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(09/15/08 1:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If you’re crazy enough to switch majors at the outset of your junior year, or feeble minded enough to regurgitate others’ viewpoints while believing them to be your own, you’d not only fit the mold of a good many others on IU’s undergraduate scene. You wouldn’t just share something unexpectedly in common with me (at least occasionally). You might also be ripe for your latest superstition checkup. A superstition checkup would evaluate how addled your mind and spirit are by the travails and transitions incumbent on every college student and determine how vulnerable you are to parasitic scams, junk science and kooky conspiracy theories. It would be an introspective exercise, of course, but also entirely informal and individualized. It would not need to take place on any regular basis, only when circumstances truly called for it. All it would ask you to do is ask yourself some questions.“Superstition checkup.” You might snort at this, and perhaps rightly so. But I doubt it because quite a few of my religiously oriented friends have the modesty to acknowledge how their own faith could be taken as little more than superstition. They’re just as aware of the absurdity potentially coloring their beliefs as its legitimacy as I am with my most burgeoning convictions.One such conviction (although it hasn’t always “burgeoned”) is a belief in reincarnation. I’m more than happy to tell you why a superstition checkup could be necessary – even more necessary than, say, a dental checkup, whose function has been lost upon me because I treat my teeth with decency anyway.At the start of a new year, I think of myself now and then as the archetypal, idealistic, youthful scholar who cavorts across this sunny campus with books in arms and earnest love of life and learning in my heart. I didn’t see myself as a budding Bertrand Russell, blithely but boldly pondering my own role in and compatibility with society. Nor did I consider myself the reincarnation of some equally influential person.But there’s a chance I was some kind of gawky, spastic, quirky intellectual. I might have taught physics or philosophy at some far eastern university just a few decades ago. I could’ve emigrated to America after being exiled from Europe in the revolutions of 1848. I could’ve ... Oh, but you don’t care, do you? It couldn’t possibly spark the most negligible glimmer of interest.Then that confirms it. You’ve just completed your superstition checkup in advance, and vicariously, too. You didn’t even have to answer those questions I said you would. Having learned through me, however, you’ve helped honor the hyper-idealistic, cyclical, larger-than-life forces of nature I’ve just spent the last 400 words deriding. Congratulations. Come again soon (to your senses).
(09/08/08 12:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If you’re like me (younger than 25), your most reliable sense of history probably begins around the time you were born. Even so, our generation has filled out voter registration paperwork, watched CNN or Fox News daily and often perused USA Today or the New York Times (because, as students, we get it free) so as to pretend we’re reading something not spooned out for us on a digital platter.Nonetheless, please don’t adopt the attitude that 2008 really is some kind of historic or “watershed” year. It’s certainly nice to think so. And scientifically speaking, there’s always something going on, as the hot chick on the weather channel tells us. But is that something history? No. At least not the kind I’d like to read a book about some day, or have kids learn in school.So if you don’t mind, I’m going to place a moratorium on the superficialities spouted by our textbooks, professors and high school teachers under the veil of “history.” Then I’m going to breeze through a few fascinating “plot points” in the wondrous narrative I believe our history is and still ought to be.Let’s start with Fort Ticonderoga (“Fort Ti” for short), the crown jewel of educational tourist sites in upstate New York and a stronghold against the British in the second half of the 18th century. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison painted ennobling portraits of the former garrison on Lake Champlain in their diaries.In the year 2008, the New York Times had to report the site’s president proclaiming it “essentially broke.” The New York State Board of Regents forbids selling the fort museum’s artwork to settle debts, but its leadership, headed by executive director Nicholas Westbrook, have placed politics over principles enough to think they can afford to ignore the Regents’ statute. Surely, old T.J. would’ve cheered them on.Reflections on 1968 should indeed include the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet Offensive and “Tricky Dick” Nixon’s ominous rise to the presidency. Beyond that, the overrated psychedelic anniversaries and memoirs on magazine covers aren’t doing it for me. Just go back 20 years to the photograph of Harry Truman, beaming and brandishing the newspaper headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Dismissed and disdained by every major newspaper as a failure from 1947 to the night before the election, Truman’s whirlwind “whistlestop” tour of the country earned him not only sudden but genuine endearment to millions. He might have proved almost half the nation dead wrong. Isn’t that just as memorable, if not more, than the shadows of disillusionment cast by the Baby Boomers?Lastly, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the most incendiary authors of the 20th century, died last month. His 18 years in the United States helped solidify his status as an eminent voice of individual rights, democracy and anti-censorship – exactly what today’s Russia is punishing every nefarious chance it gets. “Historied” out yet? Don’t be. It’s still a new century, and we’ve got 92 years to go.
(08/26/08 3:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It was the single least-stressful day in my recent memory: fishing, swimming, lazing about and reading on a lake in northern Maine, followed by a delicious nap until dinner. I’d indulged in a pleasant lack of hygiene, having not showered in some time.This didn’t matter until I plopped myself down at the table, underestimating how my hair must have looked. It looked messy. By “messy” I mean something akin to a bloated tick or a scraggly mullet crowned by a giant leech. As eminently satisfied as I was, however, I could sit back and let my family ridicule me all they wished. And that they did.“Good God,” Dad crooned, “look at Erich!” Shoving a bony index finger in my face, he counted at least three unfortunate hairs across my pate. “White ... White ... White! Hah!”“No,” I cried, “they’re just really, really, really light brown.”Dad snorted. “They look white to me.” Dinner wasn’t over, but my pristine day was. I’d gone 20 years, eight months and a few days without facing this unequivocal fact of life: I’m gonna be old-and-farty, and soon, for the hairs do not lie. Which begs the question: Why do I have them? I’m not long enough in the tooth to have a beer, for Pete’s sake. But if you’d listened to my family, you’d be led to believe that hair-graying has nothing to do with age, which it damn well does. They bombarded me with conventional wisdoms, such as: “Some of it’s genetic,” or, “You can’t escape it, so just live with it.” These might be true to some degree. My eldest brother, for instance, has an unsightly receding hairline, borrowed from my grandfather. By his late teens, he was fretting over not only graying, but missing hairs, too. That was eight or nine years ago; it’s decidedly worse now. My maternal grandmother was said to be completely gray by 40, and Steve Martin’s hair has been white for almost that long. Last Wednesday, Barack Obama acknowledged how much “more salt than pepper” he’s noticed up top since his campaign started. Graying hair (as opposed to hair that is simply gray, white or some other soulless color) finds no shortage of examples in our promising 21st century.No matter how culturally infixed these ideas become, however, they fall frustratingly short of the truth. My hair is nothing like my brother’s. It doesn’t look, grow, feel or behave the same at all. And to insist on the propagation of fleeting genetic linkages is worse than stupid: It’s ignorant. I’m sure my mom’s mom never would’ve settled for a “scientific” explanation like “There’s my old Aunt Mildred catching up with me.”The most tenable alternative explanation (and most belabored) is found in that sinister, sibilant word we’ve all come to know and despise: s-t-r-e-s-s. Some say you can control it; others say it’s either nature or nurture. I’m not too sure about either, but I do know I’ll be old soon – and won’t blame it on any one thing or person.
(08/03/08 8:05pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Cross-country running in high school proved to be a most rewarding experience. My first season got me acquainted with the burly captain of the wrestling team who took running as seriously as he did studying. One of those self-proclaimed “seniors-who-just-don’t-care,” he taught me an invaluable lesson of high school (and formal education)’s true value and purpose.Before our first race, this fellow hoped to get a head start on his latest English assignment: reading the first act of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” In Act I, Sc. 1, the Danish courtier Bernardo calls out the first line of the play: “Who’s there?” When our coach snapped the order to get warmed up, stretched and mentally attuned for the grueling task ahead, my friend tossed the book aside and sprang to his feet. As we jogged alongside each other through the lush September breeze, I listened keenly to what the burly wrestling captain had to say about the most famous play in Western literature. “The first line goes, ‘who’s there?,’ … and then I had to stop.” After pausing to catch his breath, he unleashed his full train of thought: “I wonder who, or what, there is.” I giggled and guffawed along with my teammates, as much to soothe pre-race nerves as to avoid displeasing this formidable jock of jocks. But apart from the mock-curiosity and scholarliness he displayed, what etched this moment into my memory was the self-deprecating tone he used to suggest: “I may be bigger and badder than you ever will; but when it comes to Shakespeare, I can’t read two lines in one sitting.”Whether I’m putting words in his mouth, or projecting my own self-aggrandizing opinion onto someone else’s, is irrelevant. Nor is it of any worth to assume that because this fellow didn’t read and didn’t study much, his intellect and study skills were below average. He is, in fact, now a senior at Bucknell.18th-century English writer and statesman Joseph Addison said: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” I still run these days, albeit on my own time, and with far less frequency than I read. Yet Addison’s words, in conjunction with the wrestling captain’s self-jabs, prove the absurdity of the idea that a social divide could exist today between those with a zest for sport and those with an enthusiasm for the written word (which admittedly includes more than Bill Shakespeare). Yet it’s surprising how inclined we still are to make that overtly simplistic distinction—between the physically gifted and adroit and the supposedly more sedate, “learned” members of society. Far gone, however, are the days of those sharp social contrasts and stereotypes that pervaded the worlds of academic and athletic competition before college. Although I harbor no delusions as to my future as a student (and my lack thereof as an athlete), the wrestling captain’s lesson remains clear: that for all those wannabe jocks of posterity, the line cannot only be blurred, but erased.
(07/27/08 9:54pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Instead of taking a road trip to the Sunshine State this past spring break like many of my friends, I stuck around B-Town and took up a challenge on a topic I’d never even thought about before. A New York Times Magazine essay competition for college students challenged writers to answer the question: “Modern Love: What is it now?”Although the deadline would not be until the end of March, something drove me to the library well in advance to get a hold of at least a few inspirational tomes, everything from “The Beatles And Philosophy” to “Hemingway on Love.”You might say I tried to diversify my research. And I really did. When all was said and done, however, I was more likely to drive up to the Big Apple, sneak into NYT headquarters and urinate all over their printing machines than seriously consider submitting my piece to them.I came to realize that they weren’t really looking for creative drive, emotional veracity, intellectual integrity or rudimentary research and writing skills, whatever their purported criteria for evaluation.What, then, could possibly be worth the prominent endorsement of the NYT Magazine’s “Fashion & Style” section, an appearance on mtvU (MTV’s college network), and $1,000? If previous winners are any indication, the price would be pretentious, fatuous, pop-cultural drivel passed off as deeply introspective discoveries of love in their own lives.To be fair, some of the entries were quite good. One piece, entitled “I Married A Republican: There, I Said It,” gave me a sort of aesthetic-intellectual orgasm. I wanted my piece to be exactly like the rollicking adventure I’d just read, not some glorified diary entry, nor the drug-induced bitching, moaning and whining of some of my favorite songs.Yet the reality of modern essay competitions is a lot like the reality of modern love: to try to portray, explicate or even mock it requires one to contribute to what one of my former professors called “a world of superficialities.”It’s true that writing a research paper isn’t the same as trying to represent, in words, one’s most permanent and intimate understanding of love. Equally true, however, is the crude maxim that writers – all writers – are whores.Those who enter high school or college essay competitions thinking they can get around this crude maxim are some of the biggest and most unfortunate whores. They believe that by appeasing judges who are bound by preconceptions and prejudices (concerning things like “creativity,” “originality” and in this case, “love”), they can win something more than fleeting recognition and material prizes.In order to succeed, however, writers must have a semblance of honesty and substance about them as much as a sense of style, and these “winning entries” placed infinitely more emphasis on the latter than the former.Love is undoubtedly the most subjective of all possible subjects. It’s far easier to write about the “luv” of our AIM and Facebook-charged generation. It certainly isn’t honest, but it is more specific and far more marketable than the real thing.
(07/20/08 7:32pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I know more than a few IU folks from the Chicago area. I use the term “area” because I wouldn’t want to spoil the racy feeling one gets by saying they’re from Chicago, when in truth they happen to be from Evanston, Arlington Heights or somewhere else on the unfashionable “outskirts” of the city.I freely admit I’ve never really “been” to Chicago, despite having physically set foot on its storied sidewalks. I don’t really count the time in fifth grade I attended my brother’s graduation from boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. When a friend invited me to visit him this summer, I accepted, albeit with some reluctance.My most enduring impression of the city, accurate or not, is the setting of the 1987 Brian De Palma film “The Untouchables.” Based on a 1950s TV series and inspired by the 1957 bestseller by legendary detective Eliot Ness, it hypes the hell out of the clash between Ness and Al Capone – the crime lord who corrupted and terrorized Prohibition-era Chicago for six years before his indictment and imprisonment in 1931 (for income-tax evasion).While it’s by no means sensible to slight this celebrated cultural center of the Midwest for events more than 70 years in the past, since East Coast cities like New York (Capone’s birthplace) and Boston similarly upheld the reign of organized crime, gambling, prostitution and bootlegging, but the Windy City of today is by no means guiltless of failing to erase yesteryear’s stain of scandal and governmental corruption.Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has produced the bulk of the disappointments tainting the historically brackish waters of Chicago politics today. He cited a $2 billion budget deficit (which his six-year administration couldn’t possibly have to do with) in his veto of HB5701, legislation enabling a critical boost to social service programs, hospitals, prisons and child-care centers.This controversial rejection estranged him from fellow Democrats (particularly House Speaker Michael Madigan, one of the bill’s staunchest supporters), broadening the partisan divide that is stalling progress on Chicago’s crime control, which Blagojevich bombastically referred to as “out of control” recently. This blithering remark did not sit well with Police Superintendent Jody Weis or Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, who is aiming to make the city a flashy candidate for the 2012 Summer Olympics and whose administration’s suggestions of youth-employment programs as crime prevention Blagojevich characteristically snubbed.Yet perhaps most unsettling detail of these misadventures is the Governor’s ties to Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the Obama campaign fundraiser (and a known Blagojevich contributor) convicted earlier this year of fraud, money laundering, and aiding and abetting bribery. When reporters raised questions about it last week, Blagojevich blew his stack.This news is not heartening. While Chicago’s vibrant arts community and sports teams make the city an enviable place to visit, enjoy and admire, it is an unenviable time to being doing so. At least Capone’s dead and Ness’ sensational biography can still enlighten us.
(07/14/08 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>One of my first college literature courses surrounded me mostly with folks of Hoosier background, with sprinklings of Illini. They filled the cramped Ballantine Hall room with a din of unmistakable dialects and raucous humor that irked my professor. Having met someone who would later become a lasting friend in the class, this atmosphere did not start out bothering me.Until, one day, someone decided to deride Mark Twain (an American literary hero if there ever was one) for the relatively free pass our current era of political correctness has given him.“I mean, nobody ever calls him racist!” the student said, tossing up his hands exasperatedly in the middle of his directionless diatribe.Upon spouting his hastily surmised thought, he took for granted how serious a reaction it would’ve elicited outside the classroom. By “outside the classroom,” I mean any recognizably public spot, including the hallway.In these places, where others were not so accustomed to the strident, unyielding flow of this student’s rants, where people wouldn’t have been so tired of them that they stopped listening after five seconds, this student wouldn’t have gotten off as freely as the dead man he thoughtlessly criticized.Outside the classroom, he might have been approached by someone of the same opinion as Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter, who recently wrote an essay for Time Magazine called “Getting Past Black and White.”“Was Twain racist?” Carter, who is himself black, asks. “Asking the question in the 21st century is as sensible as asking the same of Lincoln.”Although Lincoln really did think of African-Americans in terms that would be considered racist today, Carter concedes, he deplored slavery throughout his life and waged one of the most gruesome wars in our nation’s history to uproot, outlaw and formally end the despicable practice.Now, even a young American like me (supposedly brainwashed by the public school system, if I have any brains left) can pride himself on knowing this part of my country’s history. I guess that’s because American history isn’t much without Honest Abe.The same could be said for his fellow Midwesterner, Twain, whose storytelling and prowess for blunt criticism brought out from the American mind its humane and sensible elements while lampooning its darker side as no one else could. He villainized his era’s bigotry, hypocrisy, fanaticism, zealous religiosity and moral disfigurement, among other things.Academia and literati may be the most willing to defend “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from censorship and attack by those who cry foul at the characterization of Jim, Huck’s runaway slave companion, who speaks (like the rest of the characters) in dialect and whose appearances in the narrative are often accompanied by the n-word.Still, there’s no level of erudition necessary to see Jim’s deep fraternal bond with the narrator, the heroic instances in which he ensures his safety or the transcendent pathos of his development throughout the book – a book that generated more momentum against the cause of slavery than any work of American literature, before or since.There’s a reason Twain isn’t branded as racist more often. It’s because he wasn’t.
(07/06/08 7:28pm)
As orientation reaches its peak and the Class of 2012 starts gagging on the campus literature that’s being perfunctorily crammed down their throats, my feelings drift between pity and “Schadenfreude,” the German word for finding mirth in other people’s misfortunes. \nI’m not proud of it. It’s just a wretched impulse that seizes me when I walk past all those misty-eyed, pasty-faced “pre-frosh” on my way to work, flitting and gibbering at the heels of their parents. They thought they were ready for college, I chortle to myself. But all they’re ready for are the forces of fate that will soon swallow them whole.\nHow will they be swallowed whole? And why? These are serious questions.\nIn my two years of observation of the deadening slough of Welcome Week, there is one tradition that provokes in me the wicked-est laughter of all: the Freshman Induction Ceremony. It’s one of the oldest traditions of the program, and the one their parents will most likely force them to attend.\nDr. Herman B Wells, in his autobiographic sketch “Being Lucky,” wrote: “When as a student I first witnessed this ceremony, the colorful regalia, the beautiful ritual, the excitement of starting another school year combined to make the moment memorable.” Before my official induction, I shared Wells’ feelings. The hellish intensity of my high school years would now amount to something more than inflating my resume with expedient “extracurricular activities” and whoring myself to the tastes and demands of seemingly omniscient admissions officers.\nSo I sat up straight in my plush auditorium seat, ready to be vindicated – not only by the relatively official status of “student,” but by the mantle of meaning that would soon be bestowed on my post-adolescent life.\nThe auditorium’s organ kicked in, signaling the start of the eerily churchlike ceremony. The orderly flow of robed figures to the stage merely enhanced the clerical atmosphere. The deep red and crimson colors evoked the feeling of generations of tradition, as well as IU’s founding as a seminary. \nAlthough I was something of a believer then, the religious tone and theme of the introductory procession unnerved me. I wanted to like it, to be inspired. But I wasn’t.\nI nonetheless found myself humming to the low, rich music. I looked about, finding other people tolerating it just as much. I feared for my soul. \nThen-President Herbert stepped up to the podium, resplendent in immaculate white robes (not unlike the evil Emperor Commodus from the movie “Gladiator”). The ritual had begun for my conversion from East Coast snob/heretic into predictable, impressionable, trustworthy Hoosier stock.\nThis can’t be what college is altogether like, I thought. \nI won’t feel the need to buy into more meaningless pageantries and spectacles like these, will I? \nI’m still an individual, right? \nMy greatest fears and dreams don’t wholly resemble those of my peers. Do they?\nWith a bitter chuckle, I surrendered my soul to the glory of old IU. But after two years of college, I’m glad I can still laugh at myself. And, of course, at those poor freshmen.
(06/30/08 5:52pm)
Charlton Heston most certainly isn’t rolling in his grave. If anything, his cold dead hands have temporarily come back to life and tightened their grip on the antique rifle he’s no doubt entombed with in a posthumous victory. One of his most cherished beliefs was validated by the country’s highest court last week: the civilian right to keep and bear arms.\nHeston, as you may know, died this year. The big-time movie star turned stalwart conservative did more to protect and call attention to the Second Amendment than any politician of his generation.\nAlthough we all know a surprising number of people who couldn’t tell the difference between the “arms” mentioned in the Constitution and the appendages hanging from their upper bodies, I’m confident that an equally impressive number were left queasy by the Court’s decision. It has already rallied the rifle-toting reactionaries of our time, those who have adopted the un-mindful attitudes that allowed the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres to happen.\nBy “reactionaries,” I don’t mean Heston, who was in fact a poised and respectable advocate for his cause. To give a better example, I once lived in a town where pick-up trucks rolled around with bumper stickers reading “CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT,” a swipe at then-president Clinton, who signed the 1994 assault-weapons ban into law. And it’s not like I was seeing the same truck over and over again.\nAs if that wasn’t sufficiently close to home, I also grew up in a household where a considerable arsenal of ammunition and small arms rested in a safe on the other side of my bedroom wall. Perhaps because of my gentle, artistic disposition, my parents successfully kept this secret from me for several years. \nI’m glad I found out sooner or later, just to remind me where I stand on this historic ruling. I don’t deny the virtue of the argument proclaimed by Heston in an essay for the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Magazine: that the Second Amendment was, in no minor sense, “America’s First Freedom.” You can’t blame our colonial ancestors for preferring to have guns in their hands when leaping out of the bushes at those numerically superior British redcoats. \nBut you can blame today’s self-righteous, ideologically motivated NRA and related gun groups who began a countrywide crusade last week against cities with strict gun-control laws in the wake of the Court’s ruling. Their aim is not the logical preservation of self-defense, but a voracious and impetuous pursuit of hastily defined legislation that will leave gun-fearing communities even more fearful. \nCapitalizing on public anxieties to combat the ambiguously defined specter of “victim disarmament” (that banning guns only takes guns away from law abiding citizens, not criminals) fails to achieve what the founders of these groups originally intended to do. They wanted to bridge the gap between gun safety and gun accessibility and to encourage an atmosphere in which both interests can thrive. Their ideal was not to scare the hell out of people, humiliate those who feel genuinely threatened and to make guns seem more of a priority than human lives.
(06/23/08 5:16pm)
Have you ever noticed how, in the humdrum of casual, college-kid conversation, the topic of politics is regarded with aversion and distaste? I fully understand the ominous feeling that overtakes you when you really aren’t ready to reveal some of your most personal convictions, especially to someone who gets a kick out of finding some superficial basis for argument.\nBut the old adage about avoiding religion and politics at dinner parties falls short of describing this peculiar characteristic of young adults who are now beginning to participate in and learn about our precious democratic process.\nI can’t think of a clearer, more obnoxious example than the “Political Views” personal information tab on people’s Facebook profiles. While it’s entirely optional to make this information public (along with your sexual orientation, birthday, etc.), if you’re going to be open and honest about where your beliefs and experiences fall on our ideological spectrum, is it really necessary to select “Other”?\nBetter to leave that portion blank than indulge in the pretentious ambiguity surrounding this description of your “ideals” – supposedly so far removed from the party-bound sentiments of the masses that you can’t afford to waste your breath on anyone curious for your opinion.\nSince the advent of the blog and sites like Facebook, this self-righteous cynicism towards our political system has taken root and become emblematic of today’s youth culture. People take every opportunity possible to distract themselves from the increasingly civic nature of lives as coming-of-age citizens. \nYet as 2008 approaches its pivotal halfway point, it’s also become more difficult to hide behind vague, self-created labels. It’s even more important for people to get involved than perhaps 40 years ago, in 1968. Then, as now, overseas conflict mixed with disillusionment about government leaders has mobilized a new generation to become more politically active than before. But it isn’t enough to just “be involved;” we have to figure out what we believe and participate constructively, instead of just watching. Personalized forms of media have made it easier to distort and delude ourselves as to what we really think, and much of the political discourse has been left to over-opinionated airheads who think they’re writing and prophesying history every time they open their mouths. \nIn spite of it all, however, there’s no exaggerating the youth-central energy behind this election. But it isn’t enough to just keep track, we have to first and foremost identify where and with whom we stand. However, there are plenty of people who, if they bothered to clarify their views, might sway this election. \nFor those under 30, the Washington Post estimated about 6.5 million participated in this year’s primaries or caucuses. Time Magazine found 7 of 10 people our age who avidly follow the race. So even if you aren’t sure which party to affiliate yourself with, don’t hesitate to take a side if that’s what you happen to truly believe. This might be the only time in your lifetime that it will matter this much. No matter who or what inspires you, vote! – and make it a call from the mountaintops.
(06/15/08 8:41pm)
In a political season like this, things are said to change rapidly. But here’s an example of what hasn’t changed in this historic year thus far: my ambivalent attitude towards the New York Times. \nWhile sifting through a June 9 article on how gas prices affect citizens across the country’s various regions, one line caught my eye.\n“With the exception of rural Maine, the Northeast appears least affected by gasoline prices because people there make more money and drive shorter distances, or they take a bus or train to work.”\nI stopped reading, not because the NYT dropped a staggering no-brainer in the middle of a poignant news story, but because it surprisingly lacked the BS in which these stories are so often embedded. It was so bereft of BS, in fact, that I suffered a flashback to one of those 13-hours car trips up the eastern seaboard to see grandma.\nIt’s a pity that of all the people not to be affected by gas prices, it had to be the group whose driving is arguably the worst you’ll find anywhere in the country. \nI remember why my father didn’t exactly look forward to passing through Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. As a result of those claustrophobic, profanity-laden hours of authentic family time, I vowed to exercise all possible patience, courtesy and vigilance behind the wheel. After five years of practice, I’m proud of how true I’ve stayed to those vows. Far more consistent and unchanging than me, however, has been this hard little fact: The drivers in those areas still deserve to be condemned with the same four-letter words that played so critical a role in my father’s driving. When I came to the Midwest, however, I was floored by the utter lack of chaotic motorists. \nI sympathize (albeit reluctantly) with my dad whenever undertaking a trip “home” with that blend of animosity and nostalgia all lovers of travel learn to overcome. Having gone to school here for two years, it’s hard to believe the disparity in basic road manners and competence between here and my home in the Northeast. For drivers, Bloomington is comparably idyllic. \nIt’s a shame that Bloomington’s calm road atmosphere has faced adversity through higher gas prices. If anyone should have to drive less, it’s my relatives on the East Coast. Yet even here, Bloomington has an advantage. We don’t seem to have suffered as much as countless other towns. Our public transportation is as good as anywhere in the region, and our city often receives awards for how “walkable” it is. Not only can you escape the pain of gas prices here just by expanding your worldview through taking alternative transportation, you can’t help but come to grips with the prevailing sense of peace in and around Bloomington in doing so. So when you indulge your next college-themed road trip, remember what you had back in B-Town.
(06/09/08 5:35pm)
For the denizens of Ernie Pyle Hall, last week marked the anniversary of two people’s deaths, two people whose sense of humanity and range of accomplishment transcended the reaches of IU and the country.\nOne was former Director of Student Media Dave Adams. The other was former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.\nBut last week was last week. I should shift my focus to the here-and-now, allowing all that sad stuff to slide back into the past, where it belongs. So why do I feel it necessary to take another look back?\nMoreover, how can the tribute we end up giving them do justice to the good they have done, and continue to do, for us? \nI don’t mean to cast a pall over any of the memories or experiences one may have with these two celebrated lives. In fact, I embrace the argument that the intimate and influential stamp they’ve left on each and every person should never be forgotten.\nBut not a few people would make that same argument on behalf of former president Ronald Reagan, who passed away four years ago last Thursday, or the countless men who died preserving our freedoms as Americans on D-Day, 64 years ago last Friday. \nHow, then, should we go about justifying and legitimizing the tributes we’ve already given? How can we bring ourselves to label one person’s life “important,” and the other “unimportant”? Well, that’s a complicated question. \nA tribute should not only celebrate the person and their emotional impact on individual lives. It should also draw attention to the social forces and attitudes they fought, and the ideals and ideas we can learn from them. In this way we can do what they would’ve asked of us, at the bare minimum: to understand, create and take charge of our own destinies. \nIn turn, once we’ve passed on, each of us will deserve a tribute in our own right, having left the world in better shape than when we first came into it. \nWe shouldn’t settle for sentimental reminiscences; we should admire and further the legendary work begun by the people who are now sealed away in the past. To fall short of doing so would make their accomplishments, if not their visions and dreams, seem simplistic and inconsequential – confined to the dry, lifeless pages of history. \nWe would see their names in some newspaper blurb and perhaps feel a pinch of familiarity or fondness. But we wouldn’t come close to realizing what they did for us, what they left behind to render our lives easier, happier and less difficult than their own.\nNeedless to say, settling for fond memories is the exact opposite of what a tribute should do. Our generation continues to be charged with an ignorance of history, but we have unprecedented opportunities to shape the history started by the people we’ve loved and lost. \nRemembering them is just the beginning. And if you ask me, that’s a pretty fortunate way to start.
(05/26/08 6:47am)
The New York Times, that beacon of cutting-edge journalism and cultural exploration, surprised me this week with its scathing portrait of the late novelist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond 007, who would have turned 100 this month.\nMost of the article was dedicated to contrasting the fearless, witty, seductive hero with his creator—a lecherous, shy, thin man who smoked and drank himself to death before James Bond came to represent the symbol of ultimate masculine dignity.\nBut there are enough of those dudes in our literary history to fill an encyclopedia of tasteless trivia. Ian Fleming stands apart from them because his series of novels gave rise to a legendary film franchise, beginning with Sir Sean Connery in the early 1960s, which eventually reshaped our understanding and appraisal of the modern movie star.
(05/12/08 5:56pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The most memorable words of my freshman year came from my acting teacher: “Don’t think that you can impress me ... I’ve seen Helen Mirren, the greatest living actress in the world, perform in London from a front-row seat.” Aside from the assumption that all acting students are prone to vain delusions like these, my beef with this piece of “advice” concerns the pervasive American habit of upholding the ideas, opinions and qualities of someone with a British accent above those of the slack-jawed everyman (i.e., you and me). The veneration of Helen Mirren, however little her acting ability has to do with it, is understandable. English elocution is not only clearer and more resonant than the average American’s, it is more elegant and confident in its intonation – its sound evokes an appreciation for the language far less common on “our side of the pond.” Pop stars, sports heroes and our president are not exclusively at fault here.Upright, educated Britons can hardly be accused of taking their words for granted or abusing them to the extent we do, even when dishing out the slang that has endeared them to us. Laurence Olivier’s performance as Hamlet endures largely because the diction needed to speak and animate Shakespeare’s lines was a way of life for him. For Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the stars of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” the timing and placement of profanities peculiar to the British Isles comes just as naturally.While Helen Mirren’s displays on the stage and screen are by no means negligible, her fawning admirers (from the Academy Awards to my former professor) are not primarily concerned with talent, dramatic presence or even the sound of her voice. They are breathing new life into the stereotype that a national or regional dialect is synonymous with intelligence, sophistication, respectability – and sometimes superiority. Americans can be dumb. So can the Brits. Neither country has a monopoly on idiocy. The difference lies in our perceptions and presumptions. The perception that the British, on the whole, sound more articulate and more intelligent than we do has at least some truth to it. They are more likely to modulate their tone, pitch, and inflection for the sake of correctness. Their subtleties and proprieties of speech continue to influence us.Their actors also hail from an entirely different set of traditions than ours, which were redefined by Marlon Brando (who, in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” proved that great acting and speaking were two clearly different things).I ran into the presumption while interviewing to work at a local video store. The manager was interested to know I lived in Kent, England for a year. “Is that where all this is coming from?” she asked, gently mocking my frenetic hand gestures, a nervous tic. “Because everything over there, I hear, is more ... sophisticated ...” She then trailed off in the way most people do when they start to realize they don’t know what they’re talking about.
(05/11/08 8:52pm)
The most memorable words of my freshman year came from my acting teacher: “Don’t think that you can impress me ... I’ve seen Helen Mirren, the greatest living actress in the world, perform in London from a front-row seat.” \nAside from the assumption that all acting students are prone to vain delusions like these, my beef with this piece of “advice” concerns the pervasive American habit of upholding the ideas, opinions and qualities of someone with a British accent above those of the slack-jawed everyman (i.e., you and me). \nThe veneration of Helen Mirren, however little her acting ability has to do with it, is understandable. English elocution is not only clearer and more resonant than the average American’s, it is more elegant and confident in its intonation – its sound evokes an appreciation for the language far less common on “our side of the pond.” Pop stars, sports heroes and our president are not exclusively at fault here.\nUpright, educated Britons can hardly be accused of taking their words for granted or abusing them to the extent we do, even when dishing out the slang that has endeared them to us. Laurence Olivier’s performance as Hamlet endures largely because the diction needed to speak and animate Shakespeare’s lines was a way of life for him. For Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the stars of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” the timing and placement of profanities peculiar to the British Isles comes just as naturally.\nWhile Helen Mirren’s displays on the stage and screen are by no means negligible, her fawning admirers (from the Academy Awards to my former professor) are not primarily concerned with talent, dramatic presence or even the sound of her voice. They are breathing new life into the stereotype that a national or regional dialect is synonymous with intelligence, sophistication, respectability – and sometimes superiority. \nAmericans can be dumb. So can the Brits. Neither country has a monopoly on idiocy. The difference lies in our perceptions and presumptions. \nThe perception that the British, on the whole, sound more articulate and more intelligent than we do has at least some truth to it. They are more likely to modulate their tone, pitch, and inflection for the sake of correctness. Their subtleties and proprieties of speech continue to influence us.\nTheir actors also hail from an entirely different set of traditions than ours, which were redefined by Marlon Brando (who, in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” proved that great acting and speaking were two clearly different things).\nI ran into the presumption while interviewing to work at a local video store. The manager was interested to know I lived in Kent, England for a year. “Is that where all this is coming from?” she asked, gently mocking my frenetic hand gestures, a nervous tic. “Because everything over there, I hear, is more ... sophisticated ...” She then trailed off in the way most people do when they start to realize they don’t know what they’re talking about.
(02/04/08 5:16am)
Just taking your seat before IU’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” can be an unusual experience. Younger theatergoers at the Lee Norvelle Theatre & Drama Center giggled at the bare-chested and toga-clad cast Friday night, whose physical endeavors conveyed a freshness of expression and an ethereal ease. The guffaws force one to pay ever closer attention, only to be floored by the most intoxicating 75 minutes of IU theater this year.\nBut walking pretty is just one of the things this cast pulls off in one hour and 45 minutes with no intermission. Each actor takes on a main role, followed by several others, relying on imaginative pantomime and elegant narration to create the world of ancient Western myth and carry the audience through the dirty, as well as divine, realms of that world.\nThe show’s technical strengths could not better suit the creative engine of the cast. Just because these actors can play and pantomime doesn’t mean graduate student Alicia Bailey’s prop mastery, graduate student Jared Rutherford’s epic scene design or graduate student Mary Weber’s dreamscape-worthy carpentry go unappreciated. Also displaying distinctive talent were dyer/painter Angie Burkhardt, a graduate student, cutter/draper Lara Berich and more than a few folks with inspiring, original taste in costumes and use of lighting to craft atmosphere and transform it on cue.\nWhen Ceyx (graduate student Harper Jones), an adventurous man, starts feeling, as he says, “afraid, domesticated, diminished ... kind of (like) a lap dog” in the undying happiness of his marriage to Alcyone (freshman Kate Suffern), he journeys overseas to find an oracle. Her pleas for him to stay and avoid Poseidon’s malevolent winds are dismissed with chauvinistic swagger. His vessel succumbs to “an enormous green catastrophe,” out of which Poseidon (junior Graham Sheldon) emerges, a spiny, eyeless face barely visible in the dim light of a pendulum-like bulb overhead. Drowning, Ceyx entreats the gods to let his body wash ashore, where Alcyone alone may find him. When his ghost visits her, however, she shrieks and hides her eyes. “Does death undo me so?” he calls to her. “Look at me, my little bird.” At once, the cheerless confines of the stage extend into the hearts of the audience – not swept up in a shallow sappiness, but pricked by a fundamentally recognizable emotion – and what before was met with laughter now finds silence.\n“Metamorphoses” is a montage of the tragic and the comic kept seamlessly together by the boundless energy and aplomb of actors who, consistent with Director John Maness’s direction and the demands of their script, understand why audiences should bother revisiting these ancient stories: for their timeless themes and plethora of parallels to our own lives.\nGraduate student Jeff Grafton’s portrayal of Midas (the king of greed who faces fatal consequences for his wish that everything he touches turn to gold) is unforgettable as an unctuous, unlikable businessman babbling about family values, as well as Theias, another lust-filled monarch whose daughter is forced by Aphrodite (senior Melanie Derleth) into seducing him again and again until he finally chances to look in her face. Senior Dylan Weinberger plays Erysichthon, an arrogant brute who mocks the gods and cuts down a favorite tree of the agricultural goddess Ceres, who curses him with an insatiable appetite. He, too, pays a grotesque penalty.\nManess, having made his mark upon 12 truly able actors, has birthed something markedly different from any stage experience one will see at IU this year. It will run Tuesday, Feb. 5 through Saturday, Feb. 9.
(12/10/07 4:20am)
In conjunction with International Day of Action in Bali, Indonesia, activists demonstrated at the local level Saturday morning on Kirkwood Avenue to get people to urge Rep. Baron Hill and other lawmakers to take prompt action against the perceived threats of climate change.\nThe activists carried seven-foot rectangular posters displaying messages from south-central Indiana’s farming unions and distributing pamphlets, hoping to “educate and mobilize the public” on the reality of global warming, and “to show support and put pressure on Congress,” to take action.\nThe group has already passed through 13 districts and plans to reach up to 50 by next year, said Edyta Sitko, Greenpeace Field Organizer.\nThe demonstration coincided with the International Day of Action, when 55 nations convened to discuss how to curb global climate change.\nFarmers from the Local Growers Guild “are feeling the effects of droughts and severe heat waves” that inflate the costs of growing and irrigating crops, Sitko said. This situation also creates conditions in which insects and diseases can thrive. \n“Farming is already not a high-income profession,” she added, arguing that this is a demographic crucial to the region’s health and stability, and it is experiencing both environmental and societal burdens. \n“Representative Hill has called upon the entire Indiana delegation to get the United States Department of Agriculture o sign (energy legislation) for all 20 counties in the 9th District,” Sitko said. \nBut the group insists more can be done.\nH.R. 6, the energy bill that passed the House in December with Hill’s support, was “a really good first step,” Sitko said. The bill outlines new incentives for renewable resources, invalidates tax breaks for “big oil” and gas corporations and sets fuel efficiency standards higher than any since the 1970s. \nIU senior and Greenpeace member Chiffone Puckett also credited Hill, but nonetheless believes he “should go even further” in setting limits for carbon emissions, saving people’s money and ending decades of dependence on foreign oil. \n“We have the power, the technology and the means to do it,” Puckett said. But Puckett mainly thinks Hill should mount a more aggressive campaign because she fears the threat of filibusters in Congress.\nIU senior Harry Luton said he is even more concerned about national leaders’ inclination to ignore and resist acting on the problem. \n“It’d be stupid for Bush to veto it,” he said of H.R. 6. If Bush does veto the bill, as activists anticipate he will, Luton believes it will still send a clear signal to those in power. As soon as a new president is inaugurated in January 2009, he or she “has to be more helpful than Bush has been, just by comparison,” Luton said.\nThe U.S. remains the only industrialized nation whose leaders have not signed the U.N. Kyoto protocol mandating 36 countries to substantively reduce their carbon emissions by the target year 2012. On Dec. 3, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his country’s ratification of the treaty. Speaking for Greenpeace, Sitko said the U.S. should commit to slashing 80 percent of its 1990-era emissions by 2050.
(12/06/07 4:44am)
It would be unfair and undeserved to call the Monroe County Civic Theater’s boisterous, one-act adaptation of “A Christmas Carol” amateurish. It’s unfair because of the scant attention, publicity and money that is usually the plight of community theater, and undeserved because these actors are as committed to their artistic progress and achievement as those strutting the halls of IU’s Lee Norvelle Theater & Drama Center. \nDialogue from local playwright Russell McGee’s adaptation, which opened Monday at Rhino’s, is well articulated by the famous curmudgeon, Ebenezer Scrooge, played by IU alumna Hannah Moss. At the beginning, the audience witnesses Scrooge snorting and scowling as she sweeps their feet with her broom, and the classic refrain “Bah! Humbug!,” which she snarls throughout, is given proper ferocity. Considering the level of focus on the character, the fact that Scrooge is played by a young woman is negligible. \nHer costume changes go relatively unnoticed as a fluid ensemble of ghostly reindeer elves, played by Meggie Bontrager, Hayleigh Connor, IU freshman Kaylee Spivey and Paige Talbert, surround her at scene transitions and give the audience the signal they are now looking inside Scrooge’s mind. \nThe energy and timing so crucial to comedic action are demonstrated by IU sophomore Bradley Good in the roles of Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. His cheerfulness and utter lack of melancholic moments highlight his dramatic function as a reminder to all, particularly Scrooge, of the need to wish everyone on Earth, no matter their situations, a “Merry Christmas!” Unsurprisingly, this well-wishing does not sit well with Scrooge at first. Even after his many rebukes and grimaces, the gleeful, high-pitched voice cannot contain these words, even in his presence. \nIU sophomore Kerchanin Allen, playing Mrs. Cratchit and Martha, inflects both roles with tongue-in-cheek subtlety and a clear sense of on-stage professionalism. Her voice, with its distinctive rises and falls, is never excessive or overly mannered, and never fills more of the performance space than necessary. \nConsidering the scant funds, the costumes are quite elaborate. The ghost of Jacob Marley, played by Madeline Krause, who also plays a Christmas Angel, is resplendent in red-and-white sheets with a lampshade hat with similarly-colored ornaments hanging at its edges and shielding the face from Scrooge’s anxious gaze. He speaks in low, laborious tones mocking earlier film and stage depictions of the character. Nurses Belle, Fred and Fezziwig, played by IU senior Lauren Robison, sophomore Erika Heidewald and Charlotte Fitzek, wear lab coats while a hospital robe is placed on Scrooge. This offers a clear contrast between the characters and their state of mind, as well as a clue to Scrooge’s fate at the play’s climax when he is dragged offstage to a mental ward.\nThat said, this production of “A Christmas Carol” warrants some critiques. While the thematic underpinnings of Scrooge’s story (redemption, revelations about the fragile and finite in life) are both thorough and refreshingly funny, the focus on holiday cheer suffers. \nGiddy musical sequences, from Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t) Fear the Reaper” to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” interrupt the course of the story, as well as the character development. Almost every song represents a stage in Scrooge’s psychological descent, and though this is a clever narrative device, it falls short of providing any recognizable Christmas or holiday nostalgia.\nThe spirit of pushing every actor’s limits, taking risks with the original material and enlivening the audience with an unexpected twist should never be discouraged. Creativity is by no means lacking in these students of various ages, backgrounds and talents. Their ambitions and intentions of revamping a 164-year-old story are certainly justified. But those intentions did not always produce results striking the audience in the same way, or to the same extent, as those onstage. \nThe civic theater’s “A Christmas Carol” will show at 7 p.m. Dec. 7 and 8, and at 3 p.m. Dec. 9 at the Cinemat,123 S. Walnut St. All performances are free, but donations are appreciated.
(12/03/07 1:15am)
This week, Bloomington will embrace an entirely new spirit of the holidays as Monroe County Civic Theater’s production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” adapted to one 60-minute act by local playwright Russell McGee, opens for a three-week run. The production will be featured at seven locations across Bloomington and Spencer starting today through Dec. 17. The first performance is at 7 p.m. today at Rhino’s Youth Center and All-Ages Music Club, 331 S. Walnut.\nDirector and co-producer David Nosko will share with audiences a non-conventional, modest-budget version of the 164-year-old tale, accommodating generous helpings of humor within its original dramatic structure. \n“(We want) audiences to open up at least a little bit,” he said. “We took something dramatic and made it funny.”\nCo-producer and IU alumna Hannah Moss, playing the traditionally grouchy role of Ebenezer Scrooge, warns not to expect the most strictly faithful adaptation of Dickens’ novel.\n“(We’re) challenging the audience in a way that isn’t really competition (with any other ‘A Christmas Carol’),” Moss said. \nTheir version, she said, is in no way intended to rival other versions, nor to divert attention from other seasonal attractions, such as the Bloomington Playwrights Project’s “Sex/Death V” or the IU Department of Theatre and Drama’s “Jimmy Cory.”\n“Quite the contrary, we’re trying to be ourselves. … It’s very much about us,” Moss said.\nFor good measure, Moss and Nosko checked out film adaptations, old and new, from the local library, relishing Michael Caine’s Scrooge in “A Muppet Christmas Carol,” but not forgetting Alastair Sim and George C. Scott, to name a few. \nIU sophomore Kerchanin Allen, who plays both Mrs. Crachit and Martha, said she has found two inspiring and highly talented people in Nosko and Moss. \n“At the beginning of rehearsals, (Nosko) told us his idea, and we were like, ‘How are we going to pull this off?’” Allen said. “He pretty much made it happen.” \nAllen is just as enthusiastic to perform with Moss, who she is also quick to praise. \n“She knows exactly what she wants and (how to) get it,” Allen said. “She has amazing ideas that seem to come out of nowhere.” \nBoth producers, she added appreciatively, have devoted themselves to the production as a whole.\nAllen has also had the privilege of performing with theatrical groups of high financial capability, such as Shakespeare in the Park. Working with the Monroe County Civic Theater, however, has done nothing to limit the experience she has gained thus far in “A Christmas Carol.”\n“Every couple of nights, we change venues,” she explained. “We’re reaching out to different audiences and (having) different experiences.”\nChanging venues, she said, spurs creativity and she said she likes to make changes with each performance to keep on-stage action from becoming static.\nEach actor has been encouraged to “shout out an idea or make a suggestion,” emphasizing the level of comfort and flexibility in their tightly knit, motley crew of artists, Moss said. Charlotte Fitzek, who plays Fezziwig, decided just after the beginning of rehearsals to “step up in a big way” and become the assistant director. Moss described Fitzek as having “a keen eye” for the story’s physical dimensions, and said by suddenly displaying her abilities, “we helped realize her dreams.”\nParental guidance has been recommended for those under age 12. All shows are free, but donations are accepted.
(09/28/07 4:38am)
Thursday’s televised mayoral debate featured candidates Mark Kruzan and David Sabbagh heatedly defending their views as they fielded questions from panelists and viewers at WTIU, IU’s official television studio.\nA panel of journalists including Herald-Times editor Bob Zaltsberg and WFIU news director Will Murphy, among others, questioned the candidates and read several questions from Bloomington residents. Response times started at about one minute but were eventually cut to 30 seconds to challenge the candidates into giving the most concise answers.\nSabbagh, a Republican, frequently accused his opponent, incumbent Mayor Kruzan, of misstating views, while blaming him for a “bloated” budget increase in the mayor’s office of 60 percent – ”three times (the growth) of the city,” he said. \nSabbagh continued by saying Kruzan’s administration has created an “uncivil, intimidating workplace” and has caused an “exodus” of employers from the downtown area. He called the U.S. Census Bureau’s calculation of Bloomington’s poverty rate at about 35 percent “eye-opening.” \nKruzan, a Democrat, said in response “David (Sabbagh) must have woken up grumpy this morning.” He touted Forbe’s magazine’s recent rating of Bloomington as “one of the top 10 (cities) in the country for business and careers.” \nKruzan criticized Sabbagh for saying he would be able to work with colleagues from whom he distanced himself merely because he has been in the minority party for 12 years. He argued against the census figure, saying it was “exaggerated somewhat” by the student population.\n“I don’t subscribe to the belief that Bloomington is the fifth or sixth worst-off city in the country,” Kruzan said.\nSecond to the economy was the issue of environmental sustainability. Kruzan pointed to EverGreen Village as an example of his administration’s energy-efficient housing agenda, along with sewer extensions and about 150 acres of “green space” he has helped add to Bloomington. \nSabbagh characterized City Hall as a “fleet (of) gas-guzzling SUVs,” meaning that Kruzan’s administration has allowed high carbon emissions that has caused pollution. He pressed further on the issue of housing, saying average properties should cost less than $230,000. \nZaltsberg asked the candidates how they would work with IU to improve Bloomington’s overall quality of life. Sabbagh said he began his career as an academic, teaching for more than 15 years, and emphasized his experience with college life. \n“IU is our number-one asset,” Sabbagh said, adding that he sees an “unprecedented opportunity” in the leadership of IU President Michael McRobbie.\nKruzan also pointed to his years of collegiate experience – as a student, faculty and staff member at IU as proof of his commitment to the school. He also praised Michael McRobbie for his enthusiasm for the life sciences and technology sectors.