Ludwig remembered as selfless, hardworking
After years of heartbreak, failure, time and energy, she was the last one.
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After years of heartbreak, failure, time and energy, she was the last one.
IU Associate Professor in gender and American studies Marlon Bailey recently won the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for his book “Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance and Ballroom Culture in Detroit.”
A new app, RapChat, is gaining in popularity, having reached 34,500 downloads, and 20,000 from December alone.
When Alex and Andres Ruesta were young, their mother Kristin Hill would make up stories to tell them.
Rainbow note cards speckled the walls of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Student Support Services office Wednesday afternoon on the center’s 20th birthday.
Voter registration papers and pamphlets on police encounters filled the chairs of Neal Marshall Black Cultural Center’s Grand Hall for an event to talk about happenings in Ferguson, Mo., on a local scale.
Everything from unicorn costumes to glittery make-up and plain T-shirts adorned those gathered at Fourth Street and College Avenue for Bloomington’s first Pride Summerfest Celebration this weekend.
A crowd of people stood in the afternoon heat Tuesday to witness the rededication of a commemorative plaque to Susan B. Anthony for the nationally celebrated Women’s Equality Day.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students exchanged $5 and their IDs for 30 minutes with puppies Thursday afternoon.The Lutheran Campus Ministry at IU partnered with the Bloomington Animal Shelter for the third annual Rent-A-Puppy event and had over 150 students attend, said Maureen Savage, event coordinator with LCM. “My first year here we were trying to come up with fun ideas for a fundraiser,” Savage said. “This was an event that we did at my undergrad at Western Michigan University. (LCM Minister) Jeff (Schacht) loved the idea, and we’ve been doing it for the past three years, and it’s been going strong ever since.” The money raised during the day is split between LCM and the shelter, Savage said. “The first year we made somewhere near $1,500,” LCM Diaconal Minister Jeff Schacht said. “Then last year we made around $1,200, and this year we hope to stay north of $1,000.” Rent-A-Puppy is a fundraiser, but it serves other purposes as well. The event helps students relieve stress and gives the dogs a chance to socialize and leave the shelter. “We purposely plan it during dead week so people can come and relax before finals,” Savage said. “Everyone’s super stressed and papers and projects are piling up. It’s especially for folks who have dogs at home they are missing. It helps them get a puppy fix and relax before the final plunge.” Aside from the funds raised, which help with supplies and medical expenses for the shelter, the time outdoors is what the shelter sees as most valuable, said Emily Herr, Bloomington Animal Shelter outreach coordinator.“The main goal is to get exposure for the shelter and to have dogs experience one-on-one time with people,” Herr said. “They don’t get this on a day-to-day basis, and that interaction is really important for their health.” This year, the event consisted of 15 dogs, but the shelter currently has over 40 dogs and around 27 of them are available to adopt, Herr said. She said she hopes the event can expand in the future and attract more students so more dogs can come get time with students.Because the event has been so popular, LCM added a Puppy Kissing Booth for people who may not have a full 30 minutes to play with a puppy.For just $1, the event had a designated dog for buyers to pet and hang out with for 1-5 minutes, Savage said. Savage said she hopes the day brings more people to adopt dogs but rarely sees this happen.“It would be a nice goal to find forever homes for the pups but with students going home it can be rough,” Savage said. “There was someone who posted on our Facebook event who said this is where they found their dog, though.”Herr also said the shelter doesn’t see a spike in adoptions because of Rent-A-Puppy, but she does think it benefits adoptions another way.“I think, all in all, it makes the dogs more adoptable,” Herr said. “Just having time away from the shelter and being more socialized with humans and other dogs helps them. They might not get adopted after this, but it might be a factor in them getting adopted later.”Both Alex Howe and Mindee Kelly rented their puppies because they have dogs back home in Middlebury, Ind., and find it hard to be away from them. The two said they were satisfied with the puppy-renting experience. “I mean it could be more contained maybe, but other than that it’s pretty hard to go wrong with renting a puppy for 30 minutes,” Howe said.The event didn’t convince the two to adopt a dog because they have already decided to buy one when they live off campus next year. Howe isn’t adopting from the shelter because they didn’t have the breed she wanted but she said she fell in love with Jupiter, the pitbull/shepherd mix puppy she rented yesterday.“If I could I would take this one right now,” Kelly said. “I don’t really need my ID back, right?” The time and money was well worth the cost, Kelly said.“Everyone is going to buy Starbucks, so screw Starbucks and go rent a dog,” Kelly said. “It’s a lot more destressing than a coffee.” Howe said she hopes students will take the time to participate to benefit the dogs.“It’s good company for the dogs and exercise, too,” Howe said. “If nothing else, do it for the dogs.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>A light cold rain was falling as David Solkowitz stood on the train tracks of Auschwitz decades after World War II, as he prayed and remembered the victims from the concentration camp. His friend, who had family who had been in Auschwitz, led the prayer on the class trip his high school took this past year. Some students were crying. Some were saying all the words to the prayers, and some were just standing silent on the land where a generation of Jews stood before them. “It’s an experience I’ll never forget,” IU freshman Solkowitz said. “It was uncomfortable. It was really cold. But the fact that I was doing something in a place where not even 100 years ago before my people were sent there, because they were doing what I was doing. It was probably the most incredible, intense, spiritual experience of my life.”Monday was the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day. But this year Hillel didn’t read names of victims or plan any programs, a Jewish tradition. “Since the day fell towards the end of the year in America this year, we didn’t want to plan anything so close to the end and not have anyone show up,” Rabbi Sue Silberberg said. “It kind of says something worse if no one shows up than if we just don’t have anything.” Instead, Hillel used social media to reach more people by tweeting and posting stories of survivors, videos on the event and an online audio reading of the names of victims to Facebook, Hillel engagement associate Ally Turkheimer said. “We felt like we still wanted to recognize the day,” Silberberg said. “We thought social media would be a better way to reach more students than inviting them in during finals and the end of the semester.” Hillel at IU received a grant from Hillel International to do a Holocaust Remembrance program next fall in concordance with the anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Kristallnacht was a series of attacks on Jewish stores and people, named for the shards of glass from the broken windows of Jewish peoples’ stores and homes on November 9, 1938.The program will have three different activities, including a walk of silence, a sharing of survivors’ testimonies and a special Seder-like meal based on Holocaust Remembrance, Jon Schulman, Hillel program director and grant writer, said. “We’re doing this for a couple reasons,” Schulman said. “The Holocaust is vital to think about and talk about and do programs, because it’s a part of the history of Jewish people. And it’s so important to remember the 6 million Jewish people who were killed. It’s also important to discuss it so it never happens again.”Schulman is not the only person who believes it’s important to remember the victims and ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. Solkowitz wore only black and white Monday to honor the lost people, which he said is how Jews in Israel dress on the Remembrance Day. He also wore his Jewish star and a kippah under his hat.“It’s important to show people that Jews are still here and even though they tried to get rid of us — that through courage and perseverance Jews survived,” Solkowitz said. “To remember is at least what I’m going around today with in my head. That, and the idea of ‘never again,’ so we as people should never again let anything like this happen again. Not to us as Jews, or any other group of people.” Not only has sophomore Jessie Nejberger taken the time to remember the Holocaust, but she is also using her life to commemorate the victims, especially her family.Three of her great-grandparents died in the Holocaust, she said, two at concentration camps and one fighting for the Red Army in Stalingrad. Luckily, her grandparents were able to survive as small children.“I’m fortunate enough to be here, because they survived,” Nejberger said. “If they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here, so I have to take that and do what I can to protect the interests of the Jewish people.” In order to protect Jewish interests, Nejberger is spending 16 days this summer learning how to be a campus advocate for the state of Israel. She is also an American Jewish Committee Fellow, which is a group working to combat anti-Semitism and globally promote Jewish interests.“The last time I went to Israel, I remember being there and realizing my great-grandparents died in camps for being Jewish,” Nejberger said. “And I think how they never would’ve imagined a state created solely for Jewish people. For me to be there and see that is so powerful.” Growing up remembering the Holocaust changed even small aspects of Nejberger’s life. “It’s the little things like eating what you’re served for dinner and not complaining,” Nejberger said. “My grandparents didn’t know where their next meal would come from. Jews starved, so it’s as small as being grateful for food.” Nejberger said she thinks it’s important to remember the Holocaust, because it’s easy to forget what happened.“Jews have been so successful since then,” Nejberger said. “We really raised up since the Holocaust and have control in the financial industry, Hollywood and the government so people don’t think Jews had it that bad.”But more than 6 million Jewish people were killed as a result of the Holocaust, and Nejberger wasn’t the only IU student to have family involved. Freshman Alexandra Koyfman had family who lived in Poland and Ukraine during the time of the Holocaust. She said she remembers stories being passed down to her about her great-grandfather continually moving to avoid the Nazis and never seeing his extended family again. Stories of her grandmother, who as an 8-year-old hid in the forest at with her sister, only surviving by the kindness of a Polish woman who brought them food and supplies. “Every little act of kindness is important,” Koyfman said. “If that Polish woman hadn’t helped my grandmother, she wouldn’t have survived, and I wouldn’t be here right now.” Koyfman remembers the victims to honor them, and also because she thinks it is crucial people know about the atrocities that took place.“It’s important for people to know what happened and what people are capable of,” Koyfman said. “It’s the little prejudices and little things that can add up without people realizing it until it becomes too late.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Chatter grew louder as the back porch at Oliver Winery filled with guests for the Latino Faculty and Staff Council Latino Awards and Reception Friday evening. The reception was organized to celebrate the end of another school year and to recognize individuals who have worked to promote diversity and awareness, LFASC council member Israel Fernando-Herrera said.This is the third year the council has awarded these accolades, but the reception has taken place for several years.“We think that Latino faculty, students, groups and events are needed and they need recognition at a university level because sometimes the work is not well-known,” Fernando-Herrera said. “We want to highlight the accomplishments the students have done.” One reason the accomplishments of Latino students and faculty sometimes goes unrecognized is because IU is such a large university, LFASC member Luis Hernandez said. “When you are a minority in numbers, it’s very easy to get lost through the cracks,” Hernandez said. “When you don’t have strength in numbers among 40,000 students to be recognized, especially when working on efforts that support a minority group, well, the numbers just don’t add up and it doesn’t often happen.” Lillian Casillas, La Casa Latino Cultural Center director and LFASC council member, suggested another idea as to why these accomplishment go unnoticed. “Often, people don’t get recognized because people assume that because you’re Latino it’s just a part of your job,” Casillas said. “This is important work and it needs to be valued and recognized.” The council gives out five different awards — an undergraduate, graduate, staff, faculty and event or group award to those who have participated in service and mentoring, promoted diversity initiatives and developed awareness in the areas of culture, arts, health, economy, language or education, according to the event’s press release. This year, Fred Diego won the undergraduate award for his work with undocumented students and mentoring. Eric Morales won the graduate award for his welcoming attitude toward new Latino students. The staff award went to Micaela Richter for her work as the Latino Studies administrative assistant. John Nieto-Phillips won the faculty award for growing the Latino Studies program and the Latino Film Festival as well as several other programs. Finally, the Latin American Music Center received the group recognition award for establishing itself more prominently within the Jacobs School of Music.“When you look at the reasons why the recipients have been selected, it’s for a wide range of reasons,” Casillas said. “It’s from programming to advocacy, behind-the-scenes work to being in the forefront. It shows everybody can do something, they just gotta find that one thing that ignites their passion.” To help present the awards, Provost Lauren Robel and Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs James Wimbush gave small speeches about the importance of the Latino community at IU and congratulated them on their growth and achievement. “With Provost Robel and Vice President Wimbush coming, it shows we have more people that support the Latino community on campus,” Fernando-Herrera said. “We want to engage in all the communities on campus and make them realize how the Latino community is working and accomplishing many things.” Aside from recognizing awards, the night’s goal was to bring the community together from all disciplines and celebrate everyone’s accomplishments throughout the year, Hernandez said. “Regardless of your race, your background or whatever, everybody here is passionate about what they’re doing and the work they do is amazing,” Hernandez said. “It’s awesome to celebrate everyone’s accomplishments at the end of the year and recognize the people who stood out. I think that’s just great.” Hernandez has an optimistic view of where the future is going, he said. He said he believes the campus will eventually accurately represent the population of Latino students and faculty and more space will be given for Latino contributions in academia. “I would like this event to grow to the extent that everybody feels welcome and everybody feels a part of whatever each faculty member is doing,” Hernandez said. “It would be awesome if this reception was overflowed with people who’ve all worked hard and made a contribution for us to recognize and celebrate.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For the past two years Nikitha Linga has missed celebrating Holi, one of her favorite festivals, because she’s been miles from home. Linga remembers celebrating Holi back home in India with dancing, color fights and bong, a drink that gets you high, she saidThe Asian Culture Center staged its own Holi festival Wednesday at Collins Living-Learning Center to give students like Linga the chance to connect back home. Linga said festivals are a part of life in India. It’s a way for family and friends to connect to each other and the culture.“And since we are in the U.S. and don’t have family here, we get to have fun we’d be missing right now and connect back to home,” Linga said. Holi is a Hindu holiday in India that celebrates the coming of spring, ACC Student Coordinator and Holi organizer Vivian Chen said. This year’s Holi festival was originally scheduled April 4 but was rescheduled because of bad weather. “It would have been nice if the weather let us do it when planned,” Chen said. “We’ve been worried about attendance because it’s in the middle of Little 5.” Chen’s fears were confirmed when only about 200 students showed up. In previous years the event attracted 350 to 400 students, she said. Shesaid she’s still hopeful for the years to come, even though this year’s festival was less attended.“Everyone should come and have fun,” Chen said. “Even if they didn’t come this year they should definitely come next year.” But the event had more to offer to students this year with tissue paper flower crafts, henna workshops, dance demos, food catered from Taste of India and, as always, the color war. “It’s really a lot of fun,” ACC student staff member Laura Baumann said. “We really just want to get a lot of people here and get a lot of color on them.” Other than to just host a fun event, the ACC also hopes to bring multicultural awareness to campus, Chen said. “A lot of Indiana people know there is Indian and Asian culture, but they don’t know much about it,” Chen said. “Definitely part of it is for us to have fun, but also to get the word out there to show the many facets of the different cultures all around campus.” Chen said she thinks it’s important for people to be aware of how America sometimes adapts foreign cultures to form their own.“Everyone knows the color run, but no one knows about Holi,” Chen said. “But that’s where the color run came form. I mean, we get colored powder from India, and it’s nice to show where it originated from.” Holi is one of the bigger events the ACC plans each year, student staff member Vivian Ge said. “Not only is it a lot of fun, but it allows everyone to participate whether you’re students or not and whether you’re Indian or not,” Ge said. Though the festival is smaller this year and smaller than back in India, Linga said it’s better than nothing. It helps her feel less far from home.“It’s important because I get to meet people, and I miss home a lot,” Linga said. “This helps me feel like I’m not so far away from my culture.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On the verge of tears, Kaynaw Ali spoke about the year 1991, when her family and 2 million other Kurds left their homes to flee from Saddam Hussein’s rule. She said she remembers not having any food or water and seeing her sister die, because she was so sick. “We all lost at least one person,” Ali said. “This is normal in my country. Some have lost more. I don’t want to remember.” The Asian Cultural Center was host to Ali for her talk about the history of Kurdish people. Ali offered to deliver the speech and cook traditional Kurdish food when she realized the ACC didn’t have much information on Kurds. “When they told me they didn’t have much information about my country, I wanted to present some to make it clear,” she said. Ali presented a history of Kurdistan and its struggle for independence through the years. She said she hopes her presentation can help people better understand Kurdish people as their own ethnicity and nationality.“Most people say that we are from Iraq,” Ali said. “They say, ‘You’re Arabic,’ but we are not Arabic. We are Kurdish, with our own traditions and our own language.” The struggle to be recognized as such still continues today, even after the reign of leaders like Hussein. Kurds are spread between four countries: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, but Ali said Kurds everywhere hope for one single country.“It is not just my hope, but the hope of every Kurdish person born that we have our country,” Ali said. “Not just Kurdistan in Iraq, but to become independent so we can keep our rights.” To share her culture beyond just telling her country’s history, Ali prepared a Kurdish dish called dolma. Dolma is made by combining rice, onion, garlic, dill, parsley and ground beef, wrapping it into a grape leaf, and boiling it on a stove. Dolma is prepared often in Kurdish homes, but is often eaten at picnics, Ali said. Grant Pusinelli said he had never heard of Kurdistan until his Asian studies professor offered extra credit to anyone who attended the event. He had many events to choose from, but chose this one because he had never learned about Kurdish people or where they came from before. “It seemed like the most interesting to me,” Pusinelli said. “I didn’t know about the history, and I didn’t know what to expect.”In order to best write his extra credit paper, Pusinelli tried the dolma. “I thought the food was good,” Pusinelli said. “I didn’t expect it to be as tasty as it was, but I thought I’d stick around to see what it was like.” In the past three years since Sarah Moon has been working at the Student Outreach Coordinator at the ACC, she has never seen a Kurdish event.“We were looking for events to host for Asian-American and Pacific Islander heritage month, and so when we heard (Ali) wanted to do this, we were for it,” she said. Moon said she thinks people often think the ACC is limited to just East Asian events.“People think the ACC is only for East Asians, but we really have loosely defined boundaries,” Moon said. “We are here to primarily serve students and then community members, and we like to have various events from different cultures.” Moon said she hopes this event will encourage others to feel more open to visiting the ACC no matter their cultural background.“I encourage anyone that has an event or idea to come give a presentation,” Moon said. “Everything we do is free and interesting and you don’t have to be Asian to come to our events.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>City Hall took a trip to Asia this Saturday without ever leaving its front lawn. Asianfest is an annual event sponsored by the Asian Cultural Center and the City of Bloomington to celebrate and embrace Asian culture city-wide, ACC Student Outreach Coordinator Sarah Moon said. “This is our biggest event for the community,” Moon said. “All ACC events are open to community members, but they often think it’s just for students. I like this event because it brings the campus and community all together.” It goes to show how active the Asian and Asian-American community is in Bloomington, she added.“I think it’s important for our community to see how many Asian cultures there are even in Indiana,” Moon said. “Asian cultures are really important and vibrant in Bloomington. We have so many countries represented, not just at the college, but in the community.”Moon said she hopes by sponsoring a community culture event, students will feel more welcome in the city. “Showing the different cultures in the city shows even students are a part of this community and can branch out of just campus life,” she said. Asianfest consisted of 11 cultural performances, including classical Indian dance, Japanese folk songs and Chinese music performed by children from the TianTian Chinese Weekend School. The event also included two cooking demos, during which cooks taught a crowd to make Vietnamese stir-fried cellophane noodles and Chinese eggplant in a fragrant fish sauce. “We always have cultural tables, cooking demos and cultural performances, but the performances always change,” Moon said. “It’s really based on what people have to offer.”This year, 13 different tables set up, giving henna tattoos, offering origami lessons and chopstick challenges and teaching people how to write in Chinese and Korean characters. “It’s fun and festive, and people are learning,” Moon said. “But I feel like their learning is more engaging, and it’ll actually stay with them. It’s a neat and fun way for children to get introduced to the culture outside of a classroom.” Xinyi Shen, a graduate student in education at IU, said she appreciated seeing countries other than China represented. “I have never been to another country besides China,” Shen said. “I wanted to know other countries other than China that are Asian. That’s why this is important.” Zhen Zhang, a graduate student in environmental management, said he was happy to see the city interact with Asian cultures.“We live here as students and scholars,” Zhang said. “There are so many of us sharing at the University, but it is good for the local people to know about local Asian culture. Having many different people coming together is very happy.”He said it helped take the edge off of being outside his native country. “Because we are in a foreign country, being able to meet some people in the same situation is a very great thing for us,” he said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After attending a Step Up! IU training session, freshman Dayanna Arichavala wanted to share her new knowledge with everyone.This drove her to be host to Step Up! at La Casa Latino Cultural Center Thursday, where she has a work-study position. “After I heard the talk, I found myself being more vigilant,” Arichavala said. “I felt like it helped me a lot in assessing what goes on every day as I walk around campus.” Step Up! IU is the action piece of Culture of Care, meaning they go to student groups and give trainings on bystander intervention, Step Up! Coordinator Thea Cola said. Student groups can ask Step Up! to come to their meetings or events to give either a bystander intervention presentation or a sexual assault prevention presentation.The group teaches students how to create a safe environment. “We want to increase confidence levels in students intervening,” Cola said. “In 2011 we surveyed IU students, and 66 percent thought that a problematic situation could’ve been avoided if someone intervened.” Culture of Care began collecting data and developing the Step Up! program, originally developed by the University of Arizona, for IU in 2011 and implemented it in 2012.The need for the group came after incidents on campus like Lauren Spierer’s disappearance, Cola said, as well as a national address in which President Barack Obama said sexual assault was an issue he’d like to address. This school year, the initiative has served 1,167 students at IU, Cola said. “Incidents like sexual assault and hazing still occur even this year,” he said. “Culture of Care put this in for a reason. People don’t believe they have control of the environment, but they can create that culture of care and that’s what Step Up! is for. For encouraging students to take control of their environment.” Arichavala said she sees intervention as an area that could be improved on campus and in the world.“Everybody has this idea that we’re such a big campus that anybody will help,” Arichavala said. “But in reality everybody has that mindset, so no one actually ends up helping, not only on this campus, but everywhere.” Step Up! is important to IU students as they transition into college life, Cola said. “College is a transitional period that can be tough,” Cola said. “Having someone smile at you or ask you if you’re OK can really go a long way. Intervening can really help people in the long run. It’ll make for an easier transition for students and help them have a better college experience.” Cola said she wanted to stress how Step Up! is not a group that promotes only sobriety or abstinence, but rather tries to encourage safer practices.“It’s not trying to crush fun,” Cola said. “It’s just trying to make fun safe.” As Little 500 approaches, Step Up! gets flooded with requests to speak and do intervention training. Between now and the end of the academic year they have 10 planned sessions, Cola said. Recently, Culture of Care commissioned the Student Media Bureau to make a video about bystander intervention. The video is called “Bystanders,” and it staged events to see how IU students would react and if any would intervene. Some examples of the staged events included public harassment of a gay couple, a man harassing a woman and students crying alone. “The beauty of it was no matter what, if people intervened or not, we could still use it,” video producer Carlos Guiterrez said. “If they didn’t react we could say, ‘Look at this problem,’ and if they do that’s great.” Students did end up intervening in the video, but at first Guiterrez said he was concerned people wouldn’t do so.“In the beginning I was worried on the state of the human condition because for a while no one stopped,” Guiterrez said. “I had to listen to this girl cry and watch it on camera. It was discouraging, but after people stepped up I felt more confident.” Guiterrez said he wished they would’ve staged more uncommon events to see what bystanders would do, such as a gay couple harassing a straight couple or a woman harassing a man. He said he’s also afraid the video was too “feel good.”“I’m afraid people will see it and think, ‘Everything’s good, people stood up, I don’t need to do anything,’” he said. “But then again people still walked by and the stage guy who was crying wasn’t helped at all.” However, Guiterrez said he is happy with how it created a community.“From the responses I’ve gotten, a lot of people really expressed their pride about IU are proud of the students for stepping up,” Guiterrez said. “People were for at least one reason bound together and agreed on something.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After learning about a proposal to merge Latino Studies, Asian American Studies and First Nations Educational and Cultural Center into one Ethnic Studies department, sophomore Rachel Colegrove created a petition to resist the proposed merger.Faculty and students in the Latino Studies program attended a meeting April 1 organized by Latino Studies Dean John Nieto-Phillips to foster discussion about the future of the program. The meeting was prompted after Nieto-Phillips attended a College of Arts and Sciences meeting where the idea of joining the programs into Ethnic Studies was proposed. “The intentions are quite good,” Nieto-Phillips said. “The intention is to raise visibility of ethnic scholarships and programs at IU. The question is, how do we do that? And a department of Ethnic Studies was brought up, but the consensus among faculty and students is clearly this is not the best way.” But the idea of merging the Latino Studies, Asian American Studies and FNECC together under an Ethnic Studies Department angered Colegrove. “It’s about saving money and consolidating,” Colegrove said. “It would be great to have these organizations collaborate, but it doesn’t mean we have to have an Ethnic Studies Department and take away their power.” One of the problems Colegrove said she has with the proposed merger is melding the programs together under Ethnic Studies, because the proposed department is not well defined. She said she doesn’t understand the need or want to merge.“It doesn’t make sense statistically to lump it under these other programs because of the popularity and desire there is to continue Latino Studies,” Colegrove said. In fact, she said the interest Latino Studies has gained should merit that continuation.“The sheer numbers of enrolled Latino Studies students shows it shouldn’t be demoted,” Colegrove said. “If it is to grow and mature it needs to be kept independent and autonomous and ideally given departmental status.”Nieto-Phillips also said he sees growth and increased interest in Latino Studies, and the data suggests Latino Studies is strong enough to be independent at IU.“Enrollments have gone up 55 percent in the past five years,” Nieto-Phillips said. “Most disciplines have gone down. Clearly students are interested in what we have to teach and the training we have to give.” Colegrove also pointed out the many events the Latino Studies program offers for student networking and education.“Junot Diaz was enormously successful and the Latino Film Festival happened all because of Latino Studies,” Colegrove said. “Latino Studies has its own voice on campus and resources as a program. If it has to share resources, you lose a lot of events.”The merger that would produce Ethnic Studies would send a bad message to Latino students and others about how diversity is valued at IU, Colegrove said. “It’s marginalization,” Colegrove said. “It’s taking a step backward in giving minorities voices. By putting them under Ethnic Studies we’re ‘othering’ them and shoving them into corners — sending a really bad message to Latino students.” “Othering” describes the act of ostracizing an individual or group because they are different. Larry Singell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, confirmed in an email that there has been talk of a merger between the programs, but said nothing is set in stone.“It is true that such a merger has been discussed both within the Dean’s office and with the units,” Singell said. “However, no decision has been made and no decision is even eminent. Such a decision would require significantly more discussion and asking questions.”Nieto-Phillips said he sees the current proposals as the beginning of a conversation of how Latino Studies fits into the College of Arts and Sciences and the new Global and International School. “There is no plan right now for such a merger,” Nieto-Phillips said. “From my vantage point as director of Latino Studies, we’ve embarked on a conversation with faculty and students to gain a sense of what Latino Studies should become.” He said he even sees the possibility of creating a Latino Studies department.“Eventually, it’s not inconceivable that Latino Studies, like African Studies, gains departmental status,” Nieto-Phillips said. “The question is when, and it’s not something that can take place over night. The Latino population will continue to grow and additional pressure will be on the administration from students and public for more Latino oriented programs and commitment to diversity.” During the conversation, Nieto-Phillips said he encourages students to express their feelings and opinions, reiterating he doesn’t want his role as director to overrule student views. After the meeting, Colegrove said she took Nieto-Phillips’ encouragements seriously. She started campaigning for Latino Studies’ independence last week. “It’s important to have the undergraduate voice,” Colegrove said. “There’s only so much faculty can do because they’re getting paid by the University, but the students are paying. So the idea is that, hopefully, it will light more of a fire underneath the administration.” Currently, her petition has about 90 signatures online and about 40 handwritten ones, which Colegrove said she plans to send to President Michael McRobbie and Provost Lauren Robel. Students can sign the petition on change.org by searching her name. “If people want to get in touch with me or Latino Studies professors, I can point them in the right direction,” Colegrove said. “More important than signing the petition, though, is writing comments and a statement as to why you support this cause.” Colegrove said she hopes to get more than 500 students to sign, to send a strong message and secure Latino Studies as an independent program.“In an ideal world, it would be nice to say that we’re all just one big human race, so let’s celebrate those similarities in an Ethnic Studies department,” Colegrove said. “But I don’t think we’re at that stage yet. We’re still not giving enough voice to minorities and I think the way this is going isn’t about ethnic studies. It’s about these other groups they don’t know what to do with.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU’s Gay-Straight Alliance’s Diversity Ball brought together campus groups and individuals who value inclusiveness Sunday. “I see IU as having several communities that operate very autonomously,” said Anne Tinder, GSA Vice President of Communications. “I think events like this, where everyone is invited and focusing on not discounting anyone, is really important in the long run for IU.”GSA’s goals for the event were to bring together people with like-minded missions to build relationships and collaborate on issues of diversity, Tinder said. “There are issues each community is tackling,” Tinder said. “If we could tackle them together, it would be a lot more effective.” The event included snacks, music, dancing demonstrations from the IU Swing Dance Club and a philanthropy project in which students crafted homemade cards to send to Redbud Hills, a local nursing home. GSA president Megan Kelly said GSA intentionally used the term “diversity” to encompass anyone and everyone in the event. “The benefit to this is it opens us up to meeting new people and helps us understand who we are as a student body and who we are as ourselves,” Kelly said. Looking back, Tinder said she would have made some changes.“I would’ve started advertising harder and earlier,” Tinder said. “We did an awesome job of making a GSA Twitter and a Facebook event, but I wish I would’ve done more in-person advertising.” In the future, Kelly said she hopes to not just invite groups to collaborate, but work with them in planning. “If we do this in the future, I would like to have a different planning process,” Kelly said. “I’d like to be collaborating in the planning of the event to make it more diverse. That was hard this year being our first year, but it’s a good goal to strive for.” Freshman Chelsea Tolan came to the event hoping to find others of her sexual orientation.“I’m bisexual, and I wanted to meet more people who are bisexual,” Tolan said. “I have many friends who are gay, but not many who are bisexual. I thought it’d be cool to meet people and relate to them.” Tolan said she believes diversity is an integral part of the college experience. “IU is known for being diverse and it’s important for people to meet other people with different backgrounds. Being diverse is a part of college. It’s what you do,” she said. Members from the Global Village Living Learning Center, Circle K, the College Democrats, Nonprofit Leadership Alliance, Books and Beyond and Leadershape attended. Kelly said she hopes the relationships made at the ball will help make their groups stronger. “Diversity issues affect everyone, even if only a small group realizes the problems,” Tinder said. “If everyone can work to improve it, well, there’s strength in numbers and there’s strength in diversity. We hope to be stronger in the end because of this.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Thanks in part to an IU student group, more than 800 girls in an Indian children’s shelter will receive education, medical assistance and employment.The IU Indian Student Association played host to Aasha: A Night for the Children to raise money for the Aarushi-Shelter Home for Girls, which is home to 886 girls. Students filled the Indiana Memorial Union’s Frangipani room Saturday for the event.“We’re a large group with over 250 members,” ISA event planning chair Tankua Raj said. “That gives us power to do something good.” After building relationships with Children’s Hope India during the course of the year, Raj said the ISA felt the connection was strong enough to devote the evening to one of the girls’ houses they benefit. “All the money is going to the girls’ shelter,” Raj said. “Most of us are Indian, and this is something we’re passionate about. A lot of children, especially females, aren’t educated, and we feel this inhibits them from growing as individuals and fighting for their rights.”ISA President Divya Chauhan said the group focused on this particular philanthropy because of its emphasis on education and its importance to college students.“Everyone at this University can understand the importance of education,” Chauhan said. “When you’re in a university receiving and enriching education, volunteering is a way you can learn and do not just for yourself, but for other people.” The ISA board made the event formal and asked attendees to adhere to this standard of dress.“Sometimes college students like to get dressed up,” Chauhan said. “Also, I think a lot of our events are associated with Indian attire, and this reminds us we are living in America and we do have western values as well. It’s to excite people in a new way.” The cocktail benefit was the ISA’s first big philanthropy event, Raj said. She said she hopes it becomes an annual event that grows bigger each year. “Since it’s our first time in philanthropy, we wanted to start with something that connected us with our name,” Chauhan said. “That’s why we chose Children’s Hope India. But as philanthropy becomes more of an integral part of ISA, we’ll hopefully work more locally, too.” The night began with both Indian and American national anthems. Two singers performed the anthems, and the crowd stood up and sang along. The keynote speaker was Rajendra Abhyankar, visiting professor to the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and former ambassador of India. He emphasized two main points to the audience. First, he spoke about how important it is to support the children of India.“Children in India are some of the most poverty stricken in the world,” Abhyankar said. “Make it a mission to help them.” He tied India’s current elections and the importance of youth participation into his speech. “Eight hundred-forty-one million voters registered this election — more than the U.S. and Europe populations combined,” Abhyankar said. “Sixty-one percent are youth. How you vote and participate is the most significant way in which this election is different from others.” After his speech, three dancers took the stage, and there was a comedy performance.Senior Andrew Liao said he attended the event out of interest in the dance team, HoosierRaas, but also because of the awareness it raises and the opportunity to make new connections.“ISA does a lot of awareness-raising for Indian culture, and this is definitely one of those events,” Liao said. “But you also get to dress really nice and meet a lot of new people, which is also important for diversity.” Even though Liao is not Indian, he said he enjoyed being able to experience a different culture. “Getting to know and embracing different cultures is a strong point of Indiana University,” Liao said. He said he hopes anyone of any ethnicity can enjoy events that may not pertain to their direct identity. “Just get out of your comfort zone,” Liao said. “It’s important in college before you head to a new world to come into an unusual environment and make friends. You might just make a friend or two that’ll last a lifetime.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Quidditch teams will storm Dunn Meadow with their brooms Saturday for the first-ever Campus Recreational Sports quidditch tournament. After a year of deliberation CRS decided to make quidditch, a sport adapted from the Harry Potter books and films, into an official intramural sport. “Every year all our team members and student leaders give consideration to information from surveys, focus groups and participant feedback to help find what activities students would enjoy having on the calendar,” CRS Director, Kathy Bayless, said. “One of the ideas, about a year ago, was quidditch.” Ever since the Harry Potter films premiered, there has been an interest in the game, which has spawned the International Quidditch Association, Bayless said. The IQA has a governing board with rules, regulations, competitions and clinics, causing teams to sprout up across the country. “It’s novel,” Bayless said. Since quidditch is a relatively new sport on college campuses, Bayless said she hopes it will attract more students.“It’s non-traditional in that there aren’t a lot of traditions around it yet to frame peoples’ understanding about skill level,” Bayless said. “It’s very accessible in peoples’ thinking whereas football or basketball, the media images sometimes make it difficult to feel like you belong.” As an intramural sport, quidditch will start with one tournament to determine how much student interest there is, CRS assistant director and quidditch tournament organizer, Satoshi Kido, said. The tournament will occur at the Woodlawn fields, with the first game starting Saturday at 2:15 p.m. The teams will be put into a pool and play a couple of different teams, then break into single elimination, Kido said. Today is the final day for teams to register. So far, Kido estimates six or seven teams have already signed up. The Midnight Snipes Quidditch team is currently a student life and learning club and was founded in 2011. Bayless said they have been a huge help in determining rules and regulations for CRS to use in the tournament. “Rec Sports asked us for help putting the tournament on,” Co-President of the Midnight Snipes, Caroline Alexander, said. “It’s not so much our club is becoming an intramural as it is we are helping adapt the rules for intramurals.” Alexander said the team isn’t afraid the sport becoming intramural will diminish the Midnight Snipes club. “I think it’s a great opportunity for us because not many people know about us,” Alexander said. “People are starting to realize we’re a presence on campus, and Rec Sports is giving us a chance to market out team. I think it’ll bring in more people, so I’m pretty excited about it.” “I hope people can realize it’s a legitimate sport,” Alexander said. “We play a combination of rugby, basketball and soccer, so it’s pretty intense. I think if we get anything from this, it’s that people would realize that more.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Quidditch teams will storm Dunn Meadow with their brooms Saturday for the first-ever Campus Recreational Sports quidditch tournament. After a year of deliberation CRS decided to make quidditch, a sport adapted from the Harry Potter books and films, into an official intramural sport. “Every year all our team members and student leaders give consideration to information from surveys, focus groups and participant feedback to help find what activities students would enjoy having on the calendar,” CRS Director, Kathy Bayless, said. “One of the ideas, about a year ago, was quidditch.” Ever since the Harry Potter films premiered, there has been an interest in the game, which has spawned the International Quidditch Association, Bayless said. The IQA has a governing board with rules, regulations, competitions and clinics, causing teams to sprout up across the country. “It’s novel,” Bayless said. Since quidditch is a relatively new sport on college campuses, Bayless said she hopes it will attract more students.“It’s non-traditional in that there aren’t a lot of traditions around it yet to frame peoples’ understanding about skill level,” Bayless said. “It’s very accessible in peoples’ thinking whereas football or basketball, the media images sometimes make it difficult to feel like you belong.” As an intramural sport, quidditch will start with one tournament to determine how much student interest there is, CRS assistant director and quidditch tournament organizer, Satoshi Kido, said. The tournament will occur at the Woodlawn fields, with the first game starting Saturday at 2:15 p.m. The teams will be put into a pool and play a couple of different teams, then break into single elimination, Kido said. Today is the final day for teams to register. So far, Kido estimates six or seven teams have already signed up. The Midnight Snipes Quidditch team is currently a student life and learning club and was founded in 2011. Bayless said they have been a huge help in determining rules and regulations for CRS to use in the tournament. “Rec Sports asked us for help putting the tournament on,” Co-President of the Midnight Snipes, Caroline Alexander, said. “It’s not so much our club is becoming an intramural as it is we are helping adapt the rules for intramurals.” Alexander said the team isn’t afraid the sport becoming intramural will diminish the Midnight Snipes club. “I think it’s a great opportunity for us because not many people know about us,” Alexander said. “People are starting to realize we’re a presence on campus, and Rec Sports is giving us a chance to market out team. I think it’ll bring in more people, so I’m pretty excited about it.” “I hope people can realize it’s a legitimate sport,” Alexander said. “We play a combination of rugby, basketball and soccer, so it’s pretty intense. I think if we get anything from this, it’s that people would realize that more.”