Thursday, July 2, 2015

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THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2015

IDS INDIANA DAILY STUDENT | IDSNEWS.COM

Find your summer flick Read more, page 7

‘Holding history’ Getting to know a Founding Father is easier when a letter from him sits in your hands. By Annie Garau agarau@indiana.edu | @agarau6

of paper with text on one side, printed by John Dunlap, the official printer to Congress at the time of the revolution. Over 235 years ago this week, on the night the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration, Dunlap was instructed to print approximately 400 or 500 copies to be sent out to the colonies the next morning. These copies were the only versions actually printed on Independence Day. Only 26 are now known to survive. One of them is in Bloomington. The printing sits in the vault of the Lilly Library behind a case of Plexiglas. It was given to the university by J.K. Lilly Jr., an avid collector of historical texts. He purchased it from David A. Randall for $13,500 in 1951. Though the document is deeply creased, with some holes in the middle and rips on the edge, it is one of the best preserved in the country. It does not hold any signatures, other than the typed name of John Hancock, who was the president of the Continental Congress at the time. The library also possesses the letter which accompanied the Declaration, sent by Hancock

In 1989, a man unknowingly bought a national treasure, hidden behind a painting, for $4 at a flea market. Though he disliked the painting itself, a drab and dreary country landscape, the beautifully carved frame caught his eye. After bringing his purchase home, he took the painting out and set about inspecting the frame. To his dismay, it wasn’t as well-made as he had hoped and had to be thrown away. There was one piece of the purchase, however, he kept. Between the unpleasant artwork and the unsalvageable frame sat a piece of parchment folded up to be about the size of a business envelope. It was an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed by John Dunlap on the night of July 4, 1776. This impossibly lucky man went on to sell the well-preserved piece of parchment at an auction for $8.1 million in 2000. His unwittingly purchased artifact is called a “Dunlap broadside” ANNIE GARAU Declaration, because it is a A letter written by Benjamin Franklin that is part of the Dr. William B. Sprague manuscript collection at the Lilly Library. broadside, or a large sheet

| IDS

SEE LETTER, PAGE 6

Freshman runner wins junior championship By Taylor Lehman trlehman@indiana.edu | @trlehman_IU

It was freshman distance runner Jill Whitman’s best race of the season — the women’s 5K at the Eastern Regional Preliminary Round. Coming into the meet, Whitman was ranked just 22nd out of the 24 participating runners. “I had nothing to lose,” Whitman said. “There was no pressure on me, so I could just run my race.” She crossed the line with a personal record of 16:14.98, but when she looked up to the scoreboard, Whitman saw she had placed 13th, one spot out of national championship qualification — one second shy of 12th. Her season was over. “One second was really hard to come to terms with,” Whitman said about the difference between 12th and 13th place. “But, with where I was ranked before the race and where I ended up finishing, I really can’t complain.” Whitman finished her season owning IU’s top women’s 3K and 5K times, the third-best 5K

(16:14.98) time in IU history and the fifth-best 3K (9:36.23) time in school history. She also earned a chance to race in the USA Track and Field Junior Championships in the 3K in Eugene, Oregon, the host site to the NCAA National Championships she had missed just weeks before. “It was awesome just being there because I had never been in Eugene before,” Whitman said. “Running on the track was so surreal.” Knowing to stick to her style of running, Whitman stayed back in the middle of the pack until she passed each runner, one-by-one, and kicked at the end to triumph in the final straightaway with a time of 9:36.62. She had finally taken her place at the top of the podium in Eugene. “Being able to win that race was just a great way to end the year,” Whitman said. Winning is something which seems to come naturally to Whitman, as she claimed victory in five races this season as a freshman and finished within the top-five 10 times.

Whitman has made her mark on IU Track and Field quietly, though, as she has run in the shadows of national championship qualifier Amanda Behnke, a sophomore, and a successful men’s distance squad in her inaugural season. “I wouldn’t be where I’m at now if it wasn’t for my coaches and my teammates,” Whitman said. “They push me every day in practice, and I trust in what the coaches tell me. All I’ve done is run.” After running in a small track and field program at Cor Jesu Academy in St. Louis and winning the state final in the 3,200-meter run, Whitman was never challenged to the point Division I collegiate track offers. “I was from a fairly low-key track and field program, so the training was completely different,” Whitman said. “I had to write down some goals before the season started, and they were all kind of simple, like scoring at Big Tens and qualifying for nationals. Now I need to set them higher next year after having my first season done.” Whitman scored at the indoor and outdoor Big Ten

COURTESY OF MICHAEL SCOTT

Jill Whitman runs during the USA Track and Field Championships. After failing to qualify for NCAA National Championships by one spot in her last race, she won the 3K at the USATF Junior Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon on Sunday.

Championships, as she placed seventh in the outdoor women’s 5K and fifth and sixth in the indoor women’s 3K and 5K, respectively. Whitman does not look back though, as she is already looking to the future and what the program can be for the rest of her career.

“We are such a young team,” Whitman said. “We have so much room to grow as a team, and I have a lot of room to grow, especially in the 5K. We will all be together for another couple of years, so it’s exciting to think about where we can go from here.”

Hoosier Games club present at Bloomington local Indy PopCon this past weekend returns to perform at the Comedy Attic By Iann Singer

isinger@indiana.edu

Last weekend, an IU group called Hoosier Games made a trip to Indianapolis for Indy PopCon, a pop culture convention. They presented three video games, all of which were created by members of the club. Hoosier Games is a club for students interested in video game development. Its members focus on the different aspects of the industry, from programming and coding to music and aesthetic design. “Hoosier Games is a bunch of people who get together and build indie games from the ground up,” Max Lancaster, the executive producer of Hoosier Games, said. It is one thing to enjoy slaying the occasional dragon in “Skyrim,” but it is an entirely different thing to want to make “Skyrim.” Taking the step from loving video games

to creating them is a decision which can seem daunting at first. However, many people join the club not knowing anything about how to make games. “That’s where I was when I first joined a year and a half ago,” Lancaster said. “We try to perpetuate a culture of the veteran members teaching the new members.” Lancaster, who studies marketing in the Kelley School of Business, said participating in Indy PopCon was an important moment for building the Hoosier Games brand. “We really want to create an identity for Hoosier Games that is recognized outside of just IUBloomington so that we can build networks with other game companies,” he said. Lancaster said he hopes to make Hoosier Games a powerful connection in the video game industry for aspiring game develop-

ers in the Midwest, a region not typically known for video games. Conventions such as Indy PopCon and the Combine, Bloomington’s own tech convention, are vital to this aspiration. Indy PopCon also gave Hoosier Games a chance to see how the public responded to playing their work. Receiving mass feedback and observations from hundreds of different people puts an entirely new light on a game which had previously only been play-tested by a handful of developers. “When you make a game, you know all of the bugs that exist, and you purposefully avoid them,” Lancaster said. “When someone plays it for the first time, they can show you things that you might have missed before.” Although Hoosier Games’

SEE HOOSIER GAMES, PAGE 6

By Suzanne Grossman spgrossm@indiana.edu | @suzannepaige6

This weekend, homegrown comedy success Mat Alano-Martin will perform at the Comedy Attic. Alano-Martin will have five shows this weekend starting Thursday night with a benefit show for My Sister’s Closet. All of the proceeds from this show will go to MSC, a nonprofit that provides free workforce clothing and training to low-income and at-risk women seeking employment. “The benefit show will do well because Bloomington people like to come out and support local businesses,” Jared Thompson, owner of the Comedy Attic, said. Alano-Martin will also draw people in because Bloomington natives are familiar with his name,

Thompson said. Alano-Martin started his comedy career in Bloomington but now tours the states and has appeared on the Bob and Tom Show, Laughs and at several comedy festivals. Before getting into comedy, Alano-Martin toured North America playing in bands and as a band tour manager for 10 years. This experience and his late start into the comedy scene gives his style a different edge than others, Thompson said. Instead of sticking to just the basic relationship or political jokes, Alano-Martin uses his background in rock music to create jokes and pokes fun at his bluecollar background. SEE ALANO-MARTIN, PAGE 6


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