick her out because she had no place to go.“It was inconsiderate and rude,” she said. “I don’t care how well you know your roommate.”
(10/14/09 4:55am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Fabolous, whose debut album “Ghetto Fabolous” featured his first hit single “Can’t Deny It,” will perform as part of the homecoming celebration along with rapper Wiz Khalifa.“Right now Fabolous is the hottest he’s ever been,” sophomore Andrew Platkin, member of Sigma Alpha Mu, said. “We want this to be the official homecoming concert for IU.”In July, Fabolous released “Loso’s Way,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.Platkin said Fabolous plays well to a college crowd, a pull other artists do not have.“He plays a lot of homecomings,” said junior Jeff Safferman, president of Sigma Alpha Mu. “He has a clean act. He’s not a hardcore rapper.”Along with Fabolous, local acts, such as South Jordan, On the House and Anthony West, will also perform, Platkin said.Proceeds from the concert will go toward Sigma Alpha Mu’s national philanthropy to help the fight against Alzheimer’s, Safferman said. Portions of the proceeds will pay back the costs of the show, but the rest will go to philanthropy, he said.“Twenty dollars is the best value for seeing two national acts,” sophomore Jeremy Burke, member of Sigma Alpha Mu, said. “Our dream is to provide affordable entertainment and give back to the community.”Ticket sales have been relatively high for pre-sales, Platkin said, but more tickets are always sold the day of the event.“College kids buy stuff last minute,” he said.A street team, made up of Sigma Alpha Mu members, will deliver tickets to students who order them, Safferman said.Sophomore Amy Rosenberg said Fabolous will probably draw students to the show. A lot of fraternities compete with events during Little 500 week, she said, but she has not heard of any other fraternities planning concerts for homecoming.“It sets them apart,” she said. “But if people go and it’s really bad, it may hurt them for Little Five.”Last year, the fraternity brought Young Jeezy to perform during Little 500 week, Platkin said. Platkin added that he thinks that tickets for Soulja Boy Tell ‘em, the act sponsored by the Ice House Foundation as a Little 500 event in April, didn’t sell as well as expected because it ran simultaneously.“People are confident we’ll provide a great product,” Safferman said.Members of Sigma Alpha Mu want to continue to provide student entertainment in the future, junior Bryan Wool, member of the fraternity, said.“We want to continue bringing great shows,” he said. “There’s no reason students can’t have fun while helping out philanthropy.”
(10/14/09 3:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Some people claim they saw their destinies “written in the sky.” Sophomore Alicia Frost saw hers written on the ground – in chalk.Last March, chalk advertisements for a “feature film call-out” covered campus. Frost said she went to the meeting on a whim and ended up with one of the leading roles in the independent student film “Only Human.”“We were just wide-eyed freshmen starting out,” she said. “As far as being filmed before, my experience is restricted to making crappy YouTube videos. And I was in an IUSTV sitcom based on ‘The Office’ that died after one episode. I played a stoner.”Frost said she is not a theater major. Though she said she was involved in theater throughout high school, she is majoring in public relations.“As far as the practicality of pursuing a career in acting goes, other factors came into play,” she said.Frost said she plays Grace in the film, the main character’s high school sweetheart who starkly contrasts his new girlfriend. The main character flees his hometown to Bloomington, she said, and Grace tracks him down a few years later.“Grace is a very nice, smart girl,” she said. “We have a lot of similarities. It’s easy to become that character.”So far, Frost said she has only filmed one scene. The actors involved in the scene met with the directors to rehearse and memorize the lines for that scene, she said. Instead of memorizing all of the lines at once, the actors take it scene by scene, she said. Although a small crowd was watching Frost as she acted, she said it was easy to focus.“Walking up to the set, I expected a couple guys with cameras,” she said. “It was really shocking. There was a monitor watching the takes as they were filming. We were there for probably six hours, and I was wearing heels, so I was like, ‘Get me out of here!’”For Frost’s attire in the film, she said the costume designers took items from her wardrobe to use.“My style is similar, I guess,” she said. “The prom dress I wore in the scene we filmed is the costume girl’s actual prom dress.”But sophomore Rafe Kaplan, who plays Jake, the main character’s fraternity brother, had a little more trouble with his wardrobe.“I need flip flops and board shorts,” he said. “They told me to start buying stuff over the summer.”Kaplan said he constantly acts out his character, who is supposed to be a typical fraternity guy.“I don’t think I’m anything like him,” he said. “It’s always a joke to act out this guy. He’s not supposed to be funny, but the people at the audition saw how I did it and loved it.”Majoring in human biology, Kaplan said he does not see acting as a career. He said he is, however, very active in improvisation and comedy sketches and participated in “Hoosier Date?” last year on IUSTV, where he heard about the audition for “Only Human.”“I always wanted to be in a real movie,” he said. “I saw the promotional movie and I went nuts.”Kaplan said he went to the call-out meeting in March and was later asked to interview for the part.“The final cast were the only people being interviewed for the parts,” Frost said. “They told all of us we were one of two narrowed down, but really we were the only one. The whole point of the interview was to make sure of our commitment, to make sure the dedication was there.”Though Kaplan has not yet been in any filmed scenes, he said he is excited to start shooting. He said the three directors in charge of the filming are all specialized in their field and all get along and their ideas flow nicely.The producers of “Only Human” want to finish filming by spring, Kaplan said, and have production completed by November 2010. The film will premiere in Bloomington and may go on to film festivals, he said.“I’m already excited for the premiere,” Kaplan said. “I see a premiere at the auditorium. I see pulling around that fountain and stepping out on a red carpet. Basically, I have high expectations.”
(10/12/09 3:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Annual cultural festivals around Bloomington joined forces for the first time this year to showcase one massive festival Saturday in Bryan Park.Bloomington Multicultural Expo 2009 united with Festival Latino, the Moon Festival and the Soul Food Festival to offer visitors a more diverse cultural experience.The Bloomington Black Business and Professional Association organized the Soul Food Festival, La Casa Latino Cultural Center at IU organized the Festival Latino, and the Asian Culture Center organized the Moon Festival.“We utilized the multicultural festival as an umbrella,” said Lillian Casillas, director of La Casa and co-chair for the expo’s planning committee. “When we had the separate festivals, we didn’t have the mixture of people. ”Members of the Commission on Multicultural Understanding and Bloomington’s Safe and Civil City Program meet each year to identify ways to celebrate diversity, Casillas said. Three members of the committee were affiliated with the other festivals, she said, and they came up with the idea to combine them.“We all have limited resources,” Melanie Castillo-Cullather, director of the Asian Culture Center said. “If we pull them together, we can do more.”The represented festivals were split up into separate villages to give each its own identity, Casillas said.The International Village was added to showcase international diversity, said Sandy Britton, director of the Leo R. Dowling International Center and co-chair of the planning committee.Jennifer Rios, president of the Latino Enhancement Cooperative, said they asked the representatives of the booths to be interactive.“We wanted the booths to be more hands-on,” she said. “Mostly for the community, but also for the kids.”The Mathers Museum of World Cultures provided activities in each village corresponding with the cultures of the villages in which they were placed, said Deeksha Nagar, curator of education for the museum.“We’ve always been participating in multicultural festivals,” she said. “We’re taking traditional art forms to the community and giving children the opportunity to make an artifact and learn about the context.”Sophomore Emma Engelhardt is a volunteer for the Mathers Museum. At the museum’s Soul Food booth, children could play Mancala, a game where players try to move stones across a game board. They could also build “I have a dream” mobiles, she said.Beverly Calender Anderson, director for the Safe and Civil City Program and head of the Soul Food village, said the Multicultural Expo helped bring diversity to one spot.“It’s a good venue to showcase things that are important to you,” she said. “Socially, we stay in our own circles. Here you can look out and see Bloomington, see everyone in Bloomington.”
(10/09/09 3:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A Geographic Information Systems committee is now accepting entries for the third annual Earth as Art contest in celebration of GIS Day on Nov. 18.This year the contest, open to the general public, will allow multimedia entries for the first time, said Anna Radue, co-chair of the planning committee for GIS Day.“People can be as creative as they want,” she said. “They can include videos, songs, anything they can think of.”Examples of multimedia works from Austin, Texas, can be found on IU’s GIS Day Web site.The first year the contest was limited to the IU community, Radue said. Last year it was changed to include the general public.A three-member committee will judge the Earth as Art contest entries, Radue said. The deadline to enter is Nov. 16.IU’s contest is based on the Earth as Art Gallery, an online gallery sponsored by the U.S. Geologic Survey and NASA, Radue said.The U.S. Geologic Survey is a national center that wanted to introduce the general public to satellite images, Radue said.“The satellite images are unique,” she said. “The site has a lot of unusual pictures that the staff has identified.”Satellite images have been collected and admired by the USGS staff more than 35 years, said Ron Beck, program information specialist in the Land Remote Sensing Program for the USGS.Members of the USGS chose 40 of their favorite images and took them to an art museum, Beck said. After the first set’s success, he said they developed a second set of 40 images that was distributed around the country.All 80 images can now be found on the Earth as Art Gallery Web site, Beck said. Anyone can download and use the images without restriction.“We’re talking about a third set,” he said. “We have four and a half million scenes from which to choose.”The images are popular with elementary school students as well as other members of the public because they are a way of explaining geology, Beck said.“You look at the landforms and see how beautiful the planet really is despite the pollution,” he said. “You’re learning more about the planet rather than simply looking at pretty pictures.”Kaj Johnson, assistant professor of Geological Sciences, said the contest increases public awareness about available satellite technology and how it can benefit scientific activities.“It’s clearly a fun way to expose students to the technology they otherwise might not be aware was out there,” he said.See http://gisday.indiana.edu/poster or http://earthasart.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html
(10/08/09 4:33am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Weeks after settling into his new IU office, Dean of Students Pete Goldsmith is planning his next moving day.Goldsmith and his staff, whose offices are currently located in Franklin Hall, plan to transfer in March to Outdoor Adventures’ space near the Back Alley on the Mezzanine floor of the Union. Outdoor Adventures will relocate to Eigenmann Hall.“We’ve had several moves in the last few years,” Goldsmith said. “The Union is where the office really belongs.”Other members of the Dean’s staff with offices in Franklin, such as Suzanne Phillips, assistant dean of students, and Carol McCord, associate dean of students, will make the move as well.“There will also be a separate series of offices for the Veteran Support Services,” Goldsmith said of the new location. “Right now they are sharing a space with Disability Services. This way both offices will have more space.”Goldsmith said students visit him for a variety of issues, such as personal problems and academic difficulties. Though many students visit his office, they go to the Union more than they go to Franklin Hall, he said.“I’m sure because we will be in the Union we’ll have more students in the office,” he said.The Dean of Students Office has always been student orientated, Goldsmith said, and with the move it will be more visible.“Right now I’m in student mode,” Goldsmith said. “I didn’t come in with a plan. I’m talking to students about why things work; I have to understand the environment and what student issues are. “I hope students will feel comfortable enough to come up to me on campus or shoot me an e-mail.”A couple years ago, a Board of Aeons report said Outdoor Adventures was a great program for students, but it needed a new space, said Dustin Smucker, leisure programs coordinator for Outdoor Adventures.The final decision for the move was made at the beginning of September, Smucker said. In January, Eigenmann Hall was looked at as a possible space for Outdoor Adventures, he said, and more space has been made available since.“We’re thrilled about the space in Eigenmann,” Smucker said. “It will be a location for smoother operations.”Originally when Outdoor Adventures opened, Smucker said they had a small amount of equipment.In their current space at the Union, Outdoor Adventures’ boats and tents occupy small rooms in the basement, which creates congestion, Smucker said.“You have to go through about three locked doors to get to the boats,” he said. “Then up about 100 steps with the boat to get to the back door of the Union.”The reorganization has not yet begun in Eigenmann, Smucker said. Outdoor Adventures will use existing spaces there, and other spaces will be repurposed for the move. A former food preparation area will be turned into boat storage, he said. The boat storage will be a brief 30-second walk away, but will now include a loading dock.The proposal to install a small climbing wall is being explored as a way to bring students into the store, Smucker said.If students use Outdoor Adventures’ facilities, they are going to go despite the location, junior Sara Troutman said.“A rock climbing wall would be pretty sweet,” she said.The one significant drawback Outdoor Adventures will face is missing out on the hustle and bustle of IU’s central hub that is the Union, Smucker said.“We’re hoping to create a satellite hub of student life at Eigenmann,” he said. “It could be beneficial to be closer to resident centers. The move could have benefits we’re not really anticipating right now.”
(10/06/09 4:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A train conductor had just passed the airport when he called the Pizza X campus location, telling driver William Graham he would arrive at the store in 10 minutes.“I knew there was no train station around here,” Graham said. “The conductor stopped the train on the track behind the store and came in to get the pizza.”Graham said he studied art at Depauw University. After living the life of a starving artist, he began delivering pizzas seven years ago, a job he believes is not for everyone.“You can almost describe it as being a cowboy in the Wild West,” he said. “Rain, snow, you’re out there in the elements by yourself. You have to know what to do if your car breaks down. You have to stay sharp, stay on your toes.”Drivers see everything, Graham said, which is one of the best parts of the job.“Never underestimate the creative ability of college students to entertain,” he said.Driver Chris Etter said he has worked at the Pizza X campus location for eight years and loves his job.“I walk into places, and people cheer really loudly,” he said. “Most people are just happy to see me.”However, during finals and midterm weeks as well as after devastating sport losses, Etter said he can sense the tension. And tips are affected by the moods of the customers, he said. Generally college students tip 10 percent less than other customers, Etter said. But what they lack in tips they make up for with humor.On a delivery to McNutt Quad on a Friday, Etter said two girls, slightly inebriated, came out to get their pizza at about 2:30 a.m. After taking their money, Etter said he handed them the pizza, which they both grabbed at the same time. All of a sudden, they both let go, the pizza falling to the ground. Etter offered to send them another pizza, he said, but they insisted it was their fault.“Next thing I know one of these chicks gets down on the ground with a slice of pizza and starts sopping up the ranch that was splattered everywhere and eats it,” he said. “I was pretty much speechless. I guess the ranch sauce is really good. I’ll never forget that.”Drivers see a lot of people fall, Etter said. The most common time to see customers take a dive is on the steps outside of the Curry wing of Read Center after a snow or ice storm, he said.“I don’t know if it’s because the sun doesn’t hit the steps right,” he said. “But the steps are never melted down. Students see the pizza and come running out and wham! College kids, they always get back up.”Between 2 and 4 a.m. the Pizza X phones never stop ringing, Graham said. When bars let out, everyone is hungry. People always approach drivers asking if they have extra pizza, Graham said, and the answer is always no.“Sometimes we knock on the customer’s door and see the person passed out on the sofa,” he said. “We may have extra then. But usually it’s no.”Etter said during one delivery, he saw the girl who ordered the pizza passed out on her couch inside with the check in her hand. He walked in, took the check and left the pizza in the house.“Most places I just walk in,” he said. “If there’s music playing, I could be knocking for half an hour. It’s not like anyone locks their doors around here.”Pizza X has the phone numbers of every customer they deliver to, Graham said, so they can call the customer to know when to meet them. On one delivery a few years ago, Graham said he called the customer and obviously woke someone. The guy on the other end of the phone told Graham he was in Connecticut.“The son had ordered a pizza and used his home phone number,” he said. “I got the son’s number from the dad, and his dad told me to tell the kid, ‘Thanks for spending my hard-earned money on pizza.’”Etter said it is surprising how many people cannot calculate how much change they should get back. While making change for a customer once, he said the customer demanded $4 back for a $16.47 order.“I tried to explain to her that I could only give her $3.53,” he said. “She called the store and demanded to speak to my boss. I don’t know what her motive was. Needless to say, she didn’t get $4 back.” Each driver at Pizza X makes 50 to 100 deliveries a night, Graham said, and they never know what to expect. Drivers’ experiences are almost always good, he said.“We give food to happy, drunk people all night long,” he said. “We rarely have to deal with belligerent drunks.”During finals week three years ago, Graham said he made a delivery to the Herman B Wells Library to a couple that was obviously not happy. The girl who signed the receipt said she could not see Graham in the dark. He then brought out his new flashlight and joked around until the couple started laughing, he said.“She scratched out the tip and doubled it,” he said. “I feel like part of our job is to entertain people. It should be fun. They entertain us; we entertain them.”
(10/05/09 2:27am)
Brooklyn artists on two-week comics tour make stop at local bookstore.
(10/02/09 4:50am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>From wheelbarrow races to dodgeball games, members of IU’s greek community have been participating in different festivities around campus this week as part of Greek Week.Though the week-long event has taken place in previous years, turnout has been low in the past, said junior Katie Geiger, vice president of community involvement for the IU Panhellenic Association.“It’s been a long time since the last big one,” she said. “It’s a good way to get to know each other.”Geiger, a member of Delta Gamma sorority, said the Panhellenic Association and the Interfraternity Council decided to add Greek Week this year because the other Big Ten universities have it each year.An event committee, made up of members from different houses, chose events that represented the values of the greek system, Geiger said.“We wanted to have events dealing with philanthropy that are meaningful,” she said. “We also wanted to have fun, memorable events to celebrate greek life.”During the events, all the houses are paired with houses they do not usually partner with to work on their team-building abilities, said junior Mandi VanOsdol, a member of the Alpha Omicron Phi sorority.There are four or five houses on each team, said junior Ryan Brechtl from the Delta Chi fraternity, and the teams compete against each other in different events.“It lets everyone meet people they wouldn’t normally get to know,” he said.Senior Chris Hanlin, a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, said Greek Week helps get members of all the greek houses in one place at the same time.“It’s a good experience,” he said. “There are no greek names on the T-shirts. That gets rid of stereotypes.”Brechtl said he participated in the breadstick-eating contest. Each participant was given two bags of breadsticks, a total of 16 each. The first person to eat all of the breadsticks won the competition, he said.“I ate eight and a half,” he said. “The guy who got first smoked everyone.”Tailgating is the only other event when members of every greek house get together, Brechtl said, and that is when problems arise.“Greek Week proves we can all hang out and have a good time,” he said. “Alcohol ruins that.”
(10/02/09 3:51am)
Bailey Loosemore | IDS
Graduate student Tarek Fadali plays the legendary game of Go on Friday in the Asian Culture Center. Go club meets weekly to play the 5,000-year-old board game.
(10/02/09 3:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Every summer since Jake Woollen was 8 years old, his family would vacation on an island off the coast of Maine. One of his neighbors on the island, a mathematician, wanted someone with whom to play a game called Go. He taught the strategies to Woollen, now a 17-year-old senior at Bloomington South High School.“I learned slowly over the course of three or four years,” he said. “Then one summer I sort of passed him up.”Go is the oldest game known today, Woollen said. No one knows the date of its origin. However, the most common estimate is about 5,000 years ago, he said.“It’s rumored that the Chinese emperor created the game for his son,” he said, “because the son was really stupid and he wanted to make him smarter.”The Go Club has existed at IU on and off since the 1970’s, Woollen said. The person who began the club was the U.S. Go champion, he said. Woollen took over the club three years ago after the leader before him moved away. Because he won a tournament in Bloomington five years ago, Woollen said he was asked to co-facilitate the club with visiting scholar Zoran Rilak.Go is played on a lined board with black and white stones. The player with the black pieces always starts, Woollen said. The stones are placed on the intersections of lines and cannot be moved once they are positioned on the board. Each stone has up to four “breathing spaces,” points next to it connected by a line. If the other player is able to fill those points, he said, the stone is captured.“The goal is actually not to capture stones,” Woollen said. “You want points of territory – empty points you surround. It gets very strategically complicated.”The club does not keep a roster, Woollen said. On weeks with the most participants, 11 or 12 people will show up, he said, and weeks with the least participation maybe four.“When I took it over there were some days when it was just me,” he said.Freshman Ethan Hamlyn said he saw a flyer for the club in his residence hall and had heard of the game before. The club met right after his last class and did not conflict with his schedule, he said, so he went to learn how to play.“I’m an avid Manga reader,” he said. “I read about the game a long time ago and have always wanted to play.”Graduate student Xin He said she does not know how to play and is trying to learn.“I know some of the rules, but I don’t know how to catch a big territory,” she said. “I think this game is complicated – it needs some logical thinking. You have to try to go through this game from the whole picture.”GO CLUBWHEN 5 to 7 p.m. FridaysWHERE Asian Culture Center
(10/01/09 4:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The third annual Dark Carnival Film Festival, dedicated to independent horror films, will thrill viewers beginning at 6 p.m. today with a free screening of “Night of the Living Dead” in Dunn Meadow.The festival began as a filmmaking co-operative run by students, festival director David Pruett said. It has since progressed to one of the top 25 indie film festivals in the nation, as ranked by MovieMaker Magazine, he said.“Indie films are not typically represented in Indiana,” Pruett said. “Dark Carnival is the only independent horror festival in the state.”The first festival took place in early August, Pruett said, and the planners have moved it later each year to be closer to Halloween.“People are in the mood for these kinds of films around that time,” he said.One problem planners of the Dark Carnival festival have run into is scheduling the event around other major events at IU, Pruett said. The first year, the festival occurred during move-in weekend, he said, and did not gather many student viewers.“Last year, at least half the audience was students,” he said. “The movies are geared toward that demographic, people between the ages of 18 and 35.”The week-long festival will show a total of 40 films – nine feature-length films and 31 short films, said Marv Blauvelt, a local indie film actor, writer and producer. Pruett said the festival began accepting submissions in January with the deadline at the end of July. In previous years, a screening committee viewed all submissions, but because of the overload of films this year, Pruett said the committee split into groups. It took the committee nearly six weeks to narrow down the selection to the final films, he said.Pruett said festival submissions are high quality, adding that they received the best films this year.Blauvelt said of the four films he submitted, two were chosen. One, a feature-length film entitled “Sculpture,” tells the story of a young woman acting out against memories of abuse from her father. She begins killing bodybuilders to use in her artwork, Blauvelt said. “Most films show big guys in ski masks killing typical college girls,” he said. “This film turns it around and has such a small girl killing these big men.”Blauvelt said his parents have seen one or two of his horror films and will be attending the festival for the first time this year.“My parents always thought I would grow up to be a serial killer because I loved horror so much,” he said. “I don’t know if they can sit through it.”Anna Siri, co-writer and producer of “Caution Sign,” said she will attend Dark Carnival for the first time this year. “Caution Sign” is a 12-minute film adapted from a short story, she said.“It can be really hard or really easy to make a short film,” she said. “The material was already there so this one was pretty easy.”Dark Carnival gives filmmakers exposure they may not have received otherwise, Pruett said. “Our mission is to promote indie filmmaking,” he said. “A lot of times filmmakers can accomplish a lot on a very small budget.”Screenings will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday at different venues around Bloomington. Students can buy a weekend pass at a discount for $14, which will get them into all screenings.
(09/28/09 3:52am)
Innocent, nostalgic music drew nearly a full house of people from each generation reaching back to the ‘60s to see rock ’n’ roll icon Frankie Valli Saturday at the IU Auditorium.
(09/11/16 1:21pm)
Members of the IU College Republicans ask questions of Attorney General Greg Zoeller one afternoon in the Tudor Room. Some IU students worked on campaigns this summer and as internships. Sophomore Reagan Kurk worked with Zoeller's campaign.
(09/27/09 6:11pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Innocent, nostalgic music drew nearly a full house of people from each generation reaching back to the ‘60s to see rock ’n’ roll icon Frankie Valli Saturday night at the IU Auditorium.Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ first hit, “Sherry,” became a success in 1962, and Valli has not stopped singing since. Though the members of the Four Seasons are now younger versions of the original band, Valli, 75, has stayed true to his songs and his message.“I’ve seen him before, so I knew what to expect,” freshman Katheryn Purcell said. “He sounded really good. I think he’s the cutest man alive.”The Four Seasons roster has changed throughout the years. However, the same four singers, Landon Beard, Todd Fournier, Brian Brigham and Brandon Brigham, have been the main members of the group for the last three years, Brian Brigham said.Check out tomorrow's IDS for full coverage of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.