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(09/09/10 3:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Two gravestones lay tipped over Wednesday inside Dunn Cemetery near Beck Chapel. The vandalism was reported Saturday to the IU Police Department and the Indiana Memorial Union, said Thom Simmons, associate executive director for the IMU. At least four grave markers were knocked over; some of them broke into pieces. The cemetery is owned by the Dunn family, but the IU Physical Plant takes care of it, Simmons said. Moses Dunn sold 10 acres to the IU Board of Trustees in 1895, with the agreement that the cemetery would stay in the family.”I was very disappointed to see it happen,” Simmons said. He said he has been with the IMU for 21 years and can’t remember anything like this happening in the cemetery before.
(09/01/10 3:57am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Bloomington police nabbed a suspected purse snatcher Tuesday.Twenty-eight-year-old Elijah D. Reichmann, of Martinsville, was arrested with preliminary charges of armed robbery, a class B felony and resisting law enforcement with injury, a class D felony.He was caught after he allegedly stole a purse from a 19-year-old female IU student the same day at Seventh and Grant streets, said Lt. David Drake of the Bloomington Police Department.At about 11:30 a.m., Reichmann allegedly accosted the student and then attempted to steal her purse, Drake said. The victim allegedly struggled with him and eventually the purse’s strap broke and Reichmann ran off. Two men who witnessed the crime chased him to 10th and Grant streets, where they fought, Drake said.One man hit Reichmann with a broomstick as he wrestled him to the ground. BPD Sgt. Brad Seifers then arrived on scene.Reichmann managed to run away from the two men and Seifers chased him down and tackled him to the ground. Seifers suffered a hurt shoulder. Reichmann complained of pain from the broom strikes and was transported to the Monroe County Hospital, Drake said.After searching Reichmann’s car, police found a credit card of a 20-year-old female, whose purse was also stolen on Monday at Seventh and Grant streets, along with another stolen credit card, Drake said.The victim on Monday said she reported seeing a shiny object in the suspect’s hand, Drake said. Police found a folding knife near Tuesday’s attack and think Reichmann might have used it to cut the straps on the purses.IUPD suspects Reichmann could also be responsible for two other attempted purse thefts on campus on Monday.The two attempted purse thefts occurred on the intersection of Jordan Avenue and Third Street and at Wilkie North, IUPD Department Chief Keith Cash said. BPD is also investigating to see if Seifers was responsible for other Bloomington purse thefts, including one at Marsh Supermarket on N. Kinser Pike on Aug. 25 and a backpack theft in front of Monroe County Public Library.Reichmann is on parole for a 2005 burglary, Drake said. He has previous convictions for fraud, OWI while leaving the scene of an accident and receiving stolen property.
(04/29/10 1:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>MBA student Neha Kale decided she needed to be passionate about her career.Kale sold transmissions for a major manufacturer.“I actually loved my job,” she said. She traveled the world and meet interesting people. But she had a certain emptiness.“What was my mark going to be? That I sold more transmissions?” Kale said.Kale took a leave of absence from the transmission company to teach in rural South India. A photo in her apartment memorializes the time she took her students to a city three hours away, where, for the first time, they saw multi-story buildings.Afterwards, she enrolled in the Kelley School of Business MBA program and joined Net Impact.Now, she’s the president of the IU graduate chapter of Net Impact, a group that tries to figure out how to mix business and social responsibility, sustainability and profit.Early on a rainy Friday, Kale sat in a chair in her apartment with her laptop and three other Net Impact board members and ticked off the meeting’s bullet points.The members listened, offered suggestions and ate umpa — an Indian rice breakfast — figs and drank Indian tea as Kale plowed through agenda topics.The group advocates corporate responsibility and a triple bottom line for corporations – which means measuring not just for profit, but also for the social and environmental cost to the community.Kale and her board members resent being called names such as “treehuggers.” That’s not an accurate depiction of the group, she said. But a lot of fellow students just don’t care either way.“A lot of people think it’s not possible,” said Joni Lewis, the group’s vice president for internal communications.Maximizing profits, like for-profit businesses are expected to do – and at the same time looking out for the community at large – is a challenge for organizations.“That’s something that hasn’t been figured out,” Lewis said. “You can’t serve two masters at once.”But it doesn’t stop Kale, Lewis and the 80 members of the IU graduate chapter from trying. Members expect to convince the companies they work for to be more socially responsible.When Kale leaves IU, she said she wants to put her experience in the manufacturing industry to work as a consultant, hopefully for a firm that focuses on sustainability issues.“I’m interested in making an impact, but in a consulting form,” Kale said.
(04/22/10 2:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU graduate student Samuel Buelow said he was standing in a corner at a crowded Uncle Elizabeth’s bar being “anti-social” on a recent Saturday. Someone dressed as a Star Trek-style space cadet, approached him and said, “I think I’m your neighbor.”Buelow recognized him.“I think you are,” he replied.Then the man went into his routine.“I’m Major Pleasure,” the man said. “I’m an ‘ass’tronaut sent to discover Uranus.”The semi-unfamiliar man, Bloomington resident Josh Sanders, was trying to recruit members for an up-and-coming community group for gay, bisexual and transgender men aged 18 to 25 called Illumenate. He was also trying to publicize its space-themed launch party the next week.Buelow was looking to become more involved in the local gay community.As a female-to-male transsexual who identifies as a gay man, he was having trouble finding a group with which he felt comfortable. That group just happened to be, almost literally, next door, he said.Buelow joined Illumenate and quickly became part of the “core group,” which organizes activities.“It was exciting to find,” Buelow said. “Especially as they reach out to transgender men.”Illumenate is a social group and community building project, said coordinator Patrick Battani. Its purpose is to have a safe, open forum for young gay men to get the “real information,” on dating and relationships.It has events such as soda pop socials, movie nights, dances and a book club.The launch party for the group was April 18 in the Root Cellar on Kirkwood Avenue. The event, like all of the group’s events, was alcohol free. It was space-themed, with different rooms for “research,” or survey taking, a “training video” and a room for a model search for the group’s advertising material.The video said the mission of the group was to be south-central Indiana’s preeminent social group. It also said it would provide information “from finding a man to keeping a man.”Despite the outreach efforts its current members have undertaken, only a few people interested in joining the group showed up. One was graduate student Michael Young. Sanders found him at a costume shop looking for something to wear to an amateur drag contest.“It’s important to have a community,” Young said. “Students have a lot on their minds.” Illumenate is run through HIV/AIDS care coordination group Positive Link and Bloomington Hospital. The organization is modeled after and accredited by the MPowerment project in San Francisco. About 80 similar groups have sprouted across the country since the early 1990s.Battani said it is a place where gay men can just be themselves, and it’s not just for students or Bloomington residents. The group is also open to gay men from seven Indiana counties — Monroe, Bartholomew, Brown, Greene, Johnson, Lawrence and Owen, he said.While Battani said Bloomington is the fourth gayest city in America, the other counties it serves might not be so open. Bloomington is a central location — people can come to the city for the meetings, and their friends and family won’t know they’re going to some “gay thing,” he said.And, when they go, they might meet people from their own communities.“A lot of times, gay and bisexual men don’t know they have a community in their area,” Battani said.
(04/19/10 1:44am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If the Kelley School of Business had a speaker talk about values over profit and personal joy over business growth, would Kelley students listen?The answer, of course, is yes.Friday, author and “social entrepreneur” Mark Albion spoke as part of the school’s IU Entrepreneurial Connection and as part of the Dye Speaker Series. The event, organized by MBA students, was designed to help create a supportive network for current and former Kelley students starting their own small businesses.The talk was more philosophical than it was facts, figures and number crunching. Albion said he had studied the classics in college until his dad asked him what he was going to do with it. He then switched to economics.He asked questions such as “Why we are here?” and “What does it mean to have a good life?”His message: Never work. If it’s not fun; don’t do it. Careers are about what makes you come alive, he said. He stressed values over skills. He said later in a panel discussion that it was easier to teach employees skills than it was to teach them values.He talked about Ubuntu, a South African philosophy he said was opposite of Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.” This philosophy says, “You are, therefore I am.” It’s the concept that makes people in villages come together and take care of each other.Then he talked about British entrepreneur Anita Roddick and her successful company “The Body Shop,” which gives away most of its profits and doesn’t test on animals. He said before he first met her, his collegues kind of rolled their eyes at what she could teach them. But he said he was struck by her passion for her business and her capacity to do good for the world and her community.Most people who talked to her asked only what was her profit margin and what it was like to meet the queen, he said. It is possible to do well in business and to do good for the community, Albion said. Find yourself in something that’s bigger than yourself and marry your values and your desires. “It’s no longer how to be the best in the world,” he said. “But, how to be best for the world.”
(04/12/10 12:29am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A community of organizations gathered inside a tent in Dunn Meadow on Saturday to sell T-shirts, give out informative leaflets and distribute condoms. Lots and lots of condoms.People gathered there at noon to walk around downtown and raise awareness for AIDS. Organizers say it still carries an unfair stigma.Community groups — including Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls and representatives from the state government — came together for the sixth annual AIDS Walk to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.It was organized by Student Global AIDS Campaign at IU. T-shirt sales and any donations to the group went to Bloomington Hospital’s Positive Link, which coordinates support for people living with HIV/AIDS.Organizers estimated that 75 people showed up, but there were probably more. They walked down Indiana Avenue, Kirkwood Avenue, around the courthouse, up College Avenue, then down Seventh Street back to Dunn Meadow.During the 45-minute walk, the group passed the Monroe County Health Department, One City Centre, the Indiana Memorial Union and Showalter Fountain.Some bystanders stared. Some eating on Kirkwood Avenue stopped eating. Police escorts on bicycles stopped traffic at intersections. A group of young women lounging outside on the sidewalk had to get up off their lawn chairs so the group could pass.At one point, the group passed a tattooed guitarist, a guitar case open at his feet.“Why don’t any of you guys give me a dollar?” he asked the crowd.“This is already for a good cause,” someone shouted back. “It’s for AIDS awareness.” “Oh. That is a good cause,” he said. “But there’s a cure for that.”One of the people to yell back, “No,” was Chase Potter, who is HIV positive. Programs through Positive Link helped pay for his housing and medication. One medication he’s on, Atripla, costs $1,800 a month, he said.“The message isn’t out there,” he said in an interview after the walk. There’s medicine to treat AIDS, but it won’t save your life, Potter said.At last count, 187 Monroe County residents live with HIV, according to the Indiana State Department of Health’s Web site.Junior Katherine Shortt, an organizer and member of Student Global AIDS Campaign, said because it was a sunny day, unlike years past, a lot of people showed up. It was a chance for the community to come together, she said.“It involves the community,” Shortt said. “And it’s a good way to get students involved.”There were several students walking. Sophomore Hasan Mukhtar said he’s involved with the Student Global AIDS Campaign because so many people in developing countries have the disease. He’s also a member of groups such as the Timmy Foundation, which helps children in third-world countries.He said that while there’s a lot of medical research being done, there’s still a big social stigma with the disease.Unprotected sex is dangerous, Potter said, and there’s no cure for AIDS. “You will die by AIDS,” Potter said. “Unless you get hit by a truck first.”
(03/31/10 12:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s campus is full of beauty, both natural and man-made. The IU Art Museum is hard to miss. Though the entrance to the museum, located on Seventh Street near the IU Auditorium, is swallowed by the museum’s walls, while a 70-foot-tall light tower and a 21-foot-tall circular red statue stand guard out front.The museumThe IU Art Museum was founded in 1941, and its current building was dedicated in 1982. The ceiling of the atrium is made out of glass triangles — a signature of famous architect I.M. Pei, whose company was commissioned to design the building in 1973.The museum serves as a place to learn for a wide variety of people — from college to elementary students — through both serious study and casual browsing. The museum has about 40,000 pieces of art from around the world and throughout history, including works from ancient Greece and Egypt, ancient and modern Japan, China, Tibet, Europe, the Americas and Africa.Prominent artists on display at the museum include Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso. The museum also sometimes features works from the professors at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts students.The Indiana ArcThe red aluminum statue outside the museum is called the “Indiana Arc.” It was designed by Charles O. Perry and was placed there in 1995. The statue honors Thomas and Ellen Ehrlich. Thomas Ehrlich was IU’s 15th president.On his Web site, Perry says he is interested in complex mathematical curves. Another one of his pieces, “Continuum,” stands in front of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.The light poleThe Light Totem was designed by Theatre and Drama Professor Robert Shakespeare and put up in 2007 to mark the 25th anniversary of the museum building’s dedication. The light pole, which normally turns on at dusk, lights up part of the front wall with an array of color — turning the wall itself into a work of art. The pole was designed to be energy-efficient.
(03/26/10 5:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The saying goes, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Some IU professors want the country to focus more on the apple.Congress provided about $15 billion for preventive health care in the health reform bill President Barack Obama signed Tuesday. On top of that, new insurance plans are required to pay for some preventive screenings.Currently, about 2 percent to 5 percent of health care money is spent on preventing disease, estimated Mohammad Torabi, professor and chairman of the Department of Applied Health Science.He said he’d like to see it around 20 percent. About 70 percent health care costs and mortalities are caused by a small number of preventable diseases, such as heart and lung disease, asthma and diabetes, said Lloyd Kolbe, associate dean for global and community health at the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation.In the debates, the public has ignored prevention, he said.One aspect of preventing disease is providing health education and health promotion so people can protect themselves from getting sick. These are programs that encourage people to be physically active, stop smoking and eat healthy.Part of the bill requires restaurant chains to put nutrition information on food packages.“What we’ve learned how to do is compress mortality,” Kolbe said. That is, make it so when people die, they die as healthy as possible.The passage of the health bill was a great day in history, Torabi said. But he added there’s still more to do.“There’s a lot to be done to make it more preventive friendly,” he said.Prevention is fundamentalbecause it saves lives, prevents suffering, improves quality of life and saves tax payers, Torabi said.Simple changes in local policies, such as making Bloomington tobacco free, made the city healthier than it otherwise would be, Kolbe said. He said area cardiologists have seen a difference. Yet other changes haven’t been made.“We don’t have the resources or the will to implement the types of programs to prevent obesity,” Kolbe said.“Our prevention programs are enormously undeveloped,” Kolbe said. He said it’s not really expensive to implement the programs, but they do take political will.In Europe, especially Finland, Kolbe said countries practice “health in all policies” by integrating policies to achieve better health outcomes.They analyze all policies to see if they have an effect on health or not. That could include transportation, energy and agriculture policies to see if they make health better or worse.What the nation lacks, Kolbe said, is an understanding about what public health is.He said students who aren’t public health majors don’t often have the opportunity to take courses that would allow them to understand public health. Yet he said IU offers several opportunities for students to learn about public health.Kolbe said he’s proud the University has two programs for public health at IU-Bloomington and one at IU-Purdue University Indianapolis.
(03/12/10 4:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The IU Foundation let go of 18 employees Thursday.The layoffs came in the wake of a $2.4 million deficit and a 10 percent decrease in the Foundation’s budget for this fiscal year.For the past several months the Foundation has made reductions in programs, operating costs and made use of attrition, said Barbara Coffman, executive director of strategic planning and communications at the Foundation. But now it has to resort to layoffs.The IU Foundation had employed 201 people and the reductions came from all over the organization and from varying seniority levels in both the Bloomington and Indianapolis offices, she said. Coffman declined to comment on how many of the layoffs were in each office.Coffman said the Foundation was looking at consolidating operations and looking at efficiency, but wouldn’t discuss specifics.Similar to other campus organizations and the University itself, the Foundation has dealt with a severe budget crisis, Coffman said. Specifically, the endowment is down. A management fee from the endowment pays for “a good portion” of the Foundation’s budget, she said.Most of the rest of the budget comes from a development service fee paid by the University, which hasn’t been reduced, she said.The endowment fell 23 percent in the last fiscal year, going from $1.5 billion June 30, 2008 to $1.2 billion June 30, 2009.In February’s State of the University Speech, IU President Michael McRobbie said the endowment used to be about $1.6 billion but fell to as low as $1.1 billion. It’s now closer to $1.3 billion, he said.However, the laid-off employees will have some help.“We were able to give the departing employees a severance package, financial assistance and career transition counseling,” Coffman said.She added the management at the Foundation has been talking openly with the full staff about the budget situation since fall.Coffman said the Foundation looked at various ways to address the budget issue and even got ideas from the staff. Those were looked at to see which ideas would work and then were reviewed by senior management. But for 18 employees, today was their last day.However, she added that there’s no reason to think the Foundation would lay anyone else off, and it would continue to be careful with its budget.“We can’t make any guarantees, but we hope we don’t have to do this again,” Coffman said.
(03/03/10 5:52am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>While other student groups planned dinners or donation drives for charities to help with Haiti earthquake relief, one group began plotting something a little different.Members of the IU chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists said they want to find a certain type of group within Haiti to support.Their goal is to find a group that will stay and help “teach the people to fish,” instead of just throwing money at a situation, said Amber Frost, a recent IU graduate and a member of the Young Democratic Socialists national coordinating committee.A suitable group would support what the group stands for. The chapter started its search by looking at worker unions.One organization they looked at was Batay Ouvriye, but the group deemed it unacceptable because they reportedly called for the overthrow of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and then had financial support from a U.S. funded pro-democracy program. The socialists said it’s wrong because Aristide was elected democratically.This Friday to Saturday, the group is going to a national conference in New York.But when they are in Bloomington, the Young Democratic Socialists meet 5:30 p.m. Thursdays in Ballantine Hall. Or, if they can’t get a room there, they huddle around a table in the back of Soma Coffee House or Laughing Planet Cafe. Frost said that usually six or seven people show up to meetings.The group discusses international events, wars, conflicts, labor unions and the status of the socialist movement around the world.“As far as we’re concerned, as socialists, all human suffering is connected,” Frost said.She also said if there’s talk about war, then there must be talk about other issues such as jobs.The group members are also planning a war protest and a campaign to take on Nike and Coca-Cola on campus, who they say sometimes have unfair labor practices.Frost said the Young Democratic Socialists had 64 percent growth nationally between 2008 and 2009. In the past, growth was a lot slower, she said, maybe because people are scared of the word socialists. But, that fear could also help people realize what the group and socialism is really about.“I think just because it’s being thrown around as an insult so much, people want to look it up to see the real definition,” Frost said.
(03/02/10 4:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Organizers of a bone marrow drive hope their friend Lindsey Rawot will find a match.The drive in the Indiana Memorial Union’s Frangipani Room on Monday registered 952 people. The insides of their mouths were swabbed. Their names will join 12 million others on a national registry.If the donor has tissue matching a leukemia patient’s, the donor could give stem cells or bone marrow, which could save the patient’s life.Rawot graduated from Duke University last year. Before that school year she was diagnosed with lymphoma and needs a stem cell transplant to survive.She is a bright woman who had perfect scores on her ACT, friends said. At Duke, she joined the sorority Delta Delta Delta. She graduated on time, despite her disease, and got a job offer — which she had to give up.“The whole thing is it’s rare to be a match,” IU graduate Kyle Sullivan said. Sullivan went to school with Rawot at Chagrin Falls High School in Ohio.About one in 100,000 people are matches and only six out of 10 people with leukemia will find a match, Sullivan said.About 20 student groups, including several greek houses, helped run the drive. Another high school friend, IU graduate RJ Campbell, said he contacted IU Student Association President Peter Servaas, who sent a mass e-mail to several student groups.Senior Patrick Cogan, who also went to school with Rawot, used his position as a student manager for the men’s basketball team and his contacts to get basketballs signed by Tom Crean, the Indiana Pacers, Pacer floor tickets, IU hats and several other raffle items.“I used all the people I knew to make this as big as it can be,” he said. At one point, the Pacers cheerleaders showed up.IU Treasurer MaryFrances McCourt stayed most of the day. She said her son is friends with Rawot, she was from the same area and she was also a Tri-Delt at Duke, like Rawot. What the organizers did in just three weeks is amazing, she said.“Can’t say no to a human life,” she said.Similar drives were also held in Chagrin, New York; Washington, D.C.; and Duke University, where Rawot also had connections, Sullivan said.
(02/24/10 3:10am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Minutes before a dress rehearsal for Giacomo Puccini’s “La Rondine,” junior Ted Jamison-Koenig stood at the edge of the stage at the Musical Arts Center. He clapped two blocks together.Upstairs in the control room, the people recording the sound were almost frantic about correcting millisecond delays between the front and back microphones picking up sound.Junior Scott Simpson explained that the delays cause phasing, which is sometimes used on purpose in rock music.It was all a part of setting up to record the opera. This weekend and next these and other students from the Jacob School of Music Recording program will stream “La Rondine” live over the Internet. Jamison-Koenig is the technical director, or, as he calls it, the switcher, and is in charge of the camera angles and camera lighting. He went back to the control room and as the play started he began switching camera angles and giving orders.“What’s your f-stop?” he said into his microphone.Konrad Strauss, chair and director of recording arts, said he wants the video to be competitive with anything on the Net, including the Metropolitan Opera’s live streaming.“We have a set-up comparable to professional opera companies,” Jamison-Koenig said. “And in some cases it’s better.”A big difference between the two is the Met charges.“This site will always be free,” Strauss said.The live streams started in November 2007. Strauss tested the live streaming video with IU alumni in New York. The opera was “La Boheme.” He was interested in seeing if it could work. It did.“It really started out as an interest in the technology,” Strauss said. Its success allowed him to get funding from the Jacobs School of Music and other grants and publicize the streaming videos.He wants to create more interest in classic music. He said this is a resource that can make compelling classical music available to anyone. He hopes to start broadcasting performances to Indiana’s public schools, he said.“I’m very interested in technology,” he said. “Specifically technology to broaden the appeal of classical music.”He said he felt that in 2007, IU and the Bloomington community had enough access to broadband internet connections to handle the high quality video. But, he was surprised by who was most thankful — family and friends of the performers in other cities and states who couldn’t come see the show.Strauss also wanted to see if the technology could be done for a reasonable cost.The Met spends upwards of $1 million per production for broadcast. IU Music Live has spent $60,000 to $70,000 total.Not every performance goes up on the site. Strauss said most performances are with shows whose rights are in the public domain. For instance, April performances of “West Side Story” at IU, which is also running on Broadway, would be too expensive.The biggest legal challenge, he said, is dealing with granting of rights. If the school rented music for an opera from a publisher, the site has to receive permission from the publisher to broadcast. For instance, in fall 2008 the publisher granted permission to stream “The Love for Three Oranges” live and then have the show on demand on the site for six months.The site got 5,321 unique visitors from Jan. 2 to Feb. 16, Strauss said. The last show the site broadcasted live, “Lucia di Lammermoor,” attracted 889 viewers, though he said probably only 100 to 120 watched the whole thing.Other schools are starting to do similar sites, Strauss said.He gets about one call a month from schools trying to get something similar started. North Texas State University started a streaming project, concentrating on instrumental music.“You will see a lot more of these types of projects,” Strauss said.
(02/18/10 5:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Student volunteers manned the food tables a little before 5 p.m. as the Haiti Benefit Dinner was about to begin in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Grand Hall. They stood at the vegetarian table, the non-vegetarian table and the dessert table amid the pre-start panic.“Where’s the bread?” someone yelled.The students snuck peaks at the food, wondering what it was. They donned rubber gloves. Then, they took off the aluminum covers, crushed them into balls and revealed rices, potatoes and noodles.The hungry diners shuffled in. Everyone got two entrees, rice and bread. In a few hours, many of the pans would be empty. Tickets for the event were sold for $10 each to benefit Partners in Health, which is on the ground in Haiti after Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake last month. The event exceeded its goal of raising $5,000, said Philip Asamoah, a student in the Huttons Honors Council Association. The council started planning for the event about three weeks ago, said junior Hannah Wert, who is on the council and helped organize.“It’s fairly easy to get people to donate,” she said. Besides, she said, people will pay for good Bloomington food. The foods were styles from all over the world. Twenty-three restaurants donated, from Cafe D’jango to Papa John’s to European Cooking School.Sophomore Cara Escobedo got fried rice, a potato dish, a breadstick and a woman dished her up something else. “Some kind of pie,” Escobedo said the woman told her. “She didn’t know.”Escobedo tried something new, but, she said, she liked it.Her friend, sophomore Lloyd Edwards ate stuffed grape leaves from Anatolia Turkish Restaurant. He said his food had a spice to it and he liked it, also.About 40 minutes in, dance group Gumboot took stage. They performed traditional South African dances developed by oppressed black miners. After them came soul group 4Reign and then jazz, hip-hop fusion group Jip Jop.A little after 7 p.m., the food was running low. The line, which kept some for half an hour, tapered off. Organizers bought more food from China Buffet to make sure the last people got something. Through some of the night, a YouTube video projected on a wall. It played over and over of Haitian children on stretchers and in hospital beds. One scene showed a man using a sledgehammer to break through a collapsed building.“I think it’s important to have a reminder about why we’re here,” said freshman Fleetwood Young, who turned on the video.
(02/10/10 6:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>When public transportation just won’t cut it, students can now zip. Zipcars made their debut on campus Tuesday. The program allows students, faculty, staff and community members to sign up to rent cars by the hour. Currently, there are four cars, two available across the street from Ernie Pyle Hall and two available across the street from Foster Quad.Two of the cars are Honda Insights – hybrid cars – and two are Honda Civics. All are new. Kent McDaniel, executive director for transportation services, said a car sharing program is one the University has been considering for several years. The IU Student Association came on board with the program this summer.McDaniel said studies showed that the more shared cars there were, the fewer other cars would show up on campus.“Our goal was to bring these on campus, try to encourage people to feel like they can send their students to Indiana University,” McDaniel said. “And they don’t have to send them with an automobile.”McDaniel said an average car costs $700 a month to operate while a Zipcar costs an average user $100 a month.Its price is all inclusive and the users are expected to fill the car up with gas before returning it. Gas is free.“That includes gas, insurance, maintenance, roadside assistance,” said Rich Paisner, a senior account manager with Zipcar. “It’s really everything you don’t want when you run a car we take care of.”The cars can be used for 180 miles in one rental. After that an additional fee is charged. Paisner said the Zipcar program is available in 150 locations around the world. Cities such as Altanta, Boston, San Franisco, Chicago and London have programs. Universities are coming aboard, too. The University of Michigan, Yale University, the University of Illinois and about 100 more Universities use the program, according to the Zipcar Web site. Through the contract IU does not have to pay anything for Zipcars on campus. No one could say how many students are expected to use the cars or how many would need to use the service to keep the cars on campus. However, the University expects four more cars on campus by next semester.But, in a University topping 40,000 students, eight cars might not be enough, McDaniels said. “I think it’ll take a while for people to get used to it,” he said.IUSA also signed a $7500 contract with Zimride, an online carpool site Monday. Zimride is part of Zipcar and allows students to post and find rides in a more technological way than a carpooling board.
(02/03/10 3:58am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As faculty and lecturers retire, the IU School of Nursing struggles to replace them. The school, which offers bachelor of nursing degrees on the Indianapolis, Bloomington and Columbus campuses, has 14 openings on its Web site.Those positions were vacated by retiring faculty, said Judith Halstead, executive associate dean for academic affairs at the school.The national average age of the nursing faculty is 55 to 56, which the school follows closely, she said.Halstead said nationwide, schools are struggling to find nurses with advanced degrees.A lot of nursing faculty are aging and retiring and there are not enough qualified younger faculty prepared to take their roles, Halstead said. Besides that, nurses make more money in the field rather than teaching.Despite an increased interest in nursing, most states will have a nursing shortage by 2020, and Indiana could have a 32 percent shortage by that time, according a U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources report “Nursing Education in Five States: 2005.”In some places, the increase of students and decrease of faculty affects the ability of a school to expand, she said. Students just can’t get in because there are a lack of teachers in the classroom and the clinic.She said it’s not exactly the case at IU because the nursing school expanded enrollment about 30 percent during the 2007-08 school year. The school is at capacity with about 1,000 undergraduates. The number of faculty employed by IU stayed the same and might even shrink because of economic and budget reasons, but Clarian Health provided five nursing instructors to help with the expansion. The school wants to prepare more students with advanced degrees, so it’s been applying for state and federal aid for scholarships to attract graduate students, Halstead said. IU has about 450 graduate students on the Indianapolis campus.“We’ve been pretty successful at writing grants and scholarship,” she said. The school wants to fill all the positions by the fall, but probably won’t, Halstead said.“We will continue to search and look until we fill them,” she said.
(02/02/10 5:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It took two hours and several near-unrecognizable words to narrow a 23-contestant field down to one winner at Tuesday’s spelling bee at Teter Quad.Michael Moore, Bob Weith and Diana Jacobs of Residential Programs and Services read the word “falafel,” which would start the spell-off between Jennie Lipson of Wissler 4 and Zach Silverman of Thompson 2. Lipson, who sported bee’s antennae and said she wasn’t really nervous, spelled it correctly.After an intense round of food words, the contestants came to medical terminology. First word – Antithyroglobulin. Lipson spelled it incorrectly leading to sudden death.Lipson, starting the round, had the chance to win. The judges said the word. She stood at the microphone.“A,” she started. “C-e-t-y-l-c-h-o-l-i-n-e. Acetylcholine.” She won and was given a $30 iTunes coupon and a trophy.It was Teter’s second annual Spelling Bee. Residential Assistants from each of Teter’s 23 floors helped put the contest together. It was a contest to build community, said Boisen 4 Residential Assistant Tom Gaither. Each month the RAs put together a big event.All the contestants were given a list in advance of the contest. Lipson said she looked at it 10 minutes before. She said she participated in the bee because there was a contest on her floor where only three other people participated.“I’m glad I won,” she said.It wasn’t just a spelling contest, it was also a spirit contest. Each Teter floor was encouraged to show up, dress up and cheer. The winners, Boisen 4, will get an ice cream party.“It’s a very big event for our floor,” said Kent Griffith, a bee contestant for Boisen 4. He was eliminated when the words started getting tricky and obscure in the botany round. He said the farther he went in the contest, the more popular he’d be.“It’s the single most important factor in if my peers invite me to parties and events,” Griffith said.Like other floors who showed up to support their speller, Boisen 4 is a close floor, Griffith said. He said they have “pillow talk” where they lay down in people’s rooms and start telling secrets.“People’s true philosophy comes out,” he said. “We all know each other’s fantasies, hopes and dreams and favorite video games.”
(01/28/10 4:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The faculty is largely on its own this semester when it comes to classroom H1N1 policy.Memos and recommendations last semester from the Provost’s office encouraged professors and lecturers to excuse students from class without a doctor’s note if they had flu symptoms.Since they didn’t hear anything from Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson on the matter this semester, each faculty member made his or her own decision about class attendance. While they wait for new developments, some professors continued the policy from last semester and some discontinued it.“I definitely think H1N1 was ... much higher in everyone’s consciousness last semester,” said Erika Dowell, president of the Bloomington Faculty Council and public services librarian at the Lilly Library.The intent of the recommendations last semester was to avoid overwhelming doctors. IU didn’t want students to go to the Health Center to get a note, said Herb Terry, an associate professor in the Department of Telecommunications and a member of the BFC.This semester calls for a little more flexibility, he said.“I’m not sure that universally professors are any less concerned,“ Terry said.Terry said he’d mentioned H1N1 in his class several times and put his standard attendance policy in the syllabus. Wednesday, however, he announced to his class they didn’t need doctor’s notes if they were sick.The Provost might advise faculty to do something else in the future, he said.Although H1N1 cases are down, the bug is not completely out. From Jan. 10 to 16, H1N1 doctor visits for flu-like illnesses and flu activity nationwide decreased, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site. But, some states still continue to report regional activity from the virus, the site says.Hanson said there’s been no change in policy from the state or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concerning the University and H1N1. She added that some faculty members have asked for guidance on class policy for illnesses. Overall, Hanson said, the campus will be in a better position to respond if there’s a second wave of the flu.“I think mostly everyone is trying to do what they think is the right thing,” Hanson said.Hanson said a few professors have voiced concern to her because students were exempt from exams last semester after claiming they were sick. Professors have a mission to teach, she said, and students come to learn.“It can be disruptive for the whole class,” Hanson said.Terry said he doubted IU is worse than the rest of the population when it comes to H1N1. Airlines and other industries have loosened their focus on the disease, too, he said.“I hope it isn’t a mistake,” Terry said.
(01/14/10 4:29am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A new program will give full-time IU staff members credits to reduce their health care costs if they lead a healthier lifestyle. The voluntary program starts January 2011 and is part of a strategy to reduce the University’s health care costs, according to an IU press release. Employees and their spouses or domestic partners in the program will be rewarded for things such as not using tobacco, getting certain vaccinations and getting tests such as mammograms. Participants can take a health risk assessment and a biometric screening to create incentives for maintaining healthy blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose and body mass index.Many employees are expected to take part in the program, said IU Spokesman Larry MacIntyre. IU expects to pay $154 million in health care costs this year, MacIntyre said, and health care costs have been increasing by 8 to 12 percent per year. Costs for University employees are expected to increase significantly next year, according to the release.With this program in the short run, since staff members pay less, the University might bear more of a burden. But, MacIntyre said, the long-term goal and the University’s hope is to get people to lead a healthier lifestyle, which would reduce chronic health problems and costs.“Insurance is a gamble,” MacIntyre said. “It’s always a gamble.”
(12/24/09 4:02pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The state will most likely cut about $59 million from Indiana University’s share of the higher education budget over the next 18 months.It’s part of $150 million in cuts through Indiana’s seven publicly funded colleges and universities after tax revenues for the state were below projections for 14 months in a row. The cut is 6 percent of the higher education budget and about 10 percent of the money that hasn't already been given out to universities during the past six months.Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels told the Indiana Commission for Higher Education on Dec. 4 to recommend to him how to allocate the cuts. After working with university leaders, the commission announced their plan Tuesday.IU will decide within the next few weeks how exactly to make up the difference. Administrators said earlier this month that tuition will not be raised for fall 2010 or the 2010-2011 school year.The University has already implemented a hiring slowdown – effectively eliminating 50 positions in the last year. They’ve also frozen salaries, saving more than $25 million, according to an IU press release. And according to the release, IU has made $177 million in reductions this year.IU has planned several scenarios about what to do with funding cuts, IU Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Neil Theobald said earlier this month. Administrators had said they want to make any cuts as far away from the classroom and the laboratory as possible.In a statement Tuesday, IU President Michael McRobbie said it’s essential IU deals with the cuts without compromising teaching or research."However, no one should underestimate the very serious challenge that this deep cut represents, nor the impact it will have on the IU's broader contributions to the state,” McRobbie said in the statement.The commission released some non-binding suggestions for cutting costs. Some of the suggestions include, on the academic side, promoting degree completion, eliminating or outsourcing low priority programs, looking into more online courses, using technology to reduce staff in large classes and reducing state funding to schools that allow students to go two extra semesters without graduating.On the operating side, the commission said, in part, that universities should think about outsourcing or consolidating back-office operations such as technology, payroll, marketing and purchasing. They said working together would help, too. They recommended resource sharing between colleges and locations.Overall, they recommended tightening efficiency and looking at what school does what best.Jason Bearce, spokesman for the commission on higher education said when times are tight, it’s best to make every dollar go as far as it can.“Every institution can’t be everything to everyone,” he said.
(12/11/09 3:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Next fall one campus library will add features that administrators hope will be popular with students – but it will be sacrificing the books.The Business/School of Public and Environmental Affairs Information Commons will close for renovations at 5 p.m. Dec. 23 and reopen at the end of August 2010.The renovated library will feature a cafe, 16 group study areas, 46 public work computer stations and 40 large screen monitor computers. It will have new carpet, new furniture and better lighting.“It’ll be brighter in here,” said Steven Sowell, head of the Business/SPEA Information Commons.But the library will be missing something among the rows of tables and computers – physical books.There is a dramatic decrease in paper documents at this Information Commons, particularly journals, Sowell said.The library will keep a core collection of 35,000 books as well as IU employees moved about 65,000 books to IU’s Ruth Lilly Auxiliary Library Facility on North Range Road to make study space.Sowell said he’s buying fewer paper books and more electronic books, mostly electronic reference works and manuals.The library is trying to make better places for students, both as individuals and as groups, to work in. Teachers in the Kelley School of Business often assign group projects, he said.“Faculty are teaching in new ways; students are learning in different ways,” Sowell said.Fewer paper books and more study space is a trend in libraries across campus.The libraries are responding to student’s needs and re-imagining what libraries could be, said Eric Bartheld, communications director for IU Libraries.“We are definitely rethinking the role of branch libraries,” Bartheld said.The Information Commons in the Herman B Wells Library opened in fall 2003. The West Tower of the Wells Library went from about 100,000 volumes to about 20,000 to create study space, said Diane Dallis, Associate Dean for Library Academic Services.The journalism library removed all its books in summer 2007, Bartheld said, and now has several computer and study stations. The Indiana Memorial Union, while not a library, followed the trend and opened its Student Technology Center in September.Sowell said other libraries across campus will follow suit as funds become available.Factors besides money also go into the decision to become more digital, Dallis said. The Fine Arts Library does not have many books online for reasons of practicality, so it would be difficult for them to change, she said.Other disciplines, such as sciences, have been aggressive in booking journals and documents online.It’s also a national trend of libraries changing to meet the needs of the day. More and more materials which students and faculty want are available online, Bartheld said.But some aren’t convinced moving books and creating more study space is a good thing.“You’ve got to know what you want,” said journalism Professor David Weaver.Weaver said many books aren’t available online because of copyright issues. Besides, he said he liked being able to go to the journalism library and look through students’ theses. He said people could see or uncover things they didn’t expect while roaming through the shelves. Now, a lot of those books are in the auxiliary library. “It’s a shame,” he said.