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(05/13/10 12:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Chegg, called the “Netflix of book rental,” launched a buyback campaign Wednesday for students looking to sell their used books, said Tina Couch, vice president of public relations at the online company.“Students are graduating, and they’ve got these books,” she said. “We’re trying to encourage students to use Chegg to sell textbooks because we pay top dollar. We pay about $40 per book.”Through the campaign, Couch said students can check the “Sell textbooks” tab on the website’s home page, http://www.chegg.com, to see if a book they want to sell will be accepted by the site.“We have a list of preferred books,” she said. “But the trick is to check ‘Sell your books’ to see if your book is one that we’re looking for. We have 4.2 million titles in our inventory.”By looking under the “Sell textbooks” tab, students can search the title of their book, the author’s name or the ISBN code to see if the website will buy their book, Couch said.The website will then show an estimate of how much Chegg will pay for the book. However, if a book is in poor condition, Couch said, the site will pay the student selling it less.“Once we get it, we’ll assess it to see what kind of condition it’s in,” Couch said.To promote the campaign, Couch said Chegg has joined with Ashton Kutcher’s social media company, Katalyst, to create a viral web series. It will focus on how students find ways to make money, such as donating blood or collecting cans. “Instead of all those crazy things, you guys should just sell your books back to us,” Couch said. The videos are on YouTube on Chegg’s channel, she said. The company wants to use the videos to reach its target audience, Couch said, It will also serve as serve as a completely different way to get the word out about the buyback campaign. “A secondary reason is that we think it’s funny all the different ways that students try to get cash,” Couch said. “So we use the videos to kind of spoof them. You very simply could have sold your book back.”
(04/26/10 1:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Although many people in America cannot relate to the water shortages or the AIDS epidemic that afflict many African nations, alumna Nicole Moody said she believes everyone shares a universal sense of pain and loss.“There are so many things that we could be giving our time and money to,” she said. “We want to show Americans, not only can you do it here, but you can then provide some sort of care to Africans.”Moody created a project through the IU Christian Student Fellowship called Ordinary Theater, a group that brings original plays dealing with current cultural issues to Bloomington.Each year, the IU Christian Student Fellowship raises money for the Blood:Water Mission, she said, and this year the Ordinary Theater is getting involved and created Blood:Water Experience, an event that will take place today. The Blood:Water Mission provides clean wells and medical expertise to areas of sub-Sahara Africa, Moody said. “In the past at least seven years we have been supporting the mission,” she said. “The mission teaches how to build wells. You need $3,000 to build a well.”The first element of the event is a 45-minute drama telling the story of a young American woman dealing with the loss of someone important to her, Moody said.“The purpose of the play is to show a connection between the African situation and the American situation,” she said. “Then we want to transition into empowering you to do something.”After the play, visitors will walk into a separate area that will have different displays showing life in Africa, Moody said. There will be photographs and documentary films as well as shacks exhibiting photographs and different spices and smells. The final section of the experience is a water walk, Moody said.“We mapped out a track so people get the feel of what it feels like for an African to walk if they didn’t have a well in their village,” she said. “There’s also a description of what water looks like and where they’ve been getting it from.”Junior Noelle Krupski, in charge of publicity for the event, said she hopes the experience will educate people on the situation in Africa.“I think people just don’t know about what’s going on over there,” she said. “We’re in America, and we can’t relate to that as much. But the cool thing about the mission is they’re about empowering people over there.”Most of the materials used in the exhibit were donated, Krupski said.“People were definitely willing,” she said. “Nicole knew a lot of people in the community and just started contacting them. It’s really cool to see how it’s come together. If we can get 500 people there at the $5 ticket price, we can build one well. They give clean drinking water to thousands of people.”
(04/19/10 3:52am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It was a clear choice for Greg Kennedy to take up the game of chess after driving his younger brother to several tournaments. Kennedy, a Franklin resident, began playing in 1982. After a 14-year break, he returned to the game when a tournament director in Indianapolis dragged him back into competition.Kennedy, ranked 2,100 by the United States Chess Federation, along with 25 other chess players, gathered at the Kelley School of Business on Saturday to compete in the IU Hoosier Open.“At the kind of tournaments I play, I’m expected to win,” Kennedy said. “If I don’t win, I fail. But there’s no guarantee that I’m going to win.”Junior Tony Howell, president of the IU Chess Club, said the tournament was open to all ages and the games were determined by rating.“There are amazing 8-year-olds that can overplay someone who’s 40,” he said. “We try and be as accepting as possible.”Connor True, an 11-year-old Bloomington resident, said he has been playing chess for around five years. “My school got three chess boards, so me and my friends started playing,” he said.In his first match, True played an opponent significantly older than himself.“I lost,” he said. “He had a much higher ranking, but he took his moves very slowly so I thought I could beat him by making mine fast. But he still had 10 minutes left.”Howell said he hopes the tournament will become an annual competition. “I’m really happy with this turn-out,” he said. “It draws everyone together, and it’s a good way for people to get their chess out.”Each person in the tournament received the opportunity to play five games, Howell said. The competition was based on a point system: Each win earned one point, a draw earned half of a point and a loss earned zero points. The games were based on 30-minute play, Howell said, where each player gets 30 minutes to make his moves. The maximum time limit a game can last is 70 minutes, he said.“Most matches can last up to four hours,” Howell said. “But you’re constantly concentrating the entire time so it goes by fast.”Sophomore Ari Terjanian, treasurer of the IU Chess Club, said he has been playing for six years. Terjanian was the third highest ranked player in the tournament but lost his first game to Kennedy.“It’s a challenging game,” Terjanian said. “A battle of the egos. You try and force your will upon your opponent. Sometimes it doesn’t work, obviously.”Though Terjanian said it was possible for him to tie for first place, at the end of the day Kennedy took home the prize.
(04/16/10 2:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>In a dimly lit room with a projection screen illuminating a patch of the wall above a microphone, more than 30 people gathered around circular tables to discuss God’s connection to their real-life experiences. The Canvas meets in a room in First Christian Church on Kirkwood Avenue every Wednesday night, but this night’s meeting was different. Will Reed’s brother requested he tell the story of his call by God to work on community development in Nigeria, and the group had a surprise for him. Reed, an IU alumnus, said he was raised in Bloomington and played soccer in high school, but he felt like God was calling him to do something more. On a trip to Mexico, he met his now-wife, Theresa. “She said she wants to be a teacher and would love to be called into a mission field,” Reed said. “We felt called to get married in college when she was between her sophomore and junior year. We needed to have two years of marriage for whatever’s next.”Reed said he found out about Back 2 Back Ministries through his youth pastors at IU, Todd and Beth Guckenberger. After talking to the director of the group in Nigeria, Reed said the director told him the opportunities for the two work areas he and his wife want to do are in Nigeria. While living in the country, Reed said he will work with the orphans living on the streets of Nigeria. “To meet the need of an orphan in Nigeria is different than other countries,” he said. “The kids are living on the streets or in a village. They don’t have an orphanage to go to. The idea is self-sustainable, to have the community take care of the orphan.” The couple visited the country last October for five days, Reed said. “It was a heck of a trip,” he said. “We met with the staff and they gave us an idea of what life would be like.”On a Thursday night of their visit, Reed said he and Theresa had dinner with a Nigerian couple. Their hosts made fun of the ministry director for getting arrested on “Sanitation Saturday,” a day when the government requires everyone to burn their trash and clean their homes until 10:30 a.m. “They asked us if we had been arrested on our first visit to the country, would we still want to work there?” Reed said. “They asked if we knew there was so much poverty and needing. But of course there’s need. We wouldn’t go otherwise.” Reed said he and Theresa hope to leave for Nigeria in September.“We made a minimum commitment of three years,” he said. “But for us it’s indefinitely.”Near the end of the night, Giff Reed, Will’s brother and the director of the Canvas, and other members of the group took off their sweatshirts to reveal T-shirts advocating Will’s trip to Jos, Nigeria. Members of the Canvas sold the shirts, designed by Reed’s brother-in-law, in an effort to raise money for Will’s move. “We’re raising our own salary,” Reed said. “Currently we have just over 40 percent of our monthly support. This is huge. The fact that people get something while giving us something, it’s extremely encouraging.”Sophomore Alena Degrado said she feels like college students are looking to plug into something that’s bigger than just IU. “It’s a way to get connected when you normally couldn’t in Midwest, U.S.A.,” she said.The group has sold 50 or 60 shirts so far, Giff said, and will continue to sell them until Wednesday. After his speech, Reed told the members of the audience, “Don’t underestimate this time. It felt like college was a waiting period for me, but through different experiences, God was instilling something deeper in my heart. A lot of times the things we’re passionate about are the things that God wants us to live out. Don’t underestimate the power that he had to be in your life right now.”
(04/07/10 8:02pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The concept of walking around campus for an entire day without shoes did not fully cross junior Emily Nicholls’ mind until a couple of days before.“I think I didn’t realize how bad it’s going to be,” she said. “It’s really not very nice ground in some places.”Nicholls, along with other members of the TOMS Shoes Club IU, are participating in Thursday’s all-day event “One Day Without Shoes.” To raise awareness for the day, the club is holding a barefoot walk around campus at 6 p.m. Thursday beginning at the Sample Gates, said senior Erica Schori. “I’m really not quite sure how many people will come,” she said. “We created a Facebook event, and we also have an event page on TOMS Web site. I’m hoping 30 people show up. I’m shooting low.”Nicholls said one of the reasons behind the campus walk is so that if people feel uncomfortable walking barefoot by themselves, they can join others doing the same thing. Set up by TOMS Shoes, the company uses its Web site to ask people to “go the day, part of the day or even just a few minutes barefoot to experience a life without shoes first-hand, and to help spread awareness of the impact a simple pair of shoes can bring to a child’s life.”“I’ll be going all day,” Nicholls said. “I’ll put on shoes if someone tells me I have to. I know in Jordan (Hall) you have to have shoes on, but I’ll take them off again.”Nicholls said she and a few others are painting their feet in hopes of getting people to question and ask them about the cause.“I want the right amount of attention,” she said. “I don’t want it to look like a protest. But I think it’s definitely going to get a lot of people’s attention.”Schori said she hopes the day will raise awareness for the club and the entire movement.“Most people on campus have more than one pair of shoes,” she said. “We should be thankful for what we have and what we can do to help others.”
(04/02/10 3:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Najeeb Shafiq, assistant professor of education policy studies at IU, is not convinced that suicide bombings are attributable to a lack of income and education.Shafiq analyzed a 2005 public opinion survey detailing suicide bombings in relation to six predominantly Muslim countries. Along with Abdulkader Sinno, assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, he, published a study questioning the relationship between education and income levels and suicide bombings.“I was a little hesitant to write about it for a professional audience,” Shafiq said. “It was ambitious, but when you write these papers, you hope one person will read them. It’s humbling when there’s some interest.”Shafiq said a complex picture emerged from the study. The findings depended on two things, he said: the cultural differences of the countries and whether the bombings targeted innocent citizens from the Muslim countries or foreigners from America, Iraq or the Western world.“So what we think is happening is most people in the Muslim world view it as guerrilla warfare against foreigners,” he said. “Against citizens, it’s terrorism. We think the solution to that is much more complicated than just increasing education.” In one finding of the study, Shafiq said, was that educated and rich citizens tend to have stronger political and social opinions and are willing to protect those views by extreme methods.“Upon reading, what you find is the poor and less educated are too busy surviving to have strong political opinions,” he said. “If you ask a poor person in Arkansas what they think about Iraq, in all likelihood they’re not going to care very much.”Shafiq said dissatisfaction with government and foreign policy is often a motivation for the bombings. The more dissatisfied a person is in the government, he said, the more likely he or she will support suicide bombings.“We hope other people go out and confirm or check the robustness of our findings by looking at other data that’s emerging,” he said.“So far I think qualitative researchers and journalists only talk to people who try to blow themselves up or leaders of organizations or families of people who’ve been bombers,” he said. “But that’s missing part of the story. There’s a lot to be learned from going out and talking to ordinary men and women.”Shafiq said another purpose of the study was to reassess the curriculum of schools in the Muslim world. There is a rich history in the United States and other countries of conflict resolution education, he said, but over time, that aspect of education has gone away.“We encourage policy makers to look into the curriculum and look into incorporating peace education,” he said.
(03/10/10 1:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>During spring break in 1996, Dennis Bingham, associate professor of English and director of film studies at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, researched the biographical film “I Want to Live.” The movie told the story of a woman who was executed in California in 1955 and took the point of view that she was innocent, Bingham said.“That was the beginning of my research on biopics,” he said. “They’ve always interested me, and I was also fascinated by the idea that the genre is so looked down upon.”Bingham’s second book, “Whose Lives Are They Anyway?,” argues that biopics — or biographical films — should be classified as a genre. While there is not a particular look about biopics, as in western or science fiction films, Bingham said they have gone through changes like other genres.“There’s a certain kind of film I call ‘appropriation,’” he said. “It takes a celebratory film and tells the story of a counterculture person who never would have been celebrated in the old days.”Bingham also writes about gender roles in biopics. Beginning as a gender critic, Bingham said it seemed logical to look at the genre in terms of gender. He said he found that, starting in the 1930s and 1940s, many biopics were “great man” films that celebrated the lives of well-known men, such as Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln. “Culture was not comfortable with women in public roles,” he said. “What you get especially starting in the ’50s is just about the downward trajectory; the woman who gets in with the wrong man.”Until recently, Bingham said critics have not seen the biopic as a genre, and when it is considered a genre, the word is used in the negative sense.“It’s fascinating to look at promotion material and find the number of directors that deny that they’ve made a biopic, even though they have,” he said. “You’ve got a genre that’s so vibrant on one hand and yet so trashed on the other.”Because there was a run of biopics in 2009 that were flops in the box office for the most part, Bingham said critics saw the whole genre as “kaput.” Rather than trash the movies, he said, why not put a different set of criteria to them?“You won’t find a biopic that doesn’t have invention,” Bingham said. “If the film tells you a truth of the subject’s life, it probably has some worth to it.”However, many older biopics gave the idea that there was only one way of looking at a person’s life, Bingham said. Depending on who made the film, viewers were offered different perspectives that may or may not have been historically correct, he said.“Maybe there’s no way to understand a person’s life,” Bingham said. “In good biopics, this is what we think we understand about this person, but the truth might still be out there.”Freshman Kandace Greene said she agrees with Bingham that biopics should be their own genre.“They all have similar characteristics,” she said. “In all genres, they share characteristics of that genre.”Graduate student Yesim Kaptan, however, said she has her doubts. Biopics are a combination of fact and fiction. While they are similar to documentaries, she said, movies claim more fiction than fact.“Maybe it’s a different category,” she said. “They’re not totally based on imagination. But the question, even in documentaries, is what is the percentage of how real it is?”
(03/09/10 4:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Standing next to her green bike, sophomore Jordan Fredericks watched six people holding homemade mallets cycle across the Wright Quad tennis court.She had never joined her friend, sophomore Tyler Brown, at bike polo before, and she wanted to watch before jumping in to play.“He’s probably been coming out for three months now,” she said. “And he wanted me to come with him, but I said ‘no, it’s way too cold.’ So since today’s the first nice day this year, I’ve decided to come out and join him — see what all the hype’s about.”On Monday and Thursday nights, Brown said students and Bloomington residents gather at the court to play the sport.“We’re disorganizedly organized,” he said. “Sometimes we start at 8, sometimes we start at 10.”The game is played with two teams of three, Brown said. The teams play the first to five goals or for 10 minutes with a standard roller-hockey ball, he said. If any part of a player besides his or her bike or mallet touches the ground, the player has to touch one of the poles in the middle of the court before continuing to play.Senior Travis Davies said he began playing in late September.“I was really late compared to some of the earlier people,” he said. “But long enough to love it.”Davies said last summer was the first time he heard bike polo was played in Bloomington. Though the majority of the players are Bloomington residents, he said six or seven students play on a regular basis. When the weather warms up, Davies said he plans to start advocating to the University to get more students involved.“We were going to try to become a club sport,” he said. “But there’s so many rules through the University that we’re going to try to become a student organization to where we just get an account with the school and we can request space. There are a lot less rules for us, but we get to become a club officially.”To play bike polo, members first have to love riding a bike, Davies said. He said he began playing with the group one day when he rode past the court and players yelled for him to join.“So I just walked up here and started playing,” he said. “If you just like riding bikes or doing anything outside, you get to check people into the wall and fall off your bike and smack a ball into a goal once in a while. It’s a very good stress relief. And you get to wreck a lot, it’s fun.”Brown said not many serious injuries have occurred in the game so far. Neither he nor Davies has obtained major injuries.“I’ve injured people,” Davies said. “I have done that. I tried to kill a kid’s thumb, once. But, you know, he’s alive.”
(03/09/10 3:20am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What began as a small team of video-game enthusiasts has now become an immense Web site production team made up of nearly 80 members, said graduate student Andrew Benninghoff, executive creative director at GameZombie.tv. The site, which is also a student organization, originated from then-IU graduate student Spencer Striker’s project thesis, Benninghoff said.“It started off just being a Web site about a couple of guys who were in this narrative of a zombie apocalypse,” he said. “He and his friends would gather all the video games they had and hide in a video studio bunker and spend the rest of their lives broadcasting video game information through the TV to whoever may be alive.”As Striker finished up the master’s program, Benninghoff said the site, which includes video game-related short film series, interviews and news, began to grow. Now, the site has expanded to include teams made up of students and employees at IU and the University of Wisconsin, as well as a small management group in Los Angeles, Benninghoff said. The IU team, led by Benninghoff, is broken up into three sections: business, Web development and production. The team meets twice a week in IU classrooms to work on projects and discuss work to be done throughout the week, Benninghoff said.“Since it’s mostly student -run, we’re allowed to reserve rooms,” he said. “We’re allowed to reserve rooms with all of the computers and multimedia programs we need.”Besides the two meetings each week, Benninghoff said most students do their work for the site at home. When it comes to production, he said the process could take place anywhere — a studio, a street downtown or someone’s apartment. “Since we’re a Web site, we can function pretty much anywhere,” he said.Junior Lillian Feldman-Hill said she gets most of her work for the site done at the weekly meetings. “Most of my work gets done on GameZombie time,” she said. “I can’t do it at home because I do all the edits on expensive software. There’s a lot of business that goes on at the meetings also; it’s not just people sitting at their computers ignoring each other.”As a video “speed editor” for GameZombie, Feldman-Hill said she takes the B-roll video footage that the field team produces and edits it into a two- or three-minute interview or news story. Often, Feldman-Hill said she receives projects that do not have a lot of B-roll footage and provide her a challenge editing them.“It usually takes me a week or a week and a half to do a three-and-a-half minute interview,” she said. “I want to do editing professionally, so I tend to take it seriously.”Feldman-Hill said the two most important things for a telecommunications student trying to break into the film industry are networking opportunities and a student’s reel of work.“I can give employees my reel that has 10 or 12 videos already that have been approved by people that know what they’re talking about,” she said. “But reel is the second most important. Who you know is the single most important thing. The people I’m meeting, networking and the friendships that I’m making are beneficial in professional and nonprofessional ways.”Graduate student Casey Addy, lead web designer and user experience designer at GameZombie.tv, said other companies see the work that he does at the site as effective.“Gaming is popular,” he said. “And we’re able to utilize what’s popular. When people put their love and their whole soul into what they work on, it showcases their love for the company.”
(03/01/10 1:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Blobs of paint dotted a paper plate as freshman Madeline Hall dipped her paintbrush into the black, filling in an outline of a mustache on her pair of white TOMS shoes.“I used to watch Mitch Davis a lot on YouTube,” she said. “Whenever I’m in lack of ideas, I go to mustaches.”Hall and other members of the TOMS Shoes Club at IU decorated shoes and other items Friday at their Style Your Sole event.After Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS shoes, spoke at the “Check Your Label: Elements of Conscious Consumerism” series on Feb. 5, senior Erica Schori, co-founder of the club, said the group wanted to follow up with another event to bring in new members and raise awareness for the club.In 2006, Mycoskie started the company with a “one for one” mission. For each pair of shoes sold, one new pair would be donated to a child in need. “Everything that you buy from the company, they give a pair of shoes,” Schori said. “Everything they give is a pair that the kids need. Like in Ethiopia in the rainy season, they give them rain boots.”Schori said she and junior Emily Nicholls, co-founder of the club, applied on the TOMS shoes Web site to become campus representatives and received official recognition for the club by IU.For the Style Your Sole event, students ordered a pair of white shoes in advance and brought them to decorate, Nicholls said.“We wanted to bring out everyone’s artistic side,” Schori said. “You can decorate any way you want. I’m trying to paint ‘Starry Night’ on mine.”Brown and black paint covered freshman Chris Burke’s first pair of TOMS shoes. After hearing Mycoskie speak, Burke said he grasped the whole idea about the company’s cause.“I think it’s cool,” he said. “Even though it’s a for-profit organization, they’re giving back. I’m interested in it because I’m a non-profit major.”Burke said he was painting the pair of shoes “guitar style.”“I was a little nervous at first,” he said. “But they’re just going to get dirty anyway.”Freshman Kelly Fritz said she heard about the decorating through friends and decided to tag along.“Someone was like ‘free art supplies,’” she said. “I’m painting a peacock. Whenever I’m doodling, I always draw birds and things.”Though she had vaguely heard of the cause before, Fritz said the event and cause was “right up her alley.”“I think it’s a really good way to get the word out,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise, to be honest.”
(02/25/10 2:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As a trip leader for IU Outdoor Adventures, junior Jack Brumbaugh guides adventure troops, teaches classes through the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation and aids in outdoor safety.With the program’s move to Eigenmann Hall, Brumbaugh said there are more resources available for the trips because all of the equipment is in one area."Our office is somewhat legitimate now," he said. "The space is designed for us. It makes us feel like a real part of the University. And the boats aren’t in the boiler room anymore."Outdoor Adventures relocated from the Indiana Memorial Union to a space in Eigenmann at the beginning of the year and opened its doors to the public on Jan. 18, said Ginelle Heller, assistant program coordinator for Outdoor Adventures.“This space allows us to be much more efficient,” she said. “There’s space to extend retail operations.”One of the largest improvements, Heller said, is the “boat barn,” which is right next to the program’s office. At the location in the Union, boats were kept in the basement, and renters had to carry them up multiple flights of stairs.In addition to the boat room, the program’s space also now includes a food room, a lounge and classrooms, Heller said.“We used to do classes in the IMU in different rooms,” she said. “Or we would do them in our own space. It was just crowded. Now we have larger tables, more chairs, more room to spread out.”Kim Collins, assistant program coordinator for Outdoor Adventures, said the program recently directed a backpacking trip for 20 people.“There were 20 people in the food room learning how to pack food,” she said. “And there was plenty of room. Before, we could fit about four people in the food room.”The winter season is a slower period for Outdoor Adventures because people do not go outside as much, Heller said.“Generally we see less traffic,” she said. “So it’s hard to gauge if we’re doing better. It’s probably just about normal. But there is more curiosity about our space.”Collins said though her office is away from the front door, she has heard the doorbell go off “quite a bit.”“I think we’ve seen a number of people wander in the door,” she said. “But a lot of people can get right up to the door and see a lot; they don’t have to come in.”Brumbaugh said the move exceeded his expectations. He said he was worried about the logistics of the move, but it seems to be going well.“We were in a big transitional phase at the Union,” he said. “And we were growing too big for our space. We’re no longer getting hand-me-downs, which is exciting. It’s indicative of how successful our program is. We’re being rewarded for being bomber people.”
(02/11/10 5:08am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Hearing the stories of four high school students who faced deportation due to lack of proper immigration documentation affected sophomore Jennifer Cushenberry.“You never really know if the person sitting next to you is struggling with this situation,” she said. “And you might be complaining about ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this today.’ And they have to be ready to fight just to sit there and be where you are.”Cushenberry watched the documentary “Papers: Stories of Undocumented Youth” along with 20 other students Wednesday at the IU Maurer School of Law. The documentary, written and directed by Anne Galisky, told the stories of four students facing high school graduation without legal citizenship status. “It is a very powerful movie,” said Gerardo Lopez, assistant professor at the IU School of Education. “It looks at some of the real challenges kids are faced with. Often times we talk about immigration matters in the abstract. The movie put faces with those facing immigration challenges.”Lopez said he was asked to be a discussant for the movie. He and his wife recently published a book on the same topic, “Persistent Inequality,” and this was his first time viewing the documentary. Undocumented youth is one topic that not a lot of attention is paid to, Lopez said. Nationally it is on everyone’s mind right now, he said, and it is important to keep it on the forefront. “When you have a population not allowed to speak for themselves, you have to step up and help speak for them,” Lopez said. Graduation is a bittersweet moment for undocumented teens, Lopez said, and the documentary chose to tackle that area. After graduation, he said the students are faced with “what now?” In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented students should not be forced to pay an additional fee to attend public schools, Lopez said. But there is fear that the legislations will be overturned, he said.The documentary also touched on students’ fight for the government to pass the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The Act would provide some undocumented students full citizenship following completion of a college degree or two years of military service. “The DREAM Act got taken off the table due to market concerns,” Lopez said. “There are a lot of folks waiting to see what will happen in relation to the DREAM Act.”After viewing the documentary, sophomore Elizabeth Uduehi said she was amazed by one of the students’ situations.“He’s an AP Scholar,” she said. “And has all these different types of awards. He could find the cure for cancer or something. And I’m like, ‘We’re suppressing that because of paper?’”
(02/08/10 6:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The only football fan in his family, freshman Michael Brown had to fight with his sister for control of the television every Super Bowl Sunday. “She would want to watch a movie,” Brown said. “And I’d be like, ‘Mom, it’s the Super Bowl!’ ”Brown said he usually watches the game at home. This year, he watched it with his friends in the Wright Quad formal lounge with about 50 other students. “There’s a big projector,” he said. “It can actually accommodate all of us.”Growing up in Indianapolis, Brown said he has always been a fan of the Colts.Freshman Sylvia Tejchma said that, though she is a Colts fan, it was a big surprise to her that they made it to the Super Bowl. “They lost a pretty decent coach,” she said. “They got a brand new one. But they’ve reacted to it well.”Senior Jarrhod Johnson took the side of the New Orleans Saints, the Colt’s rivals. Johnson said he cheered for the Saints more so out of dislike for the Colts than devotion to the team. “I’m playing the devil’s advocate,” he said. “And I enjoy it. I enjoy screaming ‘Who dat!’ I’ll probably scream it again in about five seconds.”Instead of watching the game at home, Johnson joined more than 100 students at the Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union for the Union Board Super Bowl Party. Johnson said he went to support Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., one of the groups involved in planning the event.“Normally I just sit around at home,” he said. “I figured I’d switch it up. It’s 2010.”In an effort to collaborate with different organizations, junior Shannon Cook, outreach director for the Union Board, said the group asked Delta Sigma Theta and the Student Athletic Board to help arrange the Super Bowl screening. “It’s so students had a place to go,” she said. “We have a pretty diverse outcome. But I think we’ve got mostly Colt’s fans.”The boards advertised free food, expecting around 100 students to come out and watch, Cook said. However, the auditorium received more viewers than anticipated.“We ran out of food,” Cook said. “It obviously went fast.”First year master’s student Cynthia Bova said she does not own a television. During her college years, she said she watched the Super Bowl in her dorm. This year she lives in an apartment off campus and decided to give the Whittenberger a try after reading an advertisement for the party. A Colts fan like Brown, Bova said she has never lived in a state that has a winning team and still hasn’t. Bova said she is surprised by the Colt’s loss and expected the score to be closer. Though she is sad for her team, she said it is a good story for the Saints.“I’m sure New Orleans is happy,” she said. “But both teams played pretty well.”Sophomore Jeff Williams, student director for the Union Board, said he was cheering for a great game. “I’m from Indy,” he said. “But in my heart I’m rooting for the Saints for the story. New Orleans and all that it’s gone through – a win would be great for the city.”
(02/01/10 1:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>While in Chicago, graduate student Courtney Valerious was reading posts for jobs in Bloomington on craigslist and came across one that sounded interesting: biking passengers around the city.Valerious said she called the man who owns both the business and the bikes.“I left a message being like, ‘I’m your woman, seriously!’” she said.But Valerious is just one of the students at IU with a somewhat crazy job.Valerious works through an independent contract so the bikers pay a flat rate for the bike and keep the remaining profits, Valerious said. Valerious typically takes Saturday night shifts from 12 to 4 a.m. As a student and assistant coach for the IU women’s rowing team, the late shifts are the only times she said she can fit a job in.“Bar shifts range from Wednesday through Sunday nights,” she said. “I usually take turns swapping back and forth Saturday night with the other guys.”Valerious said she is the only girl in the business and is often mistaken for a guy. However, the owner told her there was a benefit.“Chris told me right off the bat that for some reason women always make more,” she said. “People see me sweating, especially guys, and they offer to get out and push. They see you working hard like that and people really appreciate it.”The job is a challenge, Valerious said. The bike is built for comfort, not speed, she said, and weighs a couple hundred pounds just by itself. “It looks like a circus on wheels,” she said.But when Valerious has a good night, she said it’s exciting.“In one night I was given a can of Spam, a bag of M&M’s and a teddy bear as tips,” she said. “I feel like every night something hysterical happens.”After nights with IU football games, Valerious said she “turns into a shovel,” going back and forth from the tailgating fields to the bars, and people usually end up fighting over her.“It’s usually pretty heartbreaking because you can only fit two people in the back,” she said. “I’ve had groups offer to hang and take their friends two at a time. But the busy nights are busy until at least 3 or 3:30 a.m. If you can go that long and stay busy, it’s usually a good night.”But some students work suppling food before or after others start their night.When an older member of Acacia asked his brothers if anyone wanted to fill a position as a busboy for Alpha Phi sorority, sophomore Matt Ahlberg said he was glad to take the job.“I only work two days a week, basically about four hours,” he said. “I figured it’s free food and extra money on the side.” The sorority hires a staff of seven or eight guys, Ahlberg said.“Working with the sorority, you get to know those girls,” he said. “And you can eat there whenever you want, basically. Living in a fraternity, you don’t get the best food ever. If Acacia has questionable food, I can walk over to Alpha Phi.”Ahlberg said he is saving money by not paying for meals some days. Working at the sorority, he makes the right amount of money so as not to dip into money saved up from the summer. The job is very lenient, Ahlberg said.“For Halloween formal we all dressed up,” he said. “Otherwise it’s not the most exciting job. ... I’ve never spilled on a girl or anything.”Junior Audrey Stone said she works the late shift twice a week at Jimmy John’s on Kirkwood. She said she does not get to pick her shifts, but doesn’t have class on Fridays and would stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. anyway.“It can be fun,” she said. “Tonight this really obnoxious girl was in here. She kept trying to give me a bracelet for day old bread then laughed for 20 minutes.”During her shift, Stone said people pass out frequently in the restaurant. One night, she said two girls tried to carry a friend and she wiped out in front of the door, forgot her shoes and lost her wallet.“The job’s really easy,” Stone said. “I know what I’m doing, and it can be fun.”
(01/26/10 4:58am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Being healthy is about moderation for freshman Quincy Masur. Masur has never tried a specific diet, such as Weight Watchers or the Atkins diet.Instead, she said she relies on making healthy choices when deciding which foods to eat and cutting out fried foods, fats and sugars.“I feel like a lot of diets take it to the extremes,” Masur said. “I try healthy eating habits instead of something ridiculous like the cabbage diet. When people have to count calories or weigh food, it’s not realistic.”A new research report titled “When weight management lasts: Lower perceived rule complexity increases adherence” looked at food decision-making and the complexity of two particular dietary measures, said Jutta Mata, a post-doctoral researcher at Stanford University.Mata said she proposed the study as part of her dissertation.Peter Todd, informatics professor at IU, and Sonia Lippke, assistant professor in the Department of Health Psychology at Free University of Berlin, assisted Mata in the study.“No one had ever looked at that subject before,” Mata said. “In dieting, you have rules; very explicit decision rules about eating. If you don’t try to control your intake, you eat whatever’s in front of you.”She said the researchers hypothesized that if people perceive a diet’s rules as less complex, they are more likely to stay on the diet.The study compared the dieting behavior of women following two different plans, Weight Watchers and Brigitte, and found the hypothesis to be correct, Mata said.The researchers recruited women on different diets from online discussion groups, Todd said.“The long-term success of different weight management programs should be measured not just in terms of direct weight loss, but also, as here, in terms of how long people stick to their program,” the report said. “Designing weight management rules that can be adhered to for a long period or an entire lifetime – including by making rules that are not perceived as being too complex – could help limit the spread of overweight and obesity.”While willpower by dieters plays an important role in the research, Mata said complexity of the diet is the main factor in how long a person will stick with it.When choosing a new diet, Mata said people should first look at the rules and think about how complicated they are.“If they already think the rules are complex, they shouldn’t go on that diet,” she said.Todd said the important thing is not just getting the weight off, but keeping it off. If a dieter quits early, he said, he or she is less likely to keep off the weight.“The next step would be to actually design some diets that have different complexities,” he said. “Then get people to follow the diets and see if they stick to them.”
(01/20/10 3:20am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Instead of waiting in endless lines at T.I.S Bookstore at the beginning of each semester behind other last-minute shoppers, freshman Meredith Grubbs said she chooses to buy her textbooks online. “I Google the ISB number, then buy the cheapest book,” she said. “I can compare them on the computer instead of going to different stores.” If she knows someone looking to buy a book she no longer needs, Grubbs said she can get more money by selling to another student instead of selling back to a store.Textyard.com, a Web site created by two IU students two years ago, offers students an easier way to buy and sell textbooks directly to each other, said junior Ben Greenberg, co-founder of Textyard. The site, which allows students to search for textbooks by class number, has recently expanded outside of Indiana to universities in Illinois and other surrounding states, he said.“Our plan is to be in most states around the country by next fall,” Greenberg said. “Right now, we’re expanding to all schools with more than 20,000 people that attend them.”When students use the site to search for books, Greenberg said they can also see Amazon prices.“Students save money either way,” he said.Last semester, Greenberg said about 300 people at IU and IU-Purdue University Indianapolis used the Web site, and he estimates that twice as many students use it currently.While the site currently only offers books to buy, Greenberg said they might look into adding rentals in the future.Freshman Tasha Dykes said she used the IU Bookstore to purchase her textbooks this semester, but next semester will be different. After hearing a friend tell her about Chegg.com, she said she has decided to try renting her books. “I’m not going to keep the books,” she said. “I’m not going to read them later. I know if I sell them back to the bookstore, I don’t get much money back.”Jeff Cohen, CEO of campusbooks.com, said the company launched textbookrenter.com, a textbook rental price comparison Web site, in November 2009.The site brings five rental Web sites to one location, he said, and helps students understand the policy of each company.“We felt students needed a place to understand the options available,” he said. “You can compare prices and conditions and can see what other people say about the companies as well.”Renting textbooks allows students to take the discount up front, Cohen said. However, it is not for everyone. Students who write or highlight obsessively in their textbooks might prefer to buy them, he said, as well as students who need the books for a subsequent semester.“I think we help explain the rental market,” Cohen said. “We help students decide to rent or buy. A rental company is trying to sell you their book. We provide an objective view.”Though there are many options online to rent or buy textbooks, freshman Amal Akbik said she finds using the bookstore easier.“I look them up online first,” she said. “If I can actually see the book, I know I’m getting the right one.”
(01/19/10 1:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s public broadcasting stations WFIU and WTIU are looking for ways to reduce expenses after becoming the latest victims of the state’s newest round of budget cuts.Due to a $1.6 million reduction announced Jan. 7, Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations will not receive their third or fourth quarter distributions from the state, totaling $200,000 for the IU stations. WFIU, IU’s public radio station, will lose $30,000 and WTIU, IU’s public television station, will lose $170,000.Perry Metz, general manager for Radio and Television Services, said both broadcasting stations will first look at reducing professional travel, limiting part-time employment, postponing equipment purchases and curtailing local productions to offset the budget cuts.“The stations have a large number of academic partnerships with schools on campus,” he said. “The cut limits what we can do to produce programming in cooperation with those schools.”The stations employ 75 to 100 students a year, Phil Meyer, station manager for WTIU, said. Though the number of students who volunteer or participate in a work-study program will not change, he said some part-time hours will be reduced.“When cutting more than $200,000 after the year is half over and most of the budget is in salaries, it calls into question how much of that we can do,” Metz said.Sophomore Robert Rossman, who began a work-study program at WFIU in September 2008, said opportunities for creative production will be lessened due to the cut.“The ability to do new, cool things will be limited,” he said. “And I would assume there might be less internships.”Christina Kuzmych, station manager and program director at WFIU, said if the cuts force the stations to cut back on full-time personnel, students who intern will fail to benefit from their teachings.“It has always been our philosophy to preserve as much as possible of our full-time staff,” she said. “If we start cutting the staff, we’ll have to start cutting local programs soon and then you don’t have a local radio station.“Public broadcasting is very important to the state of Indiana,” said Kuzmych. “More and more education is through the media.”Station employees understand the state’s budget problems; however, Kuzmych said it appears public broadcasting has been singled out in the cuts.“It looks like they proposed a 10 percent cut to other state agencies,” she said. “But at the same time they’re cutting public broadcasting 50 percent.”State support makes up 3 percent of WFIU’s funds. Kuzmych said the funds chiefly pay for coverage of news initiatives such as coverage of the 2008 presidential election in Indiana.Meyer said state support is higher at WTIU.“It has more impact on the TV side,” he said.State funding for WTIU helps sponsor their children’s series and outreach for day care providers, Meyer said. The funding goes toward helping children learn to read and do other activities related to the television shows, he said.In a February 2009 budget proposal by Daniels, he suggested zeroing out state funding of public broadcasting. But both legislative houses agreed they wanted to keep public broadcasting in the budget with relatively stable funding, Metz said.“If they cut our entire budget, it would surely impact what the public gets out of public radio and unduly deprive Indiana listeners from information they need to get,” Kuzmych said.
(12/14/09 3:51am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will speak to IU graduates at winter commencement about what they can accomplish through hard work and perseverance.The University will also present Gates, who earned a master’s degree from IU, with an honorary doctoral degree during the ceremony.“At commencement, oftentimes we get to bring back people who serve as an example of what people can achieve with an IU degree,” IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.The University Faculty Council established a policy used to govern who receives the degrees, said Erika Dowell, president of the Bloomington Faculty Council.According to the policy, “by awarding honorary degrees to women and men of such outstanding qualities, the University seeks to present to its several constituencies veritable models worthy of emulation and respect.” IU President Michael McRobbie likes for students to hear from the receiver of the honorary degree, MacIntyre said. He therefore invites the recipient of the degree to give the commencement address.“The council tends to nominate distinguished individuals, which would make them appropriate commencement speakers,” Dowell said.IU history professor David Ransel nominated Gates for the honorary degree.“The conferral of an honorary doctoral degree on Robert Gates would bring great credit and positive attention to Indiana University and its highly ranked programs in the Russian and East European Institute and the Department of History,” Ransel said in his nomination letter.Senior Miles Taylor worked in the Secretary of Defense office in the European/NATO section after his freshman year at IU.He said he saw Gates in meetings and events every few weeks.“It was very clear that Gates was a very deliberate man,” Taylor said. “He is a person who engages intimately with his job on both intelligent and emotional level.”Gates has served in his current office since Dec. 18, 2006, and is the first Secretary of Defense to retain his position for two presidential administrations.Gates, originally from Kansas, received a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, a master’s degree from IU and a doctorate from Georgetown University.While at IU, Gates was recruited by the CIA, where he worked for 27 years. He was on the National Security Council for nine years and served presidents from both political parties, according to a biography on the U.S. Department of Defense Web site. He served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 to 1993 and is the only career officer in the history of the CIA to rise from entry-level employee to director, according to the biography.In 1996, he published his memoir “From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War.”“I have known Robert Gates for decades,” said Lee Hamilton, an IU law school alumnus and former U.S. representative from Indiana. “He is highly competent, very professional, an excellent person to work with and quite willing to look at other views.”Hamilton said he thinks Gates has performed in a highly professional and competent way in every job he has had and believes his time at IU has significantly helped him as an individual.“I was immensely pleased when they chose him,” Hamilton said. “I am sure the University will welcome him in appropriate ways, and I hope the students do as well.”
(12/08/09 5:32am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU President Michael McRobbie announced Friday a new $10 million venture capital fund, called the Innovate Indiana Fund, which aims to help in the development of innovations and technologies generated at IU.“The fund is being established to translate technology, and really knowledge, into actual products and services,” said Steve Chaplin, assistant managing editor for the Office of University Communications. “Things like medical devices and testing tools for education.”The fund will empower researchers to move their work out of the lab and to the marketplace, Chaplin said.It will allow faculty members who have been talking about a product venture for years see it become a realization, Chaplin said.Anthony Armstrong, president and CEO of the IU Research and Technology Corporation, said he thinks the fund will allow the University to assist in producing or researching some of the technologies that have a difficult time finding funding. It will also help faculty members make their businesses more valuable, he said.“More likely these technologies will benefit people around the state and around the world,” he said.A board has been created to review applicants requesting money to support their ventures, Chaplin said. The six members of the board will review applications, rank and review them, then meet with the applicants to discuss what the money will be used for, he said.“The board decides which are best for the University and best for personal opportunity,” Chaplin said.The board will begin releasing the funds early next year, Chaplin said.Armstrong, who is serving as a member on the board, said they are already evaluating some of the opportunities that have been presented by faculty members. He said he expects to see a wide range of applicants with ventures ranging from life sciences to information technology. The board has already seen one applicant interested in developing a new type of medical device that evaluates kidney function, he said.Chaplin said the board is looking to invest the $10 million during the next five years and receive some returns out of it.Armstrong said he does not think there is any set amount per year or per quarter that the board will grant to applicants.“It depends on the quality of the deals and how much they’re asking for,” he said.The money gathered to initiate the fund came from a combination of donors and other funding generated through commercial efforts in the past, Armstrong said.“It tells faculty and researchers ‘we’re here to support you,’” Chaplin said.
(12/07/09 4:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced a 6 percent cut in higher education funding across the state on Friday.The call for the current decrease, which is about $150 million, came after state revenue for November fell $144 million short of a May forecast. So far this fiscal year, Indiana is $475 million below projections.Now the state is looking to the seven public universities to help offset some of that shortfall.The state’s Commission for Higher Education will decide during the next 30 days what the spending cuts will include at each school.It is not clear yet how the cut will affect IU, MacIntyre said.“Still, given what is going on, that’s a relatively small amount,” IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said.IU has already received a 4.5 percent cut in total state operating appropriations for fiscal year 2010 and another 1.5 percent for fiscal year 2011, a total of $29.3 million, according to the IU 2009-10 Budget Proposal to the Trustees of IU by President Michael McRobbie.The state’s efforts to reduce its spending, including a 10 percent cut to state agencies announced last month, are aimed to preserve the $1.3 billion surplus from the start of the fiscal year in July.This is not the first time recently IU has had to respond to a decrease in state funding.During the summer, IU received a 4.5 percent cut for this fiscal year and a 1.5 percent cut for the 2010-2011 fiscal year.IU responded by freezing salaries and increasing tuition by almost 5 percent for the current and next school years. Daniels also announced there will be a new revenue forecast on Dec. 15.Presidents and administrators at the seven public universities will be working with the state’s higher education commission in the coming days.“While many of these changes are being driven by current fiscal realities, our challenge is to achieve permanent cost savings, not simply short-term relief,” said Teresa Lubbers, commissioner on higher education funding, in a press release.McRobbie responded to news of the cuts Friday morning with a statement.“We have been asked by state officials to work closely with them in determining how these cuts will be allocated among the state’s public institutions of higher education, and we will certainly do so,” McRobbie said in the statement. MacIntyre said IU understands the difficult circumstances of the current economy and appreciates the governor’s hold on cutting higher education as long as he could.McRobbie stressed the vital role IU plays in the life of the state.“Our faculty, staff and students have made great strides in moving this institution forward in recent years, and it is vital to the state, as well as to Indiana University, that we are able to preserve and build on these gains,” he said.