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IDS 2021 FRESHMAN EDITION
Indiana Daily Student | idsnews.com
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Hello, welcome to IU Bloomington! The Indiana Daily Student, older than both basketball teams and the football team, has been covering issues and events on campus and in the City of Bloomington for 154 years. This is the IDS Freshman Edition, made up of past stories that could shape your experience here at IU. Here you’ll find content such as coverage of IU Athletics, the art scene in Bloomington, news sto-
ries from this past year and much more. Other work done by the IDS includes investigative reporting into issues and events that may otherwise go unknown to the public. You can find our content online at idsnews.com, on our social media pages and on newsstands located throughout campus and the city. You can also find us in our Franklin Hall office or reach out at editor@idsnews.com. We look for-
ward to serving you. If you have interest, you can come work with us on reporting, designing our paper or serving as an editor to continue the IDS into the future. We’d be more than happy to welcome you!
Luke Christopher Norton Editor-in-chief
Pamela S. Whitten named IU’s 1st female president By Matt Cohen mdc1@iu.edu | @Matt_Cohen_
Pamela S. Whitten was named IU’s 19th president at a special Board of Trustees meeting Friday morning. Whitten is replacing current IU president Michael McRobbie, who previously announced plans to retire. She will begin serving on July 1, 2021. Whitten will be the first female to serve as IU’s president. That comes after a presidential search prioritizing female and minority candidates. Whitten had been the president of Kennesaw State University since 2018. She previously served as the senior vice president for academic affairs and provost for the University of Georgia. She has also worked in the University of Kansas and Michigan State University medical departments. Whitten has a Ph.D. in
ILLUSTRATION BY MADELYN POWERS | IDS
PHOTO BY COLIN KULPA | IDS
IU President-Elect Pamela Whitten speaks April 16 in Neal Marshall Grand Hall. Whitten, president at Kennesaw State University, was elected as the 19th president of IU by the Board of Trustees on Friday. She will be the first woman to be president at IU.
communication studies from Kansas, Master of Arts in communication from the University of Kentucky and a Bachelor of Science in man-
agement from Tulane. “To our students, please know you will always be the center of the universe,” Whitten said at the Board of
Trustees meeting. “Thank you for the opportunity of a lifetime.” This story was originally published on April 16, 2021.
3 IU researchers help explore women essential to codebreaking By Olivia Oliver ooliver@iu.edu
PHOTO BY ETHAN MOORE | IDS
Freshman Mohkm Singh lights candles before the Sikh Student Association’s vigil begins Sunday in front of the Sample Gates. The vigil was in honor of the victims of the Indianapolis FedEx shooting.
IU Sikh students speak out at vigil for Indianapolis shooting victims By Wei Wang daviwang@iu.edu | @WeiWangDavid23
When IU freshman Mohkm Singh learned eight people were shot and killed in Indianapolis April 15, he immediately thought of gun violence, racism, and most of all, hate in the United States. “Four of them were my Sikh brethren,” he said. “Unfortunately, hate is something that exists far too much in our world.” About 30 people, mostly IU students, held candles up high to mourn the victims of the Indianapolis mass shooting Sunday evening at Sample Gates as a bouquet of orange flowers lay next to the cream and crimson tulips. The Sikh Student Association organized the vigil. A gunman identified by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department as Brandon Scott Hole killed eight people and injured five at the FedEx Ground Plainfield Operations Center before dying by suicide. This was the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis and the deadliest in the city in at least 15 years. Four of the eight people killed were members of the local Sikh community, according to Indianapolis
Mayor Joe Hogsett. The eight victims were: Matthew R. Alexander, 32, Samaria Blackwell, 19, Amarjeet Johal, 66, Jasvinder Kaur, 50, Jaswinder Singh, 68, Amarjit Sekhon, 48, Karli Smith, 19, and John Weisert, 74, according to an IMPD press release on April 16. The New York Times reported that three Sikh victims’ family and friends provided different spellings of names and ages for Amarjit Sekhon, 49, and Jaswinder Kaur Singh, 70. Ravleen Ahuja, co-president of the Sikh Student Association at IU, said the shooting brought “confusion, shock, trauma and anger.” “An attack on any marginalized community is gutwrenching and heartbreaking, and as a Sikh in Indiana, this event particularly hit close to home,” she said. Ahuja said members of the Sikh community must stay strong, speak out against hateful attacks and stay in “chardi kala,” or relentless and eternal optimism. “We hold the power to create a safe and productive space for our friends and family, a place that the victims of the shooting did not have, unfortunately,”
she said. Attendees bowed their heads in silence after Ahuja read the eight victims’ names. SSA co-President Taveen Saran said the mass shooting underscores a pattern of violence against the Sikh community in the U.S., referencing the 2012 mass shooting in which a gunman killed six people in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. “I think hate creates a monster, and the accessibility to guns allows for that monster to act upon that hate and those feelings of bigotry and pure hatred towards others for no reason,” she said. SSA Freshman Representative Mohkm Singh said the root cause of gun violence in America is hate, something inherently inhuman. “The way to combat hate is through love, through revolutionary love,” Singh said, referencing the Revolutionary Love Project by SikhAmerican activist Valarie Kaur. Indiana State Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, attended the vigil. She said there is much work to do to fight gun violence. “We need to do our jobs to make sure that we’re do-
ing everything that we can to combat gun violence,” she said. SSA Vice President Angad Singh said learning about the Indianapolis shooting was a tough experience. He said he was confused how Hole could legally obtain the rifles he used in the mass shooting after police had confiscated his shotgun in 2020 and the FBI had interviewed him after discovering he had been browsing white supremacist websites on his computer. “We do need stricter laws,” he said. “A gun, it gives someone who has a lot of hate an easy method to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time.” Singh said he was 10 when the 2012 Sikh temple shooting took place and remembered feeling confused about why Sikhs were subjected to such violence. He said he now understands more about gun violence and hate. “I was confused by it and I couldn’t understand it, and now I fully understand what’s going on,” he said. Ethan Moore contributed reporting. This story was originally published on April 25, 2021.
School principal turned codebreaker Elizebeth Friedman helped indict rum-running criminals in the ‘20s, decrypt Nazi cipher machines in the ‘40s and write textbooks on cryptography. Only recently did documents surface showing how vastly important Friedman’s work was. She assisted in breaking several important codes to help the U.S. war effort during World War II and used her experiences to help educate others. History often overlooked her and other women who were instrumental in early codebreaking. Now, three IU researchers have combed through the IU archives, National Security Agency databases and more to explore women who were essential to cybersecurity but didn’t receive recognition. The project, run through the Center of Excellence for Women in Technology, was first envisioned by IU first lady Laurie McRobbie who said she brainstormed the idea using a list of women compiled by Justin Troutman, a cybersecurity specialist. The goal is to help more people learn about how women have been at the forefront of codebreaking and cybersecurity since women in these fields have long been treated like they didn’t belong, McRobbie said. “The more we can tell these stories and get names and images and true history out there, I really think the more likely it is that generations of young women won’t be burdened by that sense of not belonging,” McRobbie said. The research is divided into two parts — historic and modern. The team also took into consideration Black women who were overlooked because of their race. Senior Alexandra Schrader-Dobris, team leader, said the goal of the group’s research is to bring these women’s stories to the public eye. “It normalizes the idea that women and specifically women of color contributed to code-breaking even in its earliest stages,” Schrader-Dobris said. The research doesn’t
come without obstacles, though. The racist climate of the early 20th century meant Black women’s work went unrecognized and often less documented, she said. Senior Julie Stout, who researched three Black women, said it was frustrating because she first doubted her own research abilities before realizing the records on Black women just hadn’t been as well kept. “Even after all the research that I’ve conducted, the fact that I wasn’t able to find as much as I wanted to is really telling of their story,” Stout said. Stout said the women she researched also inspired her as a woman about to enter a maledominated field. “Knowing about how these women entered the field and knowing about their own struggles entering the field, there’s a message to pull from that when I go forward in my career,” Stout said. Sophomore Kat Ellingson was responsible for researching three white women, including Friedman, the inspiration for the project. Unfortunately, the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover took credit for much of her work during World War II, Ellingson said. Ellingson and her fellow researchers also interviewed women currently in cybersecurity. She said that while it was inspiring to hear from them, they warned that women often have to work twice as hard and are still looked down upon. Ellingson said surviving in a field that is constantly changing and fighting against you shows tenacity. “I walked out of these interviews absolutely astounded by people’s capacity to really make change,” Ellingson said. The researchers said they plan to publish their interviews and findings on the CEWIT website at the beginning of the summer. “Even during a time where they were genuinely oppressed and segregated, [they] were able to push through that and still achieve something great,” Stout said. This story was originally published on April 25, 2021.