I N D I A N A D A I LY S T U D E N T | F R I D AY, J A N . 2 2 , 2 0 1 6 | I D S N E W S . C O M
Police lack LGBT liaison
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By Samantha Schmidt schmisam@indiana.edu | @schmidtsam7
JAMES BENEDICT | IDS
Freshman center Thomas Bryant celebrates after scoring against Illinois on Tuesday at Assembly Hall. Bryant has been one of the players credited with improving defensively.
Improving defensively By Michael Hughes michhugh@indiana.edu | @MichaelHughes94
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omething has changed since IU started Big Ten play. The Hoosiers have continued their winning streak, but they’re winning in a different way. The Hoosiers have increased their defensive presence since conference play began, IU Coach Tom Crean said, and will try to continue this trend and their current 11-game win streak Saturday against Northwestern at Assembly Hall. In IU’s first six Big Ten games, it maintained an average of 64.1 points a game. “We’re really focusing in,” senior forward Max Biefeldt said. “We’re a lot clearer on what we want to do. There was a little uncertainty at times in the past, and I think we just really worked on that in practice and just kind of harped on the small things and playing that defense as a unit.” One thing that has changed has been the presence of sophomore guard James Blackmon Jr. It was announced Blackmon Jr. was injured before IU’s Big Ten opener against Rutgers.
Shortly after, it was announced he would undergo season-ending surgery. Blackmon Jr.’s injury has meant the Hoosiers have shifted their lineup by adding junior forward Collin Hartman. But Crean has insisted this hasn’t been the reason for the Hoosiers’ recent defensive success. “I don’t agree with that at all,” Crean said. “I think guys are getting better in practice. I don’t know how to answer that other than I don’t agree with that. It’s all about improvement.” Crean did admit, however, that certain players have improved in Blackmon Jr.’s absence in part because they were forced to step up after Blackmon Jr.’s injury. Players like freshman forwards OG Anunoby and Juwan Morgan and freshman center Thomas Bryant have stepped up, also in part because they are now fully healthy, Crean said. But really the team has just improved defensively, Crean said, and it just happened to coincide with Blackmon Jr.’s injury. In many ways, actually, the improvement started before the injury and only truly SEE BASKETBALL, PAGE 10
IU (16-3) vs. Northwestern (15-5) noon, Saturday, Bloomington
“We’re really focusing in. We’re a lot clearer on what we want to do. There was a little uncertainty at times in the past, and I think we just really worked on that in practice and just kind of harped on the small things and playing that defense as a unit.”
Despite being named one of the nation’s most LGBT-inclusive cities in a recent survey, Bloomington lacks one major community resource: an LGBT liaison within the Bloomington Police Department. Bloomington scored 100 points in the Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index for 2015, one of only 47 cities in the country with a perfect score. The study rated each municipality’s laws, policies and services regarding LGBT inclusivity. Bonus points in categories such as HIV/AIDS services and openly LGBT municipal leaders boosted Bloomington’s score to reach the perfect 100. However, in a required category addressing the presence of an LGBT police liaison or task force, Bloomington earned a zero out of 10. “Nobody has ever really brought it up,” BPD Chief Michael Diekhoff said. “I’m not aware of any issues that have arisen between the LGBT community and the police.” Diekhoff said if any LGBT or human rights groups in the community felt there was a need for such a liaison, BPD would certainly consider it. Bloomington is one of the few cities with a perfect score on the MEI that does not have a position of this kind within law enforcement. Ninetyone percent of the 47 cities that scored 100 points have LGBT liaisons, said Xavier Persad, legislative counsel for the Human Rights Campaign. It is worth noting most of the municipalities with LGBT police liaisons were cities larger than Bloomington, said Barbara McKinney, director of the Bloomington Human Rights Commission. Of seven Indiana cities included in the survey, the only city a liaison is Indianapolis, where the position has existed since 2010. The IU Police Department does not have an LGBT liaison either, IUPD Chief Laury Flint said. Diekhoff said he does not see a current need for an LGBT liaison because he believes all of his officers are well-trained in sensitivity issues. BPD requires all new officers to complete diversity training sessions and offers additional diversity training at different points throughout an officer’s career, Diekhoff said. BPD Capt. Steven Kellams said he feels the department has had an
Max Bielfeldt, Senior forward
SEE POLICE, PAGE 10
First Nations Center Protomartyr frontman finds speaker series begins non-answers in a cruel world By Jack Evans By Nyssa Kruse nakruse@indiana.edu | @NyssaKruse
When it comes to gender identity and sexuality in the Native American community, conversations historically were not about acceptance or a lack of acceptance. Instead, professor Brian Gilley said, Native people have a completely different understanding of people, and queer people were incorporated into specific community roles. Gilley, director of the First Nations Education and Cultural Center, made this point in a speech Thursday about the intersection of queerness and Native sovereignty in the United States. The talk was the first of the spring speaker series at the First Nations Center. “American Indians, in addition to being the first nations in North America, were also quite possibly the first queers,” Gilley said. Gilley said the reason for his talk, and the speaker series overall, is to promote learning about present-day indigenous issues. “The most important thing is to create a community of learning around Native issues,” Gilley said. The talk focused on the issue of same-sex marriage in the Cherokee Nation. Although one lesbian couple was granted the right to marry in the Cherokee Nation in 2005 after a legal battle, Cherokee Nation law now defines marriage as between a man and a woman, Gilley said. Only five Native nations explicitly allow same-sex marriage, while some explicitly disallow same-sex marriage. Others are ambiguous. Federal law now allows samesex marriage, conflicting with tribal laws disallowing same-sex
FUTURE SPEAKER SERIES EVENTS 12:30 p.m. Feb. 18, March 24, April 21 First Nations Center marriage. This could force the Supreme Court to revisit the issue of Native nations’ sovereignty if someone challenges a Native nation in court about their right to same-sex marriage, Gilley said. Native nations are subordinate to federal law but not state law. Conversations about LGBT issues sometimes refer to Native people and historical evidences in their communities of genders and sexualities that do not match the norms of Western culture. “Native ideas about personhood are different than Western conception of personhood,” Gilley said. “...A lot of non-Western gender constructions is that there are multiple genders and they’re tied to an individual’s role in society.” An audience member asked about the loss of Native words for people with queer identities during a question and answer session after the talk. Gilley said some nations still have some words in their languages to describe these identities, but the Cherokee Nation does not. Words could be created to fill these gaps, Gilley said after another question. In past semesters, the First Nations Center was host to speaker series events every other week, departmental secretary Heather Williams said. This semester, the events will be monthly instead. Williams said this is because the center was overstretching their SEE SPEAKER, PAGE 10
jackevan@indiana.edu | @JackHEvans
Protomartyr frontman Joe Casey doesn’t spend all his time wearing black, smoking cigarettes and complaining about the world. But he said he’d understand why people might think he would. Since Protomartyr broke out with the release of its second album, 2014’s “Under Color of Official Right,” the Detroit post-punk band has put out tracks with names like “Dope Cloud,” “Scum, Rise!” and “Cowards Starve.” Two of the bleakly titled songs come from the band’s third album, “The Agent Intellect,” released in October. The band was set to play in Bloomington shortly after the release but canceled its tour after a death in bassist Scott Davidson’s family. It’s set to play a rescheduled show Friday at the Blockhouse. On “The Agent Intellect,” Protomartyr occasionally pushes hooks through the gloom, and though some of that was intentional, Casey said he wanted to keep any pop edge within the context of Protomartyr’s sound. “I don’t think we’re ever going to go all-pop, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be like, ‘Everything is totally great. This next song is called “Just Dance and Forget about Shit,’”” he said. “But I also don’t want to be on the other side, a completely dour band where there’s no hooks and there’s nothing to latch onto and it’s 40 minutes of misery.” Despite the apparent darkness of his subject matter, Casey said there’s no catharsis in writing for Protomartyr. Instead, he said, he often approaches subjects from angles that differ from his actual feelings or invents a character to drop into
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Detroit post-punk band Protomartyr will play the Blockhouse on Friday. It released its third album, “The Agent Intellect,” last year.
the situation of a song. Here too, he said he wants to avoid descending into total darkness. “If you’ve got any bit of brains, you know the world can be cruel and dark and depressing, and it’s trying to navigate that without completely ignoring things and being oblivious to the world around them, but also not being mired in them,” he said. Casey said much of “The Agent Intellect” concerns the unknowable — how the mind works, what lies beyond death, the prospect of eternity. The album’s title refers to a varyingly interpreted philosophical concept introduced by Aristotle. Casey said he came across the idea while reading and was struck by the lack of a consensual explanation of the philosopher’s musings. “He didn’t explain himself too well,” Casey said. “I liked the fact that it was Jewish philosophers,
PROTOMARTYR Tickets $10 8 p.m. Friday, the Blockhouse Muslim philosophers, Christian philosophers — everybody was trying to figure it out, and they all came to different conclusions, and nobody knows for certain what he meant.” Though much of “The Agent Intellect” is thematically unified, Casey said subject matter didn’t precede songwriting — he waited until his bandmates had music written and then decided what to fit to it. That’s how one of the album’s core tracks — a six-minute ballad called “Ellen” — came together, he said. The song is named for Casey’s mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, and is sung from the perspective of his late father. SEE PROTOMARTYR, PAGE 10