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(06/10/09 9:43pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Well, here we go with my play, ‘The Last Days of Heath Ledger,’” senior and playwright Harry Watermeier said to the rehearsal cast. “I’m already embarrassed.”Three rows of empty desks sat like a silent, invisible audience watching Watermeier’s play read aloud for the first time. The rehearsal cast sat around a table in a classroom in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center, pencils at the ready to mark up their copies of the script.“We’ll talk about the play after we do a read-through,” rehearsal director Chris Lee said.For Watermeier, the discussion after the play is just as important as the reading itself. “The Last Days of Heath Ledger,” a play he has been working on for more than a year, will be the first student-written play the University Players ever runs as an independent show.And he wants it to be good.The play is based on a story of the same name by Lisa Taddeo that ran in Esquire magazine in April 2008. It is a fictionalized account based on actual investigation of the days before Ledger’s death and his interactions with celebrities such as Jack Nicholson, Mary-Kate Olsen and Michelle Williams. Watermeier said he fell in love with the story the first time he read it.“It was a very visual story that I couldn’t help but see on the stage as I read it,” he said.After contacting the author for permission to adapt the story for the stage, Watermeier set to work, spending evenings sitting on the floor of his room with his laptop immersing himself in things he “wanted the play to feel like.”Eventually, he submitted the script to the University Players, and the group approved its production. The show will go on stage during the 2010 spring semester.During the week of May 25-29, after more than a year of writing and rewriting, he gathered friends and classmates to read through the script, rehearse it and put on a public reading for comment and critique.“It was embarrassing to hear it being read,” Watermeier said. “When you’re acting, you have a script to interpret, and a bad actor can ruin a good play. But the quality of the play is essentially the writer’s fault.”IU alumnus Jason Nelson read the part of Heath Ledger during the read-through, circling difficult words or phrases in his extended monologues as he went along.As Nelson read, Watermeier pinched his brow, shook his head and furiously scribbled notes in the margins of his copy of the script.“To hear your own words read aloud, you feel much more vulnerable,” Watermeier said. “It’s a naked feeling. You can be judged critically, which is not something I’m used to. But over the course of the week, I got more confident and now I’m happy with how it sounded.”At the end of the week of read-throughs and corrections, the cast did a public reading of the work and invited audience members to share criticisms and concerns.“I’m the first to say something needs work,” Watermeier said. “I’m the first to criticize my writing. Criticism is expected. And people were saying a lot of the same things that I thought needed work.”In the coming months before an official director and cast are selected for the final production, Watermeier will return to the floor of his bedroom to write, rewrite and critique his own work. But he said he is already happy with the direction the script is headed.“People interpreting it are finding messages that I didn’t even know were there,” Watermeier said. “I’ve created something, as flawed as it is, that creates discussion. That expands the possibilities of what the show could be.”
(06/04/09 12:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Throughout Turkey, radio stations are playing the music of IU alumna and harpist Fatma Ceren Necipoglu.For Distinguished Professor of Music Susann McDonald, this is a fitting tribute to her former student.Necipoglu, a 2001 IU Jacobs School of Music graduate, was one of the 228 people onboard Air France Flight 447. The plane crashed over the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. The 37-year-old was returning from a performance at the Rio Harp Festival in Brazil when she boarded Flight 447. The plane encountered severe storms near the equator and lost contact with air traffic controllers. On Tuesday, Brazilian officials confirmed that debris found floating in the water off the coast of Brazil belonged to the missing plane. An oil slick in the area is also believed to be a remnant of the crash.No survivors are expected to be discovered, which would make this the worst civilian aircraft crash since a November 2001 crash in the New York City borough of Queens that killed 265 people.Now rescuers are searching for the black box that recorded data from the cockpit of the plane, which could answer lingering questions about the nature of the crash. But the area is still plagued with severe thunderstorms on a daily basis, and divers are calling the search for more wreckage a “monumental salvage effort,” according to an Associated Press story. But back in Indiana, McDonald said she is still in disbelief that her student was on board the flight.“You just never think you will know someone who is involved in something like this,” McDonald said.McDonald remembers Necipoglu as a reserved, humble person and a dedicated student.“But she had a dramatic playing style on the harp,” McDonald said.As a student and performer, Necipoglu won accolades at harp competitions across the world and was a two-time winner of the Marjorie Schlamp Winters Harp Scholarship from the music school.At the USA International Harp Competition in 2004, she and composer Garrett Byrnes won the composition competition with their piece “Visions in Twilight.” McDonald said composers delighted in working with Necipoglu.Before Sunday’s accident, Necipoglu lived in Eskisehir, Turkey, and worked as a harp instructor at the Anadolu University Conservatory in Eskisehir. She and McDonald still kept in touch, and Necipoglu often brought her young students to the harp conferences McDonald organizes.“It’s just horrible, horrible news to hear,” McDonald said. “It’s devastating.”
(05/22/09 3:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Band leader and jazz legend Al Cobine has died at the age of 82.A representative for Allen Funeral Home confirmed that the Bloomington resident had passed away and that funeral plans had not yet been confirmed.Cobine, a native of Richmond, Ind., began his career as a band leader in Bloomington in 1956 after graduating from Earlham College in Richmond and receiving an M.A. from the University of Cincinnati.In addition to his award-winning band, Cobine worked closely with the IU Foundation and the Singing Hoosiers.His 'Al Cobine Big Band' performed as recently as May 10, though under the direction of a different band leader.Be sure to check idsnews.com during the weekend for more information and reflections from members of the Bloomington jazz community.
(05/10/09 11:25pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When Tutto Bene and Jazz at the Station closed within weeks of each other earlier this year, Bloomington lost more than just a couple of its fine dining restaurants.The two were hot spots for the local jazz scene and were key programming centers for Jazz from Bloomington, a nonprofit organization that sponsors jazz concerts.Jazz from Bloomington celebrated its 10th anniversary Saturday while struggling to regain its bearings with the two recent venue closings. Members met to discuss how to maintain the healthy jazz scene prevalent in Bloomington.Former Jazz from Bloomington President Carl Weinberg said the group has sponsored 59 concerts in its 10-year history, but despite those successes the organization faces challenges in the near future.“The global economic crisis has affected the world of music,” Weinberg said.About 10 members met in the gallery of the John Waldron Arts Center to discuss the future of events such as its community-wide jam sessions, which formerly took place at Jazz at the Station.Group treasurer John Lawson shared a fiscal report from the past three years.In addition, they discussed how to create a mutually beneficial relationship with jazz organizations in Indianapolis and how to create a membership package that will attract more members.Though Jazz from Bloomington sponsored five major events in its 2008-2009 season, members believe attendance could have been higher for those events if their advertising strategies were tweaked, including increased poster use and Facebook advertising.Incoming President Monika Herzig, one of the founders of Jazz from Bloomington, said the group is at a crossroads.“If we can stick our heads together,” Herzig said, “we can grow something nice with this.”
(04/30/09 4:42am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On a whim, freshman Hayley Fischer decided to go through women’s formal recruitment this past fall. But after going through all four rounds of recruitment, she didn’t receive a bid.“When my Rho Gamma came and told me, I had no expression on my face,” Fischer said. “She asked if I was okay, and I said, ‘Uh, yeah.’ I felt like I was supposed to cry.”Fischer is one of 150 women who went all the way through the recruitment process but did not receive a bid to join one of the 19 sorority chapters early this semester. Only 52 percent of women who start recruitment receive bids, a placement percentage that is almost 25 percentage points below the national average, said Kris Bridges, a college Panhellenic chair for the National Panhellenic Conference, the national governing body for sororities.After considering the current system, the IU Panhellenic Association hopes to tweak the process and increase recruitment numbers.“This has been years in the making,” said PHA Vice President of Recruitment Anna Berg. “We were all unsatisfied with the amount of women we were placing. It was a challenge of, ‘Can we change?’”THE CHANGESIU currently operates on a bed-quota system. This allows each sorority to choose the number of bids it will give out based on the amount of living space it will have available the following year, Bridges said.IU is the only school in the country that still uses this system, Berg said.Representatives from the National Panhellenic Conference told IU’s Panhellenic Association in February that it needed to change the recruitment process so more women could receive bids. One of the recommendations was that IU move to a “quota total system,” where the number of bids each house could give out would depend on the average chapter size at IU.To increase the number of bids, IU’s Panhellenic Association voted in April on two measures to change the recruitment process.The first, which was rejected by a vote of 6 to 13, would have changed IU’s system to an all-January recruitment. This would decrease the number of women who go through recruitment just for the experience and have no intention of joining a sorority. Berg said she thought the change was “too much, too soon.”The second measure, however, passed at a meeting on April 14. In the upcoming recruitment period, women will now preference two more sororities in the first and second invite rounds.Previously, women selected and ranked 12 sororities in the first invite round and six in the second. Now, they will choose 14 and eight, respectively.“Each sorority would see a bigger pool of women and get more exposure to them,” Berg said. “It helps everyone.”But junior Katelyn Walbridge, president of Kappa Alpha Theta, said her chapter voted against both measures because she said they do not do enough to solve the problems of recruitment.“There’s no reason to change when the outcome will end up the same,” Walbridge said.And, for some women like Fischer, the changes might be coming too late.THE OTHER 48 PERCENTFreshman Sarah Finnerty said she loved having a Rho Gamma, or recruitment guide, to help her through the recruitment process and was optimistic because of the support she received.But when 19 Party – where women tour all 19 sorority houses – began, Finnerty said her recruitment experience changed completely.“I felt like I was being speed-dated,” Finnerty said. “I’m pretty sure a lot of people don’t find their true love through speed dating.”Finnerty also said she felt like sorority members discriminated against her because she was a part of the Air Force ROTC.“If there was more of an opportunity for sororities to get to know you longer, I could tell them I’m in ROTC but show that I’m not some strict, masculine woman who can’t have fun,” Finnerty said.After receiving invitations from only two of the sororities she marked as “preferred” at the end of first invite, Finnerty learned of a death in her family and decided to drop out of recruitment.Freshman Tiffany Barrios, who also eventually dropped out of recruitment, was excited at the beginning of the process.But she felt “disappointed” after only being invited to five sororities during the first invite round and only receiving two invitations to the second round. She dropped out after visiting those two chapters.“I didn’t understand how they eliminated people,” Barrios said. “But I’d heard it was really hard to get into a house at IU.”Fischer also said she felt alienated by the recruitment process.“The whole thing was hell,” Fischer said. “I got to the last round. After that I didn’t get a bid. It felt like the whole process took place after people had already formed cliques and were already friends with girls in houses.”But Walbridge said that in Kappa Alpha Theta, having connections within the sorority doesn’t give prospective members an advantage.“The recruitment process does give everyone a fair chance,” Walbridge said. “But I don’t think knowing people has that much of an effect.”CHANGE FOR THE BETTERWhile most people agree a change needs to be made, there is no consensus about the best solution.Finnerty said the PHA-proposed changes aren’t enough.“Even if there were more rounds and you could see more houses, you could still get screwed out of a bid,” Finnerty said. Barrios also said changing the size of rounds won’t make enough of a difference, since it’s normal for women to only get six invitations during the first invite round.When women like Fischer, Barrios and Finnerty don’t receive bids, then women’s recruitment needs to be changed, Berg said.“When it comes to that, I’m speechless,” Berg said. “It’s a difficult situation that doesn’t happen at every school.”But until recruitment changes, Fischer said women who don’t receive bids will question themselves.“You’re wondering what you did wrong,” Fischer said. “You second-guess yourself. Girls shouldn’t have to go through that.”
(04/29/09 4:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Most love stories don’t begin while watching a motorcycle wreck, but that’s exactly how seniors Leigh Ann Pittman and Nathan Dixon first met. Two and a half years later, after countless fraternity and sorority events, motorcycle rides and separation due to military service, they’re getting married.The couple will graduate in May and marry in September.Dixon is a former president of Phi Kappa Tau, an aspiring math teacher and a member of Indiana’s Army National Guard who served two tours in Iraq. Pittman is a motorcycle enthusiast and member of Phi Mu.Dixon said he first went to Iraq for 12 months in 2003 after finding out in basic training that he would be deployed. He served as security for the small Army camp where he was stationed in the middle of the desert, a job he called “not that exciting.”After returning, he enrolled at IU in 2004 and joined Phi Kappa Tau.In the fall of 2006, between Dixon’s first and second tours, he was out riding motorcycles with his friends when one of them tried to pop a wheelie and wrecked.Pittman was out riding her motorcycle with some of her friends and saw the crash, and,while helping collect debris from the accident, saw Dixon for the first time.“I turned around, and there’s Nathan in all of his glory,” Pittman said. “It was love at first sight. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get to know this guy.’”Little did Pittman know, Dixon and his fraternity brothers were planning on going to Phi Mu for dinner the next night. The two started dating shortly after talking at the house dinner.In 2008, Dixon was called back to active duty. But before he shipped out, he and Pittman spent a week together at Fort Stewart in Savannah, Ga.While walking on the beach one afternoon, Dixon told Pittman he had a surprise for her.“He asked me, ‘Do you want the surprise now?’” Pittman said. “I didn’t see anything in his hands or pockets so I said yes, and he got down on one knee, asked for my left hand and said, ‘Will you marry me?’”Pittman said yes and, soon after, Dixon headed to an old Iraqi air force base in Tikrit, Iraq. While there, he said, he escorted supply convoys throughout northern Iraq. “Occasionally we had to detonate roadside bombs,” Dixon said. “My unit had the best find-to-detonate ratio for roadside bombs in the batallion.”While Dixon lived in an abandoned Iraqi air force base, Pittman yearned for him in Bloomington. She said she was in shock for the first three months he was gone and kept expecting him to come back, but after a while, the waiting became “really intense sadness.”“We talked on Skype, and in our conversations we didn’t really have much to say at that point,” Pittman said. “We were tired of small talk, and we didn’t have much more to say other than, ‘I’m really ready for you to come home now.’”Dixon said he wasn’t really worried about safety while he was gone, but he said there was one incident with a roadside bomb when he did get scared.“We rolled up on an IED and didn’t know it,” Dixon said. “We were trained to look for certain visuals. When you realize what it is, you clench. I yelled, ‘Get out of here!’”Eight months later, on Thanksgiving Day, Pittman waited with her sister in an airplane hangar for Dixon to come home.“He’d gotten delayed before, so I was almost scared to get too excited for him to get back,” Pittman said. “But when he landed and he finally got to me, all I could do was squeeze him. We hugged for a good 20 minutes.”
(04/29/09 2:25am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After losing its charter almost seven years ago, Sigma Alpha Epsilon is back.But fraternity president Tyler Mikev said he wants to show the campus that the new Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which regained its charter in a ceremony April 18, is here to stay.“We can go back to our alumni and show them that we’re not the guys who got kicked off campus in 2002,” Mikev said. “Now, we’re everything that SAE should be.”The off-campus fraternity lost its charter in 2002 after what former president and senior Zach Garrison said were behaviors that didn’t reflect what SAE stands for.SAE was kicked off campus in 2002 after the IU Police Department busted a party in which fraternity members were serving alcohol to minors and after they accumulated $125,000 in payments, late fees and interest on their house, according to a July 17, 2006, Indiana Daily Student article. “It was a situation where, on a monthly basis, something was going wrong with the house,” Garrison said. “The University shut it down before it got too out of hand.”In 2007, Garrison and a few friends got together to start a colony.“It means a lot to get the charter,” Garrison said. “It’s one of the biggest things I’ll do in my college career.”Mikev said the chapter has grown to nearly 40 members since 2007.“The charter comes after two years of really hard work,” Mikev said. “We were off campus, and it was like we were restarting the chapter.”Now that the fraternity is back on campus, Mikev said it plans to focus on the basics of the organization, including philanthropic events. On Saturday, members will participate in the True Gentleman Day of Service with Middle Way House.Last year, members painted houses for Middle Way House, and Mikev said that this year they will do “whatever they ask us to do to help.”Garrison said the new SAE will be doing philanthropic and social events, like the service day, to uphold the chapter’s tradition, which includes alumni such as journalist Ernie Pyle and NBA players Tom and Dick Van Arsdale.“We’re continuing a tradition that went away in 2002,” Garrison said. “SAE has been at IU since 1907, and it means a lot to carry on that tradition and say that you’ve made something for future generations.”
(04/28/09 2:27am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When she signed an agreement earlier this semester to sublet an apartment in Bloomington over the summer, freshman Tessa Wilhelm hoped she would have gotten a job by now to pay for her rent and other expenses.But after applying for about 10 jobs with no luck, she decided to stop spending money entirely.“I need to save money so I can continue actually going to school,” said Wilhelm, who pays for part of her tuition and all of her books. “Since I’m an out-of-state student, it’s difficult to afford.”As the economy worsens, students like Wilhelm are trying to balance their expenses and bills with enjoying the college experience. Yet the extent to which students adjust their spending habits in a recession largely depends on their parents’ involvement and how much they have been personally impacted. Ellie Mafi-Kreft, a clinical assistant professor of business economics and public policy, said students like Wilhelm are more conscious of money because their parents pay for less of their tuition.“It seems like a lot of students at IU are relying on financing that comes from their parents,” Mafi-Kreft said. “If their parents are uncertain about money, then they might become a little bit more aware.”In addition, Mafi-Kreft said students’ perceptions of the economy depend on what spending they prioritize.“Your income is responsive to type of goods you’re buying,” Mafi-Kreft said. “So, if your professor says, ‘I want you to buy this book,’ you’ll buy the book. But, on the other hand, when it comes to luxuries like spring break or eating at a restaurant, you’ll start thinking about spending.”Junior Jessica Hansel said her awakening about finances came when her family lost a large amount of her college fund, which was in stocks.“My college money was in the stock market,” Hansel said. “We lost $20,000 of it.”Hansel now works at CVS so she can split the cost of her education with her parents and has cut back on shopping to save money.Freshman Amanda Gruber also cut back on her shopping habit when she noticed she was running low on money last semester.“In the past, when I went out shopping I’d buy everything I liked,” Gruber said. “Now, I put stuff back.”Gruber’s parents have been paying tuition this year for her and her twin brother.“It’s been taking a toll on them,” Gruber said. “They still have their jobs, luckily, but next year I’m going to help them out a little.”Senior Bailey Wolfe never used to be a comparison shopper. But, when the economy started to get bad, he decided to sacrifice brand names to save a few dollars.“I’ve started buying dollar stuff more, like ketchup for example,” Wolfe said. “I’ve learned to love generic.”While Wolfe is taking small steps to save money, he said budget consciousness doesn’t impact his spending.“I do what I want,” Wolfe said. “I don’t try to restrict myself just because other people spend less. If I want it, I’ll get it.”After he graduates, Wolfe said he is going to have to make some budget-friendly spending cuts, especially since he will have to be responsible for insurance payments.“A lot of my expenses like food, rent and bills aren’t going to go away once I graduate,” Wolfe said.And even though students like Wolfe are now more aware of their finances, Margaret Taylor, who owns the Book Corner at 100 N. Walnut St., said she hasn’t seen any change in her sales.“People want to read books,” Taylor said. “People need books, and I haven’t seen a change.”Taylor said students keep buying books at her store because they enhance the college experience.“I’ve been in the book business for 60 years, and I think students and everyone else still love books in the printed form,” Taylor said. “There are always going to be people who want to build a library, and that’s what I provide.”Student-driven restaurants like Noodles & Company on Kirkwood Avenue might not be as affected as restaurants further away from student traffic. Noodles & Company spokesman Matt Wagner said overall, the restaurant hasn’t seen a change in its sales.“As a restaurant, we’re doing well right now,” Wagner said. “We’re opening restaurants in college towns. ... That wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t a good business move.”But students responsible for their own spending money aren’t oblivious to the economy. Before she started saving all of her money, Wilhelm said she used to see dance performances and order delivery food but has not done any of that recently.She said she thinks many of her friends are less concerned about money because they are in-state students or are getting more financial help from their parents. “Normally, I feel like the only one that’s saving money,” Wilhelm said. “It sometimes impedes on me socializing with my friends because they might go out to see a concert and I can’t pay the money to go.”
(04/23/09 3:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Four days after graduating from high school, Sarah Mordis woke up and couldn’t move the left side of her body.“I was sleeping over at a friend’s house after a graduation party, and when I woke up my left arm and left leg were dead weight,” Mordis said. “My friend heard me fall while trying to get out of bed, and we were like, ‘Something’s obviously wrong.’”After being rushed to an area hospital where doctors could not diagnose her condition for seven hours, she was taken to the intensive care unit, where the then-18-year-old Mordis learned she suffered from a stroke and would have to relearn how to walk, talk and use her left arm.Now a fully-rehabilitated IU senior, Mordis was one of two main speakers at the Bloomington Heart Ball, which took place Saturday at Assembly Hall.The American Heart Association sponsored the black-tie event, which featured silent and live auctions, a gourmet dinner and speeches, said the association’s Communications Director Jeannine Templeman.IU President Michael McRobbie also attended the event. Templeman said she asked Mordis to speak at the event because Mordis is an IU student and a representative of the younger sufferers of cardiovascular disease.“It’s important to show people that there are many different faces of cardiovascular disease,” Templeman said.And sometimes the face of cardiovascular disease is, like Mordis, indistinguishable from anyone else her age. Though Mordis said she sometimes has to check the left side of her face in photos to make sure it matches the right, she shows no signs of having survived a stroke four years ago.Mordis doesn’t hesitate to share her story, which she said comes in part from the acceptance she got from her sorority sisters at Alpha Omicron Pi.“I was apprehensive to talk about my stroke with my sisters freshman year,” Mordis said. “I was really self-conscious. But when I told them, the girls were amazing with all of their help and love.”Templeman also said Mordis’ stroke was a classic example of why people need to be more aware of the signs of strokes and heart attacks, because, if health professionals had diagnosed Mordis’ stroke earlier, the rehabilitation might not have been so intense.But even though Mordis’ stroke could have been diagnosed earlier, she said she was never worried or scared, even when she had no idea what had happened.“While I was in the ICU, I looked over and my dad was bawling,” Mordis said. “I told him, ‘If I’m not crying, you’re not crying.’ I was never scared. I just thought that I needed to get better. So I did.”Doctors discovered that an undetected heart defect had led to Mordis’ stroke and, after treating that, sent Mordis to rehabilitate her weakened body. She kept herself motivated by focusing on one goal: coming to IU.“I had plans to come to IU in the fall,” Mordis said. “The whole time I was like, ‘I need to go to IU and move on with my life.’”Mordis spent 16 days in a rehabilitation center and, for the rest of her summer, went to physical and occupational therapy three times a week. By the time move-in came, she was “just healthy enough” to start her college career.“When I walked on my own for the first time, I was so excited,” Mordis said. “I called my best friend and she came down to watch me walk. It was incredible. It felt so weird, but when I was doing it, it was euphoria.”In the two years after that, Mordis was able to walk across campus to her classes, participate in recruitment and stand for 36 hours at IU Dance Marathon.Though she sometimes notices a residual weakness in her left side while running, she said she is now “perfectly healthy” and has the same chance as anyone else her age of having another stroke.“The whole time, I thought of it as just a bump in the road,” Mordis said. “Why should I have sat there saying, ‘why me?’”
(04/20/09 4:01am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As the men’s and women’s Little 500 races approach, the Indiana Daily Student asked the presidents of a few greek houses across campus to share their chapters’ pre-race superstitions and traditions.We also included how they fared in last year’s race to see how well they work. Alpha Omicron PiLast year’s finish Ninth in the women’s raceTraditions: “All the riders go inside the house on the day of the race and ride their bikes out of house. Then we have a little celebration before race. We don’t have any superstitions that I know of, but on the Thursday before race, our riders watch ‘Breaking Away.’” – Jana Struewing, junior Alpha Gamma DeltaLast year’s finish Tenth in the women’s raceTraditions: “To send off our riders, we all come downstairs in our house and have signs for our riders, which we hang up all around. Then we do our cheer to send them off. Also, for all of our members, no drinking is allowed during the race, which shows our morals and values.” – Brooke Scott, juniorAlpha Tau OmegaLast year’s finish Third in the men’s raceTraditions: “We wake up super early and do a rider send-off. All the riders get up and get ready in (a) room. Us and our pairs get out on the front steps of hou facillitate se, and we chant our creed and cheer as the guys go down the front steps. It’s like 200 people on the front lawn.” – Dustin DeWitt, junior FijiLast year’s finish Eleventh in the men’s raceTraditions: “On the day of the race, we get up really early and all get outside wearing purple, so if you took an aerial shot, our house would be a sea of purple. The night before, we do a bike team dinner where the team talks and passes on nicknames to someone who helped them out.” – Adam Gemmer, junior Delta Tau DeltaLast year’s finish Thirteenth in the men’s raceTraditions: “We do a front-door send-off. The team rides up the sidewalk and sees all the brothers lined up on the sidewalk in a tunnel formation, and we send them off that way.” – Bryan Stoffel, juniorPhi Delta ThetaLast year’s finish Fifteenth in the men’s raceTraditions: “This is only our second year, so we’re still re-establishing our traditions. But we try to cheer and wear our colors.” – Bob Goode, sophomore
(04/17/09 4:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Because of a stable climate, in the span of 10,000 years, humans have gone from hunter-gatherers to modern, technological beings, said sustainability expert Anthony Cortese.But, because of human-worsened global warming, “all bets are off.”“That is the reality of where we are now as a species,” Cortese said.Cortese, the co-director of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, president of Second Nature and co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, spoke Thursday in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Whittenberger Auditorium.The speech was part of SustainIU, a week-and-a-half-long series of events sponsored by the Office of Sustainability, along with several other organizations. His talk, titled “Higher Education’s Critical Role in Creating a Healthy, Just and Sustainable Society: A Lecture by Anthony Cortese,” focused on the concept and importance of sustainability and its application to a university setting.“We do this work for a simple reason,” Cortese said. “If we don’t figure out a way to operate differently, our chance of creating a just and sustainable society in the future are slim to none.”He defined sustainability as the use of resources so that the needs of human development are met without producing unusable waste or negative economic impacts or environmental effects.“We tend to think the economy is over here and the environment is over there,” Cortese said. “That’s wrong.”Cortese discussed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, an agreement on the part of college and university presidents nationwide to pledge to end their campus’ greenhouse gas emissions.He said presidents at 623 schools have signed the commitment, but IU is not one of them.“Sustainability is not just about the environment,” Cortese said. “It’s about meeting the needs of all current and future generations.”School of Public and Environmental Affairs graduate student Abby Schwimmer said universities are good locations to try new environmentally friendly practices.“This is a living laboratory,” Schwimmer said. “It should be used as a vehicle for sustainability.”Jennifer Larson, also a SPEA graduate student, said Cortese’s idea about realizing that material possessions create waste rather than fulfillment is the key to sustainability.“I liked that he talked about making a values shift,” Larson said. “That’s the most significant idea, in terms of maintaining an aggregate desire to make change.”Schwimmer said her favorite part was the discussion of how when things are created in a non-sustainable way, they leave behind holes of used and wasted materials.“He brought in more of a global perspective when he talked about everything here being taken from elsewhere,” she said. “Sustainability is the awareness that everything you do affects someone else.”
(04/17/09 4:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The inaugural running of the Little Point Five, a soapbox derby race sponsored by Delta Upsilon fraternity, will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday on the south end of Fee Lane.Proceeds from the $50 team entry fee will go to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the fraternity’s national philanthropy organization.Event organizer and sophomore Andy Gordon said organizations from across campus will race in head-to-head heats in soapbox cars, which hold one person and are non-motorized.The winner of each heat will advance to the next round in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament.The ultimate champions and the drivers of the best-decorated car will receive prize packs from the IU Student Foundation, including Little 500 T-shirts and all-event passes.“The experience of doing it is something people are going to remember,” Gordon said.In addition to the races, Straight No Chaser and the Clayton Anderson Band will perform, and representatives from Red Bull will be handing out free drinks, Gordon said.Little Point Five is the result of a year of planning and organization by Gordon and other brothers.“Last year, somebody brought it up in passing,” Gordon said. “When we got the event approved by the University, it was like, this is definitely going to happen.”Sophomore Ryan Duerring, the fraternity’s president, said this event replaced a previous “big, upscale” philanthropy event.“It dwindled off in the past few years,” Duerring said. “So we wanted to pick up something we could have attached to our name that would actually be beneficial.”The fraternity wanted to tie their new event to the Little 500, Duerring said.“Hopefully, it’s something that sticks in the IU culture,” he said.Delta Upsilon also has high hopes for the event because it will be so public.“It’s a good opportunity to do something visible to the whole campus, since most philanthropy events are inter-greek,” Duerring said. “There’s not usually a lot of entire campus involvement.”Gordon said he hopes for a big crowd for the event that he’s been waiting to see come together for a year.“Even if people aren’t signed up, they should still come down to watch,” Gordon said. “It’s meant to be entertainment.”
(04/15/09 3:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Within the span of one decade, mathematician John Nash went from being one of the most promising minds in mathematics and economic theory to being committed to a mental hospital. Thirty-five years after that, he accepted the Nobel Prize in Economics.When journalist Sylvia Nasar learned about Nash’s award, it began a three-year-long process of investigating and chronicling his rise, fall and re-emergence. She eventually shared his story in articles in The New York Times and her biography “A Beautiful Mind.”Nasar, who was the final speaker in the School of Journalism Spring Speaker Series, spoke Tuesday in Alumni Hall.“The life of John Nash is the story about an individual’s triumph over incredible adversity,” Nasar said.By his mid-20s, Nash already held a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton, and by his 30s, he was an MIT professor, husband and expecting father. He was seen by many as “a celebrity in the rarified world of mathematics,” Nasar said.“His modus operandi was to take a complex problem and pursue a strategy that people who knew something about the field found absurd,” she said.But by 1959, Nash was so consumed by mental illness that he was committed to McLean Hospital outside of Boston and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.“When Nash got sick, science was primitive, as was treatment,” Nasar said. “Basically, they were told mental illness was the result of bad mothers and bad wives.”For several decades, Nash fell out of the world of mathematics and economics, but his work in game theory gained legitimacy.In 1994, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. Nasar’s biography of Nash was published in 1999 and made into a movie, which won four Oscars in 2001.Though freshman Shanti Knight said she came to Nasar’s speech for a class, she said she loved Nasar’s conversational tone and thought the speech was “fantastic.”“I’m not good at math, but I consider myself to have a creative mind,” Knight said. “She made math a creative subject.”Nasar said knowing how to recognize a good story was the reason she was able to find out about all of John Nash – beyond his mental illness.“A zillion people knew the facts of Nash’s story, including some reporters,” Nasar said. “To most, it seemed like a scandalous or depressing or obscure kind of story. But that’s not what this story is about. This is the story of an ugly duckling.”
(04/13/09 3:40am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A woman is raped every 41 seconds, according to the Middle Way House, and this week, the Interfraternity Council is actively trying to change that.This week is Sexual Assault Awareness Week for the IFC, and members of fraternities will be participating in a variety of events to raise awareness, said IFC Vice President of Communications Mike Antonelli.Each IFC chapter will hang a banner from the front of its house with three to five ways to prevent sexual assault. The prevention ideas are taken from a list of “101 Ways to Prevent Sexual Assault,” which will be available on the IFC Web site beginning today.Antonelli said IFC decided to sponsor the awareness week after being approached by the organization Raising Awareness of Interactions in Sexual Encounters and because the problem is especially pervasive on a college campus.“It’s unfamiliar territory for a lot of college students,” Antonelli said.Representatives from all IFC chapters will be stationed at tables at 10th Street and Fee Lane and in front of Ballantine Hall on Thursday to pass out teal awareness ribbons.“This is large-scale,” Antonelli said. “We’re using our power in numbers to help this cause.”In addition, the representatives will be collecting donations for Middle Way House, which offers a variety of services to women and children affected by domestic violence and sexual assault, according to the organization’s Web site.“We want people to not only be able to prevent this in their own lives but in the lives of their counterparts and peers,” Antonelli said.To recognize the individual chapter that raises the most money for Middle Way House, a $100 donation will be made to the organization on behalf of IFC in that chapter’s name.“It’s something that commonly happens on any college campus,” said Sigma Alpha Mu President Jeff Safferman, a sophomore. “We’re trying to combat it and minimize the amount of it happening.”Antonelli said he, like many college students, didn’t realize how prevalent sexual assault was before coming to campus.“It can ruin a life,” Antonelli said.
(04/09/09 4:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When she’s not busy studying for classes for one of her three majors and two minors, preparing for another trip abroad or organizing things for the student group she founded, senior Rebecca Burns is experimenting in her kitchen.“I like to cook,” Burns said. “I really like Thai food, so sometimes I just throw some coconut milk in a pan and see what happens.”But despite her culinary ambition, it was Burns’ achievements both inside and outside the classroom that earned her the Herman B Wells Senior Recognition Award. Burns received the award from IU Executive Vice President and Provost Karen Hanson at a recent dinner and was recognized for the achievement at the IU-Bloomington Honors Convocation on March 29.Burns is a triple major in international studies, English and African studies and is also minoring in French and African languages. She will graduate Phi Beta Kappa, the highest academic honor in the College of Arts and Sciences, this May.“It’s amazing how much she’s done while maintaining a near-perfect grade point average,” said Greg Buse, a project specialist in the Office of the Provost.Burns traces her interest in Africa back to the area where she grew up because there were “a lot of refugees from South Sudan.”After her family moved from Reading, Mass., to Indiana while she was in high school, she came to IU as a Wells Scholar in 2005.Within her first few months on campus, she had already founded a chapter of STAND, a student branch of a nationwide advocacy group to stop genocide in Darfur.“You show yourself that there are useful forms of civic engagement,” Burns said. “You have to engage with the political system if you’re going to be a responsible member of society.”Her work with advocacy groups helped get divestment resolutions passed by the Bloomington City Council, the University Faculty Council at IU and the Indiana General Assembly, all of which require a withdrawal of funds and investments from companies that worked with the Sudanese government.People may not be aware that their money is indirectly tied to human rights issues, she said.Burns also traveled while at IU. She spent a semester in Tanzania and traveled to Cambodia and Vietnam last summer. She hopes to someday do field work in Africa.After graduation, Burns will attend the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and hopes to pursue a Ph.D.But for now, Burns said she is enjoying spending time with her family and friends in Bloomington and taking the time to read for pleasure whenever she gets the chance.After she leaves campus, she said she will remember how IU impacted her life.“IU has changed a lot of my viewpoints,” Burns said. “It exposed me to a lot of broader issues that I wasn’t really aware of.”
(04/08/09 4:12am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“He’s rolling in! He’s rolling in right now!”Members of Beta Theta Pi jumped to their feet as Tom Crean’s black SUV rolled into the parking lot of the fraternity’s house. By the time Crean entered, they were standing and clapping.Crean spoke to an audience of fraternity members and alumni in the front room of the Beta Theta Pi house Tuesday evening.He spent most of the hour and a half answering questions from the audience about anything from this past season to his coaching philosophy.When asked if he would do anything differently this past year given the opportunity, he immediately said, “Absolutely.”“We had to put a team on the floor,” Crean said.But he wouldn’t change his decision to come to IU, a choice he made April 1, 2008.“It was never hard to want to come to Indiana,” Crean said. “It was hard leaving things and people behind.”To keep the team motivated, Crean said he had to keep believing the team could win every game. He also said the fans kept the team focused.“The fan base went through it with this team,” Crean said. “They had a passion for the way the players played hard.”Crean said, in retrospect, he understands the gravity of last year’s recruiting controversy, which forced former coach Kelvin Sampson to resign and motivated several players to leave the program.“I have a greater understanding of how screwed up that was,” he said. “I’m still angry about it. We lost everything. ... I will never let this get back to where it was so self-centered.”When asked if he would be attending this year’s Little 500, he said he was worried about current basketball players getting into trouble during the weekend.“Last year was the beginning of the end for some players in the program because of some of the things they did,” he said. “And they’re so young. I don’t ever want to live through that again.”But he said he is already “in it” for the next season, saying he went “right back at” preparing for the fall after a brief spring break. He is also considering changes for next season.While Crean said he believes Assembly Hall needs a named student section, it has to come with a change of mentality in the students who attend games. He said the student fan base at Marquette would camp outside the arena to get tickets.After taking audience questions for almost an hour, Crean addressed the students in the group, focusing on motivation and finding success in the future because of “will instead of skill.” As he talked, his voice grew louder, and his gestures grew bigger.“What matters is what you do when your skill isn’t enough,” he said. “This is why I love to coach.”Sophomore Brian Rans called the final portion of Crean’s speech “awesome.”“It made you think about leadership and the mental aspect,” Rans said.After his speech, Crean said he enjoyed the opportunity to address the group.“There are a lot of people in here that I might never get a chance to take a question from,” Crean said.Beta Theta Pi President Sean Kelley, a sophomore, said he related to Crean’s speech because as a fraternity president, he, too, is a leader.“It was a great experience to see someone on such a national level,” Kelley said. “And he did it out of the genuine goodness of his heart.”
(04/07/09 4:33am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The deaths of Ryan White and Ashley Crouse were 15 years and four days apart, but the memories of both of their lives are what inspires IU Dance Marathon members like senior Sarah Franz.“It is the driving factor behind our organization,” Franz said.In their honor, IU Dance Marathon has declared this week “Ryan and Ashley Week” to remember their effects on the IU campus.White was planning to attend IU when he died April 8, 1990, of AIDS. He contracted HIV from a blood transfusion at age 13 and developed AIDS. He then became a nationally prominent face of the disease. A friend started Dance Marathon at IU in his honor in the early ’90s.“He believed people shouldn’t be treated differently because of what life hands them,” Franz said.Crouse had “a passion for Dance Marathon,” said senior Adam Ayers, and her initials “ALC” can be found on every piece of Dance Marathon-related clothing in honor of her. Crouse was leaving the Kappa Kappa Gamma house with her boyfriend and another Dance Marathon member when she was killed in a car accident April 12, 2005.Though formal programs are not planned for the week, members of IUDM will distribute information in a YouTube video about Crouse. They will also sell T-shirts commemorating both White and Crouse and pass out small flyers with information about the contributions the two made in their lives.The flyers will also have blue ribbons that students can pin to their shirts in honor of Crouse, junior Austin Bristow said.The informal nature of the memorial week is a reflection of the type of leaders Crouse and White were, Franz said.“It’s not what they stood for,” Franz said. “They were quiet leaders and humble people.”Dance Marathon members will not do any fundraising, either, said Bristow, as the week will be focused on raising awareness about who White and Crouse were.“We want people to see what they stood for as humans,” Bristow said. “They’re what people should strive to be if they ever get the chance to.”
(04/06/09 4:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As the curtain rose on the Indian dance group IU Ras, the IU Auditorium stage became a flurry of sequins and flashes of bright colors from the costumes of the performers.Each dancer, equipped with a pair of short, silver sticks, clicked along to the beat of a mix of contemporary Indian music with an occasional interjection of a beat from a Soulja Boy song.“I didn’t know our school had things like this,” said freshman Michael Mignosi, who attended Taste of Asia on Sunday.The event, which was like a variety show, kicked off Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The month is traditionally celebrated in May, but IU observes it in April, Jennifer Lee, assistant professor of sociology, said.“It celebrates the accomplishments of all who have come before us,” Lee said.The Asian American Association sponsored the event, which was first held 16 years ago.Emcees Danny Nguyen and Desma Jones discussed the ethnic diversity and history of the nine acts that took the stage.“People range in terms of language, culture and how we look,” Nguyen said. “It’s something you see illustrated here on the IU campus.”The diversity and support of the audience also strengthened the show, Nguyen said.“Without you, all of this would be really strange,” Nguyen said.Acts included several dance groups ranging from hiphop to Indonesian dance to break dance.Andrew Ramos, a student at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, performed an original acoustic song, while Jason Nguyen played traditional Vietnamese melodies on a one-stringed sitar.Another group, the Silk Road Ensemble, featured musicians such as Aida Huseynova, who recently returned from accompanying Yo-Yo Ma and performed music from Central Eurasia and the Middle East.Attendees received vouchers for samples from area Asian restaurants, including Chow Bar, Esan Thai, Fortune Cookie, Sushi Bar and Z & C Teriyaki & Sushi that they could cash in at the end of the program.“It gave you something to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon,” Mignosi said.Senior Kurt Reyes said events like Taste of Asia expose people to different cultures and serve an important function in the IU community.“Why wouldn’t you come?” Reyes said. “There was free food, world music and dance.”
(04/06/09 2:47am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Evans Scholars are not “kitchen boys,” “nerdy kids” or just “caddy kids.”But those are some of the stereotypes members hear, if people even know what Evans Scholars are at all.In reality, Evans Scholars are winners of full-tuition scholarships from the Western Golf Association and are selected for their academic achievements, caddie record, financial need and character. To receive the scholarship, students must be nominated by the country club for which they caddy and then complete a series of applications and interviews.The final interview for the scholarship takes place in front of a large committee of members of the Western Golf Association.Executive Vice President and sophomore Rob Henehan said he did his final interview in front of about 60 people.The IU chapter of Evans Scholars is one of 19 chapters across the country and one of 14 chapters with an on-campus house.Members must maintain a 2.5 GPA to remain in good standing in the house, in addition to good ratings from fellow house members in evaluations. If a member fails to meet one of these criteria in a semester, they are placed on probation.The scholarship is renewed on a semester-to-semester basis.“I’m unable to put the experience into words,” chapter president and junior Danny Williams said. “We all come from hugely varied financial backgrounds, and we’re in the house to network and learn to live with each other. By having to live with each other, we form greater bonds.”The house, located at 1075 N. Jordan Ave., stands among the fraternity and sorority houses.The similarities to the greek experience don’t end with location. Evans Scholars participate in events like the Little 500, IU Sing and Big Man on Campus. They also sponsor two major philanthropy events each semester with Stone Belt, including a caddying day in the fall and a barbecue with members of the organization, which took place Sunday.Most members of the organization work in the kitchens at sororities as well, Williams said, and because of that, relations are generally good with the greek community. “Since we do have a house on Jordan, it’s hard not to be ‘greek-ish,’” Williams said. “Some greeks get annoyed, though, and think we’re trying to be a fraternity, which is just stupid. It’s hard not to create that brotherhood.”But since Evans Scholars are not an officially recognized greek organization and are not IFC-sponsored, they cannot pair with sororities for major campus events.“We feel like we’ve been a little isolated from campus,” Henehan said.But Williams said Evans Scholars makes up for this distance by creating a closer community.“It’s a great thing that we have to live together for all four years,” Williams said. “I have friends that are greek, and they don’t have as tight of a brotherhood as us. Any 40 of these people would be willing to do more for me than in the greek community. It’s a stronger bond.”And senior Jason Quillin said it doesn’t get old seeing the same faces in the same house year after year.“We have a new batch of members every year,” Quillin said, “and I feel like I have 12 brothers and sisters in my class.”
(04/01/09 3:49am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Within moments of being introduced at his speech, Steve Kroft said he knew exactly where he was.“I can tell I’m back in Indiana when basketball is mentioned in my introduction,” Kroft said.Kroft returned to Indiana on Tuesday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater as the second speaker in the School of Journalism’s spring Speaker Series.Kroft, who grew up in Kokomo, Ind., has worked for CBS News for 28 years. For 20 of them, Kroft has been at “60 Minutes.”Though his tenure at “60 Minutes” has allowed him to travel around the world, Kroft said people pick up on the fact he is a Midwesterner.“People always say, ‘you seem so fair and reasonable – where are you from?’” Kroft said. “I say, ‘I’m from Indiana,’ and they say, ‘I thought so.’”His lecture, titled “60 Minutes with Steve Kroft,” covered Kroft’s typical process for putting together a story, his views on the current economic situation and the future of journalism.“I always hear, ‘you have got a great job,’” Kroft said. “And it is, but it’s not always how it looks on ‘60 Minutes.’”He said his 15-minute segments typically take about four to six weeks to put together and are usually drawn from 15 hours of footage. Kroft said the continuity of the “60 Minutes” format has kept it popular and relevant for the past 40 years.“We’re the only people on TV doing exactly what we’re doing,” Kroft said.Even though Kroft said investigative reporting such as what is done on “60 Minutes” is an important part of both TV and print journalism, the current business model of the newspaper industry is “ineffective.”But Kroft said he doesn’t think the ineffectual business model signals the end of journalism as a whole.“The business of journalism is too important,” Kroft said. “There is always a market for good information.”Junior Len Newton said Kroft was a “fascinating” speaker because of his balanced and mediated approach to the topics he discussed.“He was very diplomatic and treated the audience as such,” Newton said. “He was informative, but you could tell he knew exactly what he was saying. He was a newsman.”In addition to Kroft’s measured approach to his topics, Newton said Kroft seemed genuinely friendly.“He seemed like a nice guy,” Newton said. “I’d get a beer with him.”