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(01/20/12 4:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Roughly a year ago, the showing of “Lawrence of Arabia” filled the then newly opened IU Cinema to capacity.The venue celebrated its first birthday Jan. 13, and IU Cinema Director Jon Vickers said first-year attendance numbers were better than expected.“One very pleasant surprise was ... the way people showed up for the cinema,” he said. “In early estimates, we thought the first year we would issue between 19,000 and 20,000 tickets. We issued nearly 50,000.” The cinema was one renovation to the Theatre and Drama Building that began in October 2009. The project took nearly a year and a half to complete but has since presented the University with new opportunities.“The cinema studies program is one of the best in the country,” Vickers said. “There was never a place to support that.” Professor of film studies Gregory Waller said IU Cinema has provided the facilities to show a wide variety of films, such as international and art house films, and opportunities to interact with visiting members of the film industry. This presents new opportunities for film and media studies in the Department of Communication and Culture, as well as for other students, faculty and community members.“It gets our students seeing films the way they should be seen — on a big screen, no distractions,” he said.Waller, who sat on the IU Cinema’s planning committee from the beginning and is now head of the faculty advisor committee, said the facility has also created the capability to show films in 3-D. In early December, IU Cinema screened seven short 3-D films produced by students.“I encourage students to take a look at this place,” Waller said of IU Cinema. “They will have never been to a screening as good as those screenings.”Academic partnerships have developed between the cinema and “areas that you wouldn’t think film would necessarily link to coursework,” Vickers said. Examples include the Jacobs School of Music, Polish Studies, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Optometry. In its first year, the cinema showed 231 individual film titles and was host to 52 film screenings with guest filmmakers.Vickers said in the year to come, he hopes IU Cinema will continue building a reputation for cinema in universities. He also hopes IU will be recognized for its program. IU Cinema will kick off its second year with, among other things, a seven-film series titled “Australia in the 70s” and a series of films influenced by the work of Charles Dickens in celebration of the writer’s 200th birthday.“Weekly, we get emails saying that the cinema is an important part of this community already ... that the IU Cinema, in its first year, is a game-changer,” Vickers said. “If nothing more, we’ve already affected the community, which is a good thing.”
(01/19/12 4:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>High school senior Tyler Barnes knows what he’s looking for in a college.Faith-based organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ and places he can get involved in and make friends are important, Barnes said. He also knows he wants a school with a strong science research program.He applied to six schools. There’s IU, Purdue and Vanderbilt. And there’s Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And then there’s Harvard.Like many high school seniors preparing for the transition to college life, he has weighed the pros and cons of each university.But there’s something else factoring into his choice.“Ivy League schools don’t really have many sports teams,” Barnes said.He has been following IU men’s basketball this season and said he grew up as a Kentucky fan.“I’ve been to IU basketball games, and they’re really exciting,” he said, Barnes added that the energy level in Assembly Hall is one of the best parts about the games.Ever since that buzzer-beating three-pointer that secured IU’s victory against Kentucky, school spirit has been a little different, said Dean of Students Harold “Pete” Goldsmith.“I’ve certainly seen the enthusiasm at the games increase and of course the excitement around beating both Kentucky and Ohio State,” Goldsmith said. “It has caused a lot of excitement on campus.” That excitement continued to build as the men’s basketball team entered the week with a 15-4 record.In the past, some universities have experienced an increase in applicants after a successful men’s basketball season. After Butler made it to the NCAA Championship Game in 2010, the number of freshman applicants increased from 6,246 in fall 2009 to 6,760 in fall 2010. That number increased to 9,518 in 2011 after Butler made it to the championship game again.After IU won its first championship with Bobby Knight in 1976, the number of applications jumped from 9,328 in 1975 to 9,629. In 1977, the number of applicants continued to grow to 10,031.Goldsmith described the effects of a good season as “publicity you can’t buy.”“The TV time, people talking about IU, the tradition circling here gets reemphasized watching other sports programs talking about the resurgence of IU,” he said. “So I think it gets our name out there a whole lot more and makes us more attractive to prospective students.”However, Director of Admissions Mary Ellen Anderson said it is unlikely the team’s record will in itself affect the numbers too drastically.“Generally, how many students who apply based on a team is very small,” she said. “But it is an overall excitement students feel about sports when they step on this campus.”Anderson also said the University already receives a high volume of applications, so further increases are unlikely. This isn’t to say Anderson isn’t excited about the team’s accomplishments, though.“The most exciting thing is, especially for juniors, seniors and sophomores, seeing what Tom Crean has done and his enthusiasm and belief in those young men,” she said. “There were people really disappointed with what happened to the basketball team, and people gave him the opportunity to rebuild the program.”
(01/17/12 4:25am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A poster on the wall of the Willkie Quad Auditorium posed the question, “If you could eliminate one group from IU’s campus, what would it be?”Below the prompt were students’ answers, scrawled across plastic canvas in black and blue marker.“If we could have everybody stand up,” Cameron Vakilian, graduate assistant of the Commission on Multicultural Understanding, said to begin the event.The roughly 300 attendees of the 2012 Unity Summit rose to their feet as Vakilian explained the exercise. In a few moments, he would begin reading the groups off the list.“If you identify with what we read off, we’ll have you sit down,” he said.The exercise began.“Those who walk around campus reading their cell phones,” someone read.Several laughed and three-fourths of the room took a seat.“If you’re a smoker.”“If you’re in a fraternity or sorority.”“If you are a Christian or a Jew, please sit down.”Finally, no one was left standing.“We’re all part of a group that people disagree with,” Vakilian said. “Eliminating a group of people means to eliminate us all, in a sense.”The seventh annual Unity Summit took place Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Eric Love, director of the Office of Diversity Education, said the premise of the event was to provide people with a safe environment to discuss topics of diversity.The summit was composed of different exercises, including a guided small-group discussion that highlighted the event.“Everyone always says, ‘We want to be more involved in diversity. We want to interact with different groups, but we don’t know how,’” Love said. “So we developed this Unity Summit with small group dialogue so people would get a chance to interact with other IU students and community members who are different from themselves.”Participants were randomly assigned to groups of six or seven people, thus introducing attendees unlikely to have previously met.Facilitators of the small group discussion provided prompts such as, “Why is diversity important?” and “When did you first realize you were different?”The second exercise, led by Vakilian, featured “Write Your Mind” posters that had been circulating campus, including the one asking students, “If you could eliminate one group from IU’s campus, what would it be?”“We knew very well it would be an uncomfortable question, but we wanted students to write freely what their reaction to that question would be,” Vakilian said. “We knew we would get playful comments ... and we knew we might get some hurtful comments, too. But we wanted people to understand that these comments happen all the time.”In the weeks prior to the summit, one of the posters had to be removed from Eigenmann Hall due to a “hurtful comment,” Vakilian said. Though he said he didn’t know what the comment was, he said another student had crossed out the comment, and the poster was taken down. Vakilian said this occurrence was evident of how the posters created a conversation that continued into the summit.“We were a little nervous about how questions would be received,” Vakilian said. “In the end, I think everyone did a good job about bringing the conversation to the table and addressing it in a positive and reflective way.”Following the second exercise, a large group discussion about bullying and discrimination ensued.The summit attracted IU students from as far as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, as well as students from different races, sexual orientations and socioeconomic backgrounds. Students from local junior high schools and high schools, as well as University faculty and staff, also attended.Juniors Aava Khatiwada and Anissa Pugh were strangers previous to the event but found themselves at the same table discussing issues of diversity.“One thing I’ve learned is how similar we all are despite our differences,” Khatiwada said.“Even though we’re talking about diversity, there are similar things we all come back to at some point,” Pugh said.
(01/13/12 5:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU President Michael McRobbie presented Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson with The President’s Medal for Excellence Thursday, making her the award’s 67th recipient since its creation in 1985.In a speech during Hanson’s farewell program at the IU Auditorium, McRobbie lauded her contributions to “topics of great importance to the campus including undergraduate education and student life,” and recognized her as one of the leading women in the field.“Karen began her career at a time that was challenging for women in academia,” McRobbie said. “Despite the increase in women who had received doctorate degrees, women were very much underrepresented on the faculties of major research universities.”Hanson began her career at IU in 1976, where she served as a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy.“Karen has been a powerful proof of the concept that an eminent scholar and a woman can come up through faculty ranks to be appointed to a vice presidential position at Indiana University,” said Lisa Pratt, Provost’s professor of geological sciences. Pratt was one of five speakers during Thursday’s program.The President’s Medal for Excellence is one of three medals the president can present. A reproduction of the president’s jewel of office, worn by the president during special occasions, the medal is awarded in recognition of service to the University.Jacobs School of Music Dean Gwyn Richards served as the event’s master of ceremonies, and faculty members Luke Gillespie, Jeremy Allen, Marietta Simpson and Keith McCutcheon performed a couple of Hanson’s favorite musical selections.Speakers at the event included McRobbie and Pratt, as well as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Sonya Stephens and Kelley School of Business Dean Daniel C. Smith.Fred Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, was unable to attend the program and prepared a short video. In it, Cate visited areas of campus he said were “touched by Karen.”The video tour began in her office and moved to the Wells House, where Hanson met with the administration in 2007 and took on her position as provost and executive vice president.Cate then moved to the Hutton Honors College, where Hanson served as dean from 2002 to 2007. “Karen has been with the University for more than 35 years, but I suspect it is here where her greatest love is found,” Cate said.The roughly three-minute video drew laughs from the audience, who occupied the auditorium’s center orchestra in suits and ties.“We could go on to the philosophy department or one of the other places on campus that Karen has touched,” Cate concluded. “But time is short.”The ceremony concluded after Hanson stepped up to the podium.On Feb 1., Hanson will begin her term as senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at the University of Minnesota, where she received her undergraduate degrees in philosophy and mathematics.Despite those ties to University of Minnesota, she said she considers IU her alma mater.“Minnesota is where I grew up, but IU is where I really grew up,” she said. “I grew up, and I realized how incredibly lucky I was to be employed here and to have a life intertwined with this great university ... that gratitude has deepened with every passing day, every year, every decade.”
(01/13/12 5:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Purdue University announced Wednesday that it will begin its transition toward a full-year, trimester-based system as opposed to its current semester-based academic year.The end result, Purdue spokesperson Chris Sigurdson said, will be full implementation of the system: three 13-week trimesters in the fall, spring and summer. The change comes as part of the school’s 10-year funding plan, which hopes to raise revenue for the university as well as contain costs, he said.The summer trimester, Sigurdson said, will be optional and available for students hoping to obtain their undergraduate degrees in three years instead of four. He said the university hopes the change will respond to increased job market demands for individuals with degrees in engineering and science.Other possibilities for students under the new trimester system include prolonged studies abroad as well as internships in the fall and spring, when competition among students tends to be less than in the summer, he said.“Credit offerings will also expand 25 percent, yielding $40 million for the university, but the cost of credits per hour will drop because things like upkeep of facilities will already be taken care of,” he said.Sigurdson said the university will not abandon its semester structure all at once but rather use the next few years to build up summer faculty, and students have reacted positively to the proposal.“Once the students found out it was optional, they saw opportunity,” he said.IU Associate Vice President of University Communications Mark Land said IU and Purdue share similar educational goals.“Universities all want the same kind of things. We want to keep students on tack. We want to keep it as cost effective as possible,” Land said. “There are just a lot of different ways of doing that.”Land cited the University’s October 2011 announcement of summer tuition discounts.“We’d certainly like to see students using our facilities more during the summer, and that’s why we feel that giving our students a significant discount on tuition during the summer will encourage them to do so,” he said. “It was done to provide financial relief for students and families and give an incentive for students to adopt a more flexible calendar.”However, Land would not rule out the possibility of IU operating on a trimester system in the future. “I would say its probably too early to say that anything is off the table.”
(12/12/11 2:55am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After nearly six hours of interviews with students Dec. 9 in the Indiana Memorial Union Hoosier Room, a panel of campus leaders selected the final eight Union Board leaders for the 2012 calendar year.Matthew Wilkinson, Jared Thomas, Jessica Thomas, Kasie Kyle, Kyle Brehm, Graham Davis, A.J. O’Reilly and Eric Farr joined the other eight students elected in the 24-hour election that ended Dec. 6.Candidates were given the choice to run for election via student vote or attempt to be selected by a panel of interviewers. About 24 students opted to participate in the interview process, said Lisa Wagner, Union Board election selections commissioner.Among others, the panel consisted of a graduate advisor, Residence Halls Association representatives, Union Board members and IMU director Bruce Jacobs. Each candidate had a 15-minute interview with the panel.In the hours leading up to his interview, junior Eric Farr, who served as an assistant director for the Union Board’s debates and issues committee this past semester, tried to predict what questions he would be asked. Now a director for the 2012 board, he said the preparation helped him clearly convey his thoughts before the panel.“They asked me how I personally see the Union and what I would like to do to make it a better place for students,” he said.Farr said he anticipates a fairly easy transition into his new position because of his past experience with Union Board. “I’m very excited,” he said. “It’s a privilege and an honor to be selected as a Union Board director.”Wagner said the transition process will begin immediately with training activities, such as the two-hour information session that took place Dec. 10 for all the newly-elected directors.Three of the 16 students chosen will be appointed to the board’s executive positions — president and two vice presidents — Jan. 11, and remaining students will receive their committee assignments. Until then, Wagner said, the 2012 board members will work closely with the board’s current members.“Now is a time for them to get familiar with the board,” she said. “The new board members are getting a grasp on how they can positively affect campus.”Senior A.J. O’Reilly served as the director of Canvas Creative Arts Magazine, Union Board’s literary and visual arts magazine, the past two years and will serve a third year on the board of directors as he completes his degree and builds his portfolio in the coming year.“I think the transition is going to be smooth,” he said. “A big thing that will improve this year is the time old directors will spend with incoming directors. People have been talking about how important (it) is to get the right tools to the new directors and get the ball rolling faster.”Students elected Dec. 6 are Hillary Anderson, Erin Brown, Brad Domash, Ronald Gilbert, Sam Shechtman, Rachel Sheppard, Riley Voss and Brianna Whittenbarger. The 16 students will begin their terms at the end of January.
(12/09/11 4:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Union Board election results revealed eight directors for the 2012 calendar year. The 24-hour long elections ended Tuesday.Campaigning began Nov. 28 when 34 students ran for 16 available positions on the board of directors: 13 committee directors and three executive officers.Hillary Anderson, Erin Brown, Brad Domash, Ronald Gilbert, Sam Shechtman, Rachel Sheppard, Riley Voss and Brianna Whittenbarger will begin their committee directorships in late January, along with eight more students, who will be selected today after a separate interview process with student leaders.After the election and interview processes have yielded 16 Union Board leaders, they will attend a leadership retreat where they will be assigned their committees or executive roles.Anderson, who has served as a member of the board’s outreach committee since December 2010, said the wait between the time the polls closed until the time she was notified of the election results was the longest 30 minutes of her life. Although she initially missed the phone call, receiving the voice mail informing her she was elected was a great feeling, she said.“The directors who are on the board right now are very good at what they do,” she said. “Everyone will be very supportive of the new board members.”Riley Voss served as the board’s director of debates and issues for the 2011 calendar year and was re-elected Tuesday night. While he said his focus for the last few weeks of 2011 will be on finishing his current term, the Union Board has processes set up where the old board fosters the education of the new board when it comes time to make the transition.He said the current board has a commitment to initiate a feeling of comfort for the incoming board, especially because it looks as if the board may have many new faces.Of those elected Tuesday, only Riley had served as a director in the past.Lisa Wagner, Union Board election selection commissioner, said the election had a good student voter turnout.“We are very thankful to everyone that voted,” she said.
(12/09/11 3:58am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In recent weeks, Graduate and Professional Student Organization members elected a new treasurer and approved the new 2011-2012 budget, with $117,492 to spend this academic year.As a governing body for the graduate student population at IU, GPSO President LaNita Campbell said the organization administers academic grants for graduate students.GPSO Treasurer Alex Luboff said a large part of their budget goes toward providing support for academic initiatives in the form of travel, research and conference grants.While GPSO is only one of the organizations that provide academic grants, their funds are highly sought-after, Campbell said. Students submit proposals for funding, which are then reviewed by a group of about 80 peers. For the 2010-2011 academic year, about 260 proposals were reviewed, and about one-third of them received funding.Some of GPSO’s revenue comes from the University Graduate School.GPSO received more University funding this year after a committee, which included Dean of Students Pete Goldsmith and Provost Karen Hanson, examined last year’s GPSO budget allocation.“We received an increase based on the fact that in the past we’ve been able to be good stewards of money,” Campbell said. “With what money we’ve had, we’ve basically allocated a lot of it to giving back to graduate students.”In the past, GPSO hasn’t been able to fully cover all the costs associated with travel for academic purposes: lodging and food, as well as either airfare or gas. Campbell said the budget increase changes that shortfall.“We’ve been able to cover people’s costs more effectively,” she said. “Hopefully, we’re able to spread the money around more people and increase the likelihood of covering an entire trip.”But GPSO’s money doesn’t just come from the University.“Student fees are our largest source of revenue,” Luboff said. About 75 percent of GPSO’s revenue comes from students. Just as a portion of graduate students’ fees go toward the IU Student Association, which caters largely to IU’s undergraduate population. $1.08 of each student’s mandatory fees go toward GPSO each semester.GPSO expenditures aren’t limited to academic funding, either.Nearly half of GPSO’s budget, $57,200, covers staff expenses. The president, communications coordinator and operations coordinator each receive $12,500, as well as health care benefits, for their work throughout the year. Other officers receive smaller stipends.“The reason staffing is the biggest part of the budget is because the three main staff members have to promote all the events that are going on,” Luboff said. “They also organize all the people volunteering in different committees on campus and through the Bloomington Faculty Council and other sorts of initiatives that are out there.”A smaller portion of the budget is spent on social events and community-building, GPSO Communications Coordinator Anna Saraceno said.“We have social hours every month, and it’s just a place for grad students from across departments to come and get some free food and meet each other,” she said.In addition to social events, GPSO organizes academic and family events.“There are a lot of grad students that do have kids, and our social hours are usually at night at a restaurant or a bar,” she said. “So we provide events for people who want to bring their kids, too.”An additional $4,270 has been allotted for other expenditures, including advocacy efforts, website services and other member and staff resources.For further details about GPSO’s newly approved budget, visit indiana.edu/~gpso.
(12/08/11 3:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As an inter-IU fitness competition draws to a close, IU employees are competing for the title “healthiest IU campus.”The competition is based off of the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award, one of four different challenges that comprise the President’s Challenge many remember from elementary school physical education.“With this particular competition, we’re just looking to build awareness about the importance of physical activity and nutrition,” said Patty Hollingsworth, director of employee health engagement. Though few know it, the office that administers the physical fitness test used by 32,000 schools nationwide is located on the Bloomington campus, Hollingsworth said.Jeff McClaine, associate director of The President’s Challenge, worked with Hollingsworth, and IU Office of Creative Services created an online portal to track participants’ progress.“We work with a lot of large organizations, and it’s nice to do something with IU,” said Michael Willett, director of The President’s Challenge and associate chair for the department of kinesiology.Hollingsworth, who works with IU employees system-wide, said the challenge was a collaborative effort between employee groups from every campus as a step toward becoming the healthiest university in the United States.The challenge required the participants, who are IU employees and faculty, to engage in 30 minutes of physical activity per day for at least five days a week, six out of the eight weeks of the challenge, which began in October or early November, depending on the campus. The inter-campus challenge also included a nutrition component, which was introduced to The President’s Challenge this fall as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to lower obesity rates in America.For the nutrition component of the challenge, participants picked from eight different goals promoting healthy eating habits. Participants involved in the program are ideally exposed to healthier eating habits and more active lifestyle choices.The list of goals consisted of tasks such as making half the food fruits and vegetables or drinking more water.“They’re doable things,” Hollingsworth said. “That’s what I like the most.”Participants chose five of the eight goals to incorporate into their diets, one each week of the challenge with one “free” week.At the end of the six-week challenge, participants submit records of their progress. After all records are turned in, which Hollingsworth said she hopes will be at the end of the semester, the percentage of employees from each campus who completed the challenge will be calculated.The campus with the highest percentage of faculty and staff who completed the challenge will gain possession of a traveling trophy to be used in future health and wellness competitions.Hollingsworth said it is difficult to tell which campus is ahead at this point in time because not all participants have completed the challenge. “IU-Kokomo and IU-East have told me numerous times that they really want to win,” she said. “It’s based on percentage, not total numbers, so a campus that has 200 employees, since they’re small, sometimes it’s easier for them to win.”Hollingsworth, who finished the challenge last week, said she has received a lot of positive feedback about the challenge.“I had a woman the other day who said, ‘My tight blue jeans aren’t tight anymore,’” she said. “So, that was kind of fun. There were a couple employees who said they didn’t like the competition, and that’s okay. It isn’t for everybody.”Hollingsworth said she hopes to organize a similar inter-campus competition for students and, eventually, a fitness challenge in which schools within the Big Ten can compete against one another.“In the end, all participants are winners,” Hollingsworth said. “It’s really about finding physical activities that help you feel great and eating foods that both taste wonderful and nourish your body.”
(12/05/11 8:26pm)
Union Board, the student organization that has brought names like Lil Wayne and Madeleine Albright to campus, will have elections today and Tuesday.
The board’s leadership consists of 13 committee directors and three executive officers, which are a president and two vice presidents.
Thirty-four students have signed up to run for a directorship for the 2012 calendar year. Sixteen of those will be chosen — eight chosen by student election and eight by student leaders.
(12/05/11 7:11pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____> Union Board, the student organization that has brought names like Lil Wayne and Madeleine Albright to campus, will have elections today and Tuesday. The board’s leadership consists of 13 committee directors and three executive officers, which are a president and two vice presidents. Thirty-four students have signed up to run for a directorship for the 2012 calendar year. Sixteen of those will be chosen — eight chosen by student election and eight by student leaders.Click here to meet the candidates.
(12/05/11 5:01am)
For Robert and Charlene Spierer, whose daughter Lauren has been missing since June 3, this holiday season will be more difficult than usual.But despite everything, the disappearance has brought together a family of volunteers from across the country, some of whom attended a support and prayer walk Saturday. “The holiday season is when you spend time with your family, and the Spierer family is going to be a member short,” said Shelly Leonard, an administrator of the Facebook group Voices for Lauren Spierer. “I wanted to make the load a little bit lighter.”The event was organized by Leonard and other members of Voices for Lauren Spierer in conjunction with the six-month anniversary of Lauren’s disappearance.The event began outside the Smallwood Plaza apartment complex, where clusters of people gathered on the sidewalk to listen to supporters read poetry, sing and speak about an enduring hope to bring Lauren home.Among the first to speak was junior Blair Wallach, who first met Spierer when they were 9-year-olds attending the same sleep-away camp. They’ve been best friends ever since, she said, and were roommates their freshman and sophomore years at IU.“I just want to say thank you for everyone’s love and support for the past six months, and hopefully we’ll find out where my best friend is,” she said. She then left a message for Lauren: “I miss you. I love you. We’re never giving up.”Charlene Spierer took the microphone in front of the crowd. “I just have to thank you all for being with us and for not forgetting about Lauren,” she said. “She’s so much more than the face on the poster, and she deserves so much better than this.”People who were once strangers to the Spierer family and came together in search of Lauren listened as Charlene Spierer spoke of enduring perseverance.“Whoever took Lauren away from us is the worst person in the whole wide world,” she continued.Some of Lauren’s friends cried, as did some who never met her but still felt the weight of the past six months.“I just want to say I love you, Lauren. I love you with my heart, my soul, and your dad and I will always look for you,” Charlene Spierer said. “We will never give up our search, and we are here for you until the day that we can bring you home.”Following the vigil, a group of about 50 people walked to Fountain Square Mall, where a tree stood near the entryway.Instead of ornaments, tags with Lauren’s picture hung on the tinsel-laced branches. On top of the tree was a stained glass Star of David.Leonard, who initially joined the search effort because Lauren reminded her of her daughter, arranged for the tree to be displayed through Jan. 3, 2012, next to a mailbox labeled “Spierer Family,” in which supporters could leave holiday cards and letters.The group Voices for Lauren Spierer was created, in part, for people to leave positive messages for Robert and Charlene Spierer, group administrator Joe Bailey said. The event served a similar purpose, Leonard said, but also provided an opportunity for people to bring forth information about the disappearance.“I thought that creating a venue where people could leave cards and letters without police involvement, for the fear that might be attached to the tip line... I thought if I could give them an opportunity for that, someone might leave information for where she’s at,” she said.The Facebook group will continue to raise awareness doing whatever they can, Leonard said, whether that means using Twitter to tweet about the disappearance or creating more events like the prayer and support walk.“When I met Rob and Charlene, Charlene told me that she was afraid people would forget about Lauren,” Leonard said. “I told her we wouldn’t let that happen. We would do everything we could to keep her name out there.”HOW TO HELPIf you can’t make it to the memorial tree in Fountain Square Mall, send cards and letters of support to:Support the SpierersP.O. Box 284Bloomington, IN 47402
(12/05/11 2:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Hal Kibbey knows the answer to, “What is that bright thing up there in the sky?”“No, it’s not a UFO,” he said. “It’s the planet Jupiter.”Kibbey is the writer behind the monthly astronomy column Star Trak, which has been published for the last 32 years.Written for the “average person taking trash out to the curb,” Kibbey said, the column is published by IU News Room, the Herald-Times and as a stand-alone newsletter.It started in 1979 when Kibbey, who completed his graduate studies in physics at IU, was hired by the University as a science writer. The column he inherited was different from Star Trak of today. It was a weekly report faculty members of the astronomy department would take turns writing, and it wasn’t written for publication, but for the department’s records.“So, the first thing I did without knowing what else to do was simply put that in the form of a news release to the extent that it was news and send it out,” Kibbey said.A professor who would be out of town the week he was to write the reports approached Kibbey.“He said, ‘I have to be out of town next week, even though I’m supposed to do this, and it seems to me that you could probably handle it yourself,’” he recalled. “And the faculty liked the result well enough that they said, ‘Why don’t you just keep on doing it?’”From then on, Star Trak was Kibbey’s project.The faculty members used to draw basic information for Star Trak from a magazine called Sky and Telescope. Kibbey said he was surprised to discover that was their source of information, but he believes the magazine does a “fine job,” and he still uses it.Soon after Kibbey took responsibility for Star Trak, he made it a monthly publication, and the column gained popularity among readers.“There is a scientist in Chile who is an amateur astronomer and a physicist by profession,” he said. “I got an email from him years ago asking if it would be okay with me if he could translate my column into Spanish and then redistribute it to a list of Spanish-speaking readers ... so it’s been a nice way of reaching an awful lot of people, certainly far beyond what I thought of when I first started doing it.”The column has become “an important part of the astronomy department’s outreach effort,” said Catherine Pilachowski, the Daniel Kirkwood chair in astronomy. “People like to know what’s going on in the sky, what they’re seeing in the morning or in the evening,” she said. “Hal’s column does that in a beautiful way.”Kibbey said he continues to write Star Trak because there is still an audience. “What’s interesting to me is that it’s still of interest to some people,” he said. “After all these years, with all this specialized stuff, anyone who wants to can go on the Internet and get as much high-tech information as they want from all over the world, and yet they still like to read my column, which is kind of nice.”
(11/28/11 1:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The work of sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson has found a new home at The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.The Kinsey Institute, which announced the addition of the collection in a press release Nov. 15, is the only archival center to house their materials, said Liana Zhou, director of library and archives.“William Masters and Virginia Johnson used to be a couple and one of the most recognizable names in the field of sex research,” Zhou said. “Their collections came to us from Virginia Johnson and her family, and we’ve been working with her family for many years.”Masters and Johnson were married in 1971 and divorced in 1993. They were known for their research, which spanned from 1957 to the early 1990s and led to their observation and increased understanding of the sexual response cycles. Their work also contributed to the field of sexual therapy.The Kinsey Institute is still in the process of acquiring materials, and Zhou estimated it will be about a year until the collection is complete. However, researchers can already access what has been processed.The materials in the collection fall primarily into four categories, Zhou said.The first is a collection of Masters and Johnson’s published work, containing both English and foreign-language editions of their research.The second category consists of the researchers’ administrative files, including records of speaking engagements. Organizational files provide insight into the internal workings of the Masters and Johnson Institute in St. Louis, including names of staff members and visitors, as well as the training provided to staff.The third category reveals correspondences Masters and Johnson maintained while they were researching.“Masters and Johnson had an extraordinary amount of correspondence with the sex researchers of the time, their publishers and their co-authors,” Zhou said. “Those correspondents reveal what they’re thinking, what their processes and procedures were and how they envisioned the impact of (Masters and Johnson’s) research.”The collection also includes media coverage of the researchers’ work. Popular magazines of the time, from Psychology Today to Playboy, often sought expert advice from Masters and Johnson, Zhou said. The collection includes magazine and newspaper articles, as well as interviews with the researchers and correspondences with reporters and editors.Zhou said the collection is important for researchers across many academic disciplines.“If you look at the 20th-century sex research, much of the sex research, the landmark research, Masters and Johnson is definitely considered one of the guideposts of studies,” she said. “It’s very important ... for people in biology, people in sociology, people in psychology or people in gender studies, people in communications and culture.”She said by providing these resources, the Kinsey Institute can help people understand the history of sex research and form their own perspective of the field.“I think that’s probably the most important thing for people to understand,” Zhou said. “Any knowledge takes a great many people’s contribution, and Masters and Johnson happen to be two of the most significant players.”
(11/16/11 5:29am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>According to an Occupy Wall Street website, the movement “aims to expose how the richest 1 percent of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.”But who are the 1 percent, especially here at IU?“You wanna know what the 1 percent looks like?” an occupier said Thursday night after a general assembly meeting in Peoples Park. “I don’t know anybody like that, but I know what their kids drive to school. They drive Porsches. They drive Lexuses.” Lauren, another occupier, chose not to give her last name, but said the lifestyle of the 1 percent is marked by “taking more than you need and the concept that the suffering of others could ever be equated to a good time.”The actual threshold for the 1 percent the Occupy movement decries is $343,927 annual, individual income, according to the latest available tax statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.At IU, eight administrators and athletic coaches fall into that category, including basketball Coach Tom Crean and President Michael McRobbie, earning annual incomes of $600,000 and $533,120, respectively.While there are no faculty members at the Bloomington campus who qualify as part of the 1 percent on the basis of individual income, nearly 300 IU faculty members fall in the top 5 percent of earners in the United States, earning more than $154,643 annually. The list of faculty within that top 1 percent increases when dual-income households are considered. Although the IRS threshold for the 1 percent accounts for individual income, economics instructor Peter Olson points out this distinction.“If you think about this $300,000 level as two people who are earning $150,000, those are good incomes, but those are people working full-time jobs, and it’s not like they’re the idle rich,” Olson said. “They’re highly skilled people who, because they share the same household, the combined income is very high.”However, senior Justinian Dispenza, a member of the Occupy IU movement, said occupiers sometimes faced criticism from students passing Peoples Park due to their misunderstanding of the 1 percent.“People would be hostile because they think we’re protesting against their parents who make $400,000 a year,” he said. Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies Benjamin Robinson, who has been involved with both Occupy Bloomington and Occupy IU, said the movement is not about “tearing down the 1 percent or blaming the 1 percent as individuals.” “Here in Bloomington, there are many examples of the 1 percent,” Robinson said, citing Duke Energy, Verizon Wireless and Baxter pharmaceuticals as members of that group.A November 2011 study by Citizens for Tax Justice, he said, showed that these companies paid negative effective income tax, which is less than the maximum federal corporate income tax of 35 percent, because of government subsidies.That, Robinson said, is what the movement takes issue with.“There’s been a lot of mocking in the media that a lot of these protesters use Apple products or they use GE products or whatnot,” Robinson said. “It’s not calling for the immediate abolition of these firms. It’s calling for them to pay what they owe society for making their profits.” Robinson referenced Bloomington’s high poverty rate. A September 2011 New York Times article revealed that among U.S. cities its size, Bloomington has the third-highest poverty rate. “Given the poverty rate in Bloomington and given the national poverty rate of 16 percent or 49.1 million people, that there are salaries in the multiple hundreds of thousands should at least give us pause,” he said.Ultimately, though, Robinson said the movement isn’t really about the individuals earning more than the $343,927 threshold.“Part of its energy comes from affirming the 99 percent,” he said. “If there’s a symbol of the movement, it’s the 99 percent, not the 1.”For more IU salaries, visit: https://fdrs.fms.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/Salary/Salary.pl/main.html
(11/14/11 4:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Tim Bagwell plucked “Can a Poem be a War?” from a stack of his anti-war poems and stapled it to a tree.“What’s going on here?” a woman from University Capital Planning and Facilities asked.“These are my poems,” Bagwell said. “They’re anti-war, and I’m posting them. I’m a combat veteran. I feel like I have legitimacy in doing this.”“I don’t know about legitimacy in stapling trees,” she said.“Well, I’m trying to stop war,” he said.* * *Bagwell spent Veterans Day protesting war with a staple gun and copies of his anti-war poems.His poetry, based on his combat experience as a Marine in the Vietnam War, was posted on trees in Dunn’s Woods on Friday. He said he hoped they would stay up long enough to be destroyed by inclement weather.“From the tips of my hair to the tips of my toenails, I relive Vietnam daily,” Bagwell said. “It’s the only thing I can really talk about. But not enough people are talking about it, so I have to.”Bagwell, now a staff member at IU Student Ethics and Anti-Harassment Programs, enlisted in June 1968 as a 17-year-old looking for “a shortcut to being a man,” he said. After graduating from high school the following year, he began his 13-month tour in Vietnam.“I bought into the symbolism. I bought into the myth, and I bought into the look of the uniform,” he said. “And within a relatively short time, I knew that I had made a mistake.”Forty years later, he said he has suffered from post-traumatic stress since about a year after his return.“Nobody in serious combat comes out like they went in,” he said. “It is a life-changing experience, and the tragedy is we send people into it without wanting to know the pain that we’re causing them.”A member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War since 1970, Bagwell was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector in 1971.Last Veterans Day, he posted his poems on the courthouse lawn without permission during the re-dedication of the Vietnam War Memorial in downtown Bloomington. Police confronted him but ultimately didn’t arrest him. They didn’t ask him to take down the poems, either.“I would’ve gone to jail first,” he said.* * *Bagwell was only about halfway through posting the first of three stacks of poems.“I am all for peace but not for defacing the trees,” a passerby shouted his way. “That actually harms the trees.”“The trees being stapled is bothering a lot of us,” said another.Bagwell kept stapling.“Many of the faculty and staff here are very liberal,” Bagwell said. “One of the problems with being politically liberal is you care very much about your immediate surroundings, at least verbally, but to take a controversial position that’s out of your environment, people are much more reticent about.”Part of Bagwell’s display was to express his discontent about the College of Arts and Sciences’s 2011 Themester, “Making War, Making Peace.” He said the College wasn’t serious about discussing the element of peace. His critiques of the Themester were posted alongside his poetry. “There’s no Gandhi,” he said. “There’s no Martin Luther King. There’s no Vietnam War, no civil disobedience, and all of those are instrumental to understanding how to make peace.”Bagwell began posting his poems at 12:15 p.m., and by about 1 p.m., the poems had been stripped down by passers-by. IU Police Department officers arrived at Dunn’s Woods to detain him as they awaited further instructions about whether or not to arrest him for damaging University property.Fifteen minutes after they arrived, IUPD officers received word not to arrest Bagwell, and he was released.Bagwell said he will continue his anti-war work.“This is what I live for,” he said. “It really is.”
(11/11/11 3:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU will be one of 182 schools in the country to participate in the Remembrance Day National Roll Call on Friday, reading the names of 6,200 soldiers that died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.The goal of the national event was to have at least one school from every state reading the list, said Margaret Baechtold, director of IU Veterans Support ServicesIndiana generated more participation than any other state with 18 schools electing to take part in the roll call, Baechtold said.“It is significant because it is the 10-year mark of post-9/11, and it’s kind of remembering the sacrifices of 10 years at war,” said senior Kayla Bowers, an intern at Veterans Support Services and an Air Force ROTC cadet.Volunteers will read from the list of names in 15-minute shifts in the Indiana Memorial Union Memorial Room near Starbucks.Senior and Army ROTC cadet Steve Szrom said realizing there are people on the list younger than himself helped him see the reality of the war.“It’s something a lot of us are facing,” he said. “That could be us in a year. The event is honoring those who came before us.”While many of the volunteers will be ROTC cadets in uniform, Tim Bagwell, an IU employee who served in the Vietnam War as a Marine, will attend the reading wearing a shirt saying “Vietnam Veterans Against the War.”“I had originally wanted to do a silent protest of it because I am passionately and radically anti-war,” Bagwell said. “I feel without a balance, simply the reading of the names becomes unbalanced as we’re honoring people who died and didn’t have to die.”The event is in coordination with the digitization of the Golden Book, a list of IU veterans that served through World War II, which is on display in the IMU Memorial Room. The roll call will begin at 9 a.m. with a ribbon cutting for the new digital book.“The event is really significant, obviously, to show remembrance for vets who have given their life but also to show current vets support from students at IU,” Bowers said.
(11/09/11 3:04am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Matt Moneymaker, president and founder of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, stood in front of a crowd gathered at Monroe County History Center.He asked if anyone had experienced an encounter with a sasquatch, either by seeing one, hearing one or knowing someone who had a firsthand encounter.Twenty or so hands shot up.About 100 Indiana residents attended a filming of a town forum scene Monday for the 2012 season of the Animal Planet show “Finding Bigfoot.”The forum, which brought in Indiana residents from as far as 50 miles away, gave those who believe they have encountered a bigfoot a chance to share their stories with other attendees and the cast of the show, a panel consisting of BFRO members and a research biologist.Nine Indiana residents shared stories of “class A” encounters, having seen firsthand what they believed to be a bigfoot.Logan Hunter said he encountered a sasquatch in October 1999, 14 miles west of Salt Creek in Nashville, Ind. One of the panelists said there are “lots of reports from that area.”He was out with a family friend when a sasquatch began chasing the 1972 Oldsmobile they were driving.“It was either Bigfoot or a man in a suit — and a man on stilts, at that,” Hunter said.Descriptions of the bigfoots sighted ranged in height from 5 feet to 9 1/2 feet. Most said the creatures had no neck and were covered in black or dark brown hair.The panel became interested in Indiana as a sasquatch hotspot when it received a video about a sighting in Indiana Dunes State Park in Chesterton, Ind., located near Lake Michigan. They came to Indiana to determine the film’s authenticity and investigate what they heard was an active area for sasquatch sightings.The cast and crew will be in Bloomington for seven days, Producer Bicha Gholam said. For the show’s upcoming second season, they will visit 10 states, including Indiana.Many of the people who showed up for the town forum hadn’t had an encounter with a sasquatch but came out of interest for the show or the subject matter.Recent graduates from the School of Public and Environmental Affairs Susanna Foxworthy and Josh Levering attended because they “thought it would be cool to check out the show,” Levering said.“To be willing to go on public TV and say, ‘This really freaked me out,’ it just doesn’t seem like something a lot of people would do unless they legitimately saw something,” Foxworthy said. “After those stories, I totally believe.”
(11/07/11 4:41am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Debaters across campus gathered in Ballantine Hall on Friday and Saturday to participate in the first Intra-IU Debate Tournament since the 1960s.Although IU has a rich history of debate going back to before the 1870s, the program was strong until about the 1960s and declined in prominence until its dormancy from 1993 to 2009, said IU Director of Debate Brian DeLong, a professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.In fall 2009, now-senior debater Melissa Orizondo paired with another student, now graduated, to bring debate back to IU.“We went to a lot of regional tournaments,” she said. “We went to nationals and did really well for being a really new team with a pretty small budget and part-time coaches.”Orizondo said the draw of debate is the opportunity to learn and argue about a variety of topics.“You broaden your knowledge base so much because you’re learning about all sorts of things,” she said. “I have probably learned more from debate than I have in any class in terms of knowing basic information about different issues and also learning how to think critically through an issue.”IU Debate, now in its third season, is a nation-traveling team composed of students from different academic backgrounds. Its debaters engage in policy debate in which students debate a topic from the beginning of the competitive season in September to its end in March.This year’s topic addresses whether the United States should provide democracy assistance in the Arab Spring countries of Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.While the team had been traveling to tournaments since September, the Intra-IU Tournament gave students across campus the opportunity to try their hands at debate while giving some of the seasoned debaters extra practice.“The purpose of the Intra-IU Tournament is to provide an opportunity for students on campus to engage in debate with a topic, as well as research and a judge,” said DeLong. “The culture of debate is something that should be facilitated at any university,” he said. “I think the opportunity of giving eight speeches over a weekend is something that is profound and something that should be promoted.”Each team consisting of two student was assigned a topic and given either the affirmative or negative argument. The teams had a limited amount of time to prepare for the rounds, which consisted of two five-minute speeches to construct an argument and three minutes of cross-examination to address the concerns of its opponent and final remarks.“The people that would win the Intra-IU tournaments back in, like, 1915 or so would get a $50 reward,” DeLong said. “I mean, $50 now is something that would be great, right? But imagine $50 back then.”Twelve students competed against each other for IU apparel instead of the traditional cash prize. Of the 12 participants, seven were first-time debaters.The first round was a learning experience for freshman team Saleh ElHattab and Jonah Barreto, who had no prior experience with debate.“The first round made us feel like we definitely didn’t want to do it anymore,” ElHattab said. “People talked a lot faster than we expected, and we talked a lot slower than we thought we could. It was pretty embarrassing.”The final round boiled down to a debate between sophomore debate team member Christian Parroco and his teammate, freshman and first-time debater Hope Kerkhoff, arguing against ElHattab and Barreto.“The U.S. should support democracy in the Arab world, and the U.S. should enter into dialog with Islamist leaders,” ElHattab said in his opening argument. “Now, I’d like to refer to a personal anecdote because this summer, I actually went to Egypt and bore witness to the revolution the country is going through.”In the end, ElHattab and Barreto won the final argument, walking away with IU sweatshirts as their trophies. Barreto attributes their win to his partner’s proximity to the subject.“I think it’s effective that Saleh went to Egypt, and the topic is pretty close to him,” Barreto said. “So my partner had a pretty good knowledge of it.”The debate team will travel to North Carolina in the coming week for a tournament at Wake Forest University. For more information about IU Debate, visitindiana.edu/~iudebate.
(11/04/11 6:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Music blared through the speakers.“Everybody dance now!” C+C Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat,” enticed 200 IU students to join the choreographed line dance that would kick off the 36 hours that lay ahead of them at the first IU Dance Marathon.After a day and a half of non-stop dancing, IUDM had raised $10,900.That was in 1991. Nearly 21 years and more than $10 million later, the structure of IUDM has evolved, but the mission has remained consistent: It’s all “For The Kids.” Back to the Beginning It started with a kid from Kokomo, Ind., named Ryan White.At 13, White was diagnosed with AIDS after receiving a contaminated blood transfusion. “It was kind of when AIDS first started coming about and no one really knew about it, so there was a lot of turmoil in the community,” said Gretchen Ahlers, IUDM alumni relations director. “He actually ended up getting banned from his school, and his family just didn’t know what to do, so they went to Riley (Hospital for Children).”White lost his battle in April 1990 and passed away the spring before he was to attend IU. His friends from high school transitioned to college. But one friend, Jill Stewart, wanted some way to “carry on Ryan White’s name and his passion for Riley”, Ahlers said. Stewart went to her student advisor to brainstorm ideas, and he proposed a dance marathon based on the annual 48-hour event at Pennsylvania State University to benefit Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital.Stewart asked Bryan Neale, then-president of the Interfraternity Council, to help her. He agreed and solicited the help of Kristi Engle, then-president of IU Panhellenic Association.Stewart, Neale and Engle flew to Pennsylvania to observe Penn State’s Dance Marathon and spent the weekend taking notes and interviewing participants. The three made a list of about a dozen student leaders on campus on a yellow legal pad. “We knew if we wanted this to succeed, we had to get the best core group of student leaders,” Neale said. “Our number one goal was to donate at least one dollar to Riley Hospital for Children and have a whole lot of fun.” Establishing an Evolving Tradition The first IUDM raised $10,900 — $900 from the dancers and $10,000 from the sales of White’s autobiography, “Ryan White: My Own Story.”“You actually had to sign up with someone, and it had to be someone of the opposite sex,” Ahlers said. “It was like a date-a-thon almost.”It was the beginning of a new tradition that would become the second largest college philanthropy in the U.S.That year, IUDM also made a promise to Riley, Ahlers said.“We told Riley that we would raise $10 million for the Ryan White Center for Infectious Disease at Riley,” she said.Riley opened the center in 2000. In 2010, IUDM’s 20-year funding total surpassed its $10 million goal. The 2011 dance marathon structure won’t be the same as the first year, but the 20 years that have passed are a timeline of evolving traditions that define IUDM today.With increasing participation and a drive to raise more money each year, dancer qualifications and fundraising methods vary annually. This year, dancers can sign up for a shift rather than the full 36 hours. This came from concerns about dancer welfare and venue accommodation, said IUDM President Michael Essling. This year’s marathon will be at IU Tennis Center due to construction at the HPER.“It does not change the purpose or the mission,” Essling said. Maintaining the MissionUntil 2005, the letters “FTK”, which stood for “For The Kids”, and White’s initials were on all IUDM apparel.The IUDM community added a third set of initials to its slogan in April 2005, after Ashley Louise Crouse, IUDM vice president of communications, died in a car accident. Their apparel now reads, “FTK-ALC-RW,” and Crouse’s memory is preserved by the dance marathon.“It started in memory of Ryan White,” Essling said. “But whether we are motivated by Ryan, who died 21 years ago or Ashley, who passed away six years ago, we have really tried to keep core principles.”Maintaining IUDM’s longevity has been a core tradition since 1991, and Neale said IUDM founders returned in 2010 to see how it had changed since its inception.“You still have a special place in your heart for it,” he said. “The thing that stood out to me the most was the ability of young people and students to achieve ridiculously outstanding results year after year after year. The dance marathon has never changed. It’s all about giving good and creating good, and having a good time doing it.”