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(04/20/04 4:27am)
As I write this, it's 9:30 Saturday night. I've spent the last nine hours nursing a hangover yesterday's rum and vodka induced. My thoughts are spacey at best. I think I hear my name being called softly from Kirkwood Avenue, but that could be my imagination.\nHeadaches are to writers what STDs are to the porn industry. I'm on deadline for tomorrow, but I'd rather be drinking the pain away. I'd like nothing more than to finish the rest of this column in a storm of periods, hop over to Nick's and time warp to tomorrow. Unfortunately, I need all the time I can get.\nI've been told to use time better. I'd like nothing more. Man has the ability to create all the time he wants. After all, time doesn't really exist -- the concept just leapt out of man's imagination.\nTime is not absolute, either. It is inconsistent and can be manipulated. Time moves faster and slower depending on where you are in the universe and how fast you are going. Put a clock in the bottom of a tall tower and another perfectly synchronized clock at the top, and in about a thousand years the two will have diverged almost a whole minute. Time dilation. Crazy. \nOur species could have plucked any kind of time concept from the temporal abyss -- unfortunately, some Stone Age dunce decided Earth should function based on the arbitrary rotation of a big blue space ball floating around a big yellow space ball. \nThis created the standard "day" -- 24 hours long. Definitely not enough time. Either we need to invent (non-alcohol-induced) time travel or it's time for time to change. \nDays should be twice as long. No more finishing work with only a few hours of "me" time before bed. If you get done at 18 o'clock a.m. (6 p.m. arbitrary-spinning-ball time), there's another 14 hours of fun to be had.\nWith all that extra time on our hands, we could do all the little things the 24-hour time crunch usually prevents -- spending time with friends and family, reading more, playing croquet, practicing the Kama Sutra or -- if you're sans a friend to "train" with -- engaging in a little extra Web research.\nWait -- then again, half as many days means life lasts half as long. Most people would die before they turned 40. I don't want to croak just when I'm finally accepting my shattered adolescent dreams and male pattern baldness.\nI want to get old someday. I want to gradually relinquish all of my earthly responsibilities. I want grandkids. I want to be able to take a poop in the middle of a busy street on a blistering hot day and chalk it up to senility. I want to meet my maker with no regrets.\nSo on second thought, halve the days. Then we could all live until we're 170 years old. Going in to work twice as often would be a drag at first, but the prospect of retiring at 60 and spending 110 years on vacation would be well worth the inconvenience. \nThen again, unless I'm the next Jack LaLanne, I'll probably have one foot in the grave every day after I turn 90. Who would want to spend the better part of a century at the mercy of a wheelchair, false teeth, prescription drugs and a catheter? \nDarn it. This is going nowhere. All this thinking about time is time wasted.\nTo heck with it. I'm making some time for myself right now. Maybe I'll even see you out tonight …
(04/13/04 5:07am)
I visited the Teen Keira Web site before the entire hubbub began and didn't give it another thought until the stories began to show up in the news. Now that the University has decided Teen Keira did not violate its ethics code by publishing nude photos of herself taken in Briscoe Quad, we can all breathe easy. But what could this mean for the future?\nA long legacy of sexual education has always existed at the University level. According to the Kinsey Institute Web site, in 1938, Dr. Alfred Kinsey received a grant in order "to continue research on human sexual behavior." With the foundation of the Kinsey Institute in 1947 at IU, stimulated researchers quickly brought sexuality into the classroom. To date, IU houses the second-largest porn library in the United States. Why should it have a problem with one of its students contributing to the tradition started by Kinsey over 60 years ago? Kinsey's research showed over 90 percent of men masturbate regularly. By all rights, Teen Keira should be given a small scholarship for helping to bolster Dr. Kinsey's research. \nRecently, the Harvard University student organizations board voted 12-0 to approve the H-Bomb, a student-run sex magazine including pictures of naked women. The Harvard committee was aware many people would be offended by the publication but approved its production on free speech grounds.\nBelieve it or not, Teen Keira's Web site is also protected speech. Only purely obscene forms of speech are banned from the Internet. Obscenity is defined as materials designed only to arouse the prurient interest -- those appealing to the lowest and most grotesque desires of man. This category includes -- among other things -- snuff films, child pornography and pictures of people pooing in other people's mouths. Teen Keira's site contains no such images of obscene acts. In fact, there's almost an artful quality in the way she holds her 10-inch purple dildo to her mouth while gazing into the camera with intense forlorn eyes.\nFinally, higher education and the porn industry are finding some common ground. With any luck, the victories of today will pave the way for greater levels of smut inclusion at the university level. The IU Student Foundation could sponsor "Freaky Friday" -- a day-long, campus-wide celebration of the naked student body. All classes would be conducted in the nude -- including BJ101, Introduction to Web Pornography -- a new class offered through the Kelley School of Business. Greeks and independents could finally compare genital sizes. At high noon, two-woman teams would compete in the annual three-legged race across Dunn Meadow, and two-man teams would compete in the annual five-legged race later that day. \nLike Teen Keira herself, IU is also into making money off its image -- an image, coincidentally, that it sells whenever possible. The IU logo is everywhere -- T-shirts, bumper stickers, music boxes, dolls, sculptures and even on the fuzzy dice that hang from your rearview mirror. The University is not so righteous as to forgo whoring out its official moniker for financial gain. Why should it hold its students more accountable for selling what they have to offer? \nRemember, it's all money-driven. Don't forget without the patronage of millions of undersexed single men, ages 8 to 105 years who supply a steady flow of Web site hits and lust money, the multibillion dollar porn industry would flag like an aging porn star who's out of Viagra.\nFor the future, look for universities to be more open to pornography. It's already clogging up their servers and supporting their student populations. If there's some young lady reading this article who's looking to make a quick buck, you have Teen Keira to thank for another option open to you.
(04/06/04 4:27am)
Swing a dead cat by the tail at IU and you're likely to hit somebody in the Greek system. Just make sure the kitty doesn't have claws, or you might have someone's entire house chasing you all the way up North Jordan Avenue.\nGreeks, as an organization, are the most influential of all groups on campus -- the next being student government, with business majors as a distant third. Chances are, if you are reading this article, you belong to none of these factions. \nThe largest number of students belong to the great silent majority -- the independents. Unaffiliated with any group, independents are the undefinable mass that traverse the campus incognito, like thousands of extras in the background of a big-budget movie -- their cacophonous, disharmonious voices a gurgling murmur behind the main dialogue. All talk at once, and none are heard.\nStill, the expression of independent students can be found by those with keen eyes and ears -- scribbled in bathroom stalls, etched into the backs of classroom chairs and bursting forth in vulgarities from patrons leaving the bars of Kirkwood Avenue at 2 a.m. \nTheir sentiments are consistently anti-establishment and anti-Greek. For example -- this classic is scribbled in a Morrison Hall bathroom: "Fiji is the biggest bunch of fags I have ever seen. I would almost rather live in Collins than hang out with them."\nSome arguments can be found over and over -- Greeks buy their friends. Greeks think they are cooler than you because they drink more than you. Sorority girls are stuck up. Frat guys break things because they have small wieners. \nI would say it's all just a bunch of idle talk, but it's not even that -- it's just a bunch of random dudes who write things they wouldn't say in public on inanimate objects. Come on independents, where's your pride?\nIt used to be that being an independent meant something. There was a time when masochistically-inclined Greeks and independents would meet once a year in Dunn Meadow to beat the ever-living crap out of each other. I don't condone violence, of course, but my point is -- way back when -- independents had respect. \nNowadays independents are too disorganized to wipe their own butts -- a brown stain on the trousers of the student body. But how do you bring order to a group that has no ties to each other? Simple. Make them all part of the same organization.\nPretend, for a moment, the independents had their own fraternity.\nAll independent men will hereby be joined to the brotherhood of Rho Delta. Its meaning: random dudes.\nIndependent women, or GDIs, will be incorporated into the sisterhood of Gamma Delta Iota. Its meaning: GDI.\nAn independent fraternity and sorority would automatically become a formidable force in Indiana's already crowded Greek system. With memberships of more than 15,000 to draw from, RhoD and GDI could lead IU in philanthropy and intramurals. \n Naturally, the two would pair with each other for all the big campus events, and the effect of so much hooking up in Bloomington during Little 500 week would ensure IU generation after generation of legacy students. \n All the random dudes who get flak at frat parties can make one quick phone call, and before you know it, the halls will be teeming with Rho Deltas ready to chase every Greek would-be meathead all the way down North Jordan Avenue, across campus and through the Sample Gates. Then, after exercising their rediscovered strength, all the independents, belting out the official Rho Delta chant, would say:\n"Rho Delta, we love you! We are random through and through! We hate frats. Why don't you? Rho Delta, random dudes"
(03/29/04 4:29am)
The IU Student Association congress sat in session March 3, coasting through the duties of a particularly inconsequential meeting. Not much was on the slate -- approving new congress members, endorsing registration policies, making a donation to the United Way. It was in the beginning of the eager days just before spring break, and the atmosphere was an aloof kind of casual. All resolutions passed or dismissed without much debate until near the end of the meeting.\nUp to this point, junior Jason Growe had been sitting off to the side, calculating his audience. \nGrowe, president of Zeta Beta Tau, one of IU's historically Jewish fraternities, was to speak in support of congress resolution No. 04-03-09, the "Resolution to Endorse an end to Middle East violence." He felt the best way to attract congress's attention and support was to make a strong connection between Israel's and the United States' Wars on Terror. \nHis blue suit and tie injecting an air of seriousness into the laissez-faire environment, Growe began his speech. A fresh, confused attentiveness percolated through the assembly, and pin-drop silence gripped the room as the word "Israel" was uttered. \nQuestions, questions -- suddenly everybody had one:\nWhy Israel? What about the rest of the Middle East?\nAs long as we mention Israel, why not mention Palestine?\nIs this even an IUSA concern? \nWhat right do we have to get involved?\nThe debate could have gone on all night, but luckily for those with plans that Wednesday night, the resolution eventually passed with only a few small word changes. \nThe most important clause reads, "LET IT BE RESOLVED, that the Indiana University Student Body Congress endorses an end to terror in Israel and a renewed effort for peace in the Middle East."\nFor all of its semantic brilliance, no one in the room expected the resolution to have any profound results. Not a single life would be saved overseas nor would the fear of a single Israeli diminish.\nIUSA can provide students with many campus services and a voice to which the administration has to listen. Its tangible power, however, reaches little farther than the city limits of Bloomington.\nUltimately, the resolution is a paper tiger -- carrying little more political weight than the paper on which it is printed, destined to sit in a cabinet collecting dust until either the fighting stops or the entire region is blown away by black market atomic bombs. Is our student government justified in meddling in arenas in which it is a mere spectator -- where the most it can do is shout amongst the cacophony behind the sidelines?\nYet IUSA's duties extend further than simply serving the student body. Our student government is also charged with the responsibility of projecting our collective opinions into the world. In this case, the IUSA congressmen, elected by a majority of their peers to perform this very duty, decided the student body was against terrorism in Israel and the Middle East. As this is the opinion of IUSA, so it is also the opinion of the student body.\nThe plight and suffering of human beings worldwide may not fall under the jurisdiction of IU, but no man, woman or organization of persons should be given the prude charge of holding their tongues in the face of monstrous human injustice.\nSympathy has no jurisdiction. To deny our student voice the right to express its sympathy for the unwarranted deaths of thousands is to render us pitiless, coldhearted and inhuman. While one far away voice will not stem the blood-flow, it will not go unheard.
(03/08/04 4:38am)
The winter night's breeze carried the beef and beans smell of a late-night taco bar through the Sample Gates. I was taking a study break, on a walk from the Indiana Memorial Union to Jimmy John's for a late-night sub. \nA section of sidewalk by Kilroy's on Kirkwood had disappeared under a mass of people standing outside the entrance. I crossed the street to get around. The people were jovial, happily blinded by beer goggles and gushing punch-drunk promiscuity, while I was a pissed-off kind of sober. \nI felt like the only dry person at the party, given a prude charge. The stigma of temperance is an insect nested permanently up the rectum, a parasite sucking the humor out of every dirty joke, incoherent rant and liquor-cushioned fall.\nBut screw all that. I really had to study, and I should have started sooner.\nJust leaving my house was hard enough. By the time I should have been reading "Contending Forces," my roommate was pre-partying and prepping for his late-night prowl. Episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" were being piped through OnDemand TV. I started wasting time -- an hour, then three. \n9:30 already -- the cut off point.\nIn my backpack, I packed books, folders, my mp3 player, a toothbrush and paste, glasses, a contact case and solution. I pocketed my cell phone and wallet and traveled all the way across the street to the Union.\nIt was Indiana's most temperate March evening this millennium. Nobody should have been doing homework. My studies, however, had gone neglected since the previous Wednesday, when I shucked my usual mid-week study session for a section at Kilroy's Sports and watched the Hoosiers get routed by Northwestern. \nFrom then on, a mini-bender convoluted my classes, the week hazing by nauseously. Pretty soon, my three-to-four day homework cushion dwindled to two, then one. \nI was certain the state of "last-minute panic" I was creating would awaken my inner muse, but the distress of chapters unread and assignments untyped grew more sizable, like a cavalcade of Mack trucks following too closely on a freeway fast lane, constantly threatening to run over. \nSlowing down meant the paper train would crash and burn. So, basically, I had to study.\n"Contending Forces" is a romance about racial issues during American reconstruction. It's also incredibly unrewarding and boring to boot.\nThe high point Thursday came at midnight, when I discovered the best-kept men's restroom on campus. In the east wing of the Memorial Union mezzanine hid a furnished lavatory featuring intricate wallpaper, grimeless blue tiling, a subdued, fluorescent lighting scheme, wall units so clean they didn't need urinal cakes and the softest commercial toilet paper I've ever used. It's where God would go if he felt like reading on the John.\nAt the time I craved Jimmy John's, I had been focused on reading for about an hour. After the sandwich, I got a phone call -- a girl I knew from class. She said she was bored. \nThere's something convincing about a girl dialing in at two a.m. Within an hour, I was driving her around. My homework took a back seat with her three friends.\nBut damned if I wasn't the sober guy in the company, once again -- probably not good company, either.\nBy three in the morning, the girls were gone and the Union was closed. I headed to my room to finish studying.\nTurned the handle. Locked. Good hunting, roomie.\nI was done trying.\nTotal study time -- less than two hours.\nI took my backpack into the restroom, brushed my teeth, took out my contacts, undressed at the foot of my cold dorm bed and crawled onto the top bunk.\n"Tomorrow, I'll really buckle down," I thought. "After all, I've got the whole weekend"
(03/01/04 4:12am)
Ten a.m. Wake up. Walk downstairs. Take a shower. Throw on jeans, undershirt, overshirt, jacket, shoes. \n10:30. Eat breakfast. Brush teeth. Mint floss. Orange mouthwash. Hair gel. \n10:45. A spritz of inexpensive cologne, and I'm off to class.\nIt's mostly basic hygiene -- the stuff Mom spent years etching into her kids' daily habits. \nThe gel and cologne, on the other hand, make Jake look and smell good. It's vanity, I know, but it's harmless enough. \nGuys aren't culturally thought to go overboard on every little detail of their appearance like the better sex. In this vein, some guys, like me, have remained minimalists.\nIn the words of Ben Stiller's incredibly effeminate character, Derek Zoolander: "There has got to be more to life than just being really, really, really, ridiculously good-looking."\nZoolander, a parody of the non-existent male modeling industry, is just the tip of an iceberg floating in enough male-marketed natural skin creams, effervescent body oils and exotic hair applications to fill an ocean of overpriced, fruity-smelling goop.\nSlowly, slowly, male vanity is invading popular culture -- it's Zoolander and male thongs, it's glam rock and, of course, it's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."\nGrowing up, we had soap, shampoo and toothpaste in the bathroom. Now there's so much more. \nThe inventory of a random restroom in my house produced the following: St. Ives Apricot facial scrub, Luxe cucumber-melon body mist, Avena -- "the art and science of pure plant essences" -- phomollient styling foam, FORMEN skin management oil controller, Axe essence body spray and Bidage Matrix styling foam. \nAssuming this lone example is accurate for the entire world of men -- which, obviously, it is -- then many guys are expanding their beautification repertoire. \nDoes this mean that men, as an organization, are becoming (gasp) more feminine? Certain pesticides in the United States caused male frogs to change gender. Will new male-targeted body products cause human men to shed their foreskins and grow labia instead?\nDoubt it. Despite the supposed effeminate self-stylings in the example bathroom, the rest of the lavatory reeked of male presence -- the showers with mold creeping down from the ceiling and up from the floor, the floor as dirty as the rim of the toilet, the toilet with piss-yellow water in which have stagnated a wedge of paper towel and half a piece of white bread. Martha Stewart would know she's in hell if she died and woke up in this bathroom, where the intermixing of flowery body sprays and wet-fart smells perfectly illustrate the dichotomy of vanity and foulness that drives male hygiene.\nIf male vanity can be present in foul places, then it would be no surprise to find it at the gym.\nI once saw a guy kneeling on the hard, thin-carpeted floor of the always rank, over-mirrored weight room at the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. With rosin-caked hands, he drew the handles of the pulley above his head down behind his neck. Then he did bends at the waist, nearly touching his head to the floor each time, like some kind of strange bowing ritual from the church of Magnus ver Mangusen. Up, down, up, down, again, again and again -- like some form of religious worship to a god of aluminum and steel. His eyes were transfixed on his reflection in the mirror in the classic, million-dollar "you da' man" stare. \n It was vanity all right. So why are we doing it?\nWhy are men behaving this way? Going to more salons and tanning beds, applying moisturizers and bodifiers, buying health foods, dietary supplements and colored contacts, working out every little muscle from the bicep to the stapedius (the smallest in the body, located in the inner ear)?\nLike most things that motivate men, the answer is probably either money or women.\nAnd it's definitely not money.
(02/17/04 4:33am)
Imagine the University as a freight train. Adam Herbert is the conductor, there are passenger cars for the trustees, chancellors and prestigious alumni, and students are the freight -- the coal, the fuel that drives the machine. \nThe IU Student Association oversees the cargo. It organizes and reorganizes, but no matter what it does or says, we still might get burned in the end.\nIt's February again -- time for another IUSA election. Time for a few new groups of dutiful students to consider the question -- How do you win votes from a student constituency so apathetic its idea of "Super Tuesday" is five-cent drafts at Axis?\nYou've got to get people's attention, so campaign, campaign, campaign. Make promises and make them carefully. This year's most eye-catching campaign pledge comes from the Big Red party, which has quite subtly announced its intention to reverse the current University alcohol policy in favor of a "wet" campus. \nHere's how it plans to do it. Ask the administration really, really nicely if it would consider lightening up just a bit. \nGreat strategy. While they're at it, why not try bringing down Mount Everest with a pickaxe? Obviously, somebody forgot who's driving the train.\nHere's a little history lesson for all you kiddies who can't remember the days when drinking on campus wasn't a collegiate taboo.\nTime frame -- the early 90s. College students on the tail end of the Spuds McKinzie revolution are dropping off apartment balconies and residency rooftops like flies ... flies who have had way too much booze to drink. \nSuddenly, underage drinking laws already on the books aren't good enough, University administrations and Greek houses are taking the heat, and IU needs some good press. Time to get proactive.\n1996. The IU vice president of administration drafts a new policy for the distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages on University property. The paragraph most directed at students reads:\n"No alcoholic beverages may be served for any group of undergraduate students of the University, or for any function where it is reasonable to expect consumption by persons under the age of twenty-one years."\n2000. The Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Association ban alcohol consumption in Greek houses.\n2002. IFC and Panhel create the "party patrol." Greek houses police themselves. \nWith residence halls also applying their own restrictions on alcoholic beverages, all on-campus students were hit with anti-alcohol edicts from nearly every angle. \nThus, the PR demons were temporarily exorcized. In the alcohol war, however, there could be no victor, and for the sake of maintaining appearances, compromise was necessary. \nIt's give and take. Students, don't do anything stupid, like dying, that would make the administration look bad, and in turn, they'll go on pretending like we're right in line with the drinking policy.\nThe train is going in circles. The Big Red ticket has to know this. Everyone does. \nIU students aren't so oppressed. They became the nation's top party school in 2002, so why should we fight the alcohol policy at this point?\nIt's great rhetoric to promote something that's on nearly every IU student's wish list; unfortunately, our alcohol policy isn't some wet-dry vacuum that can be reversed with the flick of a switch. \nTo the contrary, it would take a hell of a lot to derail IU's freight train of anti-alcohol support. A few pennies on the track won't cut it; every student on campus would have to be standing in its way, and you can be sure that, by the time the train grinds to a halt, more than a few of us will be smashed in the grating. \nUnless Big Red plans to defy the administration head-on, it should just let the train roll, roll, roll by, and they might not even get burned.
(02/09/04 4:21am)
What if you could ride all the buses in town for a fraction of the current fee? Would you drive less, ride more? \nLast Wednesday, the IU Student Association tabled a bill that would raise student transportation fees in order to enable universal access to all buses run by Bloomington Transit and Campus Bus.\nIt could ease campus traffic. It could save students lots of money. In short, it's a great idea, and it's not a new one, either.\nFirst things first -- a little bus fee education. The "free" buses on campus -- the ones any student can ride by showing a valid student IU -- aren't really free at all. \nRight now, every student pays at least one bus fee, but some end up paying two. The first, a regular all-student fee, is relatively small. \nThirty dollars per semester covers all the green buses run by Bloomington Transit, the red "X" bus that runs from the Indiana Memorial Union to Memorial Stadium on weekdays and the "Midnight Special," the dark-hour carriage of drunkenness that has three routes running every 20 minutes from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. \nThe second fee, which is optional and more costly, pays for a universal pass available from the Campus bussing company. This is the fee you see on RegWeb just before checking out -- $107 per semester and I'll get access to every bus in town. Great deal, right?\nNot exactly. Most don't need to pay this additional fee in order to ride their favorite bus routes.\nHere's where it gets tricky. Under the current system, people who live off-campus need the $107 bus pass like they need a scuzz and anthrax casserole. Unfortunately, on-campus bus riders have to take a big, nasty bite each semester.\nLow-cost transportation is available to those living on North Jordan Avenue, in on-campus apartments or in the northern dormitories. These are the areas that Campus Bus routes A, B, D and E serve -- the routes that cost $107 to ride. On top of the big fee, students in these areas are also hit with the regular transportation fee, paying for people they don't know to ride on routes they'll never see. \nTo these students, it's double jeopardy. It's paying child support for someone else's kid. It's capitalism and communism combined -- pick an ethos and stick to it, already. \nCharge one flat fee. It's fair. This is what IUSA should do.\nNot surprisingly, many decide not to play this high-stakes game of "wheels on the bus." Why ride when you can drive?\nThat's why all the cars are here during the day. That's why there are no parking spaces. That's why a 30-year-old virgin isn't as backed up as Tenth Street and Fee Lane on a weekday. Students in sedans, co-eds in coupes and rich, east-coast girls in SUV's are the plaque clogging the circulation of IU's main arteries. \n More people riding buses would mean less people driving cars. IUSA's proposal just might be the right chelator (meaning "to remove heavy metal from the bloodstream") for IU.\n To some students, the added $15 dollars per semester would be a slight increase to a perfectly useful fee, but to those not yet in the transportation fee's service area, the new bill would give them a better way to commute, improve traffic on campus and save them enough for an extra keg per semester. Maybe even two.
(02/03/04 4:54am)
Mom always said video games would rot your brain, and once you brought home a bad report card, she took them away for a while. \nMom feared the power of video games -- probably because she couldn't understand them. With respect to the poor grades, in particular, the Nintendo didn't actually make you any stupider -- it just came down to priorities. A minute spent reading and writing at the dining room table was a minute that could have been better spent with that warm, glowing box.\nOnce in a great while, a game comes along that changes everything. Mario, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, Wolfenstein, Doom, Warcraft II and, most recently, the phenomenon that is Halo.\nThose who love this last game know the bittersweet temptations of video game addiction. You'll play it all the time; before a morning shower, after and during classes. Then the game eats your study time. It steals you from your girlfriend. \nHalo, for you laypersons, is developer Bungie and publisher Microsoft's embodiment of the perfection of a first-person shooter -- the same genre of video games that has parents afraid other 5-year-olds are toting high-caliber pistols and plastic explosives to show-and-tell. \nThe game's central character, the Master Chief, is a masked, green-armor-sporting super human genetically engineered to be mankind's greatest weapon against alien invaders -- a certified bad ass to say the least. His exploits are legendary, his one-liners questionable, but his greatest power lies in his ability to conquer the brain cells of any human (all right, male humans 8 to-30-years old) with nothing but time and an Xbox controller in their hands.\n"You end up working your day around it -- talking about it at dinner," senior Zach Held said. "Anything that brings people together competitively for that period of time is great."\nHeld, who is considered by many in his fraternity to be a premier Halo gunslinger, remembers vividly some of his greater Halo moments.\nTime frame: spring 2003. A group of 16 men at the Sigma Chi fraternity house have just hooked up four Xbox systems to the house network in order to partake in a what few others have experienced -- a Halo free-for-all with the game's maximum capacity of players. In room 301, four guys stare fixedly at their fourth of a 35-inch television screen, eyes twitching in anticipation of the unprecedented spectacle before them.\nThe games begin. Sounds echo through the entire third floor -- pistol fire, grenade explosions, the sound of sniper bullets in sonic boom, constant swearing each time someone's digital warrior is gunned down running, picked off with precision by a sniper 500 yards away or blown to pieces by their own grenades.\nNo pride is at stake, no money, no one is harmed in the process and all leave satisfied.\nAnd that was the pinnacle of the Halo experience. After that, there was nothing left to do.\n"It became real inconvenient," Held said. He and his friends have since begun to engage in nightly poker matches. "The desire to play Halo is still there, but there's only time for one addiction at a time," he said.\n People went back to their lives, girlfriends and studies. The Master Chief's armor began to lose its luster and, the following semester, most of the Xboxes were left at home. \nFor a while, the aliens would be left alone.\nUntil…\nUntil this coming summer, when the sequel to the single greatest game ever made will finally be released. \nAnd then … once again …\nYour grades will plummet. Your girlfriend will be put off. Your productive free time spent at the HPER or participating in worthwhile extracurricular activities will be devoured by a black hole of time spent staring blankly at a warm, glowing box, twiddling your thumbs. \nIt just comes down to priorities. Sorry, Mom.
(01/26/04 4:21am)
As a frat guy, I can tell you -- the Greek system is full of liars. To survive at IU, it has to be.\nThere are little lies. "Sure, babe. Have another glass. Wine actually has LESS alcohol than beer." And then there are the difficult lies -- like pretending to encourage a sober environment at a school known for boisterous behavior.\nWhile the little ones might get them off, the big ones keep them on ... campus. \nIU maintains the Athens of Greek communities -- but in the past three years, drinking, hazing and destructive behavior have led several of these organizations to fall from their lofty moral pedestals into collegiate obscurity. \nI think I speak for the whole Greek community when I say we are appalled at these formerly chartered houses' weekend flings with cheap vodka and loud music. For most of us, nothing says "Saturday Night" like spending a few hours watching a Billy Graham movie and enjoying a crisp ginger ale before bed.\nYet even after the revocation of these fraternities' charters, it is rumored several houses still encourage the consumption of alcohol -- some even holding mass-gatherings of people to partake in blatant disregard of University alcohol policy. These underground orgies of imbibition are referred to as "par-tees," "kay-gers" or as getting "whay-stid."\nI wouldn't have believed this gossip had I not witnessed certain events at my own fraternity house. \nWe were in for many scares that early November night as we held the second of our famous bi-yearly ice cream socials. First, a pledge accidentally bought a pint of Rum Raisin ice cream. We took immediate action, of course, incinerating nearly the entire quart in our boiler room and arranging sober drivers for anyone who had eaten more than a few spoonfuls. We informed the University of the incident and blackballed the pledge.\nAfter that close call, as we were nearly finished serenading a chipper group of Delta Gammas, a sudden ballyhoo arose from our entryway. It pains me to recall that one of my own brothers entered through the front door, staggering and wild-eyed and more belligerent than an alcoholic uncle at a Coors family Christmas. Needless to say, our song was ruined.\n"They've got beer!" he shouted. "I d*hic*rank it, too! I drank the beeeeeeeer!"\nHe then invited us to a "bitchin' par-tee" at another fraternity. Most of us just sat in disgust, but unfortunately, there were a few takers. I also tagged along, but only because page four of the Training for Intervention Procedures manual suggests bringing a sober person in every drinking group.\nJust after our arrival, the rumbling din of "shutdown" echoed through the halls, and I was nearly trampled and drowned by a torrent of rushing bodies and spilled beer. \nMeanwhile, the chapter president spoke to an officer at the front door:\n "How's the party going?"\n "Par-tee? Sir, I could check, but I'm sure that no social event was scheduled for tonight."\n "We received a noise complaint."\n "Was someone playing music too loud? My apologies, sir. We'll take care of it."\n "Has anyone been drinking alcohol?" \n "Haha. This is a dry campus, sir." \n Yeah, sure it is …\n But inside there was chaos. More than two whole minutes elapsed before all the beer was hidden away -- a pitiful excuse for frat security.\n A proper shutdown should take less than 30 seconds. \nBrothers and pledges with garbage bags and wet mops should rush like fire through gasoline -- grabbing cups, locking doors and doing a quick once-over on the flo- \nUh -- I mean -- at least that's how I imagine it should be. How would I know? Like I said, I'm just a Greek living on a dry campus that's never had a drop of alcohol since he's been in college. \nHonestly. \nWhy would I lie?
(01/13/04 5:14am)
It's a conversation repeated on college campuses everywhere:\n"Dude, you gotta love a good Keystone Light."\n"No way, man," another person grumbles. "This Amber Bock is the best. Dark beer has more alcohol, anyway."\n"Trust me, go with Rolling Rock," says a random third guy. "It goes down so easy. So smooth."\nAnd this is just the beginning of a collegiate conundrum unsolvable by university drinkers. \nTruth is, most students are grossly underqualified to judge the intricate flavorings of the world's many beers. Most conversations like the one above are simply time-fillers en route to intoxication. It's understandable. How could collegiate connoisseurs possibly be cultivated in an environment where the standard drinking vessel is the bong?\nA friend of mine once said as he bought me a case of cheap beer instead of the twelve-pack of Killian's I had wanted, "I'm sure it's a great beer, dude, but this one's cheaper, and we'll get twice as wasted." He was right, of course -- but he knew nothing of true beer appreciation.\nIf you haven't guessed, I consider myself somewhat of a beer buff. Thus, for the benefit of my less-than-knowledgeable collegiate peers, I feel it is my responsibility to examine several kinds of beer to finally determine which hops is tops on campus. As such, I promise to be fair and objective. Welcome to The Great Beer-Off.\nRound 1: Newcastle Brown Ale\nNewcastle, with its thick, bubbly head, smells rich and has a bitter, hoppy taste. But the real bite of Jim Porter's English ale is its astringent, long-lasting aftertaste, which slows consumption by tricking the mind into thinking it's still drinking between sips — definitely a negative.\nRound 2: Rolling Rock Extra Pale\nLast summer I would bring cases of Rolling Rock home and put them in the fridge to let my parents know I drank alcohol — that is, until my mom started swiping them. She said it tasted like soda pop, and I couldn't agree more. If not for its thin head and yellowish color, one could almost mistake the pride of old Latrobe for watered-down Perrier. But hey, it's definitely beer, it's smooth, and it's the easiest sixer you'll ever down.\nRound 3: Michelob AmberBock \nMichelob's celebrated dark lager is everything a great beer should strive to be. AmberBock is smooth and flavorful with a rich body and lightly hoppy aftertaste, making it the right beer for any occasion. I think I'll just stop for a second to enjoy the rest of this bottle. Mmm. \nRound 4: Killian's Irish Red\nKinda feelign it now but we'll press on. It's textuer is alright, but who can resist a Killian's? It's red,and it tastes awesome. I've to chug this one. \nRounds 5, 6 and 7: Keystone Ligh\nAs for the Keystones, I'm drikning 3 of them the way all truly awful beers were meant to be downed - rapidly and by the bong so I won't be able to tsate its true awfullness. this beer is Coors' effort ayt producing an eve nworse subtsitute to perennial crap beer NAtural Light. Skunky, skunky and skukny.\nFinal rounsd: ??????????????????/\nWho kwnos?. One is light in a green bottle ands the other is dark br4own like a Guinness and I c0ombined the light and dark bers in one glass to create an unstoppable superbeer! It's like if Luke Skywsalker joined forces with darth Vader-. No one in the galaxy could have stoppd them@!\nwinerr: I cant realy tell becausei drank toomuch beer@! I drank too mcuh beer cauzeI drank too muchbeeeeer. Sorry the columnn didn;t amount to much, but I did learn something abotu myself,though. It turnes out i'm just a tipical college drinwker, not a .0beer connouseur, atfer all/
(12/03/03 5:44am)
It's known as the "brain drain," and it's one reason the state of Indiana remains this country's sleeping kid in the back of algebra class. According to the 2000 census, only one in five Indiana residents over the age of 25 are college educated. Indiana just can't seem to hold on to those precious graduates, who live in the denuded bosom of this great state for four years, leaving her forever after graduation to live in another state with a bigger bosom.\nIndeed, among corn and soybeans, a continual supply of educated men and women is one of Indiana's chief exports. Unfortunately, the state gets nothing in return, save the lackluster honor of being outshined by its University.\nI used to take pride in saying I'm a lifelong Hoosier born in Indianapolis (which, for you out-of-staters, is about 200 miles southeast of Chicago). I somehow grew up with the notion that my state was the best of the 50 -- or at least in the top 5. When I was in grade school I even started a civil war with a kid from Ohio to defend Indiana's honor. He went for the arm. I went for the eye. Score one shiner for Hoosier pride.\nBoth of my parents graduated from this University. Knowing of IU's high educational acclaim from my earliest days, I had always planned on attending after high school. At the time, it was just common sense that our great state must have an equally great university. Otherwise, how did all the rich and important people get smartimicated?\nSoon after graduation my stately pride took its first hit. After two years of collegiate residency and an education in the world outside of my Hoosierland bubble, I finally understood that Indiana was in economic distress. Furthermore, I discovered that the state didn't make this University, and this University definitely didn't make the state. IU began to look more and more like the Nile River of collegiate institutions -- a delta of education, cultivating some of the greenest crops of lush young professionals in the world, surrounded by a desert of recession.\nBy the time students have four years of a college education, they are smart enough to understand that getting a job in Indiana after graduation would be the economic equivalent of playing church bingo: There's a 2-to-1 chance you'll kill yourself out of sheer boredom long before you ever win a scant portion of the jackpot. Most of us will figure, "Why gamble with some stupid chips and cardboard when a luxury casino is just down the road?"\n My last remnant of Hoosier pride (not associated with this college and its basketball team) was curbed last Wednesday when driving north on State Road 37 to Indianapolis. A large red and white billboard on the side of the highway reads, "There are 400,000 Indiana University graduates in Indiana. How many do you know?" The statistic itself was frivolous but presented in a hopelessly upbeat fashion, with images of success and smiling faces staring back -- the last-ditch effort of a state whose denial mirrored my own.\nIt almost makes this Hoosier bird want to migrate elsewhere.
(11/19/03 5:29am)
Most people know about the food chain -- that hierarchy of animals consuming other animals shown picturesquely in every fourth grade science book in the world. In any ecosystem, the larger and more ferocious beasts prey upon the weak. \nA large university is an ecosystem in itself. Like gazelles roving the African plains, students spend long days grazing their campuses for the knowledge they need to survive in the lean, test-ridden months ahead. Like their natural counterparts, the herds of students end the day by retiring to Bloomington's own proverbial watering holes -- and I'm not talking about rock quarries. \nIn nature, animals come from all around to bathe and drink in communal pools, and although Bloomington's watering holes are often just as dirty and rank, patrons are able to drink from clean glasses. These oases of collegiate nightlife are Kilroy's, Nick's and a slew of places that share the unrelenting task of helping people forget existence outside their walls. \nAnd forget, we do, that all watering holes are surrounded by dangers. Predators are lurking in the tall grass outside, but at IU, they hunt for sport, not survival.\nI live on the corner of 7th Street and Indiana Avenue, the same intersection where County Councilman Scott Wells was arrested by the Bloomington Police Department. Every weekend, I witness the cavalcade of police vehicles cruising near the bar scene, circling the smashed, stammering and straggling students like buzzards on the Serengeti, preying on the weak, the slow and the staggering. Once in their sights, there is little chance of escape. For unlike in nature, where the gazelle might be able to outrun the lion, anyone stopped by the BPD would be better off not even breathing.\nFirst, one should immediately suppress his or her flight instinct. Fear of life will lend wings to the feet of a threatened gazelle, but 10 or more beers will shackle and bind lead weights to human ankles, making any desperate attempt at self-liberation a comic act wherein the eventual punchline is an extremely close look at a concrete sidewalk with a knee in your back and brand-new charges to face in court.\nCampus cops are immune to logical reasoning, as well -- especially to the kind of quick wits developed in the after stages of a six-hour bender. Even the soundest argument can be turned into a disorderly conduct charge before you can say, "I'm not home, I'm going drunk, ossifer."\nUnfortunately, the education of a walking drunk is often learned on location -- a baptism by fire, so-to-speak. Even a man as involved in local politics as County Councilman Scott Wells learned the hard way how to deal with the BPD. \nWells was a large prey, indeed -- an elephant among the smaller animals -- yet not even this leader of local government fathomed the ferocity of Bloomington's savvy cracksquad of alcohol hunters.\nStill, Wells' demise was in part his own making. He, of all people, should have known how the law works in this town. The rules are different on our campus than in other parts of the county. \nWells was only stopped for a seat belt violation, yet he racked up several more counts before the night was over. To him, it was a conspiracy. To many students, it's a familiar story.\nSo on Sept. 27, Wells became part of the same conspiracy directed at IU students since at least three years ago, when I came to this campus. In 2002, IU had nearly double the number of alcohol-related arrests than in-state rival Purdue. BPD called it good hunting, but arresting drunk people near the bars late at night is more like shooting dead fish floating at the top of a barrel.\nIU's drunk-hunters should maintain civil obedience instead of arresting anything that blows .08. A lion, in spite of its ferocity, hunts for survival -- not because it is higher on the food chain.
(11/12/03 5:35am)
Since the millennium, skepticism seems to be the most identifiable ideological state among collegiates. Many have given up radical causes to focus on their uncertain futures, winding enigmatically in front of them through a clouded haze of economic oscillation, a jumbled job market and war still pending in the Middle East. Even at Berkeley, the result is a more passive campus with fewer student activists.\nBut there is still one avenue whereby students express their views unrestrained, a freely available forum that has lingered like an unworthy cause that refuses to die. Debate, instead of rearing its head in public places, has retreated to the most private, constrained cubicles of controversy which beckon to the bowels of idealism. This hidden forum is utilized only by those who possess a keen eye, a little luck and, most importantly, the uncontrollable need to have a movement in Morrison Hall near the Hoagie Carmichael Room. \nThe stall door is like a written history -- a jumble of scribbles written over a half-transparent layer of white paint over yet another set of scribbled messages. Looking closer, many of the messages are more than random wise cracks, fraternity emblems and dirty poems (though, admittedly, lots are). On this wall the most offensive remnants of collegiate controversy pass like a La Bamba's burrito and are flushed into the open. What follows is a brief summary of the more important points:\nJudging from the sheer number of entries on the subject, the greek-independent rivalry remains the No. 1 issue among students on campus. Indeed, this rivalry is particularly interesting as it led John Whittenberger, class of 1911, to suggest the establishment of a student union after witnessing the greek vs. independent "bullfights" that took place in Dunn Meadow in the early 20th century.\nOne argument against fraternities was scribbled nearly illegibly saying, "FIJI is the biggest bunch of fags I've ever come across. I'd almost rather live in Collins than hang out with them."\nTo which another writer asked, "Why do people hate greeks so much?"\nA follow-up comment read, "Because the 'comradery' inherent in your 'system' is a greek-imposed façade masking the true meaning behind what you stand for -- that being corruption, malice and sodomy."\nAnother student answered, "I've never heard of anything involving corruption or malice going on in my house."\nAnd so on.\nThe next most prominent series of comments, which vehemently debated the existence of God, began, "Jesus will save you from your sins. One day he will return to Earth. Please accept him."\nThis led to an argument about the scientific and biblical validity of the Big Bang Theory and a debate on whether or not Jesus actually descended from David as predicted in the Bible. The theological battle ended with a line containing several crossed out words which read, "God is dead not not dead real alive!"\nIt's unfortunate that the most controversial subjects on campus are discussed in the middle of an obscene act, yet perhaps this noxious act is the catalyst during which students are finally willing to express their most pungent opinions. The urge to add to the writing on the wall might come from the assuredness of anonymity associated with a short stay in nature's penalty box. Whatever the reason, on most college campuses, and especially at Indiana, debate rates just below defecation these days.
(11/05/03 5:53am)
I couldn't stop thinking, "Was the answer to number 38 'B: the Battle of Midway,' 'D: B and C but not A,' or 'E: all of the above?'"\nIt was shameful self-torture, but I was soon to be put at ease when a stunning sight soothed my savage soul. \nNo sooner had I rounded Ballantine's southwest corner when I saw one of nature's great displays: A volley of autumn leaves in a languid sashay drifting above an upheaved auburn floor, the late afternoon light washing through the trees like an ethereal tide. It was the kind of beauty you wish you could bottle up and keep in the cellar just in case Armageddon happens in your lifetime.\nAfter that the rest of the day was test-be-damned bliss. Bloomington in early fall can have that effect. The beauty of our campus is rivaled by few others. \nMy parents still make days of walking around Bloomington, taking in the scenery and remembering their days at IU. When they are done they usually feel nostalgic, recalling youthful memories of afternoons spent reading in Dunn Meadow in the early '70s, of parties long wasted and intimate class settings taught by the best professors ready to stimulate eager minds.\nThe experience is similar today -- the campus has hardly changed and the parties, though most are kept on the down-low, are as abundant as ever. However the last thing -- those intimate classes and exciting professors -- is something many of today's Hoosiers cannot relate to.\nIn two and a half years on this campus, I can only recall two courses in which I was taught by a real University professor in a class of fewer than 100 students. Most core courses are taught in large lectures by professors who have little to no contact with most of their students. Instead they have assistants take over the task of dealing with the barrage of questions not clarified during the lecture period. If students are lucky, the course might even have a discussion section in which these same AIs give their points of view on the material the professor already presented.\nFew of us came here knowing the more subtle intricacies of lecture courses, but I'll bet most of us were taken by the beauty of the campus after our first visits -- by the vibrant vista of the Memorial Union dynamically radiant in the late afternoon sun or the winding streams criss-crossed in the backdrop of Woodburn Meadow -- beauty so vivid one might just overlook a few misbegotten educational practices while enjoying the scenery.\nStill, unless you are majoring in horticulture, the aesthetics of the campus probably won't improve your grades. Smaller classes are not the answer, however. \n Those of us in small classes do not have it any better, often finding ourselves being talked to by a green-faced graduate student who is trying to gain a better understanding of the material by teaching it to others.\n Where have all the teachers gone? Would it cost too much to hire a few more, or is all the money going into landscaping?\nAs lucky as I feel to be learning on a college campus that offers as many vibrant panoramas as an Ansel Adams calendar, I would have felt better after my test last week had I understood the material better, and I would gladly trade a bottle full of beauty for a better education that will last the rest of my life.
(10/23/03 5:21am)
In exactly one month, I'll be celebrating my birthday, number 21; college's uniting rite of passage and the day our drinking habits are legalized.\nThat's right, administration and alumni, we've been drinking underage. Surprise! Yes, I know we're not supposed to, but consider our alternatives. Are we really going to just sit in our domiciles on a Friday night, watching people go to and from the bars and parties thinking, "Gee, only a few more years and I could be doing that!" Sure, there are some sober activities on campus, but most of us would rather play bingo at the old folks' home or read bedtime stories to sea sponges. Few and far between is anyone on campus who has seriously posed the question, "Hmm, should I go to the IMU to watch a faded movie with bad sound or get wasted at a campus keggeraider?" But even if they're serious, most of the time the answer is, "Well it depends. Will they have beer at the movie?" \nOnly a year ago the Princeton Review rated IU as the number one party school in the country. How can half the campus stay away from the action, waiting for some arbitrary day to come along when supposedly they can handle alcoholic beverages? Of course they can't, and thanks to their unending resiliency, under-21-year-olds have found many ways of skirting the laws that would potentially keep them in their dorms, apartments and houses, stone sober until 21 rolls around. \nOur methods change from year to year. As freshmen living in the dorms, we all tried to befriend the man with a fake ID. Buffalo Joe he was called, a combination of his given name and hometown. The "Buffalo" especially seemed to fit his animal-like nature. Not only did he drink enough beer on a given night to take down the animal of his namesake, he also supplied half our floor with beer and spirits all year. Good times they were. But dorm drinking was just the beginning, and getting to know the complexities of IU's party scene was like a five-credit-hour class in itself. Adding to the foray, the quest for the bars soon begins.\nIt's never easy the first time anyone walks up to a doorman with someone else's ID in hand. You do everything you can not to pay nervous attention to the doorman checking the pictures, your heart beating like a drummer on speed. Silly ideas go through your head -- "Hmm, the face on the ID is looking directly into the camera. Maybe if I turn my head to the side he won't be able to tell that's not me. I see my friends inside. I'll just wave to them like I go in there all the time. Jeez, this frekkin' door guy is really eyeballing me now. Say something."\n"Um, that's me in the photo. Really, it's not fake."\nDarn it. Darn it. Darn it.\nSo much for being a smooth operator. The doorman just shakes his head, hands back the ID, and the rest of the night is a blackout.\nNaturally there are some forces working against underage drinkers. Indiana has recently approved the use of ID scanners in liquor stores to ensure the authenticity of drivers licenses. The scanners are already in use at campus retailers such as Big Red Liquors. Yet as effective as it is, this initiative is only a small obstacle on the way to Boozetown.\nWhen the big day finally rolls around, the celebration is anticlimactic. The ritual of the 21st birthday is less a rite of passage and more of an experiment to see how close one can get to alcohol poisoning without actually being taken to the hospital. Ironically, most 21st's go better than an average night of heavy drinking. The large crowd surrounding newly legal drinkers is like a personal torture entourage, keeping them from serious danger yet ensuring plenty of pain the next morning.
(10/15/03 5:14am)
Of all the things to do after the homework is put away, something about binge drinking makes it a significantly popular leisure activity on college campuses nationwide. This could certainly be true at IU. It has been said in the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study that 54 percent of students here binge drink regularly.\nOkay, so we've got the time and money to spend on alcohol thanks to lax class schedules and parents' pocketbooks. Let's all get wasted and puke! Yeah! \nWe can treat our residencies like extended hotel stays! Water damage? Wrong -- that's beer, baby! But who really cares? We'll be out in a few years anyway, replaced by a new generation ready to cruise a mattress or two.\nIt sounds like fun, but is this really what half our campus is doing in their free time? Wouldn't we see the devastation? Considering our beautiful campus is not yet blanketed in a layer of beer bottles and used condoms, maybe all-night benders and wanton destruction are not as popular at IU as Harvard makes them out to be, and the distinction of being half drunks is a bit undeserved.\nStill, the study has found that over half our campus binge drinks. Harvard wouldn't lie, would they? Probably not, but they might bend reality a little so they look more important.\nThe Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a binge as "an unrestrained and often excessive indulgence." Not bad terminology, but when you're on the Harvard study, you don't really have to take Webster's word for it, do you?\nHenry Weschler, one of the study's authors, officially defined binge drinking as the consumption of five or more drinks in one night at anytime over a two-week period. This means students could have one beer an hour for five hours, having no traces of alcohol in their systems, not have another drink for 14 days, and still be labeled binge drinkers.\nEvidently the alcohol experts at Harvard are lightweights, and -- wouldn't you know it -- over half of IU falls into their overly-accessible category.\nBe sure to check Merriam-Webster in a few years to see if "misleading" is defined as "five or more Harvard professors making up numbers to add legitimacy to their salaries."\nUnfortunately, these same misleading statistics are used to form colleges' alcohol policies and encourage police to prey on students safely walking on sidewalks. These exaggerated numbers influence the public's opinion of collegiate culture more than all the degrees earned from all the universities across the nation. People are not looking at the students labeled binge drinkers thinking they might have a few social rounds now and again. They assume we are alcoholics, and they demand action.\nThis is one way drinking became an irremovable thorn stuck in the sides of universities across the country. Universities have taken upon themselves the moral obligation of preventing alcohol consumption on their campuses. There is only one problem: Drinking is legal.\nConsequently, University higher-ups do all they can to appear tough on alcohol consumption without actually preventing it. There can be no final solution, no agreement struck between the IU administration and the student body to lower its BAC. \nFor college administrations, the pressure to lower binge drinking creates a need to constantly invent new anti-alcohol programs that are doomed to failure. Students must bear endless advertising campaigns and periodic spurs in drinking enforcement, but neither has any significant effect. Worst of all, responsible students are caught in the middle of a cultural crossfire in a collegiate catch-22 where everyone loses.
(10/08/03 6:12am)
My old roommate thought he was getting a first rate education. He was an artist. Not with paints or clay or words or music. His canvas was college. His medium: slacking. \nHe vegetated in our room so often last semester the dust mites nearly called pest control. I was living with a room fixture, another frat-house furnishing to be willed to the next generation of tipsy tenants with the rest of the wall hangings. Naturally, the posters were getting jealous.\nClasses never daunted him. Rarely was there a block of class time when he was not in our room playing video games with John, the guy who lived across the hall, and John, the spokesman of their favorite game: Madden 2003.\nYou'd think his grades would have suffered, but the lounger quickly discovered he could earn good grades by cramming just a few days before tests with study guides and assigned readings. True to this method, his attendance record is now a pretentious legend; he attended just one class session between Easter and finals. His marks spoke for themselves -- a surprising four A's and a B+. He was proud.\nHopefully, his teachers weren't.\nFew have ever slacked so well, yet no one can claim total innocence when it comes to class attendance. Almost every college student has felt the urge to forego that last class of a tedious educational day or dreaded the thought of an AI's voice piercing through an early morning hangover. If my slacker roommate proved anything last semester, it was that most class schedules can handle the occasional ditching.\nYet he was far from the first person to learn the loopholes of large universities. Each year thousands of IU students breeze through college on paid vacations, obtaining the same degrees as other graduates, passing silently through the bowels of higher education, leaving traces of odd, vagrant odors in beer-soaked basements, dissipating like farts in the wind.\nIU English and American studies professor Murray Sperber, a longtime critic of large universities, points to a "faculty/student nonaggression pact," in which "big-time (universities) handle their undergraduate education problem by establishing a truce between faculty who want to spend a minimum amount of time on undergraduate teaching and students who want to obtain a degree as easily as possible" (Beer and Circus, p. 113). \nTeachers teach less, and students are often left to teach themselves. My roommate knew this.\nProbably, his parents didn't.\nThe benefits of ditching class simply outweighed the consequences. His transcript still reads like that of a model student.\nShould he be proud of it? It is certainly an impressive rap-sheet for anyone skating through a semester of college, or the biggest waste of 12-grand since Kobe Bryant bought his gold encrusted edition of the "Scarlet Letter."\nMaybe he should have just sent away for the Sally Struthers home education business/finance kit. \nIt would certainly have been more economical for his parents than spending $25,000 a year on the best study guides money can buy. For that amount of money the University should have made his professors force material down his throat with a plunger during classes, bludgeoning him with textbooks if he even thought about ditching. \nBut that's just wishful thinking.\nFor now my old roommate is still a model student, but only on paper. His parents assume he's learning something. They shouldn't. His professors thought they were teaching him. They weren't. And he thinks a degree is as good as an education.\nIt isn't.
(10/03/03 5:28am)
Junior Kyle Gantz recently learned more about the Fox television show "Alias" than he will ever need to know. He spent more than 10 hours researching and writing a 6-page paper about the show's cinematography for a telecommunications class. \nThe assignment was worth 4 percent of Gantz's final grade. He received a 0.\nHe made one mistake -- an error citing the "Alias" tagline he saw on the DVD box. \nTo Gantz it was a formality. To his teacher it was stealing. An automatic "F."\nGantz is not the first student to learn the hard way that plagiarism takes several shapes at IU. \n"I never even considered it an issue," Gantz said. "I know what plagiarism is. I know it's wrong, and I would never do it."\nAt IU, blatantly stealing from sources in magazines, journals or on the Internet are not the only kinds of plagiarism. Often incidents are the result of common mistakes, such as Gantz made. Misused quotation marks, incorrect citation and paraphrasing are often considered illegal uses of others' published works.\n"Those cases are frustrating," said Department of Student Advocacy Director Sally Jones. "Most students are surprised when they are charged with this kind of academic misconduct."\nGantz said he finds it troubling that he was punished for an honest mistake.\n"Maybe what I did was technically plagiarism, but I don't feel that is was completely my fault," Gantz said. "I didn't maliciously copy anything or meaningfully break the rules, and if you read (the assignment) you'd see I definitely knew enough to pass."\nJones has seen situations like this before.\n"In about 40 percent of our cases the student is genuinely shocked that what they did was considered stealing," she said.\nThe number of plagiarism cases at IU has risen every year since 1999. One-hundred-fifty cases were filed with the Department of Student Ethics in 2002-2003. \nPam Freeman, associate dean of students and department of student ethics director, said IU needs to be tough on plagiarism in order to stop its increase.\n"Faculty are supposed to report even the first instance of plagiarism," she said. "It has become huge in recent years."\nUpperclassmen should be especially careful to correctly cite their sources. Because juniors and seniors are assumed to have more experience than underclassmen, teachers have higher expectations from their papers, Freeman said. Still, every student should be sure to use correct citation.\nSeveral University sources exist to teach students about plagiarism. In addition to basic English composition, a requirement in every University program, several IU schools have published guidelines for citation in pamphlets, in their handbooks or on their Web sites. Still, there is debate over when and how plagiarism instruction should be handled at IU, Jones said.\nPerhaps the most important guideline for plagiarism can be found in the IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct, section III, A-3, which states, "a student must not adopt or reproduce ideas, words, or statements of another person without appropriate acknowledgment." This is different from most dictionary definitions of plagiarism, which allude to a breach of ethics.\n"The student code does not say plagiarism has to be intentional," Freeman said. "It's still a serious problem whether or not the student meant to do it."\nAs a result, the University's meaning of plagiarism leaves more room for error.\n"It can be interpreted by any instructor on campus as they see fit," Jones said. "There is a biography professor who considers plagiarism to be three or more words taken directly from the text and not cited. Students have to take responsibility to find out from instructors what their definition of plagiarism is."\nUnfortunately, many IU students do not talk to individual teachers about plagiarism, and often instructors are vague about their policies. On a campus without a unifying definition, students often discover the rules after the fact when charged with plagiarism.\n"That could be a wonderful teaching moment," Jones said. "When (citation errors) are viewed as a case of misconduct teachers lose that opportunity to show students something very valuable." \nNo plan has been devised to stem plagiarism cases at IU, but Jones believes that more than one solution is possible.\n"Either the system needs to change to truly become more educational and more forgiving or students need to learn the reality of how things work now," she said. "Since the first solution looks less likely, students should learn the consequences of the judicial process and protect their rights by learning the student code."\n-- Contact staff writer Jake Rossman at jrossman@indiana.edu.
(09/25/03 5:45am)
A panel of graduate students in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies held a public forum Wednesday to discuss the goals of their department following the demotion of Departmental Chair John H. Stanfield. \nAAADS graduate student Byron Thomas said the department will remain united.\n"Hopefully we will be able to continue to draw scholars and faculty who are at the top of their field and realize our vision," Thomas said.\nStanfield was removed from his position Aug. 26 by College of Arts and Science Dean Kumble R. Subbaswamy. IU professor of history and Associate Dean Michael McGerr was appointed as interim chairman for the department, while Stanfield will continue to teach at IU.\nWithin the AAADS, however, Stanfield was seen as the redeemer of one of the country's most respected African American studies programs.\n"Last year was a rebirth," Thomas said. "We gained new vitality and new vision."\nFollowing his appointment as chairman, Stanfield made several changes in the departmental curriculum, said Professor Valerie Grim, a colleague of Stanfield's.\n"Dr. Stanfield made the program more inclusive," Grim said. "He got people involved, created committees and encouraged an understanding of what our program is all about."\nThomas said the decision brings some uncertainty to the department's productivity. Grim said the demotion will diminish the department's ability to contribute in the community.\n"It will be difficult to keep up our vigilance," Grim said. "(Stanfield) had more energy than all of our graduate students and faculty put together."\nThe panel also discussed many issues facing the African-American Studies Program, including the "marginalization of people of color."\n"IU is liberal in mind, but very conservative in practice," graduate student Keon Gilbert said. "The dismissal of Dr. Stanfield could be taken by some as a sign of marginalization nationwide."\n-- Contact staff writer Jake Rossman at jrossman@indiana.edu.
