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____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jan. 19, 2010 — Instead of waiting in lines at T.I.S College Bookstore at the beginning of each semester, freshman Meredith Grubbs chooses to buy her books online.“I Google the ISB number, then buy the cheapest book,” she said. “I can compare them on the computer instead of going to different stores.”If she knows someone looking to buy a book she no longer needs, Grubbs said she can get more money by selling to another student instead of selling back to a store.Textyard.com, a website created by two IU students two years ago, offers students an easier way to buy and sell textbooks directly to each other, said junior Ben Greenberg, co-founder of Textyard. The site, which allows students to search for textbooks by class number, has recently expanded outside of Indiana to universities in Illinois and other surrounding states, he said.“Our plan is to be in most states around the country by next fall,” Greenberg said. “Right now, we’re expanding to all schools with more than 20,000 people that attend them.”When students use the site to search for books, Greenberg said they can also see Amazon prices.“Students save money either way,” he said.While the site currently only offers books to buy, Greenberg said it might look into adding rentals in the future.Freshman Tasha Dykes said she used the IU Bookstore to purchase her textbooks this semester, but next semester will be different. After hearing a friend tell her about Chegg.com, she said she has decided to try renting her books.“I’m not going to keep the books,” she said. “I’m not going to read them later. I know if I sell them back to the bookstore, I don’t get much money back.”Jeff Cohen, CEO of campusbooks.com, said they launched textbookrenter.com, a rental price comparison site, in November 2009.The site brings five rental Web sites to one location, he said, and helps students understand the policy of each company.“We felt students needed a place to understand the options available,” he said. “You can compare prices and conditions and can see what other people say about the companies as well.”Renting textbooks allows students to take the discount up-front, Cohen said.However, it is not for everyone. Students who write in or highlight in their textbooks might prefer to buy them, he said, as well as students who need the books for a subsequent semester.“I think we help explain the rental market,” Cohen said. “We help students decide to rent or buy. A rental company is trying to sell you their book. We provide an objective view.”Though there are many options online to rent or buy textbooks, freshman Amal Akbik said she finds using the bookstore easier.“I look them up online first,” she said. “If I can actually see the book, I know I’m getting the right one.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Artificial intelligence poker bots, created by undergraduate students from universities across Indiana, will battle for the top spot in IU’s first Poker Programming Contest.The competition began May 22 and will accept entries until Aug. 14, said sophomore Eric Jiang, who planned the event.Contestants can find information, announcements and rules at http://indianapokerbot.com.“We have every contestant write an artificial intelligence for playing poker,” he said. “Once they write it, all these poker bots will play in a tournament. That’s pretty much the big picture of how it works.”Students from all over the state have shown interest in the contest, Jiang said, including undergraduates from IU, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and Purdue University. The idea is not totally new, Jiang said. There has been research and writing on the subject, and the University of Alberta has featured a similar competition for the past few years.“They have graduate students doing research on it,” Jiang said. “I wanted to keep the playing field even — undergraduate students only, to keep it accessible for other people.”Faculty advisor Gregory Rawlins, associate professor of computer science at IU, said the advantage of the tournament is that students are not required to come up with the best possible bot player, but to produce one that can be comparative to others in the same time frame.It is unlikely that participants have previously made a poker bot to enter in the competition, Jiang said, but they will be able to continue work on the design and enter it in later contests.“DARPA, a research arm of the military, sponsors a project for a million bucks for a car that will drive itself across some distance out in the desert,” Rawlins said. “The first year was a complete fiasco — none of the cars completed the course. The second year, most of the cars completed, but very slowly. The third year, nearly all the cars completed and a couple of them were very fast. “So a contest just in and of itself can have great consequences. I expect great things from the Indiana community.”Jiang said he decided to go with poker because it is an accessible game to everyone.“Not like chess — that’s just a really hard game for computers,” he said. “Even though poker has a lot of strategy, you can just jump in and start playing, use some commonsense rules.”Jiang said he hopes the contest will encourage computer science students and motivate them to take on projects outside of the classroom.“It’s really important for them to have their own interests and motivations to work on,” he said. “I hope this can provide something fun, encourage them to think creatively. Maybe win a little fame and fortune, I guess.”Though the level Jiang is aiming for in the competition is unusual, Rawlins said he thinks the contest will spread knowledge of programming from the graduate level to the undergraduate.“Programming knowledge has moved down to what kids know just because they have Xboxes,” he said. “The reason I agreed to be the sponsor is to give the tools that can help them make some kind of impact.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On May 13, Jonathan Elmer, chair of the IU Department of English, sent an e-mail to the 16 students from one section of Tony Ardizzone’s Introduction to Creative Writing course explaining why some of their final grades had been lowered.He wrote, “I thought I should address some fundamental issues regarding this class, and the disagreements and misunderstandings that have occurred.”Many courses at IU are taught by professors with sections taught by associate instructors. However, professors teaching the courses have authority over the students’ grades, and there are different steps the professors can take in setting a fair, even standard.Halfway into the spring semester, Ardizzone began to see that the grading procedures of one AI were not consistent with the other six. “I am responsible for a degree of uniformity,” Ardizzone said. “I was getting a range of grades from six of the AIs, but she wasn’t giving me a range.”Juliana Crespo, the AI for the section, said she was more concerned with students’ learning and believed grades were irrelevant in the classroom.“You’re going to get an ‘A’ if you put a decent amount of work in the course,” she said. “And (students) respond to that.”Crespo, Ardizzone and Romayne Dorsey, director of creative writing pedagogy, met the week after spring break to discuss Crespo’s grading.“The three of us met, and they tried to convince me to assign new grades,” Crespo said. “It would be disrespectful to my students.”At the end of the semester, Crespo said she met with Dorsey again to go over the fiction portfolios, and both of them graded the assignments. Dorsey’s grades were lower than Crespo’s, but Crespo said Dorsey allowed her to assign the grades she felt comfortable giving, and that Dorsey would not change those grades.After the final grades were posted, Crespo said her students questioned why they received a lower grade than anticipated.“Tony e-mails them back and tells them that they had reassigned new portfolio grades — the ones that Romayne had assigned them,” she said.Seventy-three percent of all six sections received an “A” or a “B” as their final grade, Ardizzone said. In Crespo’s section, he said, 75 percent did after the grade changes.“What we worked with specifically was to try to get her to a sense where she agreed with the norms of the section,” he said. “And she didn’t agree; that’s her right. But it’s my responsibility, absolutely, to make sure that I have a uniformity of treatment and grades within the sections.”Crespo said Ardizzone thinks there should be a wide range of grades in the class and that she does not believe in that sort of grading system. Ardizzone said it is possible to have all A’s in one section, however, it is highly unlikely.“My response will be, ‘That’s possible,’” he said. “‘Because it’s unlikely, let me have a look at the work.’ That’s what we did in this case. What we found was that they weren’t all A’s.”During the first week of orientation, Ardizzone met with the AIs to discuss examples of weak and strong student poems.Ardizzone said he then worked with all of the AIs as a group after each assignment was handed in to determine what a fair grade range would look like. “Grades are an indication to the writer as to the writer’s relative level of growth,” he said.Claude Cookman, an associate professor in the IU School of Journalism, said he instructs his visual communication class on a criteria grading system.“You set clear criteria, and everyone who meets those criteria gets a good grade,” he said. “There’s no feeling that you have to have a set number of C’s and D’s and F’s. Students work harder when they understand that their work could earn a good grade.”Cookman said in courses that have sections with multiple instructors, students are justifiably concerned about fairness. “So I try very hard...to make sure the AIs and myself do try to grade consistently across all discussion sections,” he said.When an assignment comes in, Cookman said he asks the AIs to take a sample of 10 to 12 projects and rate the two highest, two average and two lowest grade-wise. He then meets with the AIs to discuss which project will receive what score. “This gives us some real parameters for looking at the rest of the assignments,” he said. “So, I don’t often have complaints from students.”Junior Emily Hoff said AIs helped with grading in her history class. For finals, she said the professor and the two AIs split the grading.“There’s no real way to tell if they’re grading the same,” she said. “But I think that they definitely try their best — no huge discrepancy there.”While Cookman said he supports his AIs’ grading decisions, he has changed some grades. “I may have changed a few grades over the years,” he said. “When a student comes to complain, I try to make that a teaching moment. I talk about their product and how they could do it better the next time.”Senior Philip Hawkins, a student in Crespo’s section, said while he thinks the professor has the ultimate authority over grades, the changes Ardizzone made seemed inappropriate. “We worked with (Crespo) the whole semester,” he said. “She graded our assignments.”Hawkins said he thinks grading for creative classes should reflect how hard students work, not the level of their work.“When you get a low grade, what is that supposed to say? Does that mean my work sucks?” Hawkins said.Students in all departments have noticeably been receiving higher grades in recent years, Elmer said. However, he said he does not think it is because professors are grading easier.“It certainly is a more competitive market,” he said, “I don’t think my colleagues think about this when they’re doing grades. I think they try to be fair-minded.”Marcus Wicker, an AI in the Department of English, said all faculty members and AIs in the department stick to a high standard of grading. “I think that because the economy is so tough, it’s not enough just to have a college degree,” he said. “Because of that, students are working harder. If there is an increase of grades, they should be applauded for it.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Plastic food symbolizing correct portion sizes and bottles of Mountain Dew and Powerade filled with teaspoons of sugar sat on the IU Health Center’s display table at the kick-off event for the Step Into Fitness program Wednesday.“This is how much sugar is in a Mountain Dew,” said Bobbie Saccone, a registered dietician at the Health Center, pointing at the plastic bottle. “It has 17 teaspoons of sugar. The Powerade has 10 teaspoons. They’re both 20-ounce bottles.”The first-time kick-off event was planned to get new and returning participants of Step Into Fitness excited for the program, said Megan Amadeo, associate director of personal training at IU Recreational Sports. The nine-week program from June 1 through July 31 is free to all IU faculty and staff members. Participants can register online throughout the program and will receive a pedometer, a nutrition tracker and maps of walking routes on campus. Though the program is five years old, Amadeo said Rec Sports wanted to get the participants together to gear up for the program before it begins. “We wanted to get them signed up and excited about the program,” she said, “and educate them about all of our wellness partners on campus.”Amadeo said the marketing team chose the IU Art Museum because the building is centrally located on campus and is somewhere people might not have visited before.“It’s a pretty walk, and it’s a pretty building,” she said.Inside, visitors of the event registered for the program and were led upstairs to tables promoting healthy activities. At the Health Center’s table, Saccone held up a plate with three portioned sections labeled as vegetables, protein and starch.“The vegetables are supposed to take up half the plate, then a quarter protein and a quarter starch,” she said. “Usually, people eat half protein, half starch, and either the vegetables are on the side or inexistent.”Next to the plate were examples of pounds of fat and muscle. A passerby picked up the pound of muscle and put it next to her hip.“You would rather have that,” Saccone said. “Surface-wise, muscle is smaller, and it burns more calories than fat.”Marcia Humphress, a department manager at the IU Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, said she saw a flyer at the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation for the event and decided to try the program.“I needed something to get me kick-started,” she said. “I think getting out and walking is a win-win. This will motivate me to do that. The group mentality is motivating, too.”Marie Jackson, an internal auditor for IU, said she likes to walk and that the program will be a better way for her to keep track of both her walking and her health. She said she will try to last the whole nine weeks of the program.“I’m going on vacation for two weeks, so that might be hard,” she said, “but I’m going to try.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Becca Lanter stood before an audience of about 100 people and recited from memory a three-page poem about her life at an Open Mic Night at BuffaLouie’s.It was the second time she had performed the poem, and it ended to resounding applause.“It was really one of my favorite performances,” said Eric Love, director for the IU Office of Diversity Education. “It was so personal and moving, really touching in the struggles that she had gone through. It was also a testament of strength and triumph.”Lanter, a 21-year-old senior, was killed in a collision early Saturday morning when her car hit a tree. Officers were notified of the accident at 2:16 a.m. on Monroe Dam Road. In celebration of Lanter’s life, a memorial service will take place 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Student Recreational Sports Center, where Lanter worked for three years.“She was just a beautiful young woman,” Love said. “I always had it in the back of my mind to have her perform that again.”Lanter had a rough upbringing but kept an upbeat attitude, senior Dylan Hollenberg said. “She was such a strong girl, loved to have fun — just so happy,” he said.Robin Denhart, a Jasper resident, said Lanter majored in sales management and wanted to travel and help people with HIV.A few years ago, Lanter’s mother died, Hollenberg said, and when she was 18, she became emancipated from her family. “Her family was pretty much her friends,” he said. “She was so mature, was already paying her bills to take care of herself. She worked all the time because she had to pay her way. She did get the Lilly scholarship — she was a very smart girl.”Denhart said Lanter lived with her family during school breaks. After Lanter’s mother died, Denhart said she told Lanter she could come to her if Lanter ever needed anything. Before the end of her freshman year, Lanter called Denhart asking for a place to stay for the summer.“Once I said, ‘What are we?’” Denhart said. “And she said, ‘We’re family.’ She has a very large family, too. But she kept in touch with everyone, even if it was just to say hi.”Hollenberg said he had been best friends with Lanter since fifth grade. “I would say a lot of people would call her their best friend,” he said, “even though she had 30 best friends.”IU alumna Mariel Avila said she met Lanter her sophomore year, two years ago. On the day of the accident, Avila said she and Lanter were supposed to go boating at Lake Monroe.“I kept calling her and she didn’t answer,” Avila said. “I got the call that morning. She was the most amazing person. I know everyone says that, but she really was. I don’t think I ever saw her having a bad day.”Senior Alyssa Kettler said she roomed with Lanter their freshman and junior years. “Becca was the kind of person that took everybody in,” she said. “She could tell you about yourself, analyze you before you even knew it.”Kettler said she met Lanter in seventh grade and swam against her competitively in high school. When the two girls found out they would both be attending IU, they decided to room together.“That was just an incredible year,” Kettler said. “She was just larger than life, and she was wise beyond her years. She always had a perspective that you didn’t think of.”Kettler said she had discussions with Lanter about what they would want for their funerals if they were to happen.“We had the most ironically weird conversations about what we would want if this kind of thing happened,” Kettler said. “She wanted to wear yellow because it looked pretty and have pictures everywhere. She wanted people to find the best in everything and always found the silver lining. It’s definitely a celebration.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The final 10th Street Mobility Study affirming a preferred course of action was released to the public May 3, said Raymond Hess, senior transportation planner for the City of Bloomington.A network of two-way streets will replace the set-up that now exists in the 10th Street corridor, Hess said. The area involved in the study extends from 10th Street to 17th Street and from Dunn Street to the State Road 45/46 Bypass. In 2008, IU partnered with the Bloomington/Monroe County Metropolitan Planning Organization to discuss ways to improve the 10th Street corridor for all modes of transportation, including vehicular, pedestrian and bike traffic, Hess said.“The north side of campus has long been identified as a traffic concern,” he said. “Numerous studies have been done in the past that go back to the 1960s. It’s been discussed since before I even began working for the city.”Graduate student Christina Sell said the area needs a change.“Especially since a student died,” she said. “It’s funny how tragedy speeds things up.”Goroves/Slade Associates, Inc. was hired in early 2008 as a consultant for the study. Hess said the company, based out of Washington, D.C., had worked on the original campus plan.“They did a fairly different approach to this study than other studies done recently,” he said. The consultants came up with three alternatives and analyzed how well they would perform, Hess said. Alternative zero was to keep everything the same. Alternative one was to make a network of one-way streets and extend Law Lane to connect with 14th Street. Alternative two was to keep the same road alignments, but make them two-way. “They analyzed it again for all different types of mobility — bike, car, pedestrian — and their conclusion was that alternative two best met the intents of the study,” Hess said. “It marked improvement for all forms of transportation.”In the one-way alternative, Hess said vehicular movement improved. However, one-ways are often associated with higher speeds and would have negative effects on pedestrian and bicycle traffic.Sell said she thinks the two-way option will be easier on motorists.“A lot of out-of-towners go the wrong way on streets,” she said.In the recently released report, Hess said some implementation strategies were identified that can be broken up into three segments. The first segment is 10th Street and Law Lane. The second is Law Lane to Fee Lane, where the consultants advised making improvements to the existing corridor so it can accommodate new traffic. The final segment is the realignment of 13th and 14th streets between Fee Lane and Dunn Street.“That’s the much more extensive part of the project,” Hess said. “There is some private ownership, and we have to be mindful of how improvements would affect the neighborhood.”This was a planning-level study, however, and it acknowledges that there is a lot of design that will go into the implementation of the final decision, Hess said. “The consultants did not have the resources or time or budget to design the corridor,” he said. “But they did identify some interim measures that can be done to make some improvements along the corridor. For example, they recommended a speed analysis and also suggested opportunities for better pavement markings. Nice measures that the city can consider on a case-by-case basis.”So far, the team has not had a chance to strategize about how to take the next step, Hess said. With federal funding spoken for until 2013 or 2014, Hess said the actual engineering is not anticipated for the next several years.“Construction is several years out beyond the engineering,” he said. “That discussion has already begun between city and campus on interim measures.”Students are one of the primary users in all modes of transportation through the area studied, Hess said, and the University targeted student opinion in the making of the study. “Hopefully we did a good job of capturing the interests of students in the study,” he said. “And they can appreciate the suggestions that came out of it, especially when it gets implemented.” Two public workshops were held to get students and community members involved in the process, Hess said.“I think everyone should have a say in what affects the entire city,” junior Maryanne Alalade said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Chegg, called the “Netflix of book rental,” launched a buyback campaign Wednesday for students looking to sell their used books, said Tina Couch, vice president of public relations at the online company.“Students are graduating, and they’ve got these books,” she said. “We’re trying to encourage students to use Chegg to sell textbooks because we pay top dollar. We pay about $40 per book.”Through the campaign, Couch said students can check the “Sell textbooks” tab on the website’s home page, http://www.chegg.com, to see if a book they want to sell will be accepted by the site.“We have a list of preferred books,” she said. “But the trick is to check ‘Sell your books’ to see if your book is one that we’re looking for. We have 4.2 million titles in our inventory.”By looking under the “Sell textbooks” tab, students can search the title of their book, the author’s name or the ISBN code to see if the website will buy their book, Couch said.The website will then show an estimate of how much Chegg will pay for the book. However, if a book is in poor condition, Couch said, the site will pay the student selling it less.“Once we get it, we’ll assess it to see what kind of condition it’s in,” Couch said.To promote the campaign, Couch said Chegg has joined with Ashton Kutcher’s social media company, Katalyst, to create a viral web series. It will focus on how students find ways to make money, such as donating blood or collecting cans. “Instead of all those crazy things, you guys should just sell your books back to us,” Couch said. The videos are on YouTube on Chegg’s channel, she said. The company wants to use the videos to reach its target audience, Couch said, It will also serve as serve as a completely different way to get the word out about the buyback campaign. “A secondary reason is that we think it’s funny all the different ways that students try to get cash,” Couch said. “So we use the videos to kind of spoof them. You very simply could have sold your book back.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Although many people in America cannot relate to the water shortages or the AIDS epidemic that afflict many African nations, alumna Nicole Moody said she believes everyone shares a universal sense of pain and loss.“There are so many things that we could be giving our time and money to,” she said. “We want to show Americans, not only can you do it here, but you can then provide some sort of care to Africans.”Moody created a project through the IU Christian Student Fellowship called Ordinary Theater, a group that brings original plays dealing with current cultural issues to Bloomington.Each year, the IU Christian Student Fellowship raises money for the Blood:Water Mission, she said, and this year the Ordinary Theater is getting involved and created Blood:Water Experience, an event that will take place today. The Blood:Water Mission provides clean wells and medical expertise to areas of sub-Sahara Africa, Moody said. “In the past at least seven years we have been supporting the mission,” she said. “The mission teaches how to build wells. You need $3,000 to build a well.”The first element of the event is a 45-minute drama telling the story of a young American woman dealing with the loss of someone important to her, Moody said.“The purpose of the play is to show a connection between the African situation and the American situation,” she said. “Then we want to transition into empowering you to do something.”After the play, visitors will walk into a separate area that will have different displays showing life in Africa, Moody said. There will be photographs and documentary films as well as shacks exhibiting photographs and different spices and smells. The final section of the experience is a water walk, Moody said.“We mapped out a track so people get the feel of what it feels like for an African to walk if they didn’t have a well in their village,” she said. “There’s also a description of what water looks like and where they’ve been getting it from.”Junior Noelle Krupski, in charge of publicity for the event, said she hopes the experience will educate people on the situation in Africa.“I think people just don’t know about what’s going on over there,” she said. “We’re in America, and we can’t relate to that as much. But the cool thing about the mission is they’re about empowering people over there.”Most of the materials used in the exhibit were donated, Krupski said.“People were definitely willing,” she said. “Nicole knew a lot of people in the community and just started contacting them. It’s really cool to see how it’s come together. If we can get 500 people there at the $5 ticket price, we can build one well. They give clean drinking water to thousands of people.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It was a clear choice for Greg Kennedy to take up the game of chess after driving his younger brother to several tournaments. Kennedy, a Franklin resident, began playing in 1982. After a 14-year break, he returned to the game when a tournament director in Indianapolis dragged him back into competition.Kennedy, ranked 2,100 by the United States Chess Federation, along with 25 other chess players, gathered at the Kelley School of Business on Saturday to compete in the IU Hoosier Open.“At the kind of tournaments I play, I’m expected to win,” Kennedy said. “If I don’t win, I fail. But there’s no guarantee that I’m going to win.”Junior Tony Howell, president of the IU Chess Club, said the tournament was open to all ages and the games were determined by rating.“There are amazing 8-year-olds that can overplay someone who’s 40,” he said. “We try and be as accepting as possible.”Connor True, an 11-year-old Bloomington resident, said he has been playing chess for around five years. “My school got three chess boards, so me and my friends started playing,” he said.In his first match, True played an opponent significantly older than himself.“I lost,” he said. “He had a much higher ranking, but he took his moves very slowly so I thought I could beat him by making mine fast. But he still had 10 minutes left.”Howell said he hopes the tournament will become an annual competition. “I’m really happy with this turn-out,” he said. “It draws everyone together, and it’s a good way for people to get their chess out.”Each person in the tournament received the opportunity to play five games, Howell said. The competition was based on a point system: Each win earned one point, a draw earned half of a point and a loss earned zero points. The games were based on 30-minute play, Howell said, where each player gets 30 minutes to make his moves. The maximum time limit a game can last is 70 minutes, he said.“Most matches can last up to four hours,” Howell said. “But you’re constantly concentrating the entire time so it goes by fast.”Sophomore Ari Terjanian, treasurer of the IU Chess Club, said he has been playing for six years. Terjanian was the third highest ranked player in the tournament but lost his first game to Kennedy.“It’s a challenging game,” Terjanian said. “A battle of the egos. You try and force your will upon your opponent. Sometimes it doesn’t work, obviously.”Though Terjanian said it was possible for him to tie for first place, at the end of the day Kennedy took home the prize.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In a dimly lit room with a projection screen illuminating a patch of the wall above a microphone, more than 30 people gathered around circular tables to discuss God’s connection to their real-life experiences. The Canvas meets in a room in First Christian Church on Kirkwood Avenue every Wednesday night, but this night’s meeting was different. Will Reed’s brother requested he tell the story of his call by God to work on community development in Nigeria, and the group had a surprise for him. Reed, an IU alumnus, said he was raised in Bloomington and played soccer in high school, but he felt like God was calling him to do something more. On a trip to Mexico, he met his now-wife, Theresa. “She said she wants to be a teacher and would love to be called into a mission field,” Reed said. “We felt called to get married in college when she was between her sophomore and junior year. We needed to have two years of marriage for whatever’s next.”Reed said he found out about Back 2 Back Ministries through his youth pastors at IU, Todd and Beth Guckenberger. After talking to the director of the group in Nigeria, Reed said the director told him the opportunities for the two work areas he and his wife want to do are in Nigeria. While living in the country, Reed said he will work with the orphans living on the streets of Nigeria. “To meet the need of an orphan in Nigeria is different than other countries,” he said. “The kids are living on the streets or in a village. They don’t have an orphanage to go to. The idea is self-sustainable, to have the community take care of the orphan.” The couple visited the country last October for five days, Reed said. “It was a heck of a trip,” he said. “We met with the staff and they gave us an idea of what life would be like.”On a Thursday night of their visit, Reed said he and Theresa had dinner with a Nigerian couple. Their hosts made fun of the ministry director for getting arrested on “Sanitation Saturday,” a day when the government requires everyone to burn their trash and clean their homes until 10:30 a.m. “They asked us if we had been arrested on our first visit to the country, would we still want to work there?” Reed said. “They asked if we knew there was so much poverty and needing. But of course there’s need. We wouldn’t go otherwise.” Reed said he and Theresa hope to leave for Nigeria in September.“We made a minimum commitment of three years,” he said. “But for us it’s indefinitely.”Near the end of the night, Giff Reed, Will’s brother and the director of the Canvas, and other members of the group took off their sweatshirts to reveal T-shirts advocating Will’s trip to Jos, Nigeria. Members of the Canvas sold the shirts, designed by Reed’s brother-in-law, in an effort to raise money for Will’s move. “We’re raising our own salary,” Reed said. “Currently we have just over 40 percent of our monthly support. This is huge. The fact that people get something while giving us something, it’s extremely encouraging.”Sophomore Alena Degrado said she feels like college students are looking to plug into something that’s bigger than just IU. “It’s a way to get connected when you normally couldn’t in Midwest, U.S.A.,” she said.The group has sold 50 or 60 shirts so far, Giff said, and will continue to sell them until Wednesday. After his speech, Reed told the members of the audience, “Don’t underestimate this time. It felt like college was a waiting period for me, but through different experiences, God was instilling something deeper in my heart. A lot of times the things we’re passionate about are the things that God wants us to live out. Don’t underestimate the power that he had to be in your life right now.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The concept of walking around campus for an entire day without shoes did not fully cross junior Emily Nicholls’ mind until a couple of days before.“I think I didn’t realize how bad it’s going to be,” she said. “It’s really not very nice ground in some places.”Nicholls, along with other members of the TOMS Shoes Club IU, are participating in Thursday’s all-day event “One Day Without Shoes.” To raise awareness for the day, the club is holding a barefoot walk around campus at 6 p.m. Thursday beginning at the Sample Gates, said senior Erica Schori. “I’m really not quite sure how many people will come,” she said. “We created a Facebook event, and we also have an event page on TOMS Web site. I’m hoping 30 people show up. I’m shooting low.”Nicholls said one of the reasons behind the campus walk is so that if people feel uncomfortable walking barefoot by themselves, they can join others doing the same thing. Set up by TOMS Shoes, the company uses its Web site to ask people to “go the day, part of the day or even just a few minutes barefoot to experience a life without shoes first-hand, and to help spread awareness of the impact a simple pair of shoes can bring to a child’s life.”“I’ll be going all day,” Nicholls said. “I’ll put on shoes if someone tells me I have to. I know in Jordan (Hall) you have to have shoes on, but I’ll take them off again.”Nicholls said she and a few others are painting their feet in hopes of getting people to question and ask them about the cause.“I want the right amount of attention,” she said. “I don’t want it to look like a protest. But I think it’s definitely going to get a lot of people’s attention.”Schori said she hopes the day will raise awareness for the club and the entire movement.“Most people on campus have more than one pair of shoes,” she said. “We should be thankful for what we have and what we can do to help others.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Najeeb Shafiq, assistant professor of education policy studies at IU, is not convinced that suicide bombings are attributable to a lack of income and education.Shafiq analyzed a 2005 public opinion survey detailing suicide bombings in relation to six predominantly Muslim countries. Along with Abdulkader Sinno, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, he, published a study questioning the relationship between education and income levels and suicide bombings.“I was a little hesitant to write about it for a professional audience,” Shafiq said. “It was ambitious, but when you write these papers, you hope one person will read them. It’s humbling when there’s some interest.”Shafiq said a complex picture emerged from the study. The findings depended on two things, he said: the cultural differences of the countries and whether the bombings targeted innocent citizens from the Muslim countries or foreigners from America, Iraq or the Western world.“So what we think is happening is most people in the Muslim world view it as guerrilla warfare against foreigners,” he said. “Against citizens, it’s terrorism. We think the solution to that is much more complicated than just increasing education.” In one finding of the study, Shafiq said, was that educated and rich citizens tend to have stronger political and social opinions and are willing to protect those views by extreme methods.“Upon reading, what you find is the poor and less educated are too busy surviving to have strong political opinions,” he said. “If you ask a poor person in Arkansas what they think about Iraq, in all likelihood they’re not going to care very much.”Shafiq said dissatisfaction with government and foreign policy is often a motivation for the bombings. The more dissatisfied a person is in the government, he said, the more likely he or she will support suicide bombings.“We hope other people go out and confirm or check the robustness of our findings by looking at other data that’s emerging,” he said.“So far I think qualitative researchers and journalists only talk to people who try to blow themselves up or leaders of organizations or families of people who’ve been bombers,” he said. “But that’s missing part of the story. There’s a lot to be learned from going out and talking to ordinary men and women.”Shafiq said another purpose of the study was to reassess the curriculum of schools in the Muslim world. There is a rich history in the United States and other countries of conflict resolution education, he said, but over time, that aspect of education has gone away.“We encourage policy makers to look into the curriculum and look into incorporating peace education,” he said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During spring break in 1996, Dennis Bingham, associate professor of English and director of film studies at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, researched the biographical film “I Want to Live.” The movie told the story of a woman who was executed in California in 1955 and took the point of view that she was innocent, Bingham said.“That was the beginning of my research on biopics,” he said. “They’ve always interested me, and I was also fascinated by the idea that the genre is so looked down upon.”Bingham’s second book, “Whose Lives Are They Anyway?,” argues that biopics — or biographical films — should be classified as a genre. While there is not a particular look about biopics, as in western or science fiction films, Bingham said they have gone through changes like other genres.“There’s a certain kind of film I call ‘appropriation,’” he said. “It takes a celebratory film and tells the story of a counterculture person who never would have been celebrated in the old days.”Bingham also writes about gender roles in biopics. Beginning as a gender critic, Bingham said it seemed logical to look at the genre in terms of gender. He said he found that, starting in the 1930s and 1940s, many biopics were “great man” films that celebrated the lives of well-known men, such as Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln. “Culture was not comfortable with women in public roles,” he said. “What you get especially starting in the ’50s is just about the downward trajectory; the woman who gets in with the wrong man.”Until recently, Bingham said critics have not seen the biopic as a genre, and when it is considered a genre, the word is used in the negative sense.“It’s fascinating to look at promotion material and find the number of directors that deny that they’ve made a biopic, even though they have,” he said. “You’ve got a genre that’s so vibrant on one hand and yet so trashed on the other.”Because there was a run of biopics in 2009 that were flops in the box office for the most part, Bingham said critics saw the whole genre as “kaput.” Rather than trash the movies, he said, why not put a different set of criteria to them?“You won’t find a biopic that doesn’t have invention,” Bingham said. “If the film tells you a truth of the subject’s life, it probably has some worth to it.”However, many older biopics gave the idea that there was only one way of looking at a person’s life, Bingham said. Depending on who made the film, viewers were offered different perspectives that may or may not have been historically correct, he said.“Maybe there’s no way to understand a person’s life,” Bingham said. “In good biopics, this is what we think we understand about this person, but the truth might still be out there.”Freshman Kandace Greene said she agrees with Bingham that biopics should be their own genre.“They all have similar characteristics,” she said. “In all genres, they share characteristics of that genre.”Graduate student Yesim Kaptan, however, said she has her doubts. Biopics are a combination of fact and fiction. While they are similar to documentaries, she said, movies claim more fiction than fact.“Maybe it’s a different category,” she said. “They’re not totally based on imagination. But the question, even in documentaries, is what is the percentage of how real it is?”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Standing next to her green bike, sophomore Jordan Fredericks watched six people holding homemade mallets cycle across the Wright Quad tennis court.She had never joined her friend, sophomore Tyler Brown, at bike polo before, and she wanted to watch before jumping in to play.“He’s probably been coming out for three months now,” she said. “And he wanted me to come with him, but I said ‘no, it’s way too cold.’ So since today’s the first nice day this year, I’ve decided to come out and join him — see what all the hype’s about.”On Monday and Thursday nights, Brown said students and Bloomington residents gather at the court to play the sport.“We’re disorganizedly organized,” he said. “Sometimes we start at 8, sometimes we start at 10.”The game is played with two teams of three, Brown said. The teams play the first to five goals or for 10 minutes with a standard roller-hockey ball, he said. If any part of a player besides his or her bike or mallet touches the ground, the player has to touch one of the poles in the middle of the court before continuing to play.Senior Travis Davies said he began playing in late September.“I was really late compared to some of the earlier people,” he said. “But long enough to love it.”Davies said last summer was the first time he heard bike polo was played in Bloomington. Though the majority of the players are Bloomington residents, he said six or seven students play on a regular basis. When the weather warms up, Davies said he plans to start advocating to the University to get more students involved.“We were going to try to become a club sport,” he said. “But there’s so many rules through the University that we’re going to try to become a student organization to where we just get an account with the school and we can request space. There are a lot less rules for us, but we get to become a club officially.”To play bike polo, members first have to love riding a bike, Davies said. He said he began playing with the group one day when he rode past the court and players yelled for him to join.“So I just walked up here and started playing,” he said. “If you just like riding bikes or doing anything outside, you get to check people into the wall and fall off your bike and smack a ball into a goal once in a while. It’s a very good stress relief. And you get to wreck a lot, it’s fun.”Brown said not many serious injuries have occurred in the game so far. Neither he nor Davies has obtained major injuries.“I’ve injured people,” Davies said. “I have done that. I tried to kill a kid’s thumb, once. But, you know, he’s alive.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What began as a small team of video-game enthusiasts has now become an immense Web site production team made up of nearly 80 members, said graduate student Andrew Benninghoff, executive creative director at GameZombie.tv. The site, which is also a student organization, originated from then-IU graduate student Spencer Striker’s project thesis, Benninghoff said.“It started off just being a Web site about a couple of guys who were in this narrative of a zombie apocalypse,” he said. “He and his friends would gather all the video games they had and hide in a video studio bunker and spend the rest of their lives broadcasting video game information through the TV to whoever may be alive.”As Striker finished up the master’s program, Benninghoff said the site, which includes video game-related short film series, interviews and news, began to grow. Now, the site has expanded to include teams made up of students and employees at IU and the University of Wisconsin, as well as a small management group in Los Angeles, Benninghoff said. The IU team, led by Benninghoff, is broken up into three sections: business, Web development and production. The team meets twice a week in IU classrooms to work on projects and discuss work to be done throughout the week, Benninghoff said.“Since it’s mostly student -run, we’re allowed to reserve rooms,” he said. “We’re allowed to reserve rooms with all of the computers and multimedia programs we need.”Besides the two meetings each week, Benninghoff said most students do their work for the site at home. When it comes to production, he said the process could take place anywhere — a studio, a street downtown or someone’s apartment. “Since we’re a Web site, we can function pretty much anywhere,” he said.Junior Lillian Feldman-Hill said she gets most of her work for the site done at the weekly meetings. “Most of my work gets done on GameZombie time,” she said. “I can’t do it at home because I do all the edits on expensive software. There’s a lot of business that goes on at the meetings also; it’s not just people sitting at their computers ignoring each other.”As a video “speed editor” for GameZombie, Feldman-Hill said she takes the B-roll video footage that the field team produces and edits it into a two- or three-minute interview or news story. Often, Feldman-Hill said she receives projects that do not have a lot of B-roll footage and provide her a challenge editing them.“It usually takes me a week or a week and a half to do a three-and-a-half minute interview,” she said. “I want to do editing professionally, so I tend to take it seriously.”Feldman-Hill said the two most important things for a telecommunications student trying to break into the film industry are networking opportunities and a student’s reel of work.“I can give employees my reel that has 10 or 12 videos already that have been approved by people that know what they’re talking about,” she said. “But reel is the second most important. Who you know is the single most important thing. The people I’m meeting, networking and the friendships that I’m making are beneficial in professional and nonprofessional ways.”Graduate student Casey Addy, lead web designer and user experience designer at GameZombie.tv, said other companies see the work that he does at the site as effective.“Gaming is popular,” he said. “And we’re able to utilize what’s popular. When people put their love and their whole soul into what they work on, it showcases their love for the company.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Blobs of paint dotted a paper plate as freshman Madeline Hall dipped her paintbrush into the black, filling in an outline of a mustache on her pair of white TOMS shoes.“I used to watch Mitch Davis a lot on YouTube,” she said. “Whenever I’m in lack of ideas, I go to mustaches.”Hall and other members of the TOMS Shoes Club at IU decorated shoes and other items Friday at their Style Your Sole event.After Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS shoes, spoke at the “Check Your Label: Elements of Conscious Consumerism” series on Feb. 5, senior Erica Schori, co-founder of the club, said the group wanted to follow up with another event to bring in new members and raise awareness for the club.In 2006, Mycoskie started the company with a “one for one” mission. For each pair of shoes sold, one new pair would be donated to a child in need. “Everything that you buy from the company, they give a pair of shoes,” Schori said. “Everything they give is a pair that the kids need. Like in Ethiopia in the rainy season, they give them rain boots.”Schori said she and junior Emily Nicholls, co-founder of the club, applied on the TOMS shoes Web site to become campus representatives and received official recognition for the club by IU.For the Style Your Sole event, students ordered a pair of white shoes in advance and brought them to decorate, Nicholls said.“We wanted to bring out everyone’s artistic side,” Schori said. “You can decorate any way you want. I’m trying to paint ‘Starry Night’ on mine.”Brown and black paint covered freshman Chris Burke’s first pair of TOMS shoes. After hearing Mycoskie speak, Burke said he grasped the whole idea about the company’s cause.“I think it’s cool,” he said. “Even though it’s a for-profit organization, they’re giving back. I’m interested in it because I’m a non-profit major.”Burke said he was painting the pair of shoes “guitar style.”“I was a little nervous at first,” he said. “But they’re just going to get dirty anyway.”Freshman Kelly Fritz said she heard about the decorating through friends and decided to tag along.“Someone was like ‘free art supplies,’” she said. “I’m painting a peacock. Whenever I’m doodling, I always draw birds and things.”Though she had vaguely heard of the cause before, Fritz said the event and cause was “right up her alley.”“I think it’s a really good way to get the word out,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise, to be honest.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As a trip leader for IU Outdoor Adventures, junior Jack Brumbaugh guides adventure troops, teaches classes through the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation and aids in outdoor safety.With the program’s move to Eigenmann Hall, Brumbaugh said there are more resources available for the trips because all of the equipment is in one area."Our office is somewhat legitimate now," he said. "The space is designed for us. It makes us feel like a real part of the University. And the boats aren’t in the boiler room anymore."Outdoor Adventures relocated from the Indiana Memorial Union to a space in Eigenmann at the beginning of the year and opened its doors to the public on Jan. 18, said Ginelle Heller, assistant program coordinator for Outdoor Adventures.“This space allows us to be much more efficient,” she said. “There’s space to extend retail operations.”One of the largest improvements, Heller said, is the “boat barn,” which is right next to the program’s office. At the location in the Union, boats were kept in the basement, and renters had to carry them up multiple flights of stairs.In addition to the boat room, the program’s space also now includes a food room, a lounge and classrooms, Heller said.“We used to do classes in the IMU in different rooms,” she said. “Or we would do them in our own space. It was just crowded. Now we have larger tables, more chairs, more room to spread out.”Kim Collins, assistant program coordinator for Outdoor Adventures, said the program recently directed a backpacking trip for 20 people.“There were 20 people in the food room learning how to pack food,” she said. “And there was plenty of room. Before, we could fit about four people in the food room.”The winter season is a slower period for Outdoor Adventures because people do not go outside as much, Heller said.“Generally we see less traffic,” she said. “So it’s hard to gauge if we’re doing better. It’s probably just about normal. But there is more curiosity about our space.”Collins said though her office is away from the front door, she has heard the doorbell go off “quite a bit.”“I think we’ve seen a number of people wander in the door,” she said. “But a lot of people can get right up to the door and see a lot; they don’t have to come in.”Brumbaugh said the move exceeded his expectations. He said he was worried about the logistics of the move, but it seems to be going well.“We were in a big transitional phase at the Union,” he said. “And we were growing too big for our space. We’re no longer getting hand-me-downs, which is exciting. It’s indicative of how successful our program is. We’re being rewarded for being bomber people.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Hearing the stories of four high school students who faced deportation due to lack of proper immigration documentation affected sophomore Jennifer Cushenberry.“You never really know if the person sitting next to you is struggling with this situation,” she said. “And you might be complaining about ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this today.’ And they have to be ready to fight just to sit there and be where you are.”Cushenberry watched the documentary “Papers: Stories of Undocumented Youth” along with 20 other students Wednesday at the IU Maurer School of Law. The documentary, written and directed by Anne Galisky, told the stories of four students facing high school graduation without legal citizenship status. “It is a very powerful movie,” said Gerardo Lopez, assistant professor at the IU School of Education. “It looks at some of the real challenges kids are faced with. Often times we talk about immigration matters in the abstract. The movie put faces with those facing immigration challenges.”Lopez said he was asked to be a discussant for the movie. He and his wife recently published a book on the same topic, “Persistent Inequality,” and this was his first time viewing the documentary. Undocumented youth is one topic that not a lot of attention is paid to, Lopez said. Nationally it is on everyone’s mind right now, he said, and it is important to keep it on the forefront. “When you have a population not allowed to speak for themselves, you have to step up and help speak for them,” Lopez said. Graduation is a bittersweet moment for undocumented teens, Lopez said, and the documentary chose to tackle that area. After graduation, he said the students are faced with “what now?” In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented students should not be forced to pay an additional fee to attend public schools, Lopez said. But there is fear that the legislations will be overturned, he said.The documentary also touched on students’ fight for the government to pass the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The Act would provide some undocumented students full citizenship following completion of a college degree or two years of military service. “The DREAM Act got taken off the table due to market concerns,” Lopez said. “There are a lot of folks waiting to see what will happen in relation to the DREAM Act.”After viewing the documentary, sophomore Elizabeth Uduehi said she was amazed by one of the students’ situations.“He’s an AP Scholar,” she said. “And has all these different types of awards. He could find the cure for cancer or something. And I’m like, ‘We’re suppressing that because of paper?’”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The only football fan in his family, freshman Michael Brown had to fight with his sister for control of the television every Super Bowl Sunday. “She would want to watch a movie,” Brown said. “And I’d be like, ‘Mom, it’s the Super Bowl!’ ”Brown said he usually watches the game at home. This year, he watched it with his friends in the Wright Quad formal lounge with about 50 other students. “There’s a big projector,” he said. “It can actually accommodate all of us.”Growing up in Indianapolis, Brown said he has always been a fan of the Colts.Freshman Sylvia Tejchma said that, though she is a Colts fan, it was a big surprise to her that they made it to the Super Bowl. “They lost a pretty decent coach,” she said. “They got a brand new one. But they’ve reacted to it well.”Senior Jarrhod Johnson took the side of the New Orleans Saints, the Colt’s rivals. Johnson said he cheered for the Saints more so out of dislike for the Colts than devotion to the team. “I’m playing the devil’s advocate,” he said. “And I enjoy it. I enjoy screaming ‘Who dat!’ I’ll probably scream it again in about five seconds.”Instead of watching the game at home, Johnson joined more than 100 students at the Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union for the Union Board Super Bowl Party. Johnson said he went to support Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., one of the groups involved in planning the event.“Normally I just sit around at home,” he said. “I figured I’d switch it up. It’s 2010.”In an effort to collaborate with different organizations, junior Shannon Cook, outreach director for the Union Board, said the group asked Delta Sigma Theta and the Student Athletic Board to help arrange the Super Bowl screening. “It’s so students had a place to go,” she said. “We have a pretty diverse outcome. But I think we’ve got mostly Colt’s fans.”The boards advertised free food, expecting around 100 students to come out and watch, Cook said. However, the auditorium received more viewers than anticipated.“We ran out of food,” Cook said. “It obviously went fast.”First year master’s student Cynthia Bova said she does not own a television. During her college years, she said she watched the Super Bowl in her dorm. This year she lives in an apartment off campus and decided to give the Whittenberger a try after reading an advertisement for the party. A Colts fan like Brown, Bova said she has never lived in a state that has a winning team and still hasn’t. Bova said she is surprised by the Colt’s loss and expected the score to be closer. Though she is sad for her team, she said it is a good story for the Saints.“I’m sure New Orleans is happy,” she said. “But both teams played pretty well.”Sophomore Jeff Williams, student director for the Union Board, said he was cheering for a great game. “I’m from Indy,” he said. “But in my heart I’m rooting for the Saints for the story. New Orleans and all that it’s gone through – a win would be great for the city.”