Posts Tagged Bloomington
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.
Reconnect with the actual world
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on August 24, 1999
As this is my first column of the year, I wish to extend a warm welcome to you, whether you are a returning student or a new student. Indiana University has a lot to offer you, but I’d like to offer some words of caution.
What you’ve heard is true – IU is one of the most wired campuses in the United States, if not the world. There are e-mail stations in the cafeterias, hallways and in other random spaces. The campus offers dial-up network connections that are fast and efficient.
IU also offers an incredible deal that allows you to acquire Microsoft products at only $5 a CD-ROM. You can not go wrong with that deal: if a new upgrade goes wrong it probably didn’t cost you more than $20, the price of the Office 2000 Premium 4 CD set. (And, at least in my humble opinion, Office 2000 is a major improvement over its competitors and predecessors.)
The lure is great. For only a few dollars you too can get on the Internet and surf all day; many research journals are available online with the click of your mouse. Hometown newspapers keep you in touch with the places you are from. Networked games offer the lure of winning games and prizes. Chat rooms offer the potential for new friends in interesting places.
And IU is making it even easier for you to avoid stepping in the classroom. The University now offers Oncourse, a Web-based instruction system that, in some cases, could mean that you will never have to step into a classroom or physically meet your professors.
No doubt about it, this technology is grand! It is making life a whole heck of a lot better.
But I want to remind you that you are here in Bloomington, a city of 70,000 people in Monroe County, in the state of Indiana.
So I wish to offer you some advice: TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER. GET UNWIRED.
And I don’t mean you should purchase a cellular phone. I mean lose the technology.
Bloomington and the surrounding areas offer a number of splendid attractions that are well worth the trip and worth getting offline and outside for. For those of you interested in fall colors and a tourist-trap shopper’s Mecca, head east to Nashville and Brown County State Park. It’s well worth the trip, even if you must pay to park during the prime tourist season.
Every train buff in town ought to take a trip west to Solsberry and the world’s third-longest train trestle. It is an interesting site, and any one wishing to marry a person named Melissa has a built-in proposal painted on the south side of the trestle (at least it was there when I visited it earlier this summer). Both of these sites are well worth the time away from your Web browser, and there are many more places to visit in the area.
But for those of you who want to stick closer to town, or even want ideas for the upcoming weekends, Saturday, Kirkwood Avenue will be home of Hoosierfest, an annual concert and street fair. It starts at noon and the tunes begin at 2 p.m.
And Labor Day weekend will bring the Fourth Street Festival of the Arts & Crafts to Fourth and Grant Streets. Another opportunity to get outside and have some fun, you will be able to find stuff to hang on your walls and enjoy live entertainment.
For those of you who cannot wait for the weekend and have a few minutes to spare between classes, here’s an idea. Sit outside in the Arboretum or make the trek to People’s Park. Each provides their own kind of unique entertainment: plants and people at their best and worst, case dependent.
In any case, there are opportunities to get offline and outdoors. Don’t waste your time in Bloomington only seeing the walls of your apartment and the street between home and campus. Get out and live a little.
Your computer will be waiting for you when you get home.
Nunn, God hurt by new law
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1999, Newspaper Columns on April 9, 1999
Award Winning: This column earned the IDS Best Column of the Week award, April 5-9, 1999.
The March 29 front page of the Bloomington Herald-Times announced that the “Mayor envisions city without billboards.” This is one of Bloomington’s many efforts at beautification. Another example of beautification efforts has included work on Kirkwood Avenue.
But this particular mode of beautification is going to be particularly expensive, both for the city, the owner of the billboards and for advertisers who use those billboards. It is expensive for the city because the city must compensate Hoosier Outdoor, the billboard company, for the eliminated billboards. It is expensive for Hoosier Outdoor because they will have their business significantly reduced.
Last but not least, and perhaps the most expensive proposition of all, it is expensive for those who advertise on billboards and are dependent upon the people who respond to those ads for their business. Two people immediately come to mind: Ken Nunn and God.
Odd, isn’t it? In many respects they are diametrically opposed. One is good and one is, many people would argue, bad. Without pointing fingers, I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide which one is which.
Ken Nunn, a local personal injury lawyer, is a significant advertiser around town. He is probably the number one advertiser in Bloomington with four-color ads in the Herald-Times, the phone book and billboards.
But if billboards are eliminated from Nunn’s advertising mix, the number of injured clients who seek his assistance from him will probably drop dramatically, perhaps even forcing him out of business. Naturally, we wouldn’t want to let that happen, because it is important that everybody knows their legal rights.
God, a universal deity, seems mainly to advertise on billboards, although his message is usually sponsored by a number of people in the newspapers Fridays. One of his billboards can be seen on North Walnut as you approach State Road 37.
“Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer,” signed God.
It would be immensely interesting to find out what kind of response rate God’s getting from his ads. This turned out to be impossible to find out, because there are fifty different kinds of churches in Bloomington, according to the Ameritech Yellow Pages.
That’s not counting the fact that five different Lutheran Churches exist: Faith Lutheran Church LCMS, Lutheran Campus Ministry ELCA, Lutheran Church Shepherd of the Hills, St. Thomas Lutheran Church ELCA and University Lutheran Church.
To top it off, that doesn’t include Jewish people, who are relegated to look under “Synagogues — Jewish” instead of the churches. (Before I get any howls of protest that this is indeed appropriate, let me point out that one of the categories under Churches is “Churches — Buddhist.”)
Of course, to get to this point in my logic, one must assume that God is an all-encompassing God and that he does not care which place you go to worship. Whether it is a Jewish synagogue, a Christian church, Buddhist temple or Muslim mosque (although I did not see any in the phone book), God is just happy to have you praying for Him.
Regardless, conducting a survey of these churches and asking about the increase in attendance as a result of God’s billboards around town would be expensive, time consuming and difficult.
Given all the potential problems that come from the elimination of billboards around town, Ken Nunn’s bankruptcy and reduced prayer for God, this is not a decision the mayor should take lightly. The repercussions of this decision could last for an eternity.
In all seriousness, hats off to Bloomington Mayor John Fernandez for undertaking this bold initiative.
I sincerely doubt that the advertisers in this town will suffer tremendously from the loss of this space. Injured people will still make their way to Ken Nunn and God will still win the hearts of many.
The big winners in this decision are the people of Bloomington who will live in a city without billboards — a place where you can see the sky, the trees and historic buildings without a big, ugly billboard getting in the way.
– – – – – –
Ken Nunn and God on the same line
(published April 22, 1999)
Adam Lederer did a good job on his April 9 editorial “Nunn, God hurt by new law.” I must confess that this is the first time my name has been on the same line with God. I am absolutely flattered.
Keep up the good work
Ken Nunn
Attorney at law Nunn and
Green Law Offices
New bus plan benefits all
Posted by Adam in Indiana Daily Student 1998, Newspaper Columns on October 28, 1998
It is rare for a group of students to put forward a proposal that actually has merit. The Universal Transportation Proposal is one of those gems. Everyone — students, faculty and staff — needs to support this proposal.
Here is the basic idea: Every student on campus will pay a fee of up to $35 fee per semester. In return, every student will be entitled to unlimited bus trips around town.
It’s not a new idea. I saw a variation of this proposal at work a few summers back when I took a class at the University of Colorado at Denver. Once I had my student ID, I had a bus pass. I used the bus a lot that summer. Not only did I save myself gas and parking money, I reduced my share of Denver’s infamous brown cloud.
The system was so simple and logical, I thought that a lot of other universities would have already worked with their local communities to expand bus service. Yet IU and the Bloomington community are just now getting around to this pollution stopper of an idea.
The situation in Bloomington seems a bit more bizarre than most other places because two different bus systems operate: the Campus Bus Service and Bloomington Transit. The Campus Bus Service offers students a bus pass when they register — at a cool $120 a semester. Unfortunately, it’s only good for the Campus Bus Service, thus limiting you to unlimited round trips out to the stadium, if you’re looking for entertainment.
Bloomington Transit, on the other hand, has been around since 1973 and is designed to serve the local community. If you only want to ride the BT system, it costs $82 a semester for the bus pass — but it’s good only on BT buses.
A third option does exist for those who want to ride both types of buses without having to think about it– you need to purchase both bus passes for only $202.
The new proposal will change the situation. For only $35 a semester, students will be able to ride both BT buses and campus buses — thus saving everyone, including the strict anti-car environmentalist, a whopping $167 a semester.
Many of you are already saying, “I’m not an environmentalist. People in Oregon have the right to be lumberjacks and to have good paying jobs.” You might be the same person who lives five blocks from campus but drives anyway.
You might also be one of those people who complain relentlessly about the lack of parking. This proposal should please you to no end because yahoos like me will stop hogging the parking spaces when we get out of bed late.
One of the key components to this mandatory fee is that it will help the bus systems purchase more buses, provide more frequent service, as well as service later into the evenings. These new features will mean that I’ll never have an excuse for tardiness. If I get out of bed too late to catch the bus I normally catch, I won’t have to wait an eternity to catch the next bus.
Faculty and staff will also be able to buy into the program. Imagine sitting next to your favorite prof the next time you ride the bus — the individualized attention you’ll receive is worth more than the $35 you paid for the entire semester. Of course, this plan will also help improve the status of our environment in the Bloomington community.
This is a win-win proposal for everybody at the University. It is also a major victory for our community. We need to remember that IU is not an island surrounded by Bloomington. IU is an integral part of the Bloomington community, and it is incumbent upon the University to help make the town better.