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(04/25/03 4:54am)
Through 1,700 miles, seven days, three cities, two hotels, and one massive sickness, there has always been music. When a CD player wasn't near, MTV was the substitute. When neither was around, we were in a place where music was.\nWhether on Memphis's Beale Street or New Orleans' Bourbon or anywhere in between, there was always something blaring from somewhere.\nComing home from a night on Bourbon Street, Jarrett, Amy and Toby didn't want to spend any more time in the hotel room, so the three went to Toby's car to listen to music. After convincing the valet that Toby's car was indeed Toby's -- I had his receipt -- the three sat in the basement garage for over an hour talking and listening.\n"We weren't ready for bed, yet," Amy said.\nAfter the 90 minutes -- where in the interim Dave, Luke and I had to convince the lobby attendant to give us a new key since the other three had ours -- they came back to the room.\n"I bet you they're pissed," said Luke, thinking they had kept an earlier grudge.\nThey hadn't, and so all eight went to bed eager for tomorrow.\nTomorrow brought bad news.\nJarrett, Amy and Toby's 90-minute garage music session killed Toby's battery. The valet, who admitted he probably shouldn't, jumped the Accord with another guest's car, but the stereo system wouldn't work. \nDave hit a series of buttons thinking random button touching would work. But instead it locked the stereo shut. There was no music in the Accord anymore. Apparently, when the car battery died the stereo system thought it was stolen, so it went into a lockdown mode.\nNo problem. A drive without music could work, right?\nWell, not for this group.\nAs soon as the Accord left New Orleans, people started fidgeting and wondering how to fix the problem. \nAfter 10 minutes, Amy was on the phone with the Honda people.\n"They say you have to bring it in. They're going to have to take the whole dashboard apart," Amy said to Toby, relaying the bad news."\n"That's ridiculous," Toby said. "So someone can steal my car but not listen to my stereo. So are they going to return it to me because my stereo doesn't work? 'Damn, we better give this car back; the stereo doesn't work.'"\nThat's the theory, I guess.\nSo for the next 12-plus hours, there was silence in Toby's car -- except for an echo of music coming from Amy's Discman. Eventually everyone in the Accord, even Toby, was listening to a Discman, in an attempt to keep some sense of sanity.\n"That shows you just how much music is a part of this trip," Jamie said.\nBut it wasn't the same.\nAt the end it was awkwardly silent. \nFor the first time in seven days.
(04/24/03 5:14am)
Amy was made for a peace protest.\nOne day after the bombs started falling over Baghdad, Amy happened upon a large group marching against the war in downtown New Orleans -- her dream incarnate.\nShe, Stacey and Jamie had all explored New Orleans, ate lunch and shopped before the boys even got up on one of the last days of our final spring break. While those three picked up peace signs and joined a crowd of hundreds, the boys rifled through phone books, looking for a pizza place close by.\nPizza versus peace. You could call it the gender split of our spring break. The girls, and to an extent Dave, felt that New Orleans was a city to be discovered and that sleeping in a hotel could be saved for any occasion. The boys were sick of traveling in groups of eight everywhere like a family making up for lost time on a vacation.\n"We're so worried about stepping on each other's toes, that we can never get anything accomplished," Toby said before settling on Dominos.\nThe girls tried to push. They wanted everyone to make a late night stop at Café Du Monde, a New Orleans institution that serves powdered beignets, a type of doughnut. But the men finally resisted.\n"You know, we don't have to do everything together," said Jarrett, who earlier got out of a group activity by saying the sun makes him depressed. So while Jamie, Amy, Stacey and I crossed St. Charles Street, New Orleans' main strip, the boys stayed behind on the opposite corner.\n"Why aren't they coming?" Stacey asked.\nThey didn't want to.\n"Well why are they going to waste their time in New Orleans sitting in a hotel?" \nBecause that's who they are.\nSo while the women marched for peace, something they all called "amazing," the men held a protest of their own for individuality.\nThey sat in their downtown hotel room, ate Domino's pizza and watched basketball. When that was over, they went to an IMAX movie about Lewis and Clark and then took a nap.\nThey missed out on the chance to voice opposition to the war, discover the city and try Creole cuisine. They settled on things you can get anywhere.\nBut they were happy just the same.\nRead Chapter 12: Silenced, Friday
(04/23/03 4:08am)
Ten…"\nWe counted down like the rest of America. "Nine…eight…seven." Here we go; after months of anticipation. "Six…five." This is so exciting. "Four…three." I hope our families are watching. "Two." Bourbon Street can wait.\n"One." Where's Dick Clark anyway?\n"Happy War!" shouted Toby from our downtown New Orleans hotel. We all ceremoniously, and sarcastically, clapped. America's 48-hour window for Iraqi capitulation had passed. MSNBC made sure we knew by counting down the seconds during live telecasts.\nWar was on, whether we wanted it or not. And so was the accompanying TV coverage. It seemed we didn't have much of a choice on that, either. Even MTV, an outlet designed for specifically uninterested youth, covered the opening days of the war, pre-empting Justin Timberlake and the likes. \n"It's like a basketball game," Toby said Thursday, while CBS decided not to air the opening round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament in lieu of war coverage. \nHe was right. You could follow the box score live on television. \nWhen the first reports flowed in Thursday that 17 Iraqi soldiers were captured, Toby played out his parody.\n"That's a start," Toby said, clapping like a coach.\nIn New Orleans, the whole war seemed like a parody -- starting at the very top where everything was about those short one-liners. You know the ones they play over and over while a bar across the bottom of the screen has the same lines in print.\nIt began that Monday, though it began long before that when Bush gave his ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. "The tyrant will soon be gone."\nRemember that? \nOK, maybe not, but at a Thursday afternoon lunch, eight IU spring breakers tried to remember some of the more memorable lines while they watched the drama unfold in New Orleans' T.G.I. Friday's.\n"There was Powell: The time for diplomacy had ended," Amy said.\n"If you're not with us, you're against us," Toby said.\n"The Axis of Evil," chimed in someone else.\nThe list went on. \nThe night before, the group went to Preservation Hall (capacity 104), a New Orleans' historic jazz hall. Created in 1961, though the surroundings are much older, the hall is home to the city's sweetest jazz and one its best deals. For $5, guests get four hours of music.\nThe room is falling apart and packed well past its 104-person limit.\nThe last song we heard was a classic New Orleans funeral march, a macabre tribute for the loss of a jazz great. Next door we saw the first bombs drop on Baghdad from a pizza joint. One group huddled around a TV in the back of the restaurant. An employee watched the Arabic broadcast up front.\nWhat different thoughts we must have been thinking.\nWhat different mindsets we must have been in.\nWhat was next?\n"It's hard to picture people sad," Jamie said, "when we're so happy."
(04/21/03 5:11am)
There were two things in Carruthersville, Mo.\nThe casino and us. After about 30 seconds it was clear that neither belonged.\n"That's all there is," Stacey said, who navigated the trip.\nWe were all looking for some place to stop, eat and watch the IU basketball game on television. "There's got to be something there," Dave said, acting as Stacey's second-in-command.\nAs soon as we got off the highway, we should have known better. It was nine miles to Carruthersville. This was already out of the way.\n"Can we just get back on the highway?" Luke asked, ready to end the car ride as quickly as possible. Though we told the first car our hunger and eagerness to watch Hoosier basketball could wait, they kept going toward Carruthersville.\nOn the trip south on Interstate 64 we had seen all sorts of signs promoting this small town. They were all for the Casino Aztar, but surely there was some urban sprawl built around it.\nThere was, but not quite what we had in mind.\nAs we entered the town I was on the cell phone with Amy and through the garbled lines in southern Missouri you could hear all eight people laughing (especially Jamie. Her laugh is impossible to miss).\nYes, we were in the Birthplace of Bedrock passing the strangest row of bars we'd ever seen. I was so shaken with laughter I couldn't even write down their names, but they were something like Joe's Bar, and Happy Day Bar. There might have been six lined up on the border of the town in little stucco huts with mosquito-tinted doors and something-stained exteriors. We weren't sure where we were, but the IU game seemed secondary at this point.\n"Let's just turn around," Luke said again.\nBut we had already gone eight miles and the casino was just through town. Carruthersville was totally empty, not a soul in sight, until we hit the casino. Casino Aztar sits on the edge of town up a slight ramp bordered by American flags and welcoming signs. It's America in the middle of, well, America. They were welcoming Pat Boone that week. \nLuke, Jarrett and Toby didn't even want to be welcomed at all. They were perfectly happy to stay in the car.\nOnce convinced, the eight spring breakers sat in an empty bar in the casino's what-would-be-lobby. They had eight TVs mounted along the wall, all playing basketball, none playing IU.\nThey couldn't get the game. And they didn't serve food.\nTen minutes later, we'd left the bedrock and dilapidation and eeriness of an out-of-place riverboat casino in the dust.\n"That was bizarre," Toby said.\nYes, but we had weirder things to see.
(04/18/03 5:36am)
There were two things I needed on my spring break trip with seven of my closest friends.\nThe first was a notebook to record their thoughts.\nThe other was tissue to record the piles of snot taking my sinuses hostage. But my tissues weren't meant to be shared. Neither is the flu, or whatever it was.\nThe disease started with Luke a little more than a week before break. He went to the IU Health Center and got the "good stuff."\nA few days later he recovered, but not before passing his illness onto myself and Jarrett. Jarrett then seemingly moved the disease on to Toby. So when the trip started, I was carrying a box of tissues at every stop while Toby and Jarrett couldn't keep from coughing. By the time the week ended I think everyone except Amy had some form of the disease and all the tissues were long gone.\nIn their place were cough drops, vitamin C tablets, decongestants and allergy pills. But nothing really worked.\nInstead there was an assembly line of temporary relief. Dave was blowing his nose while I was drinking juice. Luke took lozenges while I did anything to try and sleep. Jamie fought a cough while I spit out anything I could.\n"I don't feel sick at all," Jamie said. "I just have this cough. I can't seem to shake it."\nThough nearly everyone had some form of discomfort, my bout with Luke's flu was the worst. And though they had lots of other things they could be worrying about -- Stacey and Jamie meeting up with a childhood friend; Jarrett's conversation with a local calling himself "Juicey"; or Toby getting a chance to talk to his girlfriend -- they all went out of the way to take pity.\n"It sucks that you're sick," Jarrett said once.\nIt did.\nBut their words were comforting. The country was seemingly days away from war and at the same time a mystery illness was attacking everyone.\nFor a while I thought I had SARS. I'm taking a biology of deadly diseases course through IU's biology program, and it's interesting, though it must make everyone (or at least me) a hypochondriac. If SARS hadn't been in the news I might have thought I had tuberculosis, or maybe even the first known case of smallpox in over 20 years. \nIf you knew what those diseases could do to you, you'd freak out.\nI did.\nAnd I would never imagine where it got me.
(04/17/03 5:05am)
Three days into the trip, Dave wanted to know how these chapters were coming.\nI told him well but that he wasn't really in them.\n"Come on, I do interesting things," Dave said while we stood on a bus shuttling us back downtown from Sun Studios -- a recording house used by all the greats including Elvis himself. We were on a roundabout way back to our hotel.\n"OK," he said, buying time while gesturing with his hand. He likes to point while he talks. "Just earlier Luke and I ran into this weird lady on Beale. It was interesting."\nI bit and took out my notebook.\n"She just kept grabbing her cheek and pinching it saying, 'Born in flesh,'" Dave started.\nSitting on the street corner along Memphis's famous Beale Street, waiting for the others to finish shopping, Luke and Dave met someone who's been to hell and back.\nBessie smoked and drank all day, riddling her body with sin. The sin caught up with her, she told the boys, when she nearly died. In her glimpse of death, she met God. He showed her hell.\n"On my left side was a lake of fire; a lake that burned with fire and brimstone," she wrote in the accompanying pamphlet. "It was a big one."\nAnd apparently, it looked a lot like Lake Michigan.\n"You'd hear these awful screams," she said.\nShe had a good audience for this specific fire-and-brimstone sermon -- David and Luke were both raised with religion, as their names might indicate. She believed churches were failing because they had abandoned the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric long ago. You should be scared into submission, she would say, I suppose.\nOnce they realized they weren't getting rid of Bessie on the corner of Beale, they decided to ask some questions. She has been to hell. That's got to count for something.\nThe two asked her what version of the Bible she prefers -- the King James -- as well as other queries about her time spent in the underworld. \n"She kept yelling that she was reborn in spirit," Dave said. "She asked us: You boys do know you'll die?"\n"I acted dumb," Luke said to me.\nBessie, a 50-year-old black woman put together in a dress and suit jacket, finally left after 10 minutes when her friends were ready to go.\n"It was interesting," Dave said as were getting off the bus, an attempt to convince me.\nI suppose. At least it kept me from thinking I had SARS for a while.\nRead Chapter 7: Pills and Pus, Friday
(04/16/03 5:38am)
It was only March, but it was already hot in Memphis, Tenn. The air conditioner was roaring as the sun smashed through our thick curtain and penetrated two riverfront hotel rooms.\nIt looked a lot like the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. From the photos, April 4, 1968, seemed picture-perfect. It turned out anything but.\nImagine a Memphis summer.\nBetter yet, imagine that summer.\nGrass scorched grey, sidewalks sizzling, drops of sweat falling like a rainstorm. It must have hurt to breathe.\nEven in March, 35 years later, for eight middle-class white students who've never known struggle, it was hard to swallow.\nThe National Civil Rights Museum sits a half mile from the busy and beautiful downtown of Memphis. It's built into the Lorraine Motel, where King was shot exiting his hotel room on his way to dinner.\nNow it's a monument to his life.\nEight IU spring breakers wandered up and down the museum's countless exhibits, reliving a piece of history they wanted no part in. Visitors walk through a bus and face the shouts and insults that Rosa Parks did in 1955. They can also simulate the experience of an African-American at a polling place, where a spin of a wheel gives visitors a five percent chance of voting. The other panels create excuses, which are ludicrous today, that prevent visitors from casting a ballot.\nMixed in are conversations between blacks and whites, southerners and northerners.\nAt an exhibit documenting African-American sit-ins of white-only diners, a white southerner talks in the background before the video shows violence erupting.\n"They looked like a bunch of idiots sitting in those stools," the white young adult said. "They were egging on a fight."\nBeing Jewish, Amy, Stacey and Jamie knew the destruction persecution brings. All three have a direct link to the atrocities their ancestors suffered during the second World War.\nThey were most intrigued by the museum, taking a free listening tour as they slowly zig-zagged through the exhibits. Jamie, an education major who's teaching fourth graders in Bloomington for her final semester, seemed particularly interested, reading each panel thoroughly.\nThe men, myself included, moved through the museum quicker, and finished the first exhibition hall, which includes a tour of King's room in the motel, more than 15 minutes before the women. But we were no less affected.\nIt was a depressing but necessary interlude on a sun-filled spring break, which exemplified a form of life we never knew.\nIt was hot for Memphis in March.\nLike those sad, scorching months in 1968.\nRead Chapter 6, It's Bessie, tomorrow.
(04/15/03 4:29am)
Fight IU spring breakers were warned twice in hotels to keep quiet during their six nights in Memphis, Tenn. and New Orleans. \nSadly neither was directly related to alcohol. In New Orleans, they recreated a skit on a seldom heard of HBO sketch comedy show for Luke's video camera. Stacey was the cameraperson. Jamie played the roll of hysterical laugher.\nI think it was the shrill laughter that got to the neighbor.\n"Could you keep it down?" he asked.\n"Sure. Sorry. It's OK. We were just filming a skit," said Stacey, who answered the pounding on the door.\n"Well, if you're going to do that, take it to Bourbon Street. People are trying to sleep."\nIn Memphis, the complaint was more official. A hotel employee said they were disturbing the guests. The truth is that portion of spring break was equally disturbing.\nThe eight spent their second night of break playing a board game called Catch Phrase. It's Hot Potato meets Taboo. Dave's play was a combination of confusion and malapropisms, though he thought otherwise. You judge.\nThe word is "flood."\nDave's clue: "Lot of water."\nAfter some guessing and reasoning, Luke finally got to the right answer, but not before "lake" and "Europe" were guessed.\nLuke got Dave's answer right on the first guess next time. Though, who knows why? Dave's clue -- while the orb pings away in his hand -- "If you're not tough, you're …"\nLogic dictates the answer should be cowardly or perhaps weak. Maybe scared or shy. But no, the correct answer, which Luke was so quick to answer, was rough. \nIf you're not tough you're rough? That makes sense.\nIt did to Luke, though. That's why the group thought Dave was a good player. They said he was able to connect with his teammates in such a way that he didn't need the best, most concise descriptions.\nI don't get it. Here's why.\nAs the game neared its end, the orb was once again in the hands of Dave at a crucial moment of a close contest.\nHe stumbled out of the gates on the word he saw. But time was running short.\n"Breakfast food … maple syrup … pancakes … human body," Dave said.\nWhat was he talking about? Time was nearly out.\n"Breakfast food … organ," Dave said.\n"Pancreas!"\nBut everyone's luck has to run out eventually.\nRead Chapter 5: Lorraine's Legacy, Wednesday.
(04/14/03 4:42am)
Luke never lost that childhood fantasy growing up.\nHe's going to be a rock star.\nHe already has the look and swagger. Now he's working on the music. Luke, Toby and Jarrett started a band this fall. Their songs -- recorded in Luke's basement -- have already impressed some people in the music industry. They're ready to play shows. They're ready to make a record. There's just one problem.\nNo singer.\nThe three have devoted the entire spring semester to finding one. They've fliered campus and held auditions but no one cut it. They brought in friends and friends of friends. One would-be singer even added his own lyrics to an All the Action song (that's their name, after a series of trials). "It sounded like Creed," said Luke. "That was enough for me."\nAt a standstill with the semester halfway over, they're changing gears on their spring break trip.\n"I think Jarrett should sing," Luke said.\nThere have always been thoughts here and there of Jarrett singing. Of the three, he's best-suited to sing the music. Plus, he's written at least half of the songs. OK, problem solved. With Jarrett in front of the mic, they're all set. Here come the shows, the records and the women. But there's one more problem.\n"He can't play and sing at the same time," Toby said. "I don't think he can. He doesn't think he can."\n"He's gonna practice 24-7," countered Luke. "He's gonna work on it. I think he can do it."\nToby, who is anything but optimistic, still isn't convinced.\nWhen the group played at Luke's party a week before break, Jarrett missed some notes while he sang harmony on a Jimmy Eat World song, Toby said.\nLuke remains hopeful for the best. He just finished watching Sting lead the Police one more time after accepting their invitation into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He sees the potential of a bassist leading the group.\n"A bass player who sings, how cool is that?" \nThe three have a while to figure it out. Jarrett won't graduate until next December, and Toby and Luke will stay in Bloomington until then. During those months they'll work on playing. They'll work on singing.\nAnd hopefully, they'll work on playing, and singing, at the same time.\nBut for now they're in Memphis on their final spring break wondering what human organs have to do with maple syrup.\nRead Chapter Four: Brains and Blues, Tuesday.
(04/11/03 5:28am)
Well, this seems like it would be the same," Toby said as the two-car caravan sped onto I-64 headed southwest into Illinois en route to Memphis, Tennessee.\nThe eight travelers in two cars starting their spring break ended up not being lost at all. \nThe stop in the middle of southern Indiana was because the passenger window was stuck open.\n"No one's to touch that window ever again," said Jarrett Burton, looking like a crow ready to peck at a scarecrow. It's Jarrett's black Pontiac Grand Am that led the trip to Memphis.\nWhile he drove, Toby and Luke did some pecking of their own in the car behind.\n"He drives like an old lady," Toby said.\n"Ten-and-two Burton. Ten-and-two Burton," Luke said.\nJarrett and Toby lived on my floor freshman year. Luke spent his freshman year with Dave Giba. We met through mutual friends working on a cheesy horror film at the end of the year. It's called "Pick," and you might see it on Bloomington's cable access channel. I met Amy Orringer and Stacey Palevsky through the IDS. Those two already knew Jamie Honigman before IU. That's how we existed.\nThrough four semesters abroad, one semester away and 10 summer sessions collectively, we have stayed closest to the people we always knew.\nAnd though we're as colloquial as any eight people from six different states can be, we each have our own soundtrack.\n"Let's listen to a mix guys," said Jamie from Toby's back seat halfway to Memphis. \nJamie and Stacey had spent the night before creating six mixes from some of their favorite traveling songs. It was hard for both of them to narrow down their volumes of music into only one small case. They like all kinds of music though they'll always bring a Phish album along.\nPhish and the guys on this trip don't mix. They like their songs to end -- at some point.\n"Who sings this song?" asked Jamie, hoping she'd catch the boys, specifically me, in a sinful realization. It was obviously Phish. And it wasn't going over well.\n"What album is this from?" I asked Toby.\n"Like I know."\nMakes sense. Toby's car is littered with CDs of his own. They're hidden in crevices and every other empty space in his car arranged in a system that only Toby can decipher. When he wants to hear a song, whatever the band, he usually knows which pile to rifle through. It's organized chaos.\nLuke's CDs are completely different. Tucked away inside a black case inside a retro-green briefcase, Luke's music is always a tidy collection that coincides with current taste. He hand-selected them from his milk crates of music back home.\nHe remembered all of his favorites -- The Dismemberment Plan, Sparta and The Ramones.\nBut there was one CD missing -- the one that means the most. \nRead Chapter 3, All The Action, Monday
(04/10/03 5:43am)
There must be 50 ways out of Bloomington, but an hour into their spring break trip, eight IU students hadn't found any yet.\nInstead they sat in two cars at an east side gas station wondering.\n"Where are we going?" asked Luke Hobson, a 21-year-old scraggly would-be rock star.\nIt was getting on 9:30 a.m. The answer of course was Memphis, Tenn.\nTwenty minutes before though, it was Nashville.\nDestinations changed when the map said it would be easier to go straight to Memphis. Nashville was more suited for a stop over on the way home.\nFine, Memphis. But how?\nThere were two cars on this 1,700-mile trip, but only one map.\nThe map showed the way. Those in possession took the lead. Those trailing scratched their head.\nShortly before 10 a.m., the caravan had sprawled out of Bloomington on its way to Nashville MEMPHIS.\nIn the second car Luke sat beside Toby Van Kleeck, who drove the whole way in his 1997 gold Honda Accord. Driving's not a problem for Toby, who's racked up thousands of miles, hundreds of dollars in speeding tickets and one major car accident visiting his girlfriend in Virginia.\nYou can say he's an expert -- despite being legally blind in his left eye.\nAnd to Toby, this rural route through southern Indiana's two-lane roads that intersect in fields and stop at deer crossings doesn't make sense.\n"I always prefer taking main roads to smaller roads," said Toby, who breaks up his drive by banging on his legs. He's a drummer, not spastic. "It may look longer on a map, but most times its quicker and easier."\n"Then why are we going this way?" asked Luke, gesturing his hand down the windy rural route. His left pinky is inside a brace. He broke it the other day playing basketball.\n"Hey buddy, I'm not leading," Toby said. "And I don't have the map."\nToby is a left-handed, pale-skinned, 21-year-old who graduates in May (though the actual diploma comes in August). He wears old oversized silver circular glasses held together by wire that turn anyone else's face into a caricature, but are fine on Toby.\n"Whenever I see somebody else with my glasses on, I think, 'What kind of dork wears them,'" Toby said. "Then I realize, 'Oh yeah, me.'"\nIt was nearing 11 a.m., and no interstate was in sight.\nMemphis was still hours away, and Toby and Luke weren't sure they were getting any closer.\nThe cars stopped in tiny Bloomfield, Ind., short of the center of town and pulled side-by-side in a strip-mall parking lot.\n"We're lost," Luke said.\nRead Chapter 2: The Mixes of Life, Friday
(04/09/03 5:06am)
This story is about a typical spring break for eight IU should-be seniors. But the story is anything but typical. Somewhere between the drinking, drama and destruction that is the midpoint of a student's spring semester, is something more . . . well, human.\nBehind the late nights and early morning pain killer conventions rests life -- the inevitable metamorphosis that awaits all eight. One year from now, they will be scattered across the country doing something -- the word something was used deliberately. Today, they wonder where and what.\nNo one can explain it to them. No words act as comfort.\nEight seniors drove south for a week, the last time they'll be together without the commitments that await. The worries about those responsibilities were already there.\nYet through the haze of a secluded student on a sensational spring break rose new concerns -- their rest was another's war. Basketball games and Mardi Gras beads and the most soothing soul music couldn't block out images of bombs, defiance and hostility happening half a world away.\nEven in eyesight were powerful protests and patriotic symbols.\nThere was no hiding from the future anymore.\nAnd one couldn't help but wonder, what's next?
(02/05/03 4:20pm)
MITCHELL, Ind. -- It's easy to miss this one stoplight town without the stoplight, 25 miles south of Bloomington. And it's even easier to stick out if you don't belong.\nIn this town of two barbershop chairs, but only one barber, secrets are never safe. Families take up blocks.\nAnd everyone has a Gus Grissom story.\nGrissom is the town's favored son and a national hero -- the second American in space and the first to leave Earth twice.\nOver the past 36 years, after Grissom died in America's race to put a man on the moon, most people have forgotten about Mitchell. But there have been moments. The Challenger's explosion in 1986 and the resurrection of Grissom's first space capsule in 1999 both put Mitchell, population 4,567, back on the map.\nFor a while, anyway.\nNow little Mitchell is back again after last Saturday's explosion of the shuttle Columbia over Texas. "Everyone's been calling," said Brandt Baughman, the assistant manager of Spring Mill State Park, the home of Grissom's memorial museum.\nBut even that won't last long.\nWhat has, is a small town's enduring love for the man who made it known.\nWHAT'S THE 'I' STAND FOR ANYWAY?\nLocal kids grow up on Virgil I. Grissom. A group from Mitchell Head Start was touring the three-room memorial museum Tuesday morning while a 39-year-old remembered aloud at the local barbershop the lessons he learned at Mitchell's high school.\n"They spend three or four days on Grissom," said Jeffrey Ray, sinking into Charlie White's chair three blocks from Grissom's boyhood home. "They have lots of stuff to show you. They seemed to focus on the space program."\nAt Spring Mill State Park, 25 toddlers ran around the museum while teachers taught them about Grissom's legacy. The first stop was his Gemini spacesuit, which circled Earth three times in five hours. The spacesuit indicated Grissom's small stature.\nEveryone called Grissom humble.\nBut the man was also small, 5 feet 7 inches, 155 pounds.\n"That's what NASA wanted," Baughman said. "If you look at the capsule, you can tell it wasn't meant for big men."\nSherri Lashlee and the other teachers at the Head Start had been teaching a space unit in class. Their visit to the memorial was planned weeks ahead of time. It was coincidence that journalists and pre-schoolers met Tuesday, days after a national tragedy.\n"We had the entire room decorated with space ships. The kids were so excited to come," said Lashlee, helping kids get a better look at the museum's second major attraction, the Molly Brown capsule Grissom used in the Gemini III mission. "It's a great chance to learn firsthand about a very important man that we all know."\nSome things, however, remain clearer than others:\n"Do you know what the 'I' stands for?" Ray asked.\n"I don't know," said White, a barber for 43 years, ready to take his clippers to Ray's scalp.\n"Me neither," Ray answered. "Mr. Smeltz found out, but I don't know what it was. He had to research it."\nLITTLE TOWN, LONG BLOODLINES\nCharlie White never really knew Grissom. But the two were related. \nSame for Khris Baker, he said sipping on coffee at the Old Mill Cafe before a trip to the doctor's office with his wife, Donna.\n"He's my mom's second cousin," said Baker, quick to add he went to high school with another famous Hoosier, John Mellencamp. "As a kid I'd watch the takeoffs, you know, because it's my mom's relative."\nWhite's link to Grissom is slightly more removed -- he's related to Grissom through White's step-grandfather. "It's not much to speak of."\nWhite's barbershop sits two blocks from Grissom Avenue, a quarter mile from Grissom's childhood home and a few more yards from the Grissom Monument next to the Municipal Hall building. Everything Mitchell is Grissom. \n"I've only been here three and a half years, but I can see just how proud this town is of him," said Terry Malcheski, owner of the Old Mill Cafe.\nThe museum sees 150,000 visitors each year, most coming from Indiana and surrounding states. It's currently seeking funds to upgrade its facilities, most of which haven't been altered since the museum opened in 1971, Brandt Baughman said.\n"He's very much a hero in the town," Baughman said. "Everyone has a connection."\nAlmost.\nSherri Lashlee father's drove the Molly Brown capsule to the Mitchell museum.\nMitchell resident Don Forbes learned to fly after watching Grissom fly in outer space.\nTerry McPherson doesn't understand all the fuss.\n"Big deal," McPherson said. "They should scrap the whole thing. It's unbelievable the amount of money they're spending. If the good Lord meant to put men on the moon, that's exactly where he would have put them."\nBut in a town were moon dreams aren't so unrealistic, McPherson is in the minority. Mitchell residents love everything astronaut.\nStarting with a little guy from a little town: Virgil I. Grissom.\nOh, and the "I" -- it stands for Ivan.
(01/30/03 6:46pm)
IU's 4,500 international students are now being monitored by a government computer program designed to protect Americans from attacks against foreign terrorists studying in the United States.\nThe creation of SEVIS, a single system nationwide that monitors all of America's 74,000 international students, was part of Congress' response to the Sept. 11 attacks. Two of the hijackers entered the country on student visas.\nUniversities were expected to comply Thursday or lose the ability to admit international students, but the INS extended the deadline to Feb. 15 this morning amid technical concerns.\nLynn Schoch, the associate director of the office of international services, said IU went online with the new program, monitored by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, last week.\nUniversity spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said IU already had systems in place to make the transition smoother than at many other institutions.\n"We had been prepared to meet the deadlines and comply," Jankowski said, adding the University already had its own system to collect information on IU international students.\nIU, along with a host of major universities consisting of thousands of international students, have encountered glitches with SEVIS in a rush to get universities to meet the Jan. 30 deadline.\n"With so many schools suddenly approved in the last week, we're all trying to work with the real-time interface," Schoch said of the Web-based program. "Sometimes, it will take hours, then the pages will lock. Then it will take five minutes to save a page and move on. These are bugs to be sorted out. The INS is working through them."\nIU's international population might not immediately realize the effects of the new system, but the repercussions of a small misstep are drastic.\nAny violation of the terms could result in deportation of the student.\nThe new system does not include policy changes, according to the INS. International students must be full-time students at a U.S. institution and be limited to a 20-hour per week on-campus job, among a host of other regulations.\nBut SEVIS, which stands for Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, is a means to enforce the INS rules under a strict zero-tolerance policy. \nFor instance, if a student taking 14 credit hours drops a class without approval from the Office of International Studies, they could be deported for losing their full-time student status. The same goes with an off-campus job without the proper paperwork.\nSchoch likens SEVIS to a credit agency.\nAnything inputted into the system stays on file forever. \n"We have a very powerful capacity to destroy someone's 'credit', so to speak," Schoch said. "So we, and students, need to be very careful."\n"Where I find myself getting upset is with the notion that everything has to be a certain way. That if there are mistakes made, it is the students fault," Schoch said. "They should be here for what they are here for, to learn -- not how to learn how to run their immigration records."\nInternational students who renew their I-20 visa -- their document authorizing entrance into the country -- will be inputted into the new system. The Office of International Services has until Aug. 1 to re-issue new I-20s from the SEVIS system for all international students, whether or not it has expired.\nSchoch said the new I-20 will be more efficient for students re-entering the United States after trips home because they will include a scannable bar code.\n"It will definitely speed up the process for students at the border," Schoch said. "They won't have to deal with stamps and paperwork. They'll just scan their I-20."\nDietrich Willke, Union Board vice president and a German with Brazilian residency, said the new regulations won't stop terrorists from entering the country. It will, however, keep some international students from making ends meet, Willke said.\n"It creates hassle and creates problems," Willke said. "The reason there are some people working more hours is because they need the money to live here. But they're still good people. And they will not catch the people they intend to"
(01/25/03 4:55am)
Students' minds worked overtime Thursday morning.\nWhen their alarm clocks went off, awakening them to another day of whipping winds, snowy sidewalks and freezer-like conditions, decisions had to be made.\nHere's how mine went:\nBuzz. Click. Snore.\nI went back to bed. Hope you did too.\nThe local Bloomington school system had two-hour delays to avoid the teeth-tickling temperatures. I decided to take one as well.\nNow, I'm not blaming the University for making us trudge to class worrying what color our appendages would be while faculty and administrators drive their foreign sedans with heated seats to their cushy parking spots feet from their office.\nI'm not blaming them.\nBut I am blaming Canada.\nIt's their air. It's their cold. \nAnd like a Celine Dion song, they can keep it.\nEverything in America is shivering right now thanks to Canada's most-recent ice invasion. There's no escape. Atlanta's 9 degrees. Jackson, Mississippi isn't much better. \nEven Florida's endangered manatees are in trouble. If the sea waters off the gulf coast stay below 68 degrees for a prolonged period of time the results for these teeming piles of blubber can be deadly.\nAttacking manatees, eh? Now that's just wrong.\nBut it doesn't stop there. The headlines running across the country offer a taste of the destruction from this most recent cold spell. Gas prices are rising. Water pipes are freezing. Shelters are over-crowded. Your pets aren't safe. Neither are your plants. Neither are you.\nSomewhere I can see Alan Thicke laughing bundled in a Gortex parka. The Canadian cold is running amok. \nAnd there's another three days to go.\nWhy won't you leave us alone Canada? \nWe don't need another reason to skip class.\nWe already have plenty.
(01/14/03 11:11am)
The man credited with developing a strategic plan for a Detroit metro school was picked Monday to run IU's Indianapolis campus.\nCharles R. Bantz, the provost at Wayne State University was named IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis' next chancellor. His appointment, which would start June 1, still must be approved by the IU board of trustees at its next meeting later this month.\n"I really like the challenges and richness of an urban university," Bantz said. "IUPUI is known nationally for student assessment, student achievement, and stellar research in some areas."\nBantz replaces Gerald Bepko, the retiring chancellor who is currently serving as the University's interim president. In accepting the recommendation from a 30-member search committee, Bepko said Monday that Bantz's work at Wayne State makes him particularly attractive for the Indianapolis job.\n"Based on the report of the search committee, discussions with University leaders who participated in the search process and my meetings with Charles, I am confident he is the right person for the job," Bepko said.\nBantz will encounter a student body similar to the one he leads as Wayne State's top academic administrator and one vastly different than the Bloomington populace. Like Wayne State and most urban schools, IUPUI has more non-traditional students, including commuter students, working students and professional school students.\nHe said he will continue to push IUPUI's Life Science Initiative as well as expanding its development in technology and medical research.\n"I like to work from data. I do a lot of listening. And then I like to put things to motion," said Bantz, who will make several trips to Indianapolis before June. "Once I'm there, there will be some things to move on much quicker than others, including the bi-annual budget, which we'll have to turn around pretty quick. But most of it will be continuing Jerry's vision while seeing where we can even be greater."\nUpon arrival, Bantz will enter a statewide brawl for public dollars.\nIU and the Indiana State Legislature have been in a fight for public funds over the past two years. IU says the money represents an invaluable investment, while the state is desperate to save wherever it can during a difficult financial period. \nBantz is ready to talk to whoever will listen, though he realizes the severity of the state's situation.\n"If times are tough enough, no argument is good enough," Bantz said. "In those circumstances, I try to consult widely and protect the core parts of the University and improve efficiency to the degree you can." \nBantz was selected after a semester-long search that included more than 100 candidates. The search, chaired by John Walda, IU's executive director for federal relations and corporate partnerships and the former president of the trustees, was completely confidential. Walda, and the committee's vice chair, IUPUI Nursing Dean Angela McBride, were travelling and unavailable for comment.\nIn speaking to the Wayne State faculty Monday, Wayne State President Irvin D. Reid said that Bantz, who has been at Wayne State since August 2000, will be difficult to replace. \n"We will miss Charles, but recognize that the opportunity to lead an urban research campus is unique and one for which he is particularly well qualified," Reid said. "I will miss his advocacy of faculty, staff, students, and alumni, his effective leadership as chief academic officer of the University, as well as his enthusiasm for university partnerships with a variety of entities in Detroit."\nBantz's wife Sandra Petronio, will accompany him to IUPUI and will become a faculty member in the Department of Communication Studies at IUPUI and join the Center on Bioethics at the IU School of Medicine. She worked with Bantz in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University.\nBantz was previously the vice provost and director of university continuous improvement at Arizona State University. Bantz had also been the chair of the Department of Communication at Arizona State and has been a faculty member at Arizona State, the University of Minnesota and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
(01/13/03 7:25pm)
The man credited with developing a strategic plan for a Detroit metro school was picked Monday to run IU's Indianapolis campus.\nCharles R. Bantz, the provost at Wayne State University was named IU-Purdue University at Indianapolis' next chancellor. His appointment, which would start June 1, still must be approved by the IU board of trustees at its next meeting later this month.\n"I really like the challenges and richness of an urban university," Bantz said. "IUPUI is known nationally for student assessment, student achievement, and stellar research in some areas."\nBantz replaces Gerald Bepko, the retiring chancellor who is currently serving as the University's interim president. In accepting the recommendation from a 30-member search committee, Bepko said Monday that Bantz's work at Wayne State makes him particularly attractive for the Indianapolis job.\n"Based on the report of the search committee, discussions with University leaders who participated in the search process and my meetings with Charles, I am confident he is the right person for the job," Bepko said.\nBantz will encounter a student body similar to the one he leads as Wayne State's top academic administrator and one vastly different than the Bloomington populous. Like Wayne State and most urban schools, IUPUI has more non-traditional students, including commuter students, working students and professional school students.\nHe said he will continue to push IUPUI's Life Science Initiative as well as expanding its development in technology and medical research.\n"I like to work from data. I do a lot of listening. And then I like to put things to motion," said Bantz, who will make several trips to Indianapolis before June. "Once I'm there, there will be some things to move on much quicker than others, including the bi-annual budget, which we'll have to turn around pretty quick. But most of it will be continuing Jerry's vision while seeing where we can even be greater."\nUpon arrival, Bantz will enter a statewide brawl for public dollars.\nIU and the Indiana State Legislature have been in a fight for public funds over the past two years. IU says the money represents an invaluable investment while the state is desperate to save wherever it can during a difficult financial period. \nBantz is ready to talk to whoever will listen, though he realizes the severity of the state's situation.\n"If times are tough enough, no argument is good enough," Bantz said. "In those circumstances, I try to consult widely and protect the core parts of the University and improve efficiency to the degree you can." \nBantz was selected after a semester-long search that included more than 100 candidates. The search, chaired by John Walda, IU's executive director for federal relations and corporate partnerships and the former president of the trustees, was completely confidential. Walda, along with the committee's vice chair, IUPUI Nursing Dean Angela McBride were travelling and unavailable for comment.\nIn speaking to the Wayne State faculty Monday, Wayne State President Irvin D. Reid said that Bantz, who has been at Wayne State since August 2000, will be difficult to replace. \n"We will miss Charles, but recognize that the opportunity to lead an urban research campus is unique and one for which he is particularly well qualified," Reid said. "I will miss his advocacy of faculty, staff, students, and alumni, his effective leadership as chief academic officer of the University, as well as his enthusiasm for university partnerships with a variety of entities in Detroit."\nBantz's wife Sandra Petronio, will accompany him to IUPUI and will become a faculty member in the Department of Communication Studies at IUPUI and join the Center on Bioethics at the IU School of Medicine. She worked with Bantz in the Department of Communication at Wayne State University.\nBantz was previously the vice provost and director of university continuous improvement at Arizona State University. Bantz had also been the chair of the Department of Communication at Arizona State and has been a faculty member at Arizona State, the University of Minnesota and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
(10/24/02 6:44am)
These days, you can find anything on TV.\nStarting Friday, that includes the Indiana Daily Student.\nToday, the IDS launches a partnership with WTIU News Forum, a Friday evening student-run news show. As partners, we'll be sharing ideas and resources. \nYou can already see the results on today's Page One, where Bennett Haeberle's video-capture packages the IDS' coverage on an adult video filmed on campus. Haeberle, who is also an IDS campus editor, will report more on IU's newest controversy on Friday's show.\nAlso, News Forum reporter Marisa Etter will examine the rising costs of textbooks for college students.\nOn Fridays, IDS reporters and editors will have their turn in front of the camera from the IDS newsroom to talk about stories we're developing for the following week.\nIt's all in an effort to give students the news they want, when they want it.\nThe show, WTIU News Forum, appears weekly at 6 p.m. on campus Channel 30 and Insight cable Channel 5.
(10/22/02 6:44am)
Friday's editorial "'Work hard' needs work" criticized members of the IU Student Association for not doing its research. \nToday, we need to apply the same criticism to the Indiana Daily Student. \nThe editorial asked IUSA to collect hard facts before making big promises. To their credit, the student group had the numbers and even submitted them to the IDS to better stake their claim. But Friday's opinion was written without that information.\nThe cost of keeping the undergraduate side of the Main Library open until 2 a.m. Sunday-Thursday is $500, student body vice president Judd Arnold said in an e-mail to the IDS Oct. 10. That information was missing from the editorial. The information was also missing from the editorial board meeting that decided Friday's staff opinion.\nWe regret the oversight.
(09/24/02 6:02am)
Today, the Indiana Daily Student is growing.\nIf you've checked our Web site, www.idsnews.com, in the past week, you were tipped off. But if you didn't see the addition to our site, it's now in print.\nToday we launch what is believed to be the first collegiate business section in the country, according to the Associated Collegiate Press.\nAnd what better place to start the dispersal of business news than at IU.\nOur Kelley School of Business is continually ranked among the nation's best and has proven to be an incubator for tomorrow's business leaders. Our School of Public and Environmental Affairs is a landmark as well. IDS columnist Katie Flege told us yesterday it ranks as the nation's third graduate program in its field.\nBusiness professionals litter the Bloomington campus, whether it's Web developers or two guys selling 'No. 1 Party School' T-shirts on a Kirkwood street corner.\nThese stories are theirs.\nAnd what better time to bring business news to IU students.\nWith the fall of corporate giants and the rising fog on Wall Street, business news has peaked in an interest across America.\nWe expect no different on the Bloomington campus.\nThe weekly section debuts today on Page 9.