Indiana Statesman
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019
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The 61st Grammys marked the beginning of the end for a one-sided music industry
Generations celebrates Black History Month
Lorraine Ali
Los Angeles Times (TNS)
The 61st Annual Grammy Awards appeared to be an exemplary model of diversity and progress as an unprecedented number of female artists _ including Cardi B, making history as the first solo woman to win for rap album and Kacey Musgraves, who won the night’s album of the year prize _ dominated the evening’s live performances. Alicia Keys (not LL Cool J or James Corden) hosted. And a notable number of African-American artists were nominated in mainstream categories outside of rap and R&B.
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my’s fraught relationship with women and artists of color played a starring role during a ceremony that was as much an ode to diversity as it was a reparation effort. What were they making up for? More than a half a century of operating like most other entertainment mediums until movements such as #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo and #TimesUp forced the first real signs of change in the TV and film industries. The music industry has been slow to catch up. Last year just one woman won a solo award during the telecast. And it didn’t seem the organization felt any pressure to change things up when the
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reers. It was the same year that Kendrick Lamar was passed over by the academy for an album that went on to win a Pulitzer. His Grammy snub followed a pattern of rappers such as Jay-Z being asked to perform, making the show look diverse, only to be passed over for wins in pop and mainstream categories. This year, the Grammys became the latest awards show to visibly struggle with the overwhelming calls for change. Childish Gambino, who won in three major categories including best record, wasn’t there to pick up his awards. Neither was Ariana Grande, who won in the pop category.
Robert Gauthier | Los Angeles Times | TNS
Derek Ali, left, and Ludwig Goransson accept the Record Of The Year award for ‘This Is America’ during the 61st Grammy Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 10, 2019.
But it was clear from who wasn’t at the Staples Center on Sunday that all was not well. The Recording Acade-
chief executive of the Recording Academy, Neil Portnow, said women in music should “step up” to advance their ca-
It was as if they were taunting academy voters when, during commercial breaks, emojis of both artists appeared in sep-
arate ads for Apple Memoji and Google Playmoji, singing the songs they probably would have performed on the Staples Center stage had they agreed to appear. Best album nominee Lamar, who led with eight nominations, also refused to attend. Drake, up for best album and six more awards, surprised everyone when he showed up to receive his award for rap song. But he took the opportunity to voice the frustration of a generation of artists locked out by a mainly white, mainly male voting body. “This is a business where it’s up to a bunch of people who might not understand what a mixed-race kid from Canada is saying, or a fly Spanish girl from New York ... The point is, you’ve already won if you have people who are singing your songs word for word, if you’re a hero in your hometown. Look, if there’s people who have regular jobs who are coming out in the rain and snow, spending their hardearned money to buy tickets to your shows, you don’t need this (Grammy award) right here. I promise you. You already won.” Grande tweeted that she had a dispute with producers over what she wanted to perform. “It was when my creativity & self expression was stifled by you, that i decided not to attend,” she posted. The Grammys did make changes after last year’s ceremony to be more inclusive and representative of today’s music industry. On Sunday, eight acts rather than five competed in the top four categories of album, record, song of the year and best new artist.
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Alyssa Bosse Reporter
The Generations Restaurant in Hulman Memorial Student Union, Commons celebrated Black History Month by serving soul cuisine on Thursday, Feb 7. This event was open to anyone and is set to be hosted again in Sycamore Dining hall later this month. Sumalayo Jackson, African American Cultural Center director, explained some of the details of the event. “Soul food is a term used to describe traditional Southern African-American Food,” said Jackson. “True Soul Food tends to be well seasoned, sweeter and spicy. Once African-Americans moved from the south, they would try to recreate their experiences by offering special dishes for celebratory occasions. Soul food was originated in areas heavily populated by African Americans.” The meal featured several dishes from different regions like Memphis, Creole, Caribbean, Harlem Renaissance and plant based soul food. Plant based soul food was also served along with vegan soul food, to be inclusive for specific dietary needs of anyone attending. At the event there were several stations, each food station represented a region. The stations were decorated with colors, pictures, food origins and memorabilia of the region it was representing. At each setting there was a table tent with pictures of black historical figures and famous quotes. While eating soul food there was also a presentation showcasing important periods and people of African American history. Patrons got to listen to African American music that was being played in the background of the power point. This was the first time Sodexo honored Black History Month with Soul Cuisine.
Parkland families petition for 2020 ban on assault weapons David Smiley
Miami Herald (TNS)
Unlikely to convince a conservative state government to ban assault weapons, the families of slain Parkland students are turning to the voters. Relatives of the 17 people killed in the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High gathered with activists Monday in Fort Lauderdale to submit the first of what they hope will be more than 1 million petitions signed in a push to force a 2020 ballot question to prohibit the possession of what they called “military-grade” weapons. If it passes, the ban would be cemented as an amendment to the Florida Constitution. “If these politicians don’t take action on this, the voters can,” said David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School alum who emerged last year as one of the leading figures in a student-led movement. The effort — which so far has netted just 88,000 of the required 766,200 signatures — began nearly a year ago amid a surprisingly successful push by activists and Parkland families to move a sweeping gun- and school-safety measure through the Republican-controlled Legislature. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act created a “red flag” law to remove guns from the hands of people believed by a judge to be unstable, raised the minimum age to buy
a rifle and banned the sale and possession of attachments capable of converting semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic. But attempts to amend the bill to completely ban “assault weapons” went nowhere. So in March, the Ban Assault Weapons Now political committee was formed in order to move a petition drive that would outlaw the civilian possession of any semi-automatic rifle or shotgun capable of holding more than 10 rounds at any time “either in fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition-feeding device.” Assault weapons that were legally purchased before the ban kicks in will remain legal as long as they’re registered. A violation would bring a third-degree felony charge. “It’s time to ban the type of military-grade assault weapons in the state of Florida that are used by our military overseas on our enemies on the battlefield,” BAWN Chairwoman Gail Schwartz said Monday morning, straining to be heard over rain and the roar of cars splashing past the downtown Broward County government headquarters. Schwartz, the aunt of slain Parkland teen Alex Schachter, was flanked by a group of activists that included Hogg, the parents of slain 17-year-old Nick Dworet, and the widow of school athletic director Chris Hixon. They gathered under the umbrella of Do Something Florida!, a bipartisan organization created
Amy Beth Bennett | South Florida Sun Sentinel | TNS
Ban Assault Weapons Now Chairwoman Gail Schwartz, aunt of Parkland shooting victim Alex Schachter, signs paperwork as she submits 200 petitions to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections office for review as part of a ballot initiative to put on the 2020 election ballot a ban on the sale of military-grade weapons. With Schwartz are, from left; Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, Debbie Hixon, Parkland shooting victim Chris Hixon’s widow, and Mitch Dworet, Parkland shooting victim Nick Dworet’s father at the Broward County Government Center in Fort Lauderdale on Monday, Feb. 11, 2019.
to push the assault weapons ban. The move is essentially an endaround the Florida Legislature, which Democrats have found to be the best course of action on big-ticket progressive issues in conservative Florida. It’s how environmentalists forced the state
to set aside hundreds of millions for land acquisition in 2014, and how personal injury attorney John Morgan forced a comprehensive medical marijuana market into existence two years later. So far, Schwartz’s political committee has reported raising
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$439,000 in just under a year. It will need to raise millions more to be successful. “This is a huge endeavor and it’s very costly to collect this many signatures all throughout
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NEWS
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Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019
Genaro Molina | Los Angeles TImes | TNS
Swaths of dead conifers on the ridgeline, in orange, which have succumbed to drought and disease, are interspersed with living ponderosa and sugar pine trees in the Sequoia National Park in December 2016. Since the fall of 2017, another 18 million trees in California died.
18 million trees died in California last year; officials say that’s an improvement Alejandra Reyes-Velarde Los Angeles Times (TNS)
Another 18 million trees in California died over the last year, a grim toll that nonetheless officials see as a sign the epic forest die-off in the state’s mountains is finally slowing. A study by state and federal forest officials released Monday noted that the 18 million dead trees since the fall of 2017 marks a major decline from the last study in 2016, which detected 62 million dead trees, and 2017, which found 27 million dead trees. Officials credited the shift to more rain, which has lessened drought conditions in California forests and strengthened trees’ ability to fight off beetles. In the last few years, California has seen the most devastating wildfires in its history as a result of the drought and beetle epidemic that, combined, kill off trees and generate more fuel for fires to burn through. The beetles had been rapidly killing
trees in the 4,500-foot to 6,000-foot elevation band of the central and southern Sierra range. It could take centuries for the trees to repopulate, if they ever do. The dead trees have made for hotter, more intense fires that have resulted in the devastation of the Thomas, Mendocino Complex and Camp fires. In all, more than 147 million trees have died across 9.7 million acres of federal, state, local and private land in the state since the drought began in 2010, according the study. The slower tree mortality rate is encouraging, but it’s no cause to breathe a sigh of relief yet, experts say. “Eighteen million trees is still a lot of trees,” said Randy Moore, regional forester for the USDA Forest Service. To make a difference in the forests’ density, 500,000 acres of national forest land would have to be treated annually. To come up with that number, experts calculate how much forest management it would take to make the forest resilient enough to do minimal damage every time
forest fires recur, approximately every 12 years, Moore said. Since 2016, federal, state, and local agencies have felled 1.5 million dead trees in areas that pose the greatest risk to live and property, according to the U.S. Forest Service, the state’s Forest Management Task Force and Cal Fire. The devastation of recent fires has put the pressure on, urging agencies to work together on forest management. As a result, this past year officials got closer to the 500,000-acre annual goal than ever before, treating about 300,000 acres of national forest land, Moore said. “The community has come together,” Moore said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s federal, private or state. It’s been working really well in a way I’ve not seen it in the past.” Porter said it helps that the beetle population has been dying off, too. “This has been an absolute epidemic in the southern Sierras to the point where there are no trees left,” he said. “They ran out of trees to eat.”
With clock ticking on another potential government shutdown, Trump blames Democrats Laura King
Los Angeles Times (TNS)
President Donald Trump sought Sunday to pre-emptively cast blame on Democrats if an impasse over his demand for a border wall leads to a second partial government shutdown this week. Stopgap funding for about one-third of the government is due to expire at midnight Friday, and congressional negotiations over border security and other immigration-related issues have stalled, according to participants. The snag, if it lasts, could presage another shutdown, although a degree of posturing by both sides is not unusual under such circumstances, as neither side wishes to appear too willing to make major concessions. Trump in December publicly said he would be “proud to shut down the government.” That re-
mark dogged him throughout the 35-day closing that followed until he was forced to temporarily abandon his demand for $5.7 billion for his desired border wall. Sunday, he took to Twitter to paint Democrats as the responsible party this time. “I actually believe they want a Shutdown,” he wrote. He suggested that Democrats wanted to deflect attention from issues like the messy fight in Virginia over whether Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, both Democrats, should resign over scandals involving racist behavior and accusations of sexual misconduct. “They want a new subject!” wrote Trump, whose own week was marked by a widely derided congressional appearance by his acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, who evaded questions about whether Trump attempted to quash some of the multiple
investigations surrounding him. Also this past week, the president delivered a combative State of the Union speech during which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., greeted his seemingly incongruous call for “compromise and the common good” with sarcastic clapping. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that another shutdown “absolutely cannot” be ruled out, although many of Trump’s Republican allies in Congress have made it clear that they hope to avoid such a scenario. On “Fox News Sunday,” Mulvaney suggested another way out, saying the president would “take whatever money Congress agrees to allocate for border barriers” and then “go off and find the money someplace else, legally.”
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In other areas, tree health is improving enough that they’re able to ward off the beetles, he said. But Porter said people should make no mistake — the next wildfire season will likely be just as devastating as the last despite the improvement in forest health. There may be fewer dead trees, but they’re adding to the existing dead trees that will be around for decades or until they’re burned up or removed. The lower tree mortality “does not change that at all,” he said. “Regardless of rain or shine, we’re going to have large and damaging fires in California,” he said. “If it rains, we get grass. If it doesn’t rain, we have drought.” So far, forest management has been focused on areas near people— along roads, trails, and campgrounds, Moore said. Deep forest land has remained largely untouched. Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for $1 billion toward a forest management plan
CALIFORNIA CONTINUED ON PAGE 3
Even in best-case scenario, opioid overdose deaths will keep rising until 2022 Melissa Healy
Los Angeles Times (TNS)
In the nation’s opioid epidemic, the carnage is far from over. A new projection of opioid overdose death rates suggests that even if there is steady progress in reducing prescription narcotics abuse nationwide, the number of fatal overdoses — which reached 47,600 in 2017 — will rise sharply in the coming years. By 2022, such deaths would peak at about 75,400, and begin to level off afterward, according to the forecast. That’s the rosiest scenario. Under conditions that are only slightly less optimistic, the U.S. could have 81,700 opioid overdose deaths per year by 2025. If the supply of prescription painkillers stops declining and there are other setbacks, researchers predict that yearly opioid overdose deaths could rise as
high as 200,000 per year by 2025. The opioid epidemic “is not finished growing,” said Jagpreet Chhatwal of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the research. “It’s far from over. And it’s far from moving in the right direction.” Almost two decades after the widening use of prescription painkillers began to fuel an epidemic of addiction, opiates kill an average of 130 people a day in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The driving force of the epidemic has changed. These days, an increasing proportion of overdose victims first got hooked on street drugs like heroin. And since 2016, the explosive growth of fentanyl — an illicit opiate that is highly lethal — has worsened the epidemic.
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Harvard, taken to court, defends its new policy on fraternities and sororities Patricia Hurtado
Bloomberg News (TNS)
Harvard University has brought its legal firepower to bear against fraternities, sororities and other single-sex clubs suing to keep their role as havens of social life at the school. The college’s new policy on single-sex social clubs –– endorsed by former president Drew Faust, the first woman to lead the school –– doesn’t ban them. But the rules, which cover the incoming Class of 2021, provide a powerful disincentive to joining the off-campus organizations, barring members from leading sports teams and receiving the school’s endorsement for prizes such as the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships. On Friday, the school asked state and federal judges in Massachusetts to dismiss two lawsuits, filed in federal and state courts in Massachusetts in December, that claim the policy discriminates against the clubs on the basis of sex and violates students’ freedom of association. Harvard says the rules are “lawful and wholly sex-neutral” and that outside groups like the Greek clubs have no right to impose their culture on the school. It argues that the claims of gender discrimination are false and have no statutory or
legal foundation, and that the plaintiffs can’t show that any student was harmed. “Harvard controls its own resources and endorsements, and students preserve the right to join organizations of their own choosing,” the school said in a motion to dismiss filed in federal court Friday. “This court should reject plaintiffs’ invitation to expand the laws to create a new kind of lawsuit that Congress did not create and no court has countenanced.” Harvard has cited as inspiration for its policy such colleges as Amherst, Williams, Middlebury and Bowdoin, all of which have banned Greek life. The plaintiffs –– including fraternities Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Chi, sororities Kappa Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Gamma, and three unidentified students who belong to exclusive all-male “final clubs” –– claim that Harvard’s sanctions are “punishing” the school’s Greek organizations. They allege that the college has “engaged in an aggressive campaign of intimidation, threats and coercion against all students who join single-sex organizations and advocate for their continued existence.” The sororities say the policy especially harms women’s groups, arguing that by banning single-sex organizations on campus, Harvard has “succeeded perversely”
Paul Marotta | Getty Images | TNS
Harvard Unversity President Drew Faust speaks at the Alumni Exercises at Harvard’s 366th commencement exercises on May 25, 2017, in Cambridge, Mass.
in eliminating nearly every women’s social organization previously available to female students at the school. The lawsuits demonstrate the challenge facing colleges that take on the powerful
Greek clubs, which have long fought in court to preserve their privileged positions. Congress, which has many members who belonged to Greek organizations, specifically exempted the groups from Title IX, the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination at educational institutions. The policy on single-sex clubs “does not discriminate against any undergraduate student” but rather “allows students to make a fully informed choice,” Rachael Dane, a Harvard spokeswoman, said. “It also dedicates resources to students whose decisions reflect the college’s aspirations for inclusivity, helping them to open their organizations to the extraordinary diversity of Harvard College’s student body.” Harvard adopted the policy in response to a 2016 report that addressed sexual assault and gender on campus. A university task force concluded the all-male clubs had “deeply misogynistic attitudes” and recommended that women be allowed to join them. The school Friday argued that there was no evidence any student had been threatened, coerced or intimidated by the policy, arguing it doesn’t prohibit students
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indianastatesman.com GRAMMY’S CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The three hour show opened with the Latin music number “Havana” led by Camila Cabello and featuring Colombian rapper J Balvin and Ricky Martin. But it was clear the show had a female empowerment theme when Keys opened things alongside Michelle Obama, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga, who shared what music meant to them. They kicked off one of the more spontaneous ceremonies in memory, which included 20-plus performances by artists ranging from Dolly Parton with Miley Cyrus to best new artist winner Dua Lipa with St. Vincent.
GRAMMY’S CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Florida,” she said. A Florida Atlantic University poll conducted shortly after the shooting last year found that 69 percent of Floridians supported a ban (which would require 60 percent support at the ballot box). And the petition drive is bipartisan, backed by Americans for Gun Safety, a group formed by Parkland developer and Republican mega-donor Al Hoffman. Anne Marie Milano, a representative for Hoffman, said Monday that the group “isn’t trying to take anyone’s guns or Second Amendment rights.” But any campaign would be sure to face stiff opposition. Florida’s conservative Legislature has been resistant to gun control measures. New Gov. Ron DeSantis said on the campaign trail that he would have vetoed last year’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. And
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019 • Page 3 Not everyone, however, appeared comfortable. And after Janelle Monae’s bombastic performance of “Django Jane” _ in which she shouted the lyric, “Let the vagina have a monologue!” _ there was no way the agro funk of the Red Hot Chili Peppers could look anything but out of place. The major artists who didn’t show spoke volumes with their silence, but the effort to make the Grammys relevant and representative of the artists it’s supposed to honor might have been better served if, say, Donald Glover (aka Gambino) had been there to take the mike. His winning number, “This is America,” speaks for itself, as does the “Black Panther”
soundtrack by Lamar. In film and TV, it took outspoken actors and behind-the-scenes folks speaking out against a white, patriarchal system _ at the ceremonies that had overlooked them for so long _ to finally crack open the doors. The Emmys and Golden Globes were the latest proof. Music isn’t there yet. Just take a look at a University of Southern California Annenberg study that showed there’s a long way for women to go in the record business. But Sunday night looked like the beginning of the end for a tradition that’s woefully out of touch with the medium it’s meant to honor.
the National Rifle Association has enormous clout in Tallahassee due to an incredibly large and politically active membership. “This petition seeks to ban practically every rifle and shotgun in America today with the exception (of) single-shot bolt action rifles or single-shot shotguns by calling them assault weapons,” said NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer. “It is a blatant attempt to fool Floridians by sucking them into a deception that would effectively ban most hunting, target shooting and significant home defense as well.” And unlike their unity around Senate Bill 7026, the law that passed during last year’s legislative session, leading to a series of school safety laws as well as weapons restrictions, Parkland families aren’t united behind the petition drive. “Other states should enact bills similar to SB7026 and skip the ob-
structing gun debate,” Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was killed in the shooting, tweeted last week. But to get to the point of even campaigning, Do Something Florida! first needs to submit the required petitions to get a question on the ballot. The group plans to snare 1.1 million petition signatures, hoping the extra petitions will help provide a cushion for any signatures deemed invalid by elections supervisors. They have a little under one year to gather the additional million signatures needed and submit them in time to be verified by a Feb. 1, 2020, deadline to get questions on the November 2020 ballot. Hogg, the student activist, said the question can pass if it makes it onto the ballot. “If guns made us safer,” he said, “Americans wouldn’t be having this issue right now.”
SHUTDOWN CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 Trump’s promised border wall “is going to get built, with or without Congress,” he said. One of the leading Republican congressional negotiators, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, described the talks as “stalled right now.” “I’m hoping we can get off the dime, because time is ticking away,” he said, also on Fox. Negotiators have said that given the time required under House and Senate rules to pass legislation, they need to have an agreement finished by Monday to guarantee passage by Friday. The president has remained insistent in his demand for $5.7 billion for border barriers, while Democrats, who now control the House, have said they will not offer
OPIOID CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 Meanwhile, many Americans who were first exposed to opiates by prescription have continued to misuse the drugs over many years, said Dr. Donald Burke, who studies the American drug epidemic at the University of Pittsburgh and was not involved in the new research. Until these people either are treated or die of overdoses, they form a “reservoir” of potential victims for the spiraling epidemic, he said. The new modeling effort, published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, finds that slowing the epidemic’s upward trajectory before 2025 will require broad-based action, and more than a bit of luck. The mathematical models that suggest a leveling off of opioid deaths by 2022 requires, first, that medical and public health professionals continue to drive down the numbers of Americans who get their first taste of addiction from legitimate pharmacy prescriptions They also assume that fewer Americans will start on the path to addiction with an illicit street drug such as heroin, or that successful treatment for such addictions will
more than $2 billion. The two sides also disagree over the number of beds at immigrant detention centers. Republicans are contesting a Democratic effort to reduce the number of detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., another member of the conference committee, said he remained “very hopeful” that negotiators could arrive at a “common sense” agreement. “It’s a negotiation — negotiations seldom go smooth all the way through,” he said on Fox. “It’s give and take, it’s compromise, it’s the way government is supposed to work.” On Twitter, the president implied that Democratic congressional negotiators were being prevented by their leader-
surge. Finally, the scenario assumes that progress in fighting the opioid epidemic won’t get blown up by some unforeseen trend, such as the appearance of a new and more lethal drug. In a market where illicit drugmakers are richly rewarded for introducing new products, narcotics such as the synthetic fentanyl — more addictive or more lethal than opioids already on the market — can appear seemingly out of nowhere. Chhatwal said reversing the surging epidemic of opioid drug deaths will not be fast and it will not be simple. “Bending the curve” will likely require a multi-pronged effort that includes limiting the supply of prescription painkillers that get into patients’ hands, providing more and better treatments for the addicted, increasing the use of overdose-reversal agents like Narcan, and shutting off the flow of heroin and fentanyl pouring into the country. “None of these interventions alone will have a substantial impact,” Chhatwal said. His work suggests that even if doctors and pharmacists cut off all prescriptions of narcotic pain relievers — a far more radical step
HARVARD FROM PAGE 2 from joining the unrecognized single-sex organizations and that those who do join remain in good standing. The school noted that the students the policy covers began matriculating in the fall of 2017 and were therefore on notice about it when they decided to attend Harvard. That defense is evasive, the plaintiffs say. “Harvard is avoiding grappling with the substantive facts and saying they have the right to do what they want to do. Our position is that Harvard students don’t give up their constitutional rights by matriculating at the college,” said Emma QuinnJudge, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the state case, which alleges violations of the state’s constitution and Civil Rights Act. She said it’s “striking that Harvard wants to treat as ‘incidental’ what has happened to the women’s groups at the school, which have almost entirely ceased to exist. There are numerous all-male groups but only one remaining all-female social group. That is a result of this policy.” R. Stanton Jones, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the federal case,
ship, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, from making concessions on what he called a “desperately needed Border Wall.” “I don’t think the Dems on the Border Committee are being allowed by their leaders to make a deal,” Trump wrote. Before the previous shutdown, the two parties did have an agreement, only to have it scuttled by Trump. Democrats taking part in the negotiations are saying aloud what their Republican counterparts cannot: that Trump’s fealty to the notion of a wall, which he made a central campaign issue, remains the principal wild card in the talks. Underscoring that, Trump was to travel Monday to El Paso for a rally expected to focus on his demand for a border barrier. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., said on
than is likely— overdoses would continue to mount until 2025, and possibly beyond. Burke cautioned that the study’s assumptions about drug users’ behavior are “at best guesswork” and that the results “must be interpreted with caution.” “While it is possible that (the epidemic’s) stabilization will occur sometime in the next decade, the U.S. has experienced four decades of exponentially increasing overdose deaths, so stabilization in the next two to seven years may be more of a hope than a scientific reality,” he said. For Georgiy Bobashev, a biostatistician at RTI International in North Carolina, the new model leaves many questions unanswered. As health experts struggle to clarify what measures work best to avoid overdoses, studies that forecast the epidemic’s growth have limited value. “But we need more modeling,” said Bobashev, who was not involved in the research. “We cannot afford to wait till we get perfect data. When we have such a crisis of this magnitude, we need as much analysis and as many forward-looking models as possible.”
didn’t respond to requests for comment. Harvard said Friday that the sororities have no standing to bring a suit as they have no student members on campus and can’t show that anyone was hurt by the policy. “Harvard should not have to change its commitment to nondiscrimination and educational philosophy for outside organizations that are not aligned with our longstanding mission,” Dane said. The sororities are improbably casting themselves as feminist havens, said Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA and a Harvard alumna. “This is a really galling reapportionment of the mission of Title IX,” Williams said. “We now have members of these very elite final clubs and other groups who say they are the ‘victims’ of discrimination.” She said sororities “need to be held accountable for their direct implication in sustaining the kinds of behaviors that are manifest in the fraternity culture. To treat them like they’re this feminist counterweight is really disingenuous.”
ABC’s “This Week” that he believed talks convened by Mulvaney at the presidential retreat of Camp David could have reached agreement “in less than a day” if the acting chief of staff were president. “I think the big problem here is this has become pretty much an ego negotiation,” Yarmuth said. “This really isn’t over substance.” Republicans also continued to suggest that Trump might move to circumvent Congress with an emergency declaration on the wall, a step that would be certain to face a strong legal challenge. Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., said on ABC that Trump was “right to have contingency plans” for moving ahead in the event of a continued stalemate. “He’s going to have some plans in place,” Graves said.
CALIFORNIA FROM PAGE 2 over the next five years. That’s welcomed news and it would ensure the state has enough money to clear out forests, rather than spend on the purely reactive approach of fighting fires, Porter said. “So, we are wanting to
continue to invest in fuel reduction work that will protect the citizens of California, the forest ecosystem and watersheds of California,” he said. “But it’s going to take many, many years for us to get to where we need to be relating to forest health.”
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Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019
Tiarra Taylor | Indiana Statesman
The Fashion and Merchandising Association’s Execs stand with Samantha Ripperger. Standing left to right, Jordan Keogler, Kelsey Graham, Samantha Ripperger and Hallie Pell.
ISU alumna Samantha Ripperger explains life in the fashion industry after college Lauren Raider Reporter
Indiana State University alumna, Samantha Ripperger, visited ISU’s campus on Friday, Feb. 8 to talk to the Fashion and Merchandising Association. Ripperger discussed her experience with her job at PATTERN Magazine in Indianapolis to give members tips on how to prepare for similar opportunities. The Fashion and Merchandising Association is a student led group that presents networking opportunities for students in Textiles, Apparel, and Merchandising and helps provide opportunities within the industry.
Ripperger was involved in FMA during her time at ISU and continues to use the knowledge she gained from her involvement. She served as the media coordinator her freshman and senior year and was president her sophomore and junior year. “I think the president position helped me with public speaking, leadership, and responsibility. It also helped with getting things done and keeping people on track. The media helped me gain knowledge and tools on social media in general. I use those now by being in charge of our social media and our online content. It helps me keep up with those who are writing the articles. I think
that helped,” Ripperger said. Ripperger’s job at PATTERN Magazine has given her many opportunities to network and gain connections. PATTERN is a nonprofit magazine that prints twice a year and is always available online. It is centered on arts, fashion, and creativity. The staff showcases artists and creative minds in the fashion and art industry. Ripperger started out as an intern, decided she wanted to stay and accepted a fellowship. In the latest print edition, Ripperger was a managing editor and helped to create PATTERN. She was very excited that she could come and share her experiences
Polar Plunge 2019
Freezin’ for a reason Indiana State plunged into raising money for Special Olympics on Feb. 9 with Polar Plunge 2019
with her peers and students in FMA. “This is my first time coming back. I was super excited to get the call saying they wanted me to come back. Honestly, I would love to come back no matter where I am,” Ripperger said. “When I was in school, I went to IU for a panel that had College Fashionista on it. I said ‘I’m going!’, and I thought it was so cool that she came back even though she has this life in New York and has done amazing things. I do think it’s important to go back to your roots, and help those who want to do something similar to what you do, because I didn’t necessarily have that.”
Remembering where she came from is extremely important to Ripperger and sticks with her through all of her successes. Sometimes, success doesn’t come easy after students graduate. There are many difficult tasks when trying to find a job. “I would say, try out everything to see where your interest is. If it’s in multiple things, go for it. If it’s in one thing, go for it. If you have an interest and then later down the road you don’t want to pursue it, that’s fine. It’s okay to fail, and it’s okay to last minute realize that you don’t want to do something. That’s something you have to go through,” Ripperger said.
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Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019 • Page 5
‘The Ted Bundy Tapes’ and ‘Shockingly Evil’: Why Joe Berlinger doubled down on the serial killer Jen Yamato
Los Angeles Times (TNS)
The timing was uncanny: Days apart, on the weekend marking the 30th anniversary of the execution of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger (“Paradise Lost” trilogy, “Some Kind of Monster”) premiered his Zac Efron-starring Bundy film “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” at the Sundance Film Festival and unveiled the four-part docu-series “The Ted Bundy Tapes” to voracious truecrime fanatics on Netflix. “It’s a little bizarre,” Berlinger admitted, stopping by the L.A. Times studio at Sundance. “I’d love to take credit for this master plan ... but the fact that I even did both is somewhat coincidental.” It was nearly two years ago that Berlinger was contacted by author Stephen Michaud with a tantalizing offer to dive into hours and hours of taped conversations with Bundy that Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth wrote into the nonfiction book “Conversations with a Killer.” “He said, ‘I’ve never really done anything with these audio tapes that I did a book on,” said Berlinger. “’Do you want to listen to the tapes and see if you think there’s anything there?’” The docu-series that would become “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” was already underway with Netflix when Michael Werwie’s Black Listed script for “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” a narrative retelling of Bundy’s crimes told from the perspective of his live-in girlfriend Elizabeth “Liz” Kloepfer, fell into his lap. Within a month and a half, the feature film secured financing with Zac Efron attached to star as the duplicitous Bundy and Lily Collins as Kloepfer, whose 1981 memoir “The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy” shed rare insight into the private life of the convicted killer. Now, with both Bundy projects unveiled simultaneously _ Netflix announced its acquisition of “Extremely Wicked” after the film’s Sundance premiere and the trending success of its “Ted Bundy Tapes” launch _ Berlinger has found himself in the controversial business of Bundy. And audiences are wrestling with their own fascination with the man who confessed to murdering and raping as many as 30 women and girls across seven states in the 1970s. The question of the hour: Why is Joe Berlinger so obsessed with Ted Bundy _ and why can’t audiences look away? Q: The timing of these two Ted Bundy
projects makes for quite the coincidence. What sparked your interest in exploring all things Bundy? A: It’s a story that’s been told many times, so my bar was high. But I listened to the tapes and I thought there was an amazing opportunity to go inside the mind of a killer and tell a story, with a little distance and with some freshness, because we had this perspective from Bundy himself. Q: How did “Extremely Wicked” fall into place? A: There was no intention to do a scripted film, but I was sitting with my movie agent at CAA and I mentioned I was doing this Bundy series. He sent me the script and on the plane ride home I read it, and I texted him from 30,000 feet saying, “Oh, my God, I love this script.” I loved it because it provided a new way into the story, a fresh way, and it allowed me the opportunity to turn the serial-killer genre on its head. (Weeks later) at a CAA meeting Zac (Efron)’s agent says, “That’s interesting _ Zac is looking to do something different. What do you think about Zac?” Q: What did you think about Zac Efron? How familiar were you with his work? A: I actually think Zac is a terrific actor who hasn’t been given enough opportunities to show his range. And I thought if Zac was willing to play with his teen heartthrob image, that’s a piece of reality to bring into the movie that I thought would be very effective. I felt like it would be a bold choice for both of us, and if it worked, it would really work. Q: You’ve both zeroed in this element of charisma being vital to Bundy’s ability to pull off so many crimes. That’s a quality Efron has demonstrated throughout his career, so on paper, that tracks. A: But when an agent says to you, “Do you want Zac to read the script?” it’s not a light decision, because for somebody at Zac’s level to read the script it’s a reading offer. That means if he says yes, you’re obligated to use him. But my reaction was immediate. I was at JFK on South African Airlines with the doors closing. Instead of going, “I need to think about that and I’m going to be incommunicado for the next 36 hours because I’m on my way to the Skeleton Coast of Namibia ... because I’m making a documentary about a wind surfing legend named Robbie Naish,” I’m having to make a quick decision: ignore the email, say yes, or think about it? I was like, “Sounds like a great idea. Boom.” Q: What gave you insight that he had Ted Bundy in him? Had you seen the
Albin Lohr-Jones | Sipa USA | TNS
Joe Berlinger arrives at the 3rd Annual Critic’s Choice Documentary Awards on November 10, 2018 at Bric House in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“High School Musical” films? A: You know, my daughter was a total “High School Musical” fanatic. I can’t say I studied his oeuvre before making the decision _ I just was always aware of him as an actor. He’s done a couple of excellent things in films that haven’t necessarily worked as well as they should have, and I just thought it was interesting _ I liked the idea of playing with that image. Q: How did working simultaneously on these two projects help each inform the other? A: On the most basic level I was deeply immersed in the subject and a total expert going into the feature film. The department heads, like the art director, production designer, costume designer, everybody had this amazing resource back in New York to tap into, which was my documentary team. Photo references were sent over. Any time we had a factual question because we changed the script during prep and added some stuff, there was this doc series in the making that we could tap into. Q: Why was Liz’s point of view an important perspective to take in the scripted film, in counterpoint to the Bundy tapes? A: I want the audience to feel that same revulsion and betrayal that Liz felt, because that’s what I’m making a movie about. We want to think that a serial killer is some social outcast, two-dimensional
monster because that implies that they’re easy to recognize and therefore you can avoid them. But the reality, in my opinion, of evil and those who do evil in this world are often the people closest to us and whom you least expect. That’s a lesson that can’t be learned enough, whether it’s a priest who commits pedophilia and then holds Mass the next day, or the CEO of a polluting corporation who goes to bed at night knowing he’s killing tens of thousands of people and is suppressing climate change research in the interest of shareholders ... that’s a form, in my opinion, of sociopathic compartmentalization. And as a father of daughters in the prototypical Bundy victim age, that’s a lesson I want my children to have, and a lesson I want to impart with people about the nature of evil _ that it’s often done by the people you least expect and most want to trust. And therefore, people really need to deserve your trust. Q: How would you describe your relationship to the “true-crime” genre? A: Wikipedia calls me a true-crime pioneer. I like the “pioneer” part. The truecrime part makes me cringe a little bit because I’d like to think my explorations of true crime in my documentary work have a layer of social justice. But there’s plenty of true crime out there that just wallows in the misery of others. Q: And much of our fascination with true crime is a seeking of understanding of the horrific things people do to each other _ A: Right, and that’s why I scratch my head where people can look at (“Extremely Wicked”) and say that we’re glorifying (Bundy). It’s a very serious film. Because Bundy defied all stereotypes of what a serial killer was. And that’s why a film that portrays not killing but the seduction of the serial killer which allowed him to elude capture for so long _ while also making a commentary about the nature of our obsession with true crime _ to me is the opposite of glorification. It’s a very highly aware, self-critical exploration of these phenomena. Q: With so much Bundy research and all this darkness swirling in your head, do you have nightmares or do you sleep well at night? A: I actually don’t have that many nightmares, I’ve been doing this for so long. I have trouble sleeping in general _ I sleep in two-hour bursts. I wish it was otherwise! But when I walk into my house I try to leave the work behind ... which is not always successful.
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OPINION
Page 6
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019
One of the most outrageous Supreme Court decisions in awhile Stephen L. Carter
Bloomberg News (TNS)
In my 30 years of writing about religious freedom, I can’t recall a case as outrageous as the one decided last week by the U.S. Supreme Court. A Muslim inmate on death row had asked to spend his last moments in the comforting presence of an imam. The Alabama prison offered only a Christian chaplain, and the justices, by a vote of 5 to 4, refused to order the state to do any more. In its two-paragraph order, the majority quoted an earlier decision encouraging courts to take into account “the last-minute nature of an application” in deciding whether to put an execution on hold. Well, yes. The court should indeed consider whether a death-row inmate’s petition might be no more than a frivolous effort to postpone the inevitable. This isn’t that. There can be, and is, a lot of debate about the right standards for judging a claim of religious freedom. But this should have been an easy decision. Domineque Ray committed a horrible crime, raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl. If the death penalty is ever appropriate, this would seem to be a clear case. But the question before the court wasn’t whether Ray should be put to death. It was whether he should be denied the same right that a Christian inmate would have to be accompanied in the death chamber by a cleric of his own faith. In recent decades, the justices have turned out to be most receptive to First Amendment claims that can be framed as examples of discrimination. Consider, for example, the court’s 1993 decision in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. The suit was brought by a Santeria congregation whose practices included animal sacrifice. In response to the concerns of residents, local officials outlawed the killing of animals within the city limits. The trouble was that the ordinance included so many exceptions that it wound up prohibiting little besides the practices of the plaintiff. The Supreme Court had no trouble striking down the law, saying it violated “the principle that the First Amendment forbids an official purpose to disapprove of a particular religion or of religion in general.” The ordinance, the justices concluded, violated the constitutional rule “that laws burdening religious practice must be of general ap-
plicability.” This is the problem with Alabama’s death chamber practices: a lack of general applicability. As Justice Elena Kagan notes in her dissent, joined by justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, the discrimination in the state’s policies is obvious: “A Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religion — whether Islam, Judaism, or any other — he may not die with a minister of his own faith by his side.” This favoring of one religion over another is permissible only in the very narrowest of circumstances, writes Kagan. Here, the state argued that the presence of a cleric other than the Christian chaplain, a prison employee who understood the execution process, would pose a security risk. That’s not a strong enough claim to get around the patent discrimination. But even were there no discrimination at all, the denial of the presence of the imam would by itself present a strong case for judicial intervention in defense of religious liberty. Imagine a state rule that no clergy from any faith could enter the death chamber. I would argue that such a ban would itself be unconstitutional, for we are speaking here not of a prisoner’s access to the holy books of his faith — the denial of which the courts have struck down even in cases where prison authorities concluded that the books were not religious at all — but of spiritual comfort at the moment of death. No one who is now alive, it almost goes without saying, can truly know what death is like. What will we find on the other side? Many insist there will be only oblivion. Others are confident that they will step into paradise. Still others fear eternal punishment. Whatever may lie beyond the threshold, however, we surely commit a great wrong when, having the chance to do otherwise, we force a person who knows he is about to die to face that great opaqueness alone. To deny that person his chosen spiritual counselor at such a moment is the ultimate cruel triumph of our current wave of secularization. The authorities are in effect saying, “What difference does it make who’s with you at the end? You’ll be dead soon, and none of this will matter to you.” No matter how outrageous
DECADES CONTINUED ON PAGE 7
Shane Dawson Conspiracy Theories – Part 3 Erin Bradshaw Columnist
This will be the final discussion of the conspiracy theories for Shane Dawson’s Part 1 series. Stay tuned for Shane’s Part 2 to the series, which was supposed to come out Feb. 6, but has now been delayed to Feb. 11. Shane put out a statement that he and his cameraman, Andrew, decided to add some last minute touches to improve the video. This video describes an active look on the conspiracies as they put them to a test to determine their validity. To conclude the iPhone theory portion of the video, Shane gave his part three a 4.5/5. This first delves into an app called “Zepeto” which creates an animated avatar version of yourself. However, this fun loving sims-like game could take a dark turn. It is thought that the app is possibly tracking you. The reason people think the app might be tracking you is because of the static coming from the phone, if you listen closely. Static is the same noise you hear if your phone is being tracked. Although, we already know that our phones are listening to us. For example, if you have an Apple product you say, “Hey Siri” and it automatically hears you. Of course, Apple says it’s just Siri that hears you and nothing else. I personally think this could be real. Phones are tracked all the time, so why not have it through an app? The last part of the iPhone theory, part four, Shane gave it a 4.5/5. Shane first dissects the anatomy of the iPhone: the microphone is constantly on, a front-facing camera, and a back-facing camera.
This pretty much allows them to see every part of someone’s life. He brings up the potential of blackmail. For example, say a celebrity, like Shane, who is exposing them or another company. They could easily show and say, “Hey we have all this information on you. If you don’t stay quiet or pay us “X” amount of money, we’ll release it.” Unfortunately, we are not far off from truly experiencing all these scenarios in the future as our generation dives deeper and deeper into technology. This is the second part to the California fires. This one, in my opinion, elaborates on the theory much more and goes into more depth. The suspicion of the fires being staged first came from tons of photos being released on Twitter of what looks to be a beam shooting from the sky right into the where the fire was. The theory is that they’re coming from military aircraft as lasers. These lasers are so insanely precise which would explain how some houses were burnt and some were not. Someone pulled up a thermal map from that night, and found a beam radiating heat right down to the houses. Another question is how are the trees still standing? Fire doesn’t just pick and choose. It would raid a whole area with nothing left. I myself am a big believer in government getting involved in our lives this way. There are many theories over the years about certain presidents being involved in certain catastrophic events, or maybe the space race. Something similar is the thought that appliances in our own homes could start a fire. The most fatal appliance, a microwave, could easily start a fire.
TNS
An electric company could possibly turn up the electric which would cause them to burst. One more popular is the idea of contamination in the air. Furthermore, Santa Susana Laboratory, which is nearby these locations, was used for testing rockets and nuclear reactors. In 1959, there was a nuclear meltdown, and the area still has not been properly cleaned up. This can cause contamination in the air, the ground, and even in the water. This area was where the Woolsey Fire started. It is known that this can cause cancer clusters. Knowing that this contaminated air was traveling for miles means that so many people could have been affected. Something even more devious and dangerous, was the fact that right before the Woolsey fire, there was something called the Campfire. This fire hardly got any coverage and killed way more people than the other. This is what was known in the area of Paradise, California. Citizens reported having little to no warning of the fire coming. As soon as people took to media, the Woolsey fire magically occurred in areas where many celebrities live. Another idea as to how the fires were started, is that the fire came from inside of houses. Many times, home owners will light their own houses on fire to get money for a new house or if they don’t want to pay for the current one. Usually, people get caught for doing this. However, the Santa Ana winds are picking up in this area around this time of year. This could possibly allow for a loophole for getting insurance money. The last theory discussed is the
CONSPIRACIES ON PAGE 7
Why power in the Senate is increasingly imbalanced Stephen Mihm
Bloomberg News (TNS)
As the stalemate over President Donald Trump’s border wall threatens to lead to another government shutdown, all eyes are on the Senate, where a slim majority of lawmakers continues to support the barrier, even though less than 35 percent of Americans do. What accounts for this and many other such imbalances in the upper chamber of Congress? The answer, sadly, is that the Senate, which has always given outsize political clout to smaller, rural states, has become increasingly dominated by this constituency. And these days, most of these small states lean conservative, giving them far more power than the Founding Fathers intended or than their relatively smaller share of the population would suggest.
The shift is a natural consequence of a decision made at the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in 1787. The delegates faced an obvious problem: How could they stitch together a republic made up of states of such varying sizes? Although everyone could agree in principle that power in the House of Representatives should be derived from population alone, small states objected to setting up the Senate in the same way. Their reasoning was understandable. If both the House and Senate derived from population alone, the largest state, Virginia, would have almost 14 times the clout of the smallest, Delaware. In the debates over this issue, delegates from large states and small states traded insults and threats. The compromise was a House of Representatives derived strictly from population, and a
Senate that conferred equal representation on large and small states alike. That meant that even though each decennial census from 1790 onward would alter the number of representatives from each state, the number of senators would always remain the same: two. The result is that today a voter in the state with the lowest population — Wyoming, with 573,000 people — has approximately 70 times the influence in the Senate as a voter in the largest state, California, where the population is 39.5 million. Though shocking, it’s unclear whether this imbalance is all that different from the way the Senate has distributed power in the past. Perhaps this has always been the case, and if so, tradition should probably stand. But if the Senate has become increasingly undemocratic in the way it shortchanges large states (and
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Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019 Indiana State University
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Volume 126 Issue 36
Claire Silcox Editor-in-Chief statesmaneditor@isustudentmedia.com Rileigh McCoy News Editor statesmannews@isustudentmedia.com Rachel Modi Opinions Editor statesmanopinions@isustudentmedia.com Alex Truby Features Editor statesmanfeatures@isustudentmedia.com David Cruz Sports Editor statesmansports@isustudentmedia.com Danielle Guy Photo Editor statesmanphotos@isustudentmedia.com The Indiana Statesman is the student newspaper of Indiana State University. It is published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the academic school year. Two special issues are published during the summer. The paper is printed by the Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind.
privileges small ones) then reform may be necessary. Measuring the relative power of large and small states over time is easier said than done, given that the number of states has changed dramatically, and with it, the number of seats in the Senate (for example, the first Senate had only 26 lawmakers). What has also changed is the relative ranking of states: California was a “small state” at one time, for instance. If we focus on today’s biggest and smallest states, we won’t learn anything about the small-state/large-state dynamics over the entire sweep of the nation’s history. One way of attacking the problem is to choose a certain arbitrary percentage of the total national population: say 25 percent. Then ask a simple question: How many of the nation’s smallest states’ populations add up to that 25 percent — and what pro-
portion of the Senate would this chunk of the population thus command at different points in time? For example, in 1790 the total population for purposes of representation was a little more than 3.8 million. A quarter of that is slightly more than 950,000, which equaled the combined populations of these six states, listed in ascending size: Delaware, Rhode Island, Georgia, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Connecticut (plus a little of the next largest state, South Carolina). This can then be translated into a percentage of the total seats in the Senate: 51.78 percent. In other words, in 1790, the 25 percent of the total population that resided in the smallest states controlled 51.78 percent of Senate seats. One can do a sim-
POWER CONTINUED ON PAGE 7
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indianastatesman.com POWER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6 similar calculation for a small proportion of the population: say 10 percent. In 1790, this smaller “tranche” of the population — also concentrated in the smallest states — controlled a still staggering 31.96 percent of the Senate. At the same time, one can flip the question by looking at the largest states. Here the results are very different. In 1790, for instance, the 10 percent of the population concentrated in the largest states controlled only 3.57 percent of the Senate; the top 25 percent controlled a mere 9.81 percent. This was unequal representation. But in all fairness, this was by design: Small states were supposed to have disproportionate power in the Senate in 1790. If you perform the same calculations every 10 years from 1790 on, a rather interesting pattern emerges. In the first two decades of the 19th century, the large states got a little more clout in the Senate (and the smaller states lost a bit of their power). This was due to an eve-
CONSPIRACIES CONT FROM PAGE 6 brainwashing of children, which was given a 4/5. This begins with subliminal messages in children’s shows. Many of these involve the unsettling topic of suicide. In an episode of Spongebob Squarepants from 2001, Squidward is seen being depressed. He’s walking around gloom, putting his head in an oven, and other sullen acts. This is one of many episodes of this popular show where suicide is referenced. However, this has been going on long since Spongebob. Suicide has been refer-
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019 • Page 7 ning out of the population, reducing the disparity between the biggest and smallest states. Then the tide began to turn in favor of the small states. Part of this was driven by the rapid-fire admission of a number of new states, many of which started very small, particularly in the West, even if they didn’t stay that way for long. As the population grew, these distortions faded away. Since around 1900, the smaller states have slowly amassed more power at the expense of the larger states, in part because of the growing concentration of the population along a smaller number of states along the coasts. The graphs above show that story in full, and while the trends have unfolded at a glacial pace and without dramatic shifts, it is hard to deny that the large states are considerably weaker now than they were in the U.S.’s formative years. Likewise, the smaller states have definitely amassed more power, though this shift is less dramatic. In 1790, the 10 percent of the population concentrated in the smallest states
had around nine times the number of Senate seats as the 10 percent in the largest states. By 2010, the 10 percent in the smallest states controlled about 23 times the number of Senate seats as a comparable bloc in the most populous states. While it’s unlikely that we’ll be passing a constitutional amendment to fix the problem, the nation is overdue for a nonpartisan debate over whether there are limits to the extent to which the largest and smaller states can diverge in size. For example, states once had to meet a certain population threshold in order to gain admission to the union; what if states faced the prospect of losing statehood if they fail to maintain that threshold? This is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Throughout U.S. history, territories that wished to become states had to reach a certain basic population threshold before being considered. In the opening decades of the 19th century, for example, states generally had to wait until they had 60,000 inhabitants before applying. By the middle of the century, Congress began implementing a more flexible rule:
Territories had to have a population sufficient to merit a single representative in the House. This threshold, which has gradually increased over the years, now stands at 710,767 inhabitants. By that measure, three states now fall short: Wyoming, Vermont and North Dakota. If they were territories, none would meet the current population threshold and would remain without representation in Congress. (Sorry, Bernie Sanders!) Another possibility would be to limit the size of big states. Once a state gets too big — I’m looking at you, California and Texas — they would need to split into two, or even more parts, as some Californians have proposed. This, too, would address the problem. And there is a problem. What began as a commendable effort to compromise over two centuries ago has introduced a powerful distortion into our system of representation, one that the architects of the Constitution did not anticipate, and most likely, would not have approved of — unless, of course, they were from Delaware.
enced in older shows like Looney Toons, Tom and Jerry and Mickey Mouse, among many others. The theory is that entertainment has been planting the idea that suicide is an option. Personally, I thought this was more common among teenagers, but I have heard of children as young as ten-years-old committing suicide. These shows make this idea seem like a happy way out when you hit a rough patch in life. A game we all know and love, The Game of Life, used to have a pawn space for suicide. Another game, Hangman, we know as someone writes dashes on a board with
a phrase or word in mind and we must guess the correct letters otherwise we are hung. This was actually based off of real events. Criminals were sentenced to death by hanging. They were put in public and made to guess the word that the person hanging them was thinking of. If they guessed it wrong, they were hanged. The twisted part about this, is that most of the criminals during this time were illiterate. Even nursery rhymes have dark themes to them. Rock-a-bye baby talks about a baby hanging from a tree and then falling to its death. Nursery rhymes are told to chil-
dren as young as newborns. Now, all of these theories are obviously not fact. Hence the name “theory.” However, it is interesting to think deeper into these ideas and see if they are in fact plausible or not. Do your own research to some of these, or find some new ones. Many theories weren’t even talked about in this video. There are some that involve history, past and future. Think beyond the surface of what you’re just told.
DECADES FROM PAGE 6 the crime, Alabama should not be taking sides in the greatest metaphysical question before us. What can the court’s majority say in response? That the security of the death chamber is inviolate? That the petition was filed too late? Such propositions as these cannot be taken seriously when the state is about to impose the technology of death. No matter how heinous the crime — and Ray’s was despicable — a civilized culture must provide those last moments of comfort for the troubled soul. The short of the matter is that the justices handed down a terrible decision, and, I suspect, miscalculated the reaction. There’s nothing to be done now, because Ray has been put to death. But the issue is bound to come up again.
MUSIC FROM PAGE 4 ence. Ryan Cash placed ninth with a time of 8:21.37 and is eighth in the MVC. Lewis-Banks is leading in the MVC and is sitting at 48th place in the NCAA for the 60-meter hurdles. Indiana State will be back in action Friday, Feb. 15 as the team travels to Charleston, Ill., for the EIU Friday Night Special.
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SUDOKU ANSWERS from Thursday’s Issue
SPORTS
Page 8
Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2019
Athletic Media Relations
January 27th versus Northern Iowa.
Women’s basketball drops weekend set Garret Short Reporter
After a heartbreaking loss at Bradley on Friday, Indiana State women’s basketball team dropped their second game of the weekend Sunday at the hands of Illinois State. Friday’s game got off to a competitive start when ISU and Bradley tied 39-39 at halftime. That’s when ISU blew things open with a 31-point quarter. They went on an 11-3 run to extend their lead. On the other end, Vicki Hall’s
squad played lockdown defense that looked ready to put the game firmly in hand. The Sycamores used five players scoring double-digits to catapult themselves into a comfortable lead. But that’s when ISU got too comfortable. The Braves overcame Ashli O’Neal’s game-high 21 points and came storming back in the fourth quarter. Bradley’s Lasha Petree scored 13 points in under a minute late in the game to give Bradley the boost it needed. ISU was outscored by 17 in the fourth, giving Bradley an 81-80
victory. ISU was hoping to bounce back against Illinois State on Sunday, a team they had already beaten this season. Home-court advantage can change games even by just a few points. It was a huge factor Sunday, however, as the Redbirds bested Indiana State 78-70. Illinois State made an unbelievable offensive adjustment from game-to-game considering they scored just 44 points in the first matchup between the two schools.
Redbird Tete Maggett was enough to jumpstart Illinois State. She scored 16 points before halftime and finished with 26. Illinois State was miraculously consistent throughout the game. They made 13 of 23 field goal attempts in each half to shoot 56 percent from the field. They also managed to outrebound the Sycamores by 11. The separation for Illinois State came in the second quarter when they outscored the Sycamores by seven. Indiana State kept it close thanks in large part to O’Neal
and Tamara Lee each pouring in 15 points. O’Neal made three of the team’s five 3-pointers but, Indiana State wasn’t able to carry on the comeback theme from the previous game. After this pair of losses, the Sycamores now stand 4-7 in the Missouri Valley Conference; the team is sixth in the conference. ISU’s next chance to get back in the win column is Friday, Feb. 15 at home against Loyola-Chicago. ISU will be retiring Sycamore legend Melanie Boeglin’s jersey during the game.
Athletic Media Relations
Photo from Music City Challenge Day 2.
Sycamores Completed in Music City Challenge Jordan Koegler Reporter
This past weekend the Sycamores Track and Field team traveled south for a successful competition. This is the second consecutive season Indiana State University Track and Field team has competed in the Music City Challenge in Nashville, Tennessee. Senior Erin Reese was the leader for the team on the first day of the Music City Challenge, placing fourth in weight throw. Reese had a strong start to the challenge, as on the first day she recorded a new high on her first attempt. She marked a throw number of 21.44 meters, placing her Friday in third place. Another top performer for the Sycamores was Ayanna Morgan for the women’s long jump. Jumping 5.91 meters put her in a seventh place finish. She now holds the second best mark in the valley. Sycamore distance runners were Jessie Conley, Imariu Hall, Rebecca Odusola and Devon Zack, finishing in fourth place as they competed against top competition. The group clocked a time of 12:06.33. Overall, the Sycamores fell to Michigan State, Michigan and Cincinnati.
On the track, Matthew Lewis-Banks and JaVaughn Moore had the best time for the Sycamores. The two finished in 15th and 16th place for the 200-meter dash. Lewis-Banks had a final time of 22.271 and Moore had a final time of 22.273. Sam Overton had a weight throw of 17.82 meters, putting him in 13th place. He led Indiana State men and is currently fourth in the MVC. On day two of the Music City Challenge, Brooke Moore ran a school record time of 9:23.53, breaking Taylor Austin’s previous school record from last season, which was 9:23.58. This impressive time earned second place behind Hannah Miller of Southern Methodist. Senior Moore, is set at number one in the MVC for the women’s 3k. The men’s 3000-meter had positive results during day two of the Music City Challenge. Three Sycamore men’s runners made the top-10. Akis Medrano took the lead on Saturday and took fifth overall in the Valley with a time of 8:17.35. Quentin Pierce finished seventh for the Trees with a final time of 8:19.99 and had the
MUSIC CONTINUED ON PAGE 7
Athletic Media Relations
February 6th, The Sycamores took on Evansville.
Sycamores get blown out on the road to Braves Jay Adkins
bound battle as they out muscled the Sycamores 44-to-27.
Sycamores get blown out on the road to Braves This past Saturday, the 11-12 Indiana State University Sycamores men’s basketball team traveled to Peoria, Illinois to compete against the 12-12 Bradley University Braves. The Sycamores would end up getting blown out in front of a crowd of 5,805 fans inside the Carver Arena, with a final score of 9667. Freshman guard Cooper Neese led the team in scoring for the second straight game. He also achieved a new career high in scoring with 20 points. Tyreke Key scored 14 points on over 50 percent shooting. Sophomore guard Clayton Hughes led the Sycamores in rebounds with five total on the night. Indiana State forced 13 Bradley turnovers and converted them in 16 points. Bradley, however, put more effort in the re-
The Braves went into a huge scoring frenzy during the matchup, hitting 33-of-58 shots from the field (56.9 percent), including 14-of-25 from behind the three point arc (56 percent). The game started off in the worst way possible for the Sycamores, with Bradley hitting their first three shots from the field and leading with a score of 11-0 two minutes into the game, forcing Indiana State to burn an early timeout. Thanks to a corner jumper from senior guard Allante Houston and a three pointer from junior guard Christian Williams, the Sycamores would put points on the board to make the score 13-5. Bradley went on a 6-0 run before Cooper Neese and Tyreke Key would score to keep the game within striking distance. Bradley went on yet another scoring spree, this time 7-0. Junior forward/center Bronson Kessinger
Reporter
hit four free throws and Cooper Neese hit a corner three to keep the Sycamores with 32-18. Junior guard Jordan Barnes hit a layup to make the score 20-32. Bradley went on their last scoring spree of the half before Cooper Neese hit another three to make the score 38-23. The Braves went into the half with a lead of 54-27 and wouldn’t relinquish their lead for the rest of the game. The Braves were led in scoring by junior guard Darrell Brown, who ended up leading both teams in scoring with a game-high 26 points in 30 minutes of play. Senior forward Luuk Van Bree led the Braves in rebounds with seven total boards. The 12-12 Indiana State Sycamores will need a short memory when they travel to Valparaiso this Wednesday to compete against the 13-12 Valparaiso Crusaders. That game will start at 8 p.m. and can be watched on television on ESPN+