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(02/20/13 3:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Oxfam club at IU will promote awareness of rural and impoverished community rights at a 7 p.m. panel discussion Wednesday in the Georgian Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.The event, co-sponsored by Coal Free IU, is centered on the Right to Know, Right to Decide campaign, an initiative developed by Oxfam America, a global organization that fights poverty, hunger and injustice.The panel will feature professors from Maurer School of Law, Kelley School of Business, School of International Studies and Department of Communication and Culture, who will discuss the effects of oil, gas and mining industries on rural communities.“The campaign calls for communities to be consulted about how extracted industries will operate,” said Emily Metallic, vice president of Oxfam club and IDS employee. “They have the right to know what is going to happen to their community and the right to decide if they should be allowed to operate on their land.”Since IU Oxfam began in 2011, the student organization has worked to spread awareness of the relationship between extracting industries such as oil, mining and gas, and the rural communities they often operate in.Oxfam, which paired with Coal Free IU due to the topic’s relevance to coal-mining, is also working year-round on the Grow campaign, an effort to create a more sustainable food system in the IU and Bloomington community.“In the Grow campaign, we can take steps in our own lives,” Metallic said. “But with the Right to Know, Right to Decide campaign, it’s hard to take concrete actions in your everyday life. The first step to understand the campaign is to educate students on what is going on.”The club has weekly meetings 7:30 p.m. Mondays in Woodburn Hall. The meetings are open to the public.
(02/19/13 4:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar was rushed away from his Washington, D.C., office due to an anthrax attack in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, he said a drastic change in American foreign policy was underway.“I mention this because there was, for the first time, a surge of desire to raise money for the defense department and to defend America. There had been a hiatus for several years where the public was not very involved in foreign affairs,” Lugar said. “Not so then.”Lugar shared stories of diplomacy with dictators and anthrax scares at a foreign policy lecture Tuesday evening in the Whittenberger Auditiorium. IU students, faculty and community members packed the room for the second annual Patrick O’Meara International Lecture, named after the recently retired IU vice president of international affairs, who introduced Lugar to the crowd. “In short, Dick Lugar directly influenced policies that affected millions of people around the world,” O’Meara said. “His life has in so many ways been dedicated to bettering the lives of others.”As the longest-serving U.S. senator in Indiana history and former chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Lugar is highly regarded for his work with U.S. diplomacy efforts that led to disarmament of Russian nuclear and chemical weapons, as well as his work as a bipartisan diplomat for the U.S.“Sen. Lugar has always been a statesman that I’ve admired,” said senior Jon Jarrett, who attended the lecture. “He’s come up with a lot of legislation that’s been very impactful.”Lugar’s lecture, titled “American Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities” emphasized that the evolution of foreign relations is forcing the U.S. to change its strategies for international peacekeeping and negotiation.“We have an evolution of American foreign policy going on,” Lugar said. “We’ll have to deal with all sorts of situations of this variety in which we’re not going to be able to send armed forces trooping in. We’re not going to be able to ‘nation build.’ But we do have opportunities in diplomacy to make a huge difference.”Lugar, who was recently appointed as a distinguished scholar and professor of practice at the new School of Global and International Studies, plugged his current employer in a story from a recent trip to Washington, D.C.“I was at John Kerry’s swearing in as secretary of state, and an advertisement appeared in the Washington Post that morning about the IU International School,” Lugar said. “Of all the 400 people I saw, almost every single one wanted to talk about IU and what’s going on out there.”He also noted the fact that solutions to international conflict begin with strong educational programs.“There are others who need our help,” Lugar said. “They need the help of people who are going to find new opportunities right here on this campus. I think we’re off to a tremendous start.”
(02/15/13 5:47am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU Outdoor Adventures, a program supervised by the Indiana Memorial Union, might not receive funding from student tuition mandates beginning next semester following recommendations by the Committee for Fee Review 2012.Assuming the IU Board of Trustees follows the Committee for Fee Review’s recommendation, IUOA will eliminate all student discounts offered for programs and services, including a 100 percent discount on student leadership training and development. IUOA offers trips throughout the United States, outdoor leadership training and development and a retail store featuring a bouldering wall. Since moving locations from the IMU to Eigenmann Hall in 2010, total participation in IUOA programs and services has roughly tripled to 9,775 total participants in 2012, IUOA officials said.“We would not have been surprised if there had been a small reduction, but we were all very surprised to see it go to zero,” said Dustin Smucker, leisure programs coordinator for IUOA.Each IU student enrolled in more than three credit hours pays $92.74 a semester in mandatory activity fees.For the past two academic years, IUOA has received 64 cents per student as a part of the activity fee all IU students pay. During the 2012 fiscal year, the program received $52,956 from these fees. Following the Committee for Fee Reviews’ recommendation, IUOA is adjusting to the very likely possibility that this part of its budget will be eliminated.“I was really surprised, because two years ago Outdoor Adventures received an increase,” said Rob Meyer, assistant director for IMU activities and events and IUOA supervisor. “They supported what Outdoor Adventures does, and they see the value in what is happening over there. It seemed as if they felt we were not transparent and then questioned whether or not we have sound financial planning and budgetary planning.”The process of determining mandatory fee rates is prepared by the Committee for Fee Review, an organization composed of a group of seven IU students and co-chaired by the president of the IU Student Association and Graduate and Professional Student Organization.Last fall, group members listened and analyzed budget proposals from any student organization that received or would like to receive funding from mandatory fees.“Obviously, funding is very tight and we were very cognizant of the fact that student tuition is a hot topic right now, and that we had to be extra conscientious of the funding we were allocating,” said Kyle Straub, IUSA president and committee member. “It was a difficult process.”Formal recommendations made by the committee are sent to the dean of students, provost, President Michael McRobbie and the IU Board of Trustees, who create IU’s budget every two years.“In general, the Board of Trustees, where they can, do seem to follow the recommendations of the committee,” Carol McCord, associate dean of students and adviser for the 2012 Committee for Fee Review, said. “They take their consideration very seriously and don’t overturn it unless there is a need to do so.”IUOA received a letter from the committee Jan. 18, detailing its recommendation to reduce funding from 64 cents per student to $0. The letter emphasized the committee was “again disappointed by the continued lack of responsiveness of IU Outdoor Adventures to the recommendations of the past two Committees for Fee Review for more careful financial management, increased financial transparency and more effective budgeting to ensure sustainable operations in the future.”Straub did not comment specifically on the IUOA recommendation, but did reiterate the committee’s goal of taking a stricter approach to allocating funds to organizations that did not follow recommendations of past committees.“Something that was apparent this year is that we can’t continue to make exceptions,” Straub said. “We have to hold all groups to the same standards. There have been several rounds of the committee where changes weren’t made based on recs but they still received funding. We want to make sure all these units are being held to the same standards.”Because IUOA receives an annual subsidy from the IMU, the committee said it felt IUOA did not clarify how much money the IMU could possibly provide for IUOA, explaining that “without this information, the Committee (of Fee Reviews) cannot determine whether IUOA actually needs the funding from the Mandatory Student Fees, or if all of this funding may be continuously augmented by the Indiana Memorial Union.”Smucker and Meyer said they understand the difficulty of the committee’s task, but that IUOA cannot rely solely on IMU funding without significant budget adjustments.The committee works very hard,” McCord said. “They’re very thoughtful in their work. To me it’s one of the very best examples of any university of student participation in a real meaningful way.”Though IMU subsidy funding for IUOA has increased in recent years, Meyer said the expansion of the program and a $74,567 yearly rent IUOA pays Residential Programs and Services for its location in Eigenmann explains the upward trend in funding.“They see that the subsidy for IUOA has increased over time, and what they don’t see is that Outdoor Adventures never paid rent when they had their space in the Union. Now they pay rent, which is why the subsidy from the Union went up,” Meyer said. Smucker said in order for the elimination of student discounts to be an effective budgeting decision, total student participation will have to stay flat.“We are hoping that this could make up for lost expenses assuming that our enrollment stays level,” Smucker said. “If we cut the discounts and enrollment goes down we haven’t covered those losses.”Despite funding adjustments, Meyer said he is optimistic that IUOA will continue to thrive.“The numbers of student participation has gone up and we’re expanding the course offerings to give more students opportunities,” Meyer said. “I’m optimistic because we’re trying to rework our proposal in two years and be more transparent with the data so they can see the value in what they cut.”
(02/13/13 5:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Local physician and healthcare advocate Rob Stone spoke Tuesday night on the upcoming Medicaid mandate being debated in Indiana General Assembly.The event marked the IU College Democrats’ first speaker event of the year. “We’ve been trying to keep the focus this semester on things that are actually happening now so we can take action and advocate,” said Aaron Dy, president. “There are going to be actions in Indiana and across the country in this next year to decide how our health care plans are implemented and how they’re going to function in the future.”The organization’s vice president Cassady Palmer emphasized that during election years, the organization receives substantially more student involvement than an average year. In order to draw enthusiasm and participation, the club brought in Stone, a well-known local and national critic of the current U.S health care system.“The club has two phases: election year and everything else,” Palmer said. “Since we’re transitioning back into that ‘everything else’ phase, we wanted to hit it off with a bang.”Stone is the director and founder of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan, an organization of Indiana residents who support a publicly financed and privately delivered health care plan, as well as the Indiana state director for Physicians for a National Health Program.He currently serves as the director of the IU Health Bloomington Hospital Palliative care unit.“Indiana is facing a choice of whether to participate in the Medicaid expansion,” Stone said. “This is a deal too good to refuse.”Stone presented facts and statistics comparing the U.S healthcare system to other countries, as well as specific details of the current Medicaid expansion offered by the Affordable Care Act. He stressed statistics from the Indiana Hospital Association and U.S. census that showed Americans spending substantially more for healthcare and medicare than other countries, even though the U.S. remains behind in average life expectancy and high in deaths from preventable diseases. “We spend a whole lot on health care,” Stone said. “And what are we getting for it? Not much.”Stone did not express total support for the Affordable Care Act, emphasizing that he is both a critic and advocate of the law.“I’ve got problems with the act and things that I think are really good about it,” Stone said.He also encouraged the crowd to call their local state representatives, educate themselves more about the issue and spread the word to friends and family.“Right now our big focus is drawing interest and getting people to see that just because it’s not an election year does not mean there is nothing to do,” Palmer said. “I think with in this economy, a lot of people don’t look at the importance of health care reform or even know exactly what it means.”
(02/12/13 4:38am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Extra chairs were loaded into the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Grand Hall on Monday night as students and faculty filled in for The State of Black Art, the first annual poetry reading and panel discussion presented by the Black Graduate Student Association.“A lot of times with poetry, people feel disengaged because it talks about things that aren’t pertaining to life,” BGSA President Ciara Miller said. “I felt like this would be a good way for people to get engaged with poetry as well, because poetry is supposed to talk about things, spark revolutions, and it’s not quite happening.”Following a performance by a local saxophonist, BGSA played an audio clip of African-American poet and activist Amiri Baraka to help prepare the crowd for the night’s theme of “poetry that kills.”Four masters in fine arts students, including Miller, began the evening by reading poems covering topics from growing up in Kentucky to oppressive eighth grade math teachers.“I’m sometimes a reluctant reader, but I’m excited to add some feminine energy to the very masculine panel,” said Ife-Chudeni Oputa, one of the four female student poets.The graduate students were followed by readings by IU faculty members Ross Gay and Adrian Matejka, along with Kyle Dargan, an IU alumnus and assistant professor of literature and creative writing at American University.All three are authors of poetry collections and have received national recognition.Matejka had the audience laughing with references to the rap group Public Enemy. While a piece by Dargan was introspective, it kept things light with a reference to Will Ferrell’s character Ricky Bobby in the 2006 comedy film “Talladega Nights.” “Ninety-eight percent of people will die sometime in their lives,” Dargan said to chuckles in the audience. “I’ll see it when I believe it.” After the seven performers finished, the event transitioned into a panel discussion led by Gay, Magejka and Dargan. Audience members were free to ask questions regarding the role of art and poetry in the 21st century. “What I’ve found is that a lot of the poems that seemed to get praised aren’t always hitting at the issues that I see,” Miller said. “I’m from Chicago where last year there were over 500 homicides in the city, so I felt like it would be a good conversation to talk about what poetry is being promoted and what isn’t.”
(02/08/13 5:54am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As the new IU Union Board directors begin their terms of office this spring, reduced funding from the University is making the organization rethink how they program campus events. “It’s not necessarily affecting how we’re working, it’s just causing us to be more critical of our program proposals and finding cost-effective ways to reach the students in ways we haven’t explored before,” Eric Farr, vice president of programming for Union Board, said.Mandatory fees charged to students besides tuition are altered based on recommendations given by the Committee for Fee Review, a group consisting of seven student members appointed by the IU dean of students. Union Board will lose 4 cents per semester per student — more than $3,000 per year — beginning fall 2013 based on the most recent proposal by the Committee for Fee Review, Jared Thomas, Union Board president, said. The current Union Board directors will oversee this budget.The board does receive some funding from other campus organizations they partner with or for specific programs from the Dean of Student’s Office. However, this is not guaranteed from year to year. Most Union Board funding comes from the Committee for Fee Review.All student organizations requesting funds must present their fiscal plans to the committee annually so the committee can recommend funding proposals to the board of trustees and campus administration in time for fees to be set for the upcoming two academic years.The organization is co-chaired by the president of the IU Student Association and the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Organization.“We share with them what we’ve been doing and they make recommendations how we can be more transparent — different things with the handling of our funds,” Thomas said.The reduction in funds is not unique to this most recent reevaluation of student fee allocation. Union Board lost 70 cents per student per semester in 2011, more than $50,000 of the annual budget.“We weren’t happy about it, but it could have been worse,” Thomas said. “With the cuts we’re still trying to do as much as possible, but we’re trying to be creative.” All IU students enrolled in more than three credit hours pay $89.62 per semester in activity fees in addition to tuition. This payment is divided between campus organizations such as Campus Recreational Sports, IU Student Association and Union Board, among others. “A lot of boards that are starting in January are feeling the effects of reports done by boards that were before them,” Erin Brown, director of external affairs, said. “But we do go back and look at those previous reports and recommendations that were given before we were here and we still try to implement those.”While the funding reduction does not directly affect IU tuition, the Union Board is charged with organizing and funding prominent campus events and activities such as the Union Board film series at Whittenberger Auditorium, the official Little 500 concert and a variety of speakers such as Karl Rove and Robert Gibbs last fall.Thomas, Farr and Brown, who were all executive board members last term, understand that debts accumulated by unsuccessful events by past administrations are now the responsibility of the current Union Board.“Some of these losses go back three or four years ago. In addition to the cuts, we’re acting on a slightly smaller budget. So if anything we’re cutting back on the food we do at events and participating in more co-sponsorships,” Farr said.“Seeing the difference between 70 cents and the 4 cents this year shows we have room for improvement, but that we have been doing well considering the recommendations given to us two years prior,” Brown said.Along with a greater emphasis on student opinion, cost-efficiency and criticism of program proposals, Union Board hopes to prevent funding cuts in the future by working smarter in the present.“Whenever you are cutting things you don’t need I think it could turn into a beneficial scenario,” Brown said. “The only option we have is to make it work.”
(01/29/13 3:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As conversations spoken in English and Hebrew quieted in the Indiana Memorial Union East State Room Monday night, the 2013 Jewish Writers Series began with an hour-long presentation by Jewish-American novelist Dara Horn.“What makes someone a Jewish writer in America today? Their likelihood of being asked to participate in a panel where they will be asked whether or not they consider themselves a Jewish writer,” Horn said jokingly to an audience of IU faculty, students and community members. “So by that standard, I think I qualify as a Jewish writer.”Horn was invited to speak through the Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, which plans to bring four contemporary Jewish writers to campus throughout the semester.The series is funded by the Dorit and Gerald Paul Program in Jewish Culture and the Arts.As a fifth-generation Jewish-American, Horn, who also has a doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature, spoke about how her novels connected to Jewish culture and religion and how they reflect the identification struggle of the Jewish-American.“I think we’re in a very unusual situation in America today,” Horn said. “We live in a culture where there is one of the largest Jewish communities in the history of the world, but it’s a community that doesn’t primarily use a Jewish language. This loss of a common Jewish language is something a lot of people mourn.”Horn said her novels, which include “The World To Come” and “In the Image,” use references to religious text and Jewish history in a way that Americans understand.“What I try to do in my book is to write in English as though it were a Jewish language,” Horn said. “I’m trying to create a language and create an audience for this language.”As a part of the Jewish Writers Series, all participating authors will visit the American Jewish writers class taught by professor of English John Schilb. The class has read “The World To Come” and will read at least one piece of work from each visiting author.“From my point of view, what’s really exciting is since this is a 200-level course, mostly freshmen and sophomores are getting to meet major writers and ask them about their novels,” Schilb said. “That’s really rare.”Graduate student Jessica Carr, who has attended several lectures through the Borns Jewish Studies Program in the past, said listening to a novelist was a good change of pace. “The author series is nice, because we’re used to having scholars,” Carr said. “It’s a different experience to hear someone talk about literature and popular culture.”As a mother of four children under 5 years old, Horn said she was grateful to speak in a more peaceful environment than her home in New Jersey.“Thank you very much for listening to me,” Horn said. “Because no one listens to me at home.”
(01/24/13 4:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU alumnus Scott Wade said he never felt more alone than when he lived in China in 1985.“I had no way of communicating with the outside world from March to July,” Wade said. “It wasn’t that I was running away from anything, but because I was so far inside of that place, I just couldn’t see out.”At the time Wade participated in an IU-China exchange program, he said students had only been traveling to China since 1983. Because mail traveled so slowly between the two countries, the only contact Wade had with his family was a bag of crumbled cookies sent by his grandma. “It was still a very foreign place at that time,” Wade said. “I would not see anything in China that looked familiar to me, even the English language.”According to an Institute of International Education report on collegiate study abroad programs, 2,023 IU-Bloomington students enrolled in a study abroad program during the 2010-11 school year. However, the increasing number of students traveling overseas in 2013 have new ways of contacting families and friends. Through social media sites such as Facebook and Skype, students studying abroad have a kind of access that Wade said he could not have imagined 30 years ago.“I’m not saying communication now is bad,” Wade said. “I just think my experience is what foreign travel should be. I think I was changed, and I wonder now if students really come back changed, because they never really disconnect.”In a recent commentary in the Chronicle for Higher Education titled “How Facebook Can Ruin Study Abroad,” professor of communication at Trinity University Robert Huesca said access to home through social media and the Internet inhibits students’ experience of cultural immersion. “We live in a world with so much intercultural communication, you can’t really look at immersing yourself in a culture as completely taking away your old culture,” sophomore Michael Young said. “In order to immerse yourself in a new culture, you don’t have to necessarily get rid of everything that represents your home culture.”Young spent a year in Germany after high school in a government-funded exchange program before attending IU and said he would check Facebook about once a day and Skype with his parents no more than once a week.Though he said he understands Huesca’s criticism, he doesn’t believe his cultural experience was greatly hurt by his Internet use. “Because of how much social media plays in our lives, you can’t really avoid it,” Young said. “All of my friends in Germany had Facebook, and a lot of the time I would talk to my friends from Germany. It made me feel more connected to that culture.”Associate Vice President for Overseas Study Kathleen Sideli said increased connectivity between families and students overseas is advantageous from a health and safety perspective.“Just in the last two years alone, there have been earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand, Chile and Italy,” Sideli said. “There were violent demonstrations in Egypt and Jordan. Email and cellphone communication allow us to know quickly which of our students were impacted by events in those countries.”Still, Sideli, who has a daughter who is currently abroad, said she tries to keep minimal contact outside of occasional emails.“I’m not a typical example,” Sideli said. “Families and children have to come to terms with what their goals are so they can have enough family contact to help the student’s experience, but not enough contact to interfere with the student’s experience.”Wade said his culture-shocked experience in China was a life-changing journey that affected how he viewed the world still to this day. But as a father, he does like the idea of having a form of communication with his son if something were to go wrong.“I would like it, though, if he needed help or there was danger that he could communicate with me,” Wade said. “But as far as daily communication, I think he would like to enjoy that space alone. He can tell me all about it when he gets home.” Young said he knows a friend who deleted his Facebook profile before traveling abroad, and his transition back to friends in the United States proved difficult. He said maintaining those relationships at home is important to him.“It’s a good idea to immerse yourself in the culture as much as possible, but I don’t think whatever small difference there might be in how immersed you are in the culture is worth losing all your close friends,” Young said.Traveling with Internet connection or not, Wade said he encourages any college student to travel while they are still young.“I’m 50 now, and these kind of chances are once-in-a-lifetime,” Wade said. “You don’t get to do things like that twice. You need to completely absorb everything around you and not waste a minute looking at a cellphone or wondering who’s dating who back in Bloomington.”
(01/17/13 3:37am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jenny Tracy said she understands the pressures of living in a military family. Tracy works for Bloomington’s American Legion Auxiliary as a chaplain and the children and youth committee chair.The American Legion Auxilary, a women’s patriotic service organization, is a program of the American Legion. This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Tracy’s dream to help comfort children of military officers will materialize with a new volunteer initiative organized by the American Legion Auxiliary unit 18 called Comfy Cozy Packages.“One of the things I noticed is that the family doesn’t always get the attention that the nation’s heroes are getting,” Tracy said. “It felt like an ideal way to provide them with love and care.”Members from the American Legion Auxiliary, an organization for women related to military soldiers and veterans, will meet Jan. 21 from 2 to 6 p.m. and assemble care packages for children of local National Guard soldiers. The south central Indiana and Bloomington Kiwanis clubs, a local Girl Scout troop and volunteer residents will be putting together 60 care packages. The event is open to the public.The packages will be distributed to Bloomington’s two National Guard units, the 2nd Battalion 150th Field Artillery and the 384th Military Police this March, allowing soldiers to personally give the packages to their children.“A lot of pressure is on a military child,” Tracy said. “Their parent does a duty that could have the ultimate sacrifice, and the nation depends on them for many things.”Tracy said she has lived with this pressure most of her life. Her father was a general in the Air Force, and her husband, Matt Tracy, is a master sergeant for the 2nd Battalion 150th Field Artillery unit and a 21-year veteran of the National Guard. “Our unit could be deployed here in Bloomington,” Tracy said. “We’re mission-ready. The idea is to let the community be ready, too. When they do deploy, our community is ready to help.”The packages, which include decorated coffee mugs filled with hot chocolate packages, stuffed animals and assorted books for toddlers to teens, all wrapped in a fleece blanket, will be tied together with a yellow ribbon representing military support.Families will be encouraged to tie the ribbon around a nearby tree to represent their soldier.“This is about their service and how their child handles it,” Tracy said. “They might not understand the Auxiliary’s involvement, but what they will understand is that daddy brought a package home with a blanket and a teddy bear.”Vanessa McClary, board member for the Kiwanis clubs and an Air Force veteran, helped both clubs along with the Bloomington Key Club — a Kiwanis club for local high school students — to purchase and decorate coffee mugs for the packages.She said she feels the key to the event’s success is the involvement of multiple community members and organizations.“I think it’s wonderful we’re getting together on Martin Luther King Day, and I look forward to doing this in the future with all the groups involved,” McClary said.Tracy said she hopes the Comfy Cozy Packages project will help create a greater support by the Bloomington community for local military troupes and their families, but understands firsthand that the worry she and her 8-year-old son Bolton have for her husband will be constant in their daily lives.“I always say to my son, ‘you serve too,’” Tracy said. “You may not carry a gun, but you still serve. You hold the flag a little differently than many children.”- Joe Weber
(01/10/13 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students missed experiencing a rare snow day at IU.Heavy snowfall in Bloomington caused IU to officially close campus Dec. 26.“Over the last five years, you could probably count the number of snow days on my hand,” said Susan Williams, director of emergency communications services for IU Communications. While Williams estimates roughly three snow-related cancellations have occurred in the past five years, the process of determining whether streets and sidewalks are safe for students and faculty is a complex operation.“The decision is not made in a vacuum,” Williams said. “It does us no good to tell people to come to work if the city and county has told people to stay off the roads.”Along with consultation from emergency management workers for the City of Bloomington and Monroe County, the IU Emergency Management and Continuity staff uses weather forecasting data to predict severe weather. If IUEMC determines a storm could require cancelling classes and closing campus, it discusses a plan of action several days in advance with a policy group, which includes the provost, president’s chief of staff and other IU administrative officials. “We make these decisions early enough, so everyone will know,” Williams said. Even if the entire campus is closed, certain IU employees Williams calls “essential personnel” are permitted to come to work, if they choose to. “Essential personnel” include IU Police Department officers, Residential Programs and Services employees and researchers who monitor lab equipment, Williams said.While IUEMC informs students and faculty of cancellations via email, phone, social media and messages on digital signs, the Campus Bus Service makes its own decisions regarding whether to operate.“It’s a multi-faceted decision on the day-to-day operation of the bus service,” said Terry Maull, Campus Bus operations manager. Though Maull maintains contact with IUEMC and the provost during times of severe weather, he must also consider advice from IUPD, the City of Bloomington and en-route bus drivers.“(In) the middle of the day, the provost said classes were cancelled, and we continued to run the buses to get people back home,” Maull said. “We have to consider how the people who work at the University get home. It’s more than just ... the campus.”Maull said buses are likely to run as soon as roads are safe and cleared, even if classes have been cancelled. Following unforgiving winter weather, however, IU Department of Physical Plant Campus Site and Landscape Services is responsible for clearing approximately 21 miles of campus streets, 52 miles of campus sidewalks and any school-affiliated parking lots or garages, according to their website. “We’re still working on that snow,” said Mike Girvin, manager of Campus Site and Landscape Services.Following the storm on Dec. 26, Girvin said a team of employees worked about 17 hours to clear roads and sidewalks. “If school was in session, we would have gone non-stop,” Girvin said.Because a snowstorm can hit any time of the day, Williams said IUEMC will continue to send out email updates to students and faculty with specific cancellation information.“Perhaps we cancel classes from 8 a.m. to noon, then do a re-evaluation to see if it is safe to have later afternoon classes,” Williams said. “Based upon information that can vary from situation to situation, we might close it all day. We might close it until noon.”
(01/09/13 9:59pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students missed experiencing a rare snow day at IU.Heavy snowfall in Bloomington caused IU to officially close campus Dec. 26.“Over the last five years, you could probably count the number of snow days on my hand,” said Susan Williams, director of emergency communications services for IU Communications. While Williams estimates roughly three snow-related cancellations have occurred in the past five years, the process of determining whether streets and sidewalks are safe for students and faculty is a complex operation.“The decision is not made in a vacuum,” Williams said. “It does us no good to tell people to come to work if the city and county has told people to stay off the roads.”Along with consultation from emergency management workers for the City of Bloomington and Monroe County, the IU Emergency Management and Continuity staff uses weather forecasting data to predict severe weather. If IUEMC determines a storm could require cancelling classes and closing campus, it discusses a plan of action several days in advance with a policy group, which includes the provost, president’s chief of staff and other IU administrative officials. “We make these decisions early enough, so everyone will know,” Williams said. Even if the entire campus is closed, certain IU employees Williams calls “essential personnel” are permitted to come to work, if they choose to. “Essential personnel” include IU Police Department officers, Residential Programs and Services employees and researchers who monitor lab equipment, Williams said.While IUEMC informs students and faculty of cancellations via email, phone, social media and messages on digital signs, the Campus Bus Service makes its own decisions regarding whether to operate.“It’s a multi-faceted decision on the day-to-day operation of the bus service,” said Terry Maull, Campus Bus operations manager. Though Maull maintains contact with IUEMC and the provost during times of severe weather, he must also consider advice from IUPD, the City of Bloomington and en-route bus drivers“(In) the middle of the day, the provost said classes were cancelled, and we continued to run the buses to get people back home,” Maull said. “We have to consider how the people who work at the University get home. It’s more than just...the campus.”Maull said buses are likely to run as soon as roads are safe and cleared, even if classes have been cancelled. Following unforgiving winter weather, however, IU Department of Physical Plant Campus Site and Landscape Services is responsible for clearing approximately 21 miles of campus streets, 52 miles of campus sidewalks and any school-affiliated parking lot or garage, according to their website. “We’re still working on that snow,” said Mike Girvin, manager of Campus Site and Landscape Services.Following the storm on Dec. 26, Girvin said a team of employees worked about 17 hours to clear roads and sidewalks. “If school was in session, we would have gone non-stop,” Girvin said.Because a snowstorm can hit any time of the day, Williams said IUEMC will continue to send out email updates to students and faculty with specific cancellation information.“Perhaps we cancel classes from 8 a.m. to noon then do a re-evaluation to see if it is safe to have later afternoon classes,” Williams said. “Based upon information that can vary from situation to situation, we might close it all day. We might close it until noon.”
(11/15/12 3:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When junior Deborah Backman decided to double major in vocal performance and sociology, she said she felt unsure about how her decision would turn out.Instead of taking her transition slowly, she founded Soc-IU, the only student sociology club on campus.“I wanted to meet other people who were majoring in sociology and learn more about the field since I was getting into it so late,” she said. “I asked if there was an undergraduate club, and there wasn’t. That just started things and got the ball rolling.”She said she felt starting a club would help sociology students network and discover different career paths and fields of study. After finding a club sponsor with sociology professor Fabio Rojas, Backman began sending out emails and informing students in her classes about weekly sociology meetings.“When we had the first meeting, I think about four people showed up,” she said. “We just talked about what we each wanted out of the club. We just got more and more people week after week.”Along with having weekly meetings open to any students majoring or minoring in sociology, the club recently organized a panel discussion open to the public about social movements and the 2012 election earlier this November. When Backman first expressed interest in starting a club, Rojas emphasized the importance of keeping one or two goals as the center of the club’s mission.“No club can do everything,” Rojas said. “Choose one thing to do and really go for it.”Backman has focused on spreading the word about meetings and getting as many sociology students involved as possible. Though she said she would like to organize more open panel events in the future, the club is still focused on providing sociology students with a peer-support system and networking resource.Along with bringing in professors in the sociology department to discuss fields of research, she said she also plans to organize fundraising and community service events for club members.“It’s gotten me a lot more excited about sociology,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how this club would go over, but the fact that people are really passionate about the club, it’s made me a lot more excited about the field.”Though she plans to receive a sociology degree and continue on to graduate work in the field, Backman still takes music classes, voice lessons and even performs in IU Opera Theater productions.Although she was accepted to the Jacob’s School of Music to study vocal performance and music education, Backman said she feared that a career solely in music would not satisfy her. “I started to feel like it didn’t fit my personality,” she said. “But my (music) friends were very supportive. They knew I felt uncomfortable being a music education major for a while, and they saw how happy I was when I talked about sociology.”While she continues to juggle music and sociology classes, Backman said she feels the club has helped her college transition run smoothly.“It’s given me a lot more confidence that I came up with this idea, and people actually liked it,” she said. “I’ve learned more about things I never really thought about, and it’s challenging me to think in different ways.”