Archive for category Newspaper Columns
Campus activism refreshing
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on April 17, 2000
I will admit I am not an especially active activist. In fact, most people would be hard pressed to call me an activist. I tend to get wrapped up in my own work and achieve a type of tunnel vision that guides me from my computer at home to my computer at the office and the classrooms in between.
Which is one thing that’s caught my attention of late: the number of protesters around Bloomington. It is, in a word, refreshing.
Refreshing is probably not the word you expected me to say, but the presence of protesters outside Starbucks reminds me that politics are an important part of our life. You see, I might not actually agree with the protesters, but it is invigorating to me to witness people using their First Amendment rights to speak out.
Take, for example, the Protect Griffy Alliance. I actually agreed with them — once. I wasn’t in favor of the golf course, and I was pleased to see the golf course stopped. But since their slam-dunk victory, and what a victory it was, the group has insisted upon pounding IU’s administration into the ground. I thought it was enough to embarrass the trustees into taking the issue off the table before a vote could be taken, but the group continues to pursue the issue.
While I do not agree with their goal, this development is refreshing because the leaders of the group did not disband the organization once victory was achieved; they continued to focus and refocus on other related issues. That they are doing this forces me to continue to question what I think.
Another group that has been protesting a lot is the group outside of Starbucks. I never quite understood this group, but at least they made me question my coffee-drinking habits. Did I want to enjoy the overstuffed chairs and pretentious environment of Starbucks, thus dooming 12-year-olds to picking more coffee beans, or did I want to continue to enjoy SOMA with its quirky and charming environment? I don’t know where SOMA gets its coffee, so I don’t know if any child labor is involved.
The Education for a Sustainable Future group that protested outside Starbucks, McDonald’s, Ben and Jerry’s, Taco Bell and Subway, this past week almost convinced me single-handedly to shop at each one of the five stores. The group complained about the union-busting record of McDonald’s, along with usual (and unusual) complaints about the other businesses.
McDonald’s has a union-busting record? I didn’t know about it, but perhaps I should shop there more often. While some unions are good, many unions want businesses to be unionized just so they can get their greedy hands on the employees’ wages. I know this sounds bad coming from a liberal, but not every business is out to screw its employees over, and, believe it or not, some employees actually think that their wages and benefits are great, without a union “negotiating” for them. That said, I think a union for IU’s Associate Instructors might actually be a good idea.
This activist period in Bloomington has been extremely refreshing, and it mirrors, to some extent, what is going on nationally. The WTO protests in Seattle, which some IU students and Bloomington residents are taking part in, have led to protests in Washington D.C., with 600 people getting arrested Saturday outside the World Bank headquarters.
Regardless of whether you agree with these protesters, they have managed to put on the table a number of topics that previously had been overlooked. When I chat with my friends we are just as likely to talk about the protesters outside Starbucks as we are to talk about the weather. That in and of itself is a remarkable victory for the protesters.
The dynamic marketplace of ideas is hard at work in Bloomington, and we are all better off because of it. Discussion about all of these issues (and non-issues) encourages the democratic process and when really important issues arise, it means that we are more likely to discuss them. I-69 is a good example of an issue more important than Subway’s marketing techniques, which is what the Education for a Sustainable Future was protesting against. I can only assume they don’t like Subway’s exploitation of Jared Fogle, the senior who lost weight using his “Subway Diet.”
Good service rare in Bloomington
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on March 20, 2000
Bloomington is, without a doubt, one of the nicest cities in the state of Indiana, in most categories. But there is one place where Bloomington has managed to be more miserable and God-awful than Indianapolis: restaurant service.
There is a great deal of potential in Bloomington, very little of it even remotely fulfilled; the restaurants usually make a reasonable effort at food quality, but then when it comes to the wait staff, Bloomington restaurants fall flat on their faces.
One recent example comes to mind, a restaurant that I enjoyed in the past, but has now been struck from my list of places worth visiting: Sangamar.
After returning early from my spring vacation, I met up with Jay, one of my friends here in Bloomington, at Sangamar, 110 N. Walnut St. We selected the restaurant over the Malibu Grill because I had enjoyed meals at the restaurant in the past, but little did we know the evening was going to be a disaster.
We entered the restaurant at 6:30 p.m. Our food arrived on the table about three minutes before 8. It took them an hour to tell us our waiter had given us the lunch menu by mistake and the items we had ordered were not readily available and they were preparing our items especially for us.
A mistake that could have been corrected by informing us of the error when they saw what we had ordered was magnified into an agonizing hour and a half wait; and when we finally got our meals, we were informed that we would only have to pay the lunch price for the meal.
Very kind of them, but I told the woman who delivered this “good news” that I wasn’t sure if she had given me a reason to return for another meal yet, and she told me other people would come to eat at the restaurant, even if I did not return.
Certainly this example is a bit on the extreme side; service is rarely so bad in this town that I won’t ever return to the restaurant because if I vowed never to return to restaurants that gave me bad service in this town, my dining experiences would be limited to Laughing Planet, Soma and Nick’s English Hut, the three hangouts within my normal budget range.
I have had a number of mediocre experiences in this town when it comes to wait staff. For example, waiters at the Malibu Grill have taken longer than necessary to bring me food and drinks and the staff at Denny’s ignored me standing at the door waiting to be seated. (I never went back. I go to the Waffle House instead).
All of this leaves me in a quandary. Every once in a while, I want to have a really good dining experience: a meal where both the food and the service come together to make it all worthwhile.
Sad to say, I have to have those meals an hour north in Indianapolis, a city so dreadfully boring and pointless I actually prefer going to the dentist for a filling than taking the time to visit it.
It would be really nice if one day Bloomington could have a real sit-down restaurant that featured good food and a decent wait staff. Here are my suggestions for ways to try and change what is Bloomington’s biggest restaurant problem.
First, stop tipping the bad waiters — tipping bad service only encourages bad service. For example, Jay and I left no tip for our waiter at Sangamar.
Second, tell your friends about the really bad experiences you’ve had, suggesting they try alternatives to the worst spots in town.
Third, tell your friends about the good experiences you’ve had in town. I never would have known about the Limestone Grill (the one beacon of light in the up-scale Bloomington restaurant category) if friends had not told me about it.
Finally, for all the restaurant owners out there, most of you do a really great job with the food, so it wouldn’t hurt to focus a little bit of attention on service. Good food and good service will make your restaurant the hottest joint in town.
Elections without substance
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on February 28, 2000
Election season is upon us, and we’re not talking about the presidential primaries. We’re talking student government.
Wait. You didn’t realize that the IU Student Association elections are here?
If so, you are not alone, because for some reason the powers that be decided to move the elections up to the last day of February and first day of March from the previous time of late March, early April. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a good or bad development.
What I can say is the IUSA elections this year sound an awful lot like a bunch of credit card commercials; not that the four tickets have been campaigning, but three of the four have named themselves in suggestive fashions.
Take “Platinum,” for example; that name alone sounds like three-quarters of the commercials I see on television for credit cards. “Blue” also sounds like a credit card — specifically the American Express Blue Credit Card; and between the two, that will leave you “POOR,” the third ticket running for IUSA.
I would have incorporated the fourth ticket in there, but their name, “CREW” doesn’t really sound like a credit card; but it does remind me that IU started a women’s crew team last fall out on Lake Lemon.
Of course, as is tradition with student governments across the country, whether at the high school or collegiate level, the candidates are running on unimportant issues, non-issues or issues where they have no chance of making any difference whatsoever.
Blue, for example, wants a “damp” campus; something that the rains last week were able to achieve in a short period of time. Of course, what they really want is a liberalized alcohol policy — something I am sympathetic toward. Unfortunately, it’s not an issue that IUSA can really tackle, making it a non-issue. What we really need is an effort on Capitol Hill to reverse the ill-effects of MADD and other organizations that fought to raise the drinking age to 21 and thought that by preventing access to adults under 21, you could solve the world’s multiple problems.
The folks running under the POOR banner want to reduce the cost of an IU education, and they appear to be focused on this goal with a single-mindedness that would make a baby trying to nurse look like an amateur. I do have to give them credit; they have recognized that IUSA doesn’t directly control tuition costs, which means they are running on an issue where they have little chance of making a difference whatsoever.
Platinum’s goal is “to inform students and to also get feedback from the student body, as a whole.” At least they have something in common with CREW, whose pointless platform is that they are running as a team and that IU needs more leadership. In short, these two tickets don’t really appear to have any substantive goals like Blue or POOR, which means they are running on truly unimportant issues.
I believe that student governments shouldn’t waste their time on issues on which they will only have limited effects.
Our student government should, instead, focus on quality of life issues on campus: more garbage cans to prevent littering, urging the people who maintain the lawns to avoid watering before or during the lunch hour, making sure that receptionists across campus are polite to students when answering the phone or greeting them at their desks or ensuring that students waiting to register for classes aren’t bored out of their gourds while waiting in line in Franklin Hall.
Club sports full of action
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on February 14, 2000
I have to confess, I’ve never been an athlete, but I’ve always enjoyed going to sporting events — especially at the collegiate level. The fact that people are able to balance being a student and being an athlete constantly amazes me.
Yet there is a class of athlete at IU often overlooked in terms of its dedication and commitment. While it is one thing to watch Dane Fife and the rest of the Hoosiers tear up the basketball court in front of 17,000 fans, it is a far different story out at “The Frank” down by Bloomington South High School.
Each time the IU club hockey team plays a home game, attendance will never reach 17,000; it will never even reach 1,000, because the Frank Southern Ice Arena only holds 700 fans.
Participants in club sports are a far different breed of athlete from those intercollegiate athletes who perform at Assembly Hall or Memorial Stadium. Unlike intercollegiate athletes, club sport athletes don’t have the support network that members of the basketball, football or golf teams have.
Athletes of intercollegiate teams get academic counseling, funding and support from the IU administration. Athletes for club sports get little. Club hockey, for example, gets about $6,000 from Recreational Sports; a small percentage of the $50,000 it needs to run its sport each year.
Team members also have other grueling conditions to work under: antifreeze, for example.
Saturday night, about 7 minutes into the game against Michigan State, a pipe broke off of the ceiling and antifreeze poured onto the ice. Naturally, antifreeze and ice are a terrific combination if you’re talking about your car, but if you are trying to play a hockey game, troubled waters are ahead.
The game was delayed long enough that my friend and I went to Blockbuster and rented a movie instead, but not before we got into the hockey experience. It was disappointing to have an hour-long interruption in the game. Much of the crowd dispersed at the same time, wandering out the door and into the parking lot of the Frank Southern Center.
The athletes stayed behind to play the game.
Of course, this flood of antifreeze is another strong argument for the replacement of Frank Southern Center, an option that has been proposed for awhile, and had another delay, as announced in The Herald Times Feb. 5.
Bloomington announced in October it was going to build a new arena on the west side of town, off of State Road 37. It was supposed to open next fall, but because unexpectedly high infrastructure costs it has been postponed. The cost of building a road to the new facility could cost $1 million; accordingly, officials are trying to find alternatives, perhaps even a different site for the arena.
The goal is to open the new arena by September 2001.
In spite of all this, IU hockey has done well this year. The team is fourth in the Southeast American Collegiate Hockey Association rankings and is preparing to play host to the ACHA national championships at the beginning of March in Indianapolis.
IU has a number of club sport teams, for example; lacrosse, Water Polo and Jujitsu. All the players have to overcome a number of barriers to play and to be students at the same time.
Supporting these athletes is worth the time and effort. They appreciate fan attendance.
Check ’em out. Maybe even get involved, if you’re so inclined.
The star power of the military
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on February 2, 2000
Without a doubt, the U.S. military is in the worst shape in recent memory. Because of the booming economy and skimpy pay for those in uniform, the military is unable to find enough young men and women to protect our nation.
The military solution to this tricky problem: Stars.
No, not the celestial bodies several light years away that populate our night sky, but those celestial beings that populate our movie and television shows.
Tom Cruise, star of 1986’s “Top Gun,” a film about a Navy pilot, has been approached to make a public service announcement according to The Associated Press. Other luminaries include Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Steven Spielberg and James Brolin, who, for those ignorant individuals amongst us, are stars on “Pensacola: Wings of Gold.”
Traditionally, celebrities have been used to boost moral for our troops abroad — during World War II when Bob Hope entertained the troops in Europe (or the Korean War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War). Today, even Christie Brinkley has made the trip to Kosovo to entertain our troops.
This notion to use celebrities as a tool to recruit hasn’t been used recently, if ever. As such, I have a few other suggestions for Defense Secretary William Cohen, who has been recruiting these stars. John Travolta and Christian Slater, co-stars of “Broken Arrow” quickly come to mind. In my humble opinion, Jack Nicholson, as star of “A Few Good Men,” would also make an excellent recruiter.
The problem with using celebrities is that they can have mixed messages. Sure Tom Cruise was a hero in “Top Gun,” a shining example in “A Few Good Men,” but downright awful in “The Firm.”
Obviously this is not the optimal solution to this problem. I would hope a few individuals would decide to join the military because they saw Julia Roberts tell them that serving in the military was cool. I would be worried about any individual who decided to join the military because a celebrity told them it was cool. Imagine what our military would look like if Urkel started recruiting for the military.
But I don’t actually think that celebrity recruiters are going to work, especially if somebody gets around to investigating their military background.
The next best thing is for the military to change its advertising ways. The Army has used “Be all that you can be” for as long as I can remember, and, as a kid, I thought it actually meant, “Eat all that you can eat.” The Navy, Marines and Air Force have similar problems. I’m not sure how to fix the actual advertising problem because they could easily make the job look and sound more glamorous than it really is. That could have some undesirable consequences.
Just wait until Little Johnny signs up and discovers he’s spending the next two years slinging hash for the residents of a military prison, then we’ll have a really happy recruit.
The optimal solution is for Congress to raise the pay for servicemen and servicewomen who stay in the military. That, of course, will be extremely difficult to accomplish considering the Democrats’ unwillingness to support the military and the Republicans’ tightfistedness that stops them from spending money on anything except high-technology gizmos that fail when tested by the military. As such, we are left at an impasse.
Celebrate all holidays
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 2000, Newspaper Columns on January 14, 2000
Growing up as a child, my favorite holiday of the year was President’s Day: a three-day weekend in the middle of February while I was in elementary school. It was memorable, in part, because it was the one day a year my oldest sister and I hung out together.
Dinner on President’s Day was also always memorable. Mother would cook a gingerbread cake for dessert, and we would share Abraham Lincoln’s favorite dessert.
Somewhere along the way, we started celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day instead of President’s Day. No longer was I able to enjoy a three-day weekend in February because the school authorities decided we couldn’t have that many days off during the spring semester and still have an adequate education.
I don’t think they made the right decision. Part of being an American citizen is participating in American holidays, and President’s Day is one of the most important. The day is between the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington’s, arguably the two most important presidents in American history.
Other days are also important for celebration and reflection: Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving Day.
IU only recognizes four American holidays: Martin Luther Jr. King Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving Day, a fact that might come as a surprise to many people.
Take any new student who assumed we would not have school on Labor Day , a day dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. This is an important holiday because it celebrates the efforts of the common working individual. But IU has seen fit for students and faculty (but not staff — they have the day off) to work on this day.
We also miss Columbus Day, the day we choose to remember Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and discovered what eventually became known as America. Whether you believe Columbus to be a hero, he is an individual certainly worth remembering. Again, everyone at IU spends this day in class or at work.
On Veterans’ Day, we celebrate the men and women who fought for the freedom of this nation during all the wars: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Gulf War, just to name a few. At IU, we do not spend the day remembering the men and women who have fought for our nation and died; we instead spend it in the classroom, doing our regular studies.
Which brings us full circle to examine the four days that we, as a university, have chosen to celebrate, starting with Independence Day. Without a doubt, this is the single-most important holiday on the American calendar. Commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, this day celebrates the independence of the United States of America from King George of England.
Thanksgiving is the next holiday on IU’s calendar, a day established by the pilgrims who came to America for religious freedom. Usually celebrated shortly after the fall harvest, this was a time to gather and celebrate. In most respects, this holiday celebrates the enduring American can-do spirit to overcome the greatest odds.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the newest national holiday on the calendar, added in 1983; this holiday celebrates the man who pushed for a fundamental change in the relationship between the races. The day offers many reminders of the distance we have traveled toward better race relations since the end of World War II, but it also reminds me of the distance we have yet to travel.
Memorial Day, established in 1948, is our designated day to remember those who have died fighting in wars. This is, without a doubt, another important American holiday: a day to pause and reflect upon those who really have paid the ultimate price for your and my freedom.
But is any one holiday more important than another?
I believe none of the holidays are more or less important than any of the others, and as such, we need to celebrate all of them. University administrators should not pick the holidays we celebrate based on a quasi-popularity contest, as it seems to be done now. As a nation, we’ve selected these days to celebrate our heritage, and IU should choose to celebrate these days as well.
A discourse on cellular etiquette
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on December 1, 1999
It’s time that we have a discussion about cellular phones and proper usage of said devices. There are many people using them and most of them have no idea how to use them politely.
I was recently at a small café that had a sum total of nine tables, in an intimate setting, eating breakfast. It was an enjoyable affair, except for the fact that somebody at one of the other tables was busy chatting away with a friend on a cell phone at the top of his lungs. The whole experience was a disaster. What could have been an enjoyable experience in a pleasant morning setting was wrecked.
There are other times that I see cell phone users acting in a reckless manner: while driving. It was a sobering experience a few years back when my car was hit by a drunk driver: while at the body shop, the elderly gentleman who been in the business for 30 or 40 years said when he started out in the business he used to walk around the shop and point at cars saying “drunk driver, drunk driver.” Today he walks around the same shop, pointing at cars and saying “cell phone, cell phone.” His casual observation in the body shop was backed up by a New England Journal of Medicine study in 1997 that found people using cell phones were four times more likely to be involved in an accident than people not using their phones.
As such I would like to make two proposals: First, that a group be formed to combat accidents caused by cellular phones. Modeled after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it could be called MACE: Mothers Against the Cellular Epidemic. Secondly, a conversation about cellular etiquette needs to be held, both in our community of learners and in our society at large.
I suggest the conversation within our academic community because as the number of cell phone users expands, I anticipate trying to listen to a lecture (whether a class or public lecture) while an audience member (student or otherwise) talks on their cell phone.
As such specific etiquette is needed, and there seem to be some easy suggestions:
- Phones should be turned off unless you are expecting an important phone call. Finite math is not the time to be speaking with your pal Muffy about your date last night.
- Should you expect an important call, audible phone rings should be turned off, vibrating rings are acceptable if your phone has that feature.
- If you do have your cellular phone turned on, sit by the aisle and near the door to leave should the phone ring.
- When the phone rings, you should leave the room before answering the call.
- Apologize to the professor after class and explain the nature of the emergency. Most professors are more sympathetic when they have an explanation of why you left the room abruptly.
Finally, in society at large, we need to recognize that cellular phones are a vital part of the world but it is important to be polite when using the phone. Clearly driving while talking on the phone can have just as deadly results as driving while drunk, but there are other times and places that cell phone etiquette needs to be followed. Here is an outline of some basic premises I would suggest:
- As noted before, do not drive and talk on the phone. There ought to be a law enforcing this objective, and there is: in Brooklyn, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, it is illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving.
- Do not talk on your cell phones in restaurants, unless you have gone outside. Recently one New York City restaurant installed a cell phone lounge for people who are more interested in talking than eating.
- Finally, do not shout into your cell phone. Shouting defeats the purpose of having a cell phone, since most people who shout into their cell phones shout loudly enough for the person they are calling to hear without use of the phone.
Cellular phones are here to stay, and the convenience and safety they offer is amazing, but along with technological progression comes the responsibility to use them carefully and politely.
Can eight minds think alike?
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on October 27, 1999
In just under a week, I, like thousands of other Bloomington residents, will head to the polls to decide the fate of the Bloomington City Council and the school system. This election has already been one of the most interesting elections I have witnessed in years due to a controversial referendum involving the schools. There is also, within the city, a city council election that has proved to be amusing.
In terms of the city council elections, I have really only given it substantial thought twice: once about a month ago when I had a strange revelation and this past weekend when I had a complete reversal in my thinking.
About a month ago while I was driving across Bloomington from one place to another, it occurred to me that until that point I had only heard from the Republican candidates. At the time I thought to myself that it was really neat. Imagine, a political party being unified enough to get nine candidates to run for office as a block, in the hopes that they would prevail and control city council. They also had given up on the mayor’s office, opting to let the incumbent Democrat retain the seat unchallenged.
Ironically, shortly after I returned home, Pam Service, the incumbent Democrat City Council member from my district (District 6) who is not running for reelection, rang my doorbell and encouraged me to vote for the Democrat running in my council district, thus shattering my brief notion that the Democrats were not going to be visible at all this election season.
I was still impressed enough with the Republicans that I continued to ponder whom I would actually vote for. Neither of the candidates running in my district are so inspired that I feel compelled to run out and vote for them early, nor so dastardly as to have caused me to run out and campaign against them.
I pretty much stopped thinking about the issue until late last week when I viewed the results of a City Council candidate survey in the Bloomington Independent and quickly realized that I was in the presence of something strange and improbable: Eight of the nine Republicans on the City Council ticket answered the questions as a group.
The odds that two people will ever agree on every issue 100 percent of the time is somewhere near zero, even if both people are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians or (even) members of the Reform Party. So if I wasn’t actually witnessing this event, then I must have been witnessing the world’s first eight-headed body that is not completely physically connected. Think of it as a new type of Siamese twin, if you wish.
Naturally, that is improbable as well, so there’s something fishy going on with the Republican side of the City Council ticket. This running as a group thing has gone too far: the last time I witnessed a group of people running together, at least they had the decency to admit that they didn’t completely agree on every subject. Of course, it was a marathon.
It is true that there have been a couple of occasions when the Indiana Daily Student and Herald-Times have cornered the candidates separately and interviewed them separately from the groupthink approach that they as Republicans seem to have undertaken this year. My impression at the time was that the individual candidates acted more like deer caught in headlights than individuals. Of course that held for the Democrats as well: the inane profiles published by the IDS and the H-T are exactly that: inane profiles.
This impressive show of “groupthink” has managed to turn me off. I still do not have any strong opinions one way or another about the two candidates running for office in my district. But since I have strong doubts about the ability of eight men and women to agree on every issue, I am disinclined to believe the Republican ticket’s unified answers to all the questions. Which means that by default, the Republican in my district is facing an uphill battle to get my vote during this last week.
Which presents another problem: I never vote a straight ticket. As such, I have to find at least one non-Democrat to vote for. I can either vote for Michael Schitt, the Libertarian running for City Council At Large, or one of the other two non-party mayoral candidates.
That decision is one I’ll be mulling over between now and Election Day. I hope that those of you registered to vote in Bloomington will do the same and remember to get out to the polls next week as well. It is important that students are involved in the city as residents, not just be visitors passing through.
Oh yes, and about that other vote I’ll be casting: I already know that I support quality education in public schools and I will vote accordingly.
Communities grieve in tragedy’s wake
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on October 13, 1999
It’s been over a year since I arrived at IU. To say the least, it has been an interesting year: every place I’ve ever lived in has been dragged through the media muck and is now stained a slightly different color.
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the days when Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten and left for dead just outside Laramie. Suddenly, and without any warning, a community I grew to love and appreciate over my six-year stay was splashed across the front page of the New York Times and the Indiana Daily Student, to name a few newspapers, when the story broke.
Having been a resident of Laramie, I read the media’s accounts of the town with a great deal of interest, even at times pausing to wonder if the reporters had visited the same town and state that I know and love so much.
They talked about this town, calling it homophobic, racist, and drunk, casting the image in such pall that I found it difficult to imagine that they were talking about the same one I lived in. It is one with a great university that has a great legacy, a warm homecoming parade Saturday morning, and a strong sense of community.
The attention on my adopted home hurt: I love Laramie and I love Wyoming. Ultimately I would love to return to the Cowboy state, a state whose residents, like those of Indiana, have a strong sense of being, who they are and the historical legacy of their state.
The second blow to my personal geography came last spring, when Denver was dragged through the muck: Columbine High School and the two gunmen. Suddenly while flipping past CNN I thought I recognized the two people sitting behind the anchor desk and on the air: people I had watched on the news while growing up. It was CNN rebroadcasting KCNC, the CBS station out of Denver.
This time, though, the media did not blame the city; instead they tried to search for an explanation. It did not matter in the end: Denver still came off looking like a “cow town,” a backward place that encouraged gun-slinging, much like the Old West.
In one sense, Colorado is very much unlike either Wyoming or Indiana. The residents have absolutely no sense of place, being or history. Nobody in Colorado cares because they all just moved in from somewhere else; usually California.
The last blow came on July 4 when Won-Joon Yoon was killed by Benjamin Smith in Bloomington. Ironically, it took me far longer to learn about this news story than to learn about the other two. It was not until I was on my way home from Bloomington’s parade that I had to detour around the three satellite news trucks that surrounded the Korean United Methodist Church on Third Street, along with the yellow police crime-scene ribbon that I had only seen on television before.
Since I actually live here right now, it is more difficult for me to know how Bloomington came across in the national media. From what I can tell, though, it has not hurt Bloomington’s national image significantly. Perhaps this was because Smith’s crime wave was exactly that: a crime wave. It ran across two states, killed two people and hurt a number of others. The real news in this case, as it turned out, was the murder of Ricky Byrdsong, Northwestern University’s former basketball coach, in Skokie, Ill.
Bloomington was left to grieve for Yoon.
The images that the media chooses to push upon the public can lead to powerful effects in the imagination and memories of the viewers and readers. Whether in Laramie, Denver or Bloomington, reporters who fly into town for 48 hours to write a story often miss the essence of the situation. The facts may be right, but the picture is left incomplete. At best it leaves an image that is only slightly distorted, at worst the foundation of the community is damaged, forcing an already hurt community to dig deeper to fix its emotional scars.
The soul searching starts at home, and Laramie is about to be dragged through the muck again as jury selection starts for Aaron McKinney, the second of the men accused of murdering Shepard, this week. When you read the news stories over the next month, pause to remember that the citizens of Laramie were not responsible: McKinney and his friend Russell Henderson are the culprits.
The citizens of Laramie, like the citizens of Denver and Bloomington, are not to blame for their community’s notoriety; they are, however, working on the healing of their community.
Homeowners’ complaints futile
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on September 15, 1999
Whine, whine, whine is the word of the day coming from local residents who live in the Garden Hill neighborhood, and although I sympathize with their complaints, they are clearly speaking out of turn.
It is my belief that when you move into a neighborhood, you take responsibility for knowing the pre-existing conditions of the neighborhood and therefore lose your right to complain about problems unless there is a significant change in the conditions.
That is to say, if you live in a quiet neighborhood 50 miles from a major international airport and then one moves in, you have a right to complain. But if you move into a neighborhood and a major international airport is only five miles from your doorstep, you lose your right to complain.
And that is the issue between the Garden Hill Neighborhood Association membership and the hundreds of student renters who live in the neighborhood.
According to a Saturday Herald-Times article, “Neighborhood group seeking peace, quiet,” the neighborhood bounded by 17th Street on the north, 14th Street on the south, Walnut Street to the west, and Indiana Street on the east, has a sum total of 20 owner-occupied homes and more than 100 rental addresses (many with multiple rental units). In other words, homeowners are outnumbered by a significant margin.
Yet these homeowners are whining about party noise, including one local resident who is going so far as to remodel a room with thick layers of insulation and ear plugs with rifle-range ear protection and pillows so that he can sleep. I really do sympathize, but the whiners moved into the neighborhood knowing that IU was right next door.
Maybe they bought their houses 15 years ago when there were fewer renters, but then again my parents bought their house in Denver, five miles from an international airport before the advent of large jumbo jets and planes landing every few minutes, and they never complained: it was a fact of life.
My parents bought their house knowing about the airport nearby and they never once complained about the jumbo jets screaming over the house, despite the fact that you could hear the noise from jets even at 1 a.m., or the fact that the noise got progressively worse as the years went by.
That’s not to say that I do not sympathize with the homeowners. I do not doubt that many of today’s student renters are noisier and more obnoxious than student renters of years past. The party noise levels probably have been rising since the ‘50s, although I suspect the bulk of the decibel increase came in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
The probable truth of the matter is that some of the homeowner’s reported increase during the past 15 years (since 1984) is probably more reflective of the fact that they have less tolerance for noise today than they did when they moved in. Most people in their twenties are far more willing to withstand the rattling windows than most people in their forties.
That’s not to say, though, that the student renters who are causing problems don’t need to be stopped. I admire the Garden Hill Neighborhood Association for trying, but they should realize that they made the choice to live where they live.