The Indiana Daily Student Magazine | Volume 9, Issue 2 | Fall 2015
Living with anxiety Students tell us what it’s like | Page 12
What is “FOMO” We looked into it for you | Page 6
Living in a co-op What’s so different about it? | Page 16
What’s in a meme? You know it when you see it | Page 4
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VOLUME 10, ISSUE 2 | TABLE OF CONTENTS | FALL 2015
Color
Social
Inside this INside LIVING UNDER PRESSURE Students tell us what it’s like to live with anxiety. | Page 12
EDITOR’S NOTE On Friday November 13, more than 100 people were killed in coordinated attacks across Paris. I, like many people, read about it on Twitter. There were 17 IU students studying in Paris for the semester during the attacks all of whom are safe. The next day, when I logged onto Facebook, I saw something amazing. In my notifications was a list of my friends who were in Paris. “John Doe was marked safe during Paris Terror Attacks.” Social media can make our world so much closer. Because of it, we were able to know what was happening, and we were able to know our loved ones were safe. Thanks for reading. I’ve loved being your editor this semester.
FEATURES
16 HO ME AN D SO MUCH MO RE
20 SEEKI N G SPI RI TUALI TY
6 FI GURI N G O UT “FO MO ”
24 ATTACK O N ACTI VI SM
ANNA HYZY— EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
DEPARTMENTS
Cooperative living provides an alternative to the traditional. Practicing Druids in Bloomington let us sit in on a ritual to learn about their religion. We’ve all been worried about missing out at one point or another. Do social constructs ruin our shot at finding social justice?
December 1, 2015 Vol. 10, Issue 2 inside.idsnews.com Inside magazine, the newest enterprise of the Office of Student Media, Indiana University at Bloomington, is published twice an academic semester: October and November, and February and April. Inside magazine operates as a self-supporting enterprise within the broader scope of the Indiana Daily Student. Inside magazine operates as a designated public forum, and reader comments and contribution are welcome. Normally, the Inside magazine editor will be responsible for final content decisions, with the IDS editor-in-chief involved in rare instances. All editorial and advertising content is subject to our policies, rates, and procedures. Readers are entitled to a single copy of this magazine. The taking of multiple copies of this publication may constitute as theft of property and is subject to prosecution.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
3 EV ER C H A N G IN G S O C IA L MED IA
10 D IFFER EN T ID EN T IT IES , EX P ER IEN C ES
11 D IS S EC T IN G T H E D O R MS
Some queer identity groups are less well known than others. Everyone knows each dorm has a “thing,” but how true are the stereotypes?
S TAY IN G W IR ED IN AT IU
4 W H AT MA K ES A MEME
2 STRANGE C O N N EC T IO N S
IU Secure keeps us plugged in, but how does a network that big work? IDS Weekend editor, Greg Gottfried is here to let us know. Can we find a way to connect two total strangers? We can try.
VISIT INSIDE.IDSNEWS.COM FOR MORE
Anna Hyzy Mercer Suppiger WEB EDITOR Alexis Daily PHOTO EDITOR Haley Ward EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Feyi Alufohai DESIGN ASSISTANT
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Our social media landscape is constantly shifting.
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Searching for connections IRL By Anna Boone
We’ve all been there. One second you are scrolling through Instagram, looking at your daily dose of dogs, friends and the occasional inspirational quote or meme. The next, you are looking through your crush’s sister’s best friend’s boyfriend’s mother pictures from Mexico two years ago, finger barely touching the screen to avoid the double-tap on a photo posted more than 100 weeks ago. Half the time, you don’t even know the steps it took to get you there. My question: could you achieve the same effect in real life? Enter Madison Wise, IU senior, and Marquis McClee, an IU alum. Is it possible to connect these two (seemingly) strangers, the same way you can connect any random assortment of people online? How low can the degrees of separation be? Time to find out.
MADISON WISE Age 21 years old Grade senior Studying in the School of Education, early childhood development Born Louisville, Kentucky
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MARQUIS MCCLEE Age 31 years old Grade IU alum Studied in the School of Public Health Born Merrillville, Indiana
START
Madison has a younger sister named Nellie.
Okay, let’s stick with the theme of foreign countries.
Marquis took family vacations to Disney World in Florida. The most recent one was probably in 2000.
Madison traveled to Cancun, Mexico when she was ten.
So this is a real connection, but there’s bound to be more stuff here. Time to go deeper.
These relatives live in Charlotte and Gastonia.
Close. Let’s back up a little bit.
Madison’s sister’s boyfriend, Dylan, is attending the University of Chicago currently.
Marquis is from Merrillville, Indiana, outside of Chicago, where his dad is from.
END Marquis has traveled to Mexico as well, but not to Cancun.
These were both vacations — but now let’s talk exclusively family vacations.
Madison and her family visit Disney World every three to four years.
Marquis has relatives who live in North Carolina, and has visited them.
UNC is located at Chapel Hill, not in either of those cities.
Madison has friends from Crown Point, Indiana, located only 6.4 miles from Merrillville.
Marquis is from Merrillville, Indiana.
Marquis’ dad was born in France, a European country.
Nellie is a freshman at the University of North Carolina.
Marquis once traveled to UNC for a women’s basketball game.
His friend, Derek, was dating someone on the team. He doesn’t remember who.
So far we have two younger siblings with first names ending in “ie” in common. Madison’s younger sister goes to a college that Marquis once visited. Cool coincidence, but I’m trying to find one thing that really connects these two people.
Madison’s roommate, who graduated last year, is from Germany (also a European country).
Marquis has a younger brother named Willie.
Both recognize it’s possible they were there at the same time, but no way to know.
Marquis knows he went during the summer, because he remembers how hot it was.
Madison’s family typically went to Disney World in August, until they grew frustrated with the crowds and started going in January.
So what did I learn from all this? A bunch of interesting facts about a couple of random strangers, for starters. But I also learned that although it’s more difficult to talk to people and find the degrees of separation, as opposed to entering the profile-clicking void, it’s definitely more worthwhile.
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THE MEME-ING OF LIFE By Greg Gottfried It was a day of the week, that much I remember. It could have been Monday or Thursday…even Saturday, the first time I saw a meme. “Yo, check out this new music video from Kanye,” my alleged friend said. “It’s awesome.” It was not “awesome” as I just got Rick-Rolled. I was scarred permanently and the fear of being Rick-Rolled again follows me to this current day. Never again. For those who don’t know, or to those that would like to re-learn, “Rick-Rolling” is an occurrence, where instead of watching or listening to a song that you want to hear, you instead end up with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It’s terrifying, it’s humiliating and it’s a meme. A meme, according to the world-renowned encyclopedia Wikipedia, is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” It can be transferred or sent through text, social media or just daily 4 INSIDE.IDSNEWS.COM • INSIDE MAGAZINE
conversation. They are viruses and they will never die. Some of the best current memes are “Crying Jordans,” where Michael Jordan’s sad face in planted over embarrassing pop culture moments, “JOHN CENA,” where the yelling of the infamous wrestler’s name cuts into any YouTube video and “Smart Dog,” where a cute dog with glasses reading a book says puns that have to do with canines such as “Thoreau me the ball.” It’s adorable, and I’ll send you a link soon. The reason that I bring all of this up, besides the fact that I was asked to write this and apparently will get paid for this, is that memes will continue to live on forever. From Sad Keanu to Doge to “Hotline Bling” Drake there are just more and more examples of how memes progress and reflect the Internet landscape. Originally just pictures, there are now videos, gifs and even audio memes that symbolize what has picked up our culture by the lapels and refuse to put us down. Anything can become a meme, even you, so it’s best to know what you’re in for before it happens to you.
P H OT O B Y H A L E Y W A R D
Evolution of Social Media How the way we interact and share online has changed By Feyi Alufohai “I’m going to tweet that!” “I saw your snap story. It was hilarious!” “Did you see the Facebook posts on her trip to Cancun?” “I can’t believe that YouTube video went viral.” There is a human need to share and monitor all that is around us. We take joy and pleasure in knowing what is happening in lives of others. We compare and contrast their lives to ours, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. Sharing anything and everything has become a huge part of our culture, and due to social media, the way the world shares and consumes aspects of life is accelerating and always changing. Different social media are used depending on the type of information shared. Would
you post a picture from a crazy night out with your friends on LinkedIn? If your answer is yes then you are a very brave soul, but the majority would not. Why is this? How is LinkedIn any different from Facebook or Twitter any different from Tumblr? All sites allow someone to write status updates, share pictures, post videos and chat with others online. Similarly, everyone dresses differently depending on the social setting. You would not wear sweatpants and a t-shirt to a charity ball, the same way you would not wear a suit and tie to a pool party. As long as you are wearing clothes, does the social setting matter? Yes, the social setting and the clothing you choose to wear go hand in hand. You adapt to your surroundings to represent the best mold of yourself that fits the
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particular social setting. The same ideology applies to the way you present yourself on social media. Another key player in the way we share our lives online is our target audience. In recent years, more parents and grandparents have joined Facebook. The change in the social setting has led to a change in the way the younger generations share their lives on that platform. Social apps like Instagram and Snapchat owe some their popularity to this change. But who decides how each social media outlet is used-- the creators, the users or both? LinkedIn was founded with the purpose of professional networking. The same does not apply to Snapchat. This application was created for the use of sharing quick pictures and
video messaging lasting 10 seconds or less. Because of the temporary nature of the messages, the app was used to send sexual content from one user to another. In the early stages, Snapchat was known as the “sexting” app. In 2015, Snapchat introduced the ‘My Story’ feature to the app and took control of how the application should be used-- to share parts of everyday life in quick fleeting moments. The way we interact with one another is always changing and this is reflected in social media. The provision of a social media outlet is by the creator, the users have the real power on how it should be used. For example, Twitter is used for social activism. People decided to put down their pitchforks and pick up their phones.
Focusing on
FOMO
BY CARLEY LANICH
Living in Teter Residence Center her freshman year, Michelle Gentz would overhear people down the hall making plans for the weekend. She would hear them coming back at 3 a.m. after having a great time out of the dorm. Scrolling through Twitter and Instagram feeds, she saw endless posts about good grades and fun times with friends. Gentz started to panic. In her first year at IU, Gentz said she didn’t expect it to be so hard to find her place on campus, so she immediately jumped in, getting involved in clubs that she was passionate about. Now, as a sophomore, she participates in IU Dance Marathon, InMotion Dance Company, the Retail Studies Program, The Body Project and is a sister at the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. “My friends yell at me because I never sleep,” Gentz said. “I’m always studying. I’m always up doing something.” With demanding class projects, like a 100-page competitive survey report for apparel merchandizing and multiple club meetings to balance, Gentz said sometimes she is forced to pick and choose which social and academic activities she can spend time doing. It wasn’t until early in her freshman year when Gentz saw the term “FOMO” circulating
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on social media that she realized it was something she might have. “I think someone finally put a label on it,” Gentz said. “Maybe it didn’t need to be labeled because I think like it’s pretty common to feel like you’re missing out, but when somebody labels it, it feel like it makes it a big deal.” FOMO, the fear of missing out, can be equated with overextending oneself into too many activities and becoming stressed when realizing what other activities are being missed. Nancy Stockton of IU’s Counseling and Psychological Services said such feelings are common among students. “College is supposed to be the best time of your life,” Stockton said. “And if students aren’t having a wonderful glorious time, they may fear they’re missing out on something.” Stockton said such issues often interfere with sleep needed for concentration, memory and academic performance. She suggested students who feel the pressure of overextension keep a diary to track how time is spent throughout the day. “Sometimes that can be highly illustrative that things are out of balance,” Stockton said. “They’re spending too much time on one thing or another, or they’re wasting time but not really enjoying it.” Stockton said CAPS offers
free weekly Mindfulness Meditation Practice Sessions and free workshops in the Herman B Wells Library focused on topics like sleep and stress. “We’re just not built to be going 95 miles an hour, 24-7,” Stockton said. Gentz said since the beginning of her sophomore year, she has had better control of her FOMO. When often in her freshman year Gentz said she felt increased pressure to go out with friends on the weekends, she now feels more comfortable choosing studying over tailgates and Netflix over parties when she feels she needs time to herself to relax. “It’s hard,” Gentz said. “I’m 19 still. I feel like I’m still a kid. I feel like I should still go out and have fun, but then I realize that I’m a sophomore in college. I need to do my homework. I need to go to career fairs.” For other students struggling with FOMO, Gentz advised not to feel bad taking a weekend to chill out or go home. “We have four years in college, and four years is a lot of time,” Gentz said. “You need to take care of yourself.You’re going to find other times to go out and have a great time. We’re in college for our education to really grow as people. It’s OK if you can’t do everything. We’re human.”
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Wired In By Alex Daily
PHOTOS BY ANDRÉS DE VARONA
Two network engineers work in IU’s Global Research Network Operations Center. GkobalNOC staff is responsible for supporting some of the world’s most advanced research networks. They use the video wall pictured above to track open alarms and manage open network issues.
S
ophomore Informatics major Jacob Bennett walks from Hodge Hall to his 2:30 p.m. Microeconomics class in Woodburn Hall, his phone full of notifications he received during his previous class. He quickly tries to reply to everything before arriving at his next class. He has three Snapchats from his roommate and presses the familiar yellow application to view the photos. The pictures are not loading. He sighs, and after walking for a few more minutes with no changes in the app, he locks his phone. “That’s what you get with IU Secure,” he said. For students, IU Secure, the wireless Internet network available throughout campus, has become a regular point of complaints. Last year, nearly 120 mentions of IU Secure appeared on social media during one of the first days of the fall semester. However, Mark Spencer,
manager of campus network engineering, said many of the problems perceived by the IU students and faculty to be the fault of IU Secure are actually due to factors unrelated to the campus network. Nevertheless, this does not stop the IU Secure team from developing solutions to the technical difficulties. “Students like to complain, but we want to hear from them,” he said. “They’re our best resource to let us know where we can make wireless better.” University Information Technology Services, UITS, maintains IU Secure, with four wireless network engineers working to ensure the efficiency of the network. IU established the wireless network at the Bloomington campus in 2002 when the university began understanding the need for wireless Internet. In 2013, the network underwent a $4 million upgrade, accompanied by an increase in the number of access points to
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4,300. Since then, however, an additional 1,700 access points have been added, making IU Secure one of the largest wireless systems in higher education in the country. “Fifteen years ago, wireless was a gadget,” Associate Vice President of Networks at IU, David Jent said. “Now, it’s a necessity.” During the first week of classes this year, 69,000 different devices were connected to the IU Secure network, a 20-percent increase from the last year. Spencer said this is in part due to the increase in enrollment over the years as well as the introduction of more wireless products in the market. However, Spencer said the network must also support the demand for more bandwidth. The first week of classes this year, two terabytes of traffic were used exclusively for video streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. “Today we buy 10 times the
capacity we bought 10 years ago,” Jent said. “In five years, we’ll be buying 10 times the capacity we’re using now.” Peak usage times, which typically fall between 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays, see 35,000 unique wireless devices connected to IU Secure. James Dickerson, lead wireless campus engineer for IUPUI and IU Bloomington, said because of the construction of old dormitories, creating a reliable wireless connection to support that number of devices was challenging. “As wireless becomes more of what I would say an everyday utility, like water and electricity, we have to reengineer the system in a way where people can have access to it all the time in buildings where it wasn’t a factor when they were built,” Dickerson said. Dickerson said new building constructions anticipate the need for wireless and are built accordingly. The Global and
“Our goal is always to make it so that users have the same experience no matter where they are,” Spencer said.
International Studies Building, for example, contains 57 access points, and with the building’s open layout and drywall rather than cinderblock materials, wireless is more reliable. “Our goal is always to make it so that users have the same experience no matter where they are,” Spencer said. Jent said the next big project is providing a reliable wireless connection outside, but building architects approving their structures to support the network takes time. He said this forces designers to think creatively about where to hide wires without ruining the aesthetic of the buildings. Examples of these well hidden outside wireless support structures are the flagpole in college mall that also doubles as a cell tower, the steeple on a church across from Memorial Stadium and four of the white stacks on top of the Chemistry building. “We still have to have a wired network with wire data jacks to support a wireless connection whether it’s inside or outside,” Jent said. “It’s a different setup
than those indoors, so it makes it even more challenging.” Dickerson added that the biggest misperception about IU Secure is that like cell service, it should almost always appear when, in actuality, there is approximately 300 yards in length of machines necessary to support the wireless. “Wireless only means the user doesn’t have to plug a wire into their device,” he said. “Wireless isn’t actually wireless, and I think most people don’t realize that.”
Your Guide to Tech Terms Access Points are devices that allow wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi. It connects to a router and can support up to 100 devices. Bandwidth is the rate of data transfer measured in bits per second. Terabyte is equal to 1,000 gigabytes. For reference, one terabyte could hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Still having trouble with your device? Call 812-855-6789 or email ithelp@iu.edu for help.
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Marginalized Queer Groups
Some sexual orientations and gender identities are less common, come explore a few with us By Lexia Banks Illustrated by Alex Ritter
Diana Ogrodowski – Asexual, she/her
Ell Thomas – Polyamorous, they/them
Aimes Dobbins – Transmasculine non-binary, they/them
Diana Ogrodowski never liked telling people about her crushes growing up because she said she felt they weren’t the same. “If I did have crushes on people it was never because they were physically attractive,” she said. “I always liked them because they were really nice to me or because they were super friendly and cool.” Ogrodowski is asexual. According to asexuality.org, an asexual is someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction. It exists on a spectrum including demisexuals, gray-asexuals and gray-sexuals. “I just don’t look at people and see them in any sort of sexual manner whatsoever at all and I never really have,” Ogrodowski said. “I surround myself with people because of who they are, not because of any sort of sexual attraction or anything about them physically. I never look at somebody and be like ‘Yeah, I would bang them.’ That’s just not something I’ve ever experienced in my life because it’s not an attraction that I have.” Ogrodowski began identifying as asexual her junior year of high school. She said she was lucky to have several friends who also identified within the asexual spectrum. No one she’s come out to has ever reacted negatively, though some haven’t understood. “I’m very fortunate for that because I know that a lot of times there is a lot of asexual violence, especially sexual violence — people like ‘You just haven’t had sex with me yet, I can fix you.’ And it’s not a matter of being fixed because you have to be broken to be fixed and it’s not something that is wrong with you.”
It just didn’t make sense to them even as a child — being with only one person for the rest of your life. “I was the 5-year-old asking ‘Why do the prince and princess only marry each other and not other people?’” said Ell Thomas, a polyamorous agender IU senior. “The concept of one true love or your special someone or your other half has always baffled me. Like one person? That’s ridiculous.” Polyamory stems from the Greek word “poly” meaning “many” and the Latin word “amor” meaning “love.” The idea of open relationships seemed normal to Thomas in high school. Though they weren’t dating anyone at the time, they remember thinking they would be OK with a partner seeing other people. “Which made it difficult to date in high school,” Thomas said. “People were all very monogamously minded like ‘You can’t date multiple people — that’s cheating.’” Thomas said that’s a common belief among those who don’t understand polyamory. But it’s not cheating because the partners know. At the moment Thomas is engaged in two romantic relationships with various “high-level importance” relationships, three of which are in Bloomington. They have one primary partner out of state who they refer to as their main emotional support and they are comfortable this way. “For me personally, I could never see myself settling down with just one partner,” Thomas said. “I think being limited to only one partner would be not just uncomfortable for me but detrimental to my mental health.”
IU junior Aimes Dobbins dresses more in men’s clothing but they are not a boy. They also aren’t a girl. Dobbins is a transmasculine non-binary individual. “Transmasculine is on the transgender spectrum but it leans toward masculinity,” Dobbins said. “But it has nothing to do with gender because masculine and feminine are not related toward genders.” It was a long journey for Dobbins to find an identity, and it’s a journey they’re still taking. “I knew that every time they said ‘she’ or something in the back of my brain bells would go off and I’d be like ‘this isn’t right’ but I didn’t know why and I didn’t have the words to describe it,” they said. In middle school they thought they were bisexual. Then as a freshman in high school they came out as a lesbian. Sophomore year Dobbins cut their hair and came out as bi-gender. Senior year they came out as a transgender man. About a year ago, Dobbins began taking hormones. “That’s when I realized I was not a trans man because the thought of having a beard and being hairy was just not me.” Dobbins has since stopped taking hormones and while identifying as nonbinary for now, they don’t think they’re truly done finding their identity. “I think gender is a construction in general like in society,” Dobbins said. “I’m not saying people choose to be trans because they don’t, but it’s who they are as a person. It’s something you can’t avoid. But I just realize that people are always changing.”
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DORM STEREOTYPES By Carley Lanich
Collins Briscoe
Read
McNutt Eigenmann From the hipsters to the partiers, every residence hall on campus has its reputation. IU Residence Hall Association president and senior Lexie Heinemann said these commonly circulating stereotypes shouldn’t be taken at face value. “There are stereotypes for each neighborhood that are perpetuated by the students,” Heinemann said. “The residence halls provide the framework to create a culture. If you come in thinking it has to be a certain way, you’re going to keep creating it to be that way.” While Heinemann admitted that location and subject-based Living Learning Communities are influential factors in the types of students living in certain dorms, she said she doesn’t believe every wordof-mouth stereotype floating around is true. So what are different generalizations on campus? Most students break them down by neighborhood. Northwest: Most people point to
Northwest as the “party” neighborhood. Close to the stadium for fall tailgating, many students perceive Northwest to be the epicenter of freshmen social life on campus. Despite hearing McNutt Residence Hall’s nickname “McSlut” before move-in, freshman McNutt resident Rianna Eduljee said she thinks a variety of people live in the quad, not just what is rumored to be mostly partiers. She and friend freshman Matt Brady live in McNutt’s Kelley Living Learning Community and said their floor in the LLC is often quieter than others in the quad. Brady said he chose the residence hall because of its proximity to the Kelley School of Business and many other business students call it home. Also in the Northwest neighborhood, distanced from the three other residence halls in the neighborhood clustered along Fee Lane, is Collins Living Learning Center, where it is rumored that mostly “hipsters” live. “I think hipster is a weird
P H OTO S B Y H A L E Y WA R D
term to describe people in here because usually the people here are just excited about what they do,” Collins resident Rachel Leak said. “It’s not like they have any pretention about it.” With beautiful paintings and murals throughout the quad, Leak added, “there’s not a place in Collins that isn’t good for drinking coffee in.” Southeast: Southeast neighborhood typically carries the reputation of housing mostly music students. Junior Grayson Mento, a third-year resident in Read Residence Center, said that was a major factor when deciding to return to Read each year. “Everything is functional,” Mento said. “It’s ugly, but it’s functional. Everything works. If you’re high maintenance I guess that’s a problem. But the washing machines work, the showers work, so I like it.” Central: Located closest to Wells Library and the new Global and
International Studies Building, the Central neighborhood varies in its reputation. Sam Clark, a freshman living in Wright Residence Center, said he thinks a variety of different types of students live on each floor, mostly being “independent kids.” Clark said he often times hears from friends that Wright is outdated, but said RPS staff working in the Wright Hoosier Café and Store and Resident Assistants have been “awesome.” Heinemann, who lived in Eigenmann Residence Center as a freshman, admitted that she was worried about missing out on social activities when she was assigned to Eigenmann instead of McNutt. However, she found not long after living in Eigenmann that it had many similar amenities as McNutt, including a c-store and nearby bus stop. “People were social. They sat in lounges,” Heinemann said. “I originally was worried that it would be too quiet of an environment, too isolated, and it just wound up being like anywhere else.”
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UNDER PRESSURE By Liz Meuser
ast semester, as the cold, blustery January weather waged outside her window, Lauren Smith withdrew into her room; dismissing the “funk” she was in as no more than a result of the dreary seasonal conditions.
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P H OT O I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y H A L E Y W A R D
But slowly a week went by, then two weeks, then three and Smith was still cooped up in her room. She began skipping classes, avoided plans with friends and was terrified to even consider leaving the confines of her room. “I was embarrassed because I just felt lazy,” Smith said. “But then I would sit in my room and cry all the time but I didn’t know why.” Smith’s parents suggested she see a doctor and short thereafter Smith was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Depression. Generalized Anxiety Disorder, commonly known as GAD, is defined as persistent, excessive and unrealistic worry about everyday things by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA). For some people who struggle with anxiety, just the thought of getting through the day can cause one to anticipate disaster. Many individuals often experience their first “episode” by the age of 22 according to a study by ADAA. Thus making anxiety one of the most common mental health problems among college students, like Smith. The pressures of college and early adulthood can be stressful for anyone, but for a student wrestling with anxiety, the need to do well in school and maintain a social life can become overwhelming. For these students, it is the relationships and social bonds they forge on campus that help them cope.
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Olivia Null feeds her cat, Orchid, who she adopted as a service animal for her generalized anxiety disorder. Null says Orchid has given her a sense of purpose and the cat has been key in her recovery process and her coping.
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ow in her junior year, Smith admitted that she still has relapses and is still trying to figure out how to handle her anxiety.
“It’s kind of like a daily thing,” Smith said. “A lot of my problem is that I internalize it.” In terms of social interaction with others, Smith said that what can set her off isn’t so much something someone may say, but rather the anticipation of how they will react or worse, that they won’t understand. “I don’t say ‘Oh so and so said this to and that’s what made me upset,’ I think, ‘This is how they’re going to react, they’re just going to think that I’m lazy ‘cause I can’t get out of bed today,” Smith said. “Or they’re going to be mad because I’m not going to do my part of the project. They’re not going to really understand what else I’m going through.”
It is for this reason that when she does have a rough day, Smith finds it easier to talk about her issues with people who’ve had similar struggles with mental health like her friend and confidant David Haggerty. “If I’m having a really shitty day and I text David and say ‘I can’t get out of bed,’ he’s really good about saying ‘Okay, well you don’t have to get out of bed, but why don’t you set a small goal?’” Smith said. “I don’t have to justify the fact that I can’t get out of bed. It’s comforting in that sense.” Haggerty, a senior who has
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had his own battles with depression and anxiety, also said for a lot of individuals struggling with anxiety the main issue is selfstigmatization and internalization. Leading them to resort to personal coping mechanisms. “You do your best on a daily basis to conceal the fact that you have a mental illness,” Haggerty said. “It’s not something that’s very visible but then when someone says something to you it’s almost like a ‘oh shit they figured it out’ moment. Everything you’ve been trying to do to cover it up has now been exposed and you just feel really vulnerable.” Haggerty said he understands that it can be easy for others to get angry, especially when one has responsibilities to uphold and their anxiety renders them unable to complete their part. For example, being in a group project for a class. “A lot of people that’s the
response that they go for. They get upset they get angry,” Haggerty said. “There’s things that you have to do, there are obligations that you have to meet, but you know you’re not physically sick, ‘I can’t see that you’re sick, so why can’t you meet these things?’” *** For freshman Olivia Null, that emotional support comes in the form of a 9-month old shorthaired black domestic cat named Orchid. Null was first introduced to the idea of a therapy pet when she was lying in a community hospital after admitting to her high-school art teacher that she was contemplating writing a suicide note. A doctor who attended to Null suggested she get something that gives her purpose. It was then that Null
P H OT O B Y L A U R E N M C N E E L E Y
decided on the name Orchid. “The name, the flower, the pink orchid, symbolizes friendship, happiness, joy and new beginnings, which were all things that I needed at the time,” Null said. After adopting Orchid this past May, Null who had already been accepted into IU began the registration process with IU Disability Services and Residential Programs and Services. According to RPS guidelines Null would have to be placed on a floor where there were no residents that were allergic to cats and she would have to clear it with her roommate. Orchid would also have to be litter and leash trained and would not be allowed outside Null’s room. “Taking care of her has given me a taste of putting something else before you and adapting to it,” Null said. Null admitted that with Orchid’s curious and lively personality it’s hard to be in a bad
mood around her. “She’s made me so much happier,” Null said. “Not every day down here has been perfect, I love IU, and I’m a lot better than where I was, but I definitely can dip. I need her.” *** Smith, Haggerty and Null all said that every now and then they run into some challenges when talking to people about their anxiety; from someone asking “Why can’t you just stop being sad?” to people carelessly claiming they have GAD because they get anxious about exams and had a panic attack once or to saying they should fake a disorder in order to bring their pet to school. The solution is creating a space to facilitate positive discussion, bringing people with mental health problems together with people who don’t, as a means of addressing stigmas and
misconceptions about anxiety and other mental illnesses. “Talking is big,” Smith said. “It’s better to acknowledge that there’s a problem rather than wait around rationalize the issue.” As a result, the focus gets shifted from simply educating people about what mental illness is to showing what mental illness looks like in real life and creates an environment where people feel comfortable talking about it. “Unless you look really carefully, you can’t see it,” Haggerty said. “But when you start to talk to these people and when you get to learn about these people, you’ll realize that they’re not that much different at all.” Director of Counseling and Psychological Services, Nancy Stockton, said that in addition to providing students with individual counseling sessions and cognitive evaluation, such as examining helpful and anxiety provoking thinking patterns, CAPS reinforces
basic self-care concepts such as exercising, eating right and getting enough sleep. “They seem basic but within the college student lifestyle they can be overlooked,” Stockton said. In addition to having small groups of friends they can talk to, Haggerty and Smith said they found support through their work with IU’s U Bring Change 2 Mind campaign. Null said that exercise has been a great help with dealing with her anxiety and depression. She stressed the importance of encouraging people who know of someone dealing with similar struggles to stay in contact and hold them accountable. “Keep them talking, keep them involved, encourage them to exercise, in general be a positive person around them,” Null said. “Remind them of the positive things in their life. Because as soon as someone stops talking it’s when it gets dangerous.”
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More than a home Cooperative living provides a community in a home By Jack Evans
E
arthy smells of spices and garlic permeated the air in the kitchen at Middle Earth, a student cooperative living community on W Kirkwood Avenue. Most dishes had been moved to the front porch of the 19-bedroom house, where Bloomington Cooperative Living (BCL) held a potluck brunch and open house. But a chill persisted in the November air, so residents, visitors and a calico cat named Princess Aloe Vera flitted between the porch, living room and kitchen. The kitchen at Middle Earth is spacious and filled with food bought in bulk. A stranger might first mistake it for a professional space, but then there’s the whiteboards on two walls – one offering a chore chart, one displaying a cooking schedule, because each of the 22 residents prepares a meal once a week – and there’s the cat. There’s the row of milk crates for sorting recycling, and hanging on a shelf there’s a long strip of cardboard on which someone’s penned a poem on the joys of composting. “The scraps that many waste And toss in the trash with such haste Can do so much good Yet misunderstood”
Residents of the Middle Earth co-op living house sit together and chat with during dinner.
Julia Paglisi, resident of the Middle Earth co-op living house, prepares broccoli and lemon puree for other residents for dinner. Residents at the Middle Earth take turns to prepare dinner for the whole household. It usually takes about four hours for two to three members to prepare the dinner and clean up afterwards.
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That mindset of sustainability defines Middle Earth and all of BCL, not just on an environmental level, but also on social and economic ones. BCL has three co-ops, including Helms Deep on Atwater and a house on Woodlawn, but Middle Earth is the only house the organization owns – it purchased the building from Middle Way House in 2012. Since then, board members and residents have found themselves balancing idealism with the realities of financial sustainability and individualism. “Being a student co-op, people are still learning about themselves,” said Marya Case-Ruchala, a former BCL treasurer and resident. “Not only are you trying to figure out what works best for the organization, but you’re trying to figure out as an individual who you are.” Case-Ruchala, who was in town for a BCL board meeting, said living in co-ops helped her determine her career path. She graduated from IU in May and now works at Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund. But cooperative living also offers varying modes of more personal experience and development,
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Brett Wisley and Julia Paglisi, residents of the Middle Earth co-op living house, prepare broccoli and lemon puree and corn bread with veggie for other residents.
from maintaining an environment where healthy eating is encouraged and relatively easy to running on a democratic system – one share, one vote. “Living in an intentional community can kind of teach you there’s strength in compromising and taught me to interact with people in a way that there’s mutual respect,” said resident Esther MoudyGummere. “From the get-go, you relinquish the power to dominate a conversation.” Case-Ruchala said the organizational system is her go-to pitch for people interested in living in co-ops: do you want to have control over your living situation? But BCL is still a young organization – a group of cognitive science students founded it in 2007 – and it’s run into some issues. At one point, Case-Ruchala said, committees were dedicated to tasks like membership and finance, but a few people often wound up stuck with all the work. So BCL established two staffer positions – treasurer and head of membershipping – as parttime jobs, and it recently added a third, head of outreach. Solving those issues has provided ample learning experience, Case-Ruchala said, and changes have improved the co-ops. But because many residents are students, turnover is high. She’s worried history could repeat itself. “I kind of use my role as
being able to keep part of that history alive in the organization, so if a problem comes up, I can say, ‘This is how we’ve handled it in the past,’” she said. “It’s important to remind people they’re just one of many people who have, are and will live in the co-op.” And, ultimately, the goal is to provide a positive living environment. Moudy-Gummere said it’s crucial for Middle Earth to be a safe space, and the house has even started posting photos of designated “Safety Squad” members when they host parties. And food planning is built to suit the needs of vegetarians and people with food allergies. The space extends beyond its residents, too. Middle Earth has opened its kitchen to organizations like Food Not Bombs, and it’s worked with community-supported agriculture. “When we engage with each other, everyone is empowered,” Case-Ruchala said. And despite any challenges BCL and Middle Earth have faced, she said she’s confident the house will thrive. “I think it’s going to be around for a long time,” she said. “I was really concerned when I left. I just kind of hoped people would be able to take it on and make good decisions for each other. Of course, that’s what’s happening ... people are actually engaging in the house and taking pride in where they live.”
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an ancient faith By Lexia Banks | Photos by Adam Kiefer
Sunny privately meditates near a tree before the start of the ritual. The tree was later used in the group’s ritual as the Earth Tree, and offerings were made to the deities connected with it.
An ancient pagan faith has given some members of the Bloomington community a sense of belonging and spirituality
I
t takes about an hour to set up. Women in long billowing cloaks trek back and forth from their cars to the shelter house, arms loaded with something new each trip: firewood, crates of sticks and candles, a bag of chips from Chipotle, a cauldron of ashes. A woman wearing a flannel shirt sets to organizing the traditional altBr. She lays the purple cloth across one of the picnic tables and begins strategically placing the items. Grove stick? Check. Candles for the kindreds? Check. Candles for the deities? Check. Chalices? Only two of three. But check. Samhain bear? Check. Money bank? “Hey, Kelly, did you bring the little money bank?” “Yes, I think I did.” Check. ***
INSIDE.IDSNEWS.COM • INSIDE MAGAZINE 21
Members of Black Bear Grove carry firewood from their cars into the Water Fall Shelter of Cascade Park before the start of their Samhain ritual Nov. 7. Their rituals typically honor different deities and this time honored the deities Branwen and Cerridwen.
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lack Bear Grove is a druid fellowship founded in 2003 dedicated to “connecting with our local land and honoring the spirits that reside around us, as well as working with and honoring the deities and spirits of ancient Indo-European religious traditions.” In 2009 it became an official charter of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship. It’s a pagan church that began in 1983 with groves across America and Canada, according to its website. Sunny joined the grove the same year it became recognized by Ár nDraíocht Féin. Sunny began self-identifying as a pagan around 10 years old, influenced by Native American literature and her uncle’s interest in Shamanism. “My parents were actually more or less atheists,” Sunny said. “A lot of people come to paganism from another religion but I came more as someone who was seeking any
religion.” Koronis, a senior druid of the grove, found her way to paganism in a similar manner. “What started my spiritual path — this is so cheesy — is in 1990 I saw ‘Dances with Wolves’ and I went, ‘the Native American way, that is so cool!’” she said. “So I started reading a lot of Native American books, which in the ‘90s that was a big thing. A lot of Native Americans were writing about their spirituality at that time.” Before druidry, Koronis studied Wicca but said it just didn’t suit her. “Wicca it’s like it just wasn’t clicking,” she said. “And then when I got to this it was like ‘This is it! This is it right here.’” At the grove’s autumn equinox Koronis said a difference between Wicca and druidry were their beliefs in deities. She called Wicca “soft polytheism,” as the religion recognizes a god and goddess figure whereas druids recognize multiple gods and goddesses stemming from various origins. “Wicca is a gateway paganism,” Sunny said.
initiation into the grove. They drove to Hoosier National Forest and passed a small church along the way. It was Easter Sunday. They remember a man standing outside greeting people and directing them on where to park. “You would not want to know what we’re gonna go do ‘cause you would freak out,” Koronis said. Though they recognize the way people could react to them for their practices, Koronis and Sunny said they’ve never had a problem with anyone. “We’ve never had someone come here to tell us we’re bad or wrong or preach,” Sunny said. “I think we’ve had maybe a passing heckler but that was at my house and they were like ‘hippies’ and we were like ‘tell me something I don’t know.’ I think people know, at least in this town, they know what they’re getting into.” Even as the ritual is hap-
*** Koronis remembers Sunny’s Sunny closes the portal between the veil with the help of two other group members, Koronis (left) and Kelly Rauch (right). This marked the end of the ritual.
22 INSIDE.IDSNEWS.COM • INSIDE MAGAZINE
One of three wooden staffs that the members of Black Bear Grove use to open the portal and connect with the spirits.
pening people who came to enjoy their afternoon in Cascades Park notice. They notice the fire, the cloaks, the chanting. They slow their pace as they walk by the shelter, children tilt their heads up for a better look. They stare. But no one says a word. ***
“Wicca it’s like it just wasn’t clicking, and then when I got to this it was like ‘This is it! This is it right here.’� — KORONIS
Outside of ritual, druidism plays a large role in their daily lives. For Koronis, it’s in her morning routine when she meditates and lights candles for her patrons. It’s in her dedication to recycling, her work at a wildlife rehabilitation center and her classical studies major at IU. Sunny said she thinks it’s easy for everything to be all encompassing for those in a pagan lifestyle. In her case her studies in anthropology and fine arts led to her career in stone carving. She said it’s common for her interests and her profession to overlap. “I carve Green Men,� she said. “I also worship Green Men. And I carve a lot of gods and goddesses and I carve a lot of animals and nature imagery.� Even the process of her carv-
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ing is influenced by her spiritual beliefs. “As I’m carving, it’s very meditative. I think a lot about how limestone‘s made out of fossilized sea life and about how the cycle of things about death and life and how this is a fossilized stone and now I’m creating it into new life and eventually I’ll be dead and that’ll still be here.� It also stems into her diet. Sunny is a vegetarian, though she said it doesn’t reflect on all pagans. She said some have an animist philosophy in believing that everything has a soul, which makes it difficult for her to eat animals. “In fact, I feel a little funny about plants some days but I gotta draw the line somewhere. “It’s funny when people ask me ‘are you religious?’� Sunny said. “Usually that’s kind of a Christian associated question, but I’m always tempted to say, ‘Well, yeah.’ Because every single thing I do and every single decision I make has a basis of my spiritual life and I think a lot of pagans are pretty religious people.�
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Do social constructs ruin our shot at achieving social justice? By Rachel Goodman
S
tudents at the University of Missouri have made complaints about race and discrimination on campus. The university president resigned amidst the chaos. Online threats were made and protests have occurred on. Other students and colleges have shown their support by using #InSolidarityWithMizzou on their social media pages. Similarly, Yale University sent out an email about Halloween costumes and how students should avoid being culturally insensitive. According to an article in the Hartford Courant, this is a story about racial sensitivity. Prior to these occurrences, a major shooting occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American male, was shot by a white police officer. Brown was unarmed, but Officer Darren Wilson took many shots and Browns died shortly after. According to The Police Violence Report by Mapping Police Violence, police
violence is persisting at high levels. What the report doesn’t show is the history and development of racism used to understand it and eliminate it for good. Eric Sevell, a graduate student and teacher in the department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, said that society has not done its part to move closer to social equality. “There’s entangled issues going on at the same time,” Sevell said. He said police violence is rooted in decades of ethnic and racial inequality seen by social, political and economic segregation. “What we are seeing is not the product of bad individuals or bad police officers or bad people,” Sevell said. “This is about the institution that these individuals find themselves in.” He deems racism a social construct, which means that we as a society have come up with the term and created its meaning and perception as a society. Sevell thinks the Justice System has not necessarily gotten better. To quote a Baltimore gang
member, Sevell said, “We can only push people so far before they have to push back.” In order to better the system, Sevell wants drug issues to be treated differently. Other countries have been successful in treating mental health and drug use differently than the United States, he said. “We should begin to start treating drug use as a public health issue and not necessarily a criminal justice issue,” he said. Sevell indicated people must know that what they are seeing in the media is not the reality. He thinks listening to people’s experiences is more important, but he said people are reluctant to understand one another. “We have huge empathy deficit in this country,” Sevell said. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor of Criminal Justice, researches black male experiences with the police. “Our society is structured in a way in which certain groups have power and privilege and others are oppressed and subjugated,” OwusuBempah said.
Owusu-Bempah said that racism has become more implicit. “Overt forms of racism are no longer socially acceptable,” he said. However, Owusu-Bempah urges citizens to acknowledge that racism, in more implicit and institutional ways, is still a problem. He used President Obama as an example. “Would he have been elected as a president if he looked the same as his black father? I’m not sure he would,” Owusu-Bempah said. Social justice can be achieved, but Owusu-Bempah believes it will take generations. He said he knows individuals need to connect with others of different backgrounds before equality can be reached. “We really need people to see one another as human beings,” Owusu-Bempah said. He encourages that citizens address history to see how society got to where it is now. “Without open and honest discussion, we’re going to continue to deny that we have a problem,” Owusu-Bempah said.
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