02/26/2019

Indiana Statesman

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019

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President Curtis poses with 13 of the 14 student musicians on the stage in the Landini Center for Performing and Fine Arts on Sunday, Feb. 24.

Tiarra Taylor | Indiana Statesman

President’s Concert gives 14 ISU musicians a night of fame Cheyenne Fauqher

and Payton Jarrett

Reporters

The President’s Concert celebrated the outstanding student performance in the Landini Center for the Performing & Fine Arts Sunday, Feb. 24, at 2 p.m.

Free and open to the public, the President’s Concert was compiled of solo performances of voice, piano, wind, string and percussion instruments.

These students worked for months leading up to this recital to perfect their performance. There were 14 students total who were selected to participate in this event.

Taylor Moga, a junior at ISU, played “Three Chorales for Solo Marimba” by Robert Oetomo on the marimba.

The marimba is a percussion instrument made of wooden bars struck with a yarn or rubber mallet to create musical tones.

Moga studies percussion with Dr. Jimmy Finnie and performs on campus in the Percussion Ensemble, Wind Orchestra, Wind Symphony and Marching Sycamores. She will be performing in China and Thailand during the summer with the ISU Percussion Ensemble.

“I was honored to have this experience.

I look forward to this summer and more concerts like this in the future,” said Moga.

Another performer was Jacob Riley, a vocal prodigy and second year Music Education Major.

“Besides singing in the shower every day, I spent about 30 minutes twice a week with my vocal coach practicing the repertoire for today’s performance,” Riley said.

More performances were by Ben Moan, Zene Colson, Loren Heck, Taylor Moga, Nick Puchek, Jacob Riley, Kaitie Moore, Ross Hanson, Jon Treadway, Logan Muñoz, Julia Powell, Chandler Ellis and Ricardo Gil Dr. Scott Buchanan, director of ISU’s School of Music, shares the significance of

holding this event.

“This is something that has started about 10 years ago and mostly serves as a way to invite and honor the people that donate to the School of Music,” Buchanan explained.

The President’s Concert allows the School of Music to show their gratitude to individuals and organizations that have donated to several scholarships and initiatives towards the program.

The largest portion of donations come from a group called, the Friends of Music who financially assist the program specifically with international travel and the welcoming of international guests to ISU. President Deborah Curtis, a proud contributor to the Friends of Music, attended to support the performers and urge the preservation of Performing Arts and Music in public schools.

“Do not let our school systems cut the Arts,” said Curtis. “Do not let them do it silently. Who we are as a civilization and who we guide our young people to be as

they become adults matter to our society.”

Curtis believes that the Performing Arts programs in schools often lack funding and support resulting to students not having the opportunity to discover and develop their talents in music. This concert allowed guests to recognize the Music Education majors who hope to contribute to molding future generations in music.

“This performance is key for us to highlight these wonderfully talented students,” said Curtis. “Some of whom will go out professionally while some will spend their time with young people helping them develop into the next generation of performance and music education.”

When the recital was over, the audience and students who performed were treated to refreshments outside of the auditorium.

The performers were greeted and congratulated by family, friends and professors.

Many families brought their students flowers and wore large smiles to show how proud they were.

Oscars 2019: 24 awards the Oscars should have given out Michael Phillips

Chicago Tribune (TNS)

So what happened?

The winds of change slammed headlong into a wall called “Green Book.” That’s what happened. It has nothing in common with the movie “Crash” except a fraudulent view of race in America.

And the Oscar.

Also, Sunday night at the 91st Academy Awards, “Bohemian Rhapsody” won more Oscars (four) than “The Godfather” has to its name (three).

The host-less show was actually pretty good Sunday. For better or worse, no one nominated picture dominated the evening.

There were outrages, and disappointments, and a few hearty, heartening triumphs.

But they left a few awards out.

Most sobering statistic award: According to the 8,000-plus members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “Green Book” was the finest film of 2018. It is now officially more Oscar-worthy than any of the other 246 eligible features released last year.

Best host: No one! There wasn’t one. The show in many ways improved because of it. Somehow academy president John Bailey’s long road of mishaps paid off with a looser, less shticky ceremony than usual, clocking in at three hours and 18 minutes.

There were, however, weird hiccups, such as ...

Worst oversight, “In Memoriam” division: The great director Stanley Donen died Thursday.

News of his death broke Saturday. Was it really too late to add one photo and the words “Stanley” and “Donen” to the admittedly incomplete honor roll of recently deceased film industry names?

Best reason to bring back the host: Come to think of it, a traditional Oscars host, backed by

Jay L. Clendenin | Los Angeles Times | TNS

Michael B Jordan during arrivals at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2019, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, Calif.

quick-thinking producers and a writer or two at the ready, could’ve honored Donen somewhere in the show. And that would’ve made the Oscars look like today’s news.

Best Grammys highlight, Oscars division: Opening the show with a Queen medley, tied to the massively popular “Bohemian Rhapsody,” pleased just about everybody except die-hard traditionalists. Still, once Mike Myers and Dana Carvey took the stage later on, and merrily revived their Wayne and Garth routine from “Wayne’s World,” it all tied together and became one. Before you knew it, “Bohemian Rhapsody” had more Oscars to its name than “The Godfather.”

Winds of change, part one: Many firsts at the 91st Oscars.

Rami Malek: best actor, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and the first Egyptian-American to win. Ruth E. Carter, an honoree at the 2018 Chicago International Film Fes-

tival: first African-American woman to win for costume design. Hannah Beachler of the “Black Panther” team: first African-American for production design. Yalitza Aparicio, first indigenous actress nominee. And so on.

The push/pull double header award: “BlacKkKlansman” won for adapted screenplay, giving director and co-writer Spike Lee his first Oscar. “Green Book” won for original screenplay.

These movies aren’t merely polar opposites; if they were polar opposites, that would imply they exist on the same planet. They’re practically enemies.

Best Oscar speech from a producer of a documentary short subject about the menstruation stigma in rural India: “I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar!” (Rayka Zehtabchi) Best “first” for Mexico: “Roma,” winner of three Oscars, took

home Mexico’s first foreign-language film award.

Best “Roma” double duty: Alfonso Cuaron became the first filmmaker to win for both direction and cinematography.

Best evidence that Mexico’s just killing it at the Oscars: Five out of the last six directing awards have gone to Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Cuaron won for “Roma” and “Gravity”; del Toro, for last year’s “The Shape of Water”; and Inarritu, for “Birdman” and “The Revenant.”

Most ardent reminder of the imminent 2020 presidential election: “Let’s all mobilize,” Spike Lee said, upon winning the adapted screenplay award with three colleagues for “BlacKkKlansman.” “Let’s be on the right side of history ... let’s do the right thing! You knew I hadda get that in there!” Backstage, Lee was asked about his feelings regarding “Green Book.” Although

“Do the Right Thing” failed to get a best picture nomination the year “Driving Miss Daisy” rolled home the winner, Lee said: “Every time somebody’s driving somebody, I lose.”

The bittersweet perspective award: Lee now has one more Oscar than Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin or Alfred Hitchcock ever received.

Best non-verbal jousting on the red carpet: The winner is Glenn Close, even though she’s now the most nominated actress yet to win an Oscar. On the red carpet outside the Dolby Theatre, Close messed with fellow actress nominee Melissa McCarthy, giving her the full Norma Desmond routine with the side-eye, followed by the front-eye. Even so ...

Best pre-show mugging and mid-show mugging awards go to ... Olmo Teodoro Cuaron, “Roma” auteur Alfonso Cuaron’s son, who pulled some stunning faces behind dad’s back, both before and during the ceremony.

Best evidence that ABC might have made a suggestion or two about including some zero-nomination hits in the opening montage: “The Mule.” “Venom.”

“Mamma Mia 2.”

Most strident reminder that nothing could possibly go wrong with the envelopes: Viewers were treated to a backstage close-up of a well-dressed PriceWaterhouseCoopers-designated flunky, making very, very sure the big red BEST PICTURE envelope got safely into the hands of presenter Julia Roberts. Nobody wanted another “Moonlight”/ “La La Land”/Faye Dunaway/ Warren Beatty situation.

Biggest stealth achiever Sunday night: Participant Media, major financial backer of both “Green Book” and “Roma,” among others. Talk about diversifying your portfolio.

Clearest reminder of Toronto’s

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Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019

West Coast’s biggest starfish vanishing amid disease, warming oceans, study finds Lymda V. Mapes

The Seattle Times (TNS)

Once a common delight of every beachcomber, sunflower starfish — the large, multi-armed starfish sometimes seen underwater at the near shore — are imperiled by disease and ocean warming along the West Coast.

The devastation occurred over just a few years and even affected starfish in deeper water, according to research co-led by the University of California, Davis and Cornell University published in the journal Science Advances.

At one time plentiful, the sea suns, or sunflower starfish, right now cannot be found off the California coast and are rare northward into Alaska, said Drew Harvell, the paper’s co-author and Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. The starfish have become so rare over the past three years the scientists consider them endangered in the southern part of their range.

“I don’t know the words to describe it, these things were as common as a robin in our ecosystem,” Harvell said in an interview. “Never, ever would anyone imagine they would be threatened and endangered.

To watch that happen on our watch has been discouraging.”

Sea star wasting disease beginning in 2013 caused a massive die-off of starfish of multiple species, from Mexico to Alaska.

Hideous to behold, the disease causes starfish to fall apart, with pieces of their arms walking away, or their bodies disintegrating on pilings, beaches, rocks and the seafloor.

Derek Holzapfel | Dreamstime | TNS

Sunflower starfish — the large, multiarmed starfish sometimes seen underwater at the near shore — are imperiled by disease and ocean warming along the West Coast.

The disease also has affected starfish on shores from New Jersey to New England.

The sunflower star continues to decline, even in the deepest ocean, and is not recovering like some other species, such as the ochre star.

Global warming is likely a major cause of the disease, causing a heat wave in the oceans. Warmer temperatures exacerbate sea star wasting disease, allowing it to kill faster and have a bigger impact, said Harvell, author of the forthcoming book “Ocean Outbreak, Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease.”

Starfish matter in the ocean — and not only because they are every kid’s first friend on the beach. Sunflower stars in particular prey voraciously on sea urchins — which keeps urchin grazing on kelp forests in check. As sunflower stars crash, urchins surge — and mow down kelp forests. That

reduces the waving, green underwater nurseries that young fish need to thrive.

Sunflower stars are the lions of the subtidal zone, big as a manhole cover and with mighty appetites. That is why losing sunflower stars threatens the biodiversity they nurture, said Joe Gaydos, another author on the paper and science director at the SeaDoc Society.

“The cascading effect has a really big impact,” Gaydos said.

The crash in sunflower starfish corresponds with ocean warming by up to 4 degrees Celsius that started in 2014. Trawl surveys from Mexico to the Canadian border recorded a total wipeout of sunflower starfish in all states, and in deep water down to 1,000 meters.

Because they live underwater and are not often seen from shore, the sunflower starfish crash has gone unnoticed by comparison with the dripping, oozing horror of the ochre stars on display at every Puget Sound beach and beyond.

“We don’t see a lot of what happens under the ocean,” Gaydos said. “It reminds us that we need to pay attention, there are a lot of changes coming in the ocean. It is a little bit terrifying when you think about climate change, we know we are going to have warming and we can expect more of these marine disease outbreaks. “ Harvell agreed. “A warmer world is a sicker world,” she said.

“That is why we have been so determined to do the science and get the story out.

There is nothing we care more about than the biodiversity of the Salish Sea waters.”

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

With his state’s economy roaring and Democrats having just retaken seven governorships nationally in no small part because of his efforts, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has a lot on his resume around which to build a traditional presidential candidacy.

Yet he is taking a leap of faith.

He will run not on economic fairness or bolstering access to health care or equal rights. His campaign will instead be focused on the single issue that Inslee argues pre-empts all others — the climate crisis.

Inslee, who is expected to officially enter the race in the coming days, would be the first candidate of a major party to focus a presidential run on an issue that is increasingly capturing the attention of voters, even as the politics of it remains full of peril.

“If I get into this race, it will be on this reason, for this reason, by this reason,” said Inslee, who speaks with the caveats of an undeclared candidate, even as members of his team ac-

knowledge a launch is imminent.

“It is going to be for defeating climate change. It will be the first thing I say. It will be the launch vehicle for the rocket,” he said in an interview. “I will be the first candidate in history to say this has to be the No. 1 priority in the United States.

This has to be the paramount duty of the United States.”

Washington state is a sturdy platform from which to build that case. The state has aggressively pursued climate action during Inslee’s tenure, advancing renewable energy goals, electric-car innovations, and efficiency requirements. The state’s economy continues to boom even as the transition to clean energy proceeds rapidly, making it a compelling counterpoint to arguments from President Donald Trump and other Republicans that climate action is too costly, burdensome and destabilizing.

Yet Inslee’s experience as governor over the last six years also reflects the pitfalls of climate politics. He helped lead two failed crusades for far-reaching clean-energy ballot initiatives

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change and worked with former California Gov. Jerry Brown to establish an alliance of 21 states committed to reaching the goals in the Paris agreement on climate change, said the urgency of the problem requires it have the full attention of the White House now.

“It is the place to call America to a higher horizon of achievement,” Inslee said of the presidency. “We have never had a president to call America to this mission statement. We have got to have that.”

The strategy stands out to some as eccentric at a time Democratic voters are more focused on finding a candidate who can demonstrate a clear path to extracting Trump from the Oval Office rather than taking a bold political risk that could go sideways in the general election. But it gives the governor, who built his political career on climate action, a signature issue with which to stand out from a crowded field.

As Democratic presidential candidates glad-hand and speechify their way through

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San Francisco will remove more than 9,300 marijuana-related crimes from people’s records Joseph Serna

A yearlong effort to expunge marijuana-related convictions in San Francisco has been completed, with more than 9,300 crimes removed from people’s records, prosecutors announced Monday.

Given that recreational marijuana is now legal in California and that the war on drugs has had a disproportionate effect on minorities, District Attorney George Gascon said his office’s effort is aimed at removing barriers a criminal conviction poses for individuals long after they’ve served their sentence.

In an announcement last year, Gascon said his office would review every marijuana-related conviction to find ones eligible for expungement under Proposition 64, passed by voters in 2016. Though individuals can request expungements themselves, the process is known to be difficult to navigate and relatively few attempt it.

Gascon’s office initially began the expungement process by hand and found about 1,000 cases to clear, but then teamed up with Code for America, a national nonprofit that uses technology to make government more efficient.

Coders there created an algorithm that combed through San Francisco’s digitized criminal records going back to 1975 in just minutes.

Gary Coronado | Los Angeles TImes | TNS

Different strains of flowers at the grand opening of Cookies Los Angeles, the city’s first marijuana dispensary selling recreation use cannabis under Proposition 64, in Maywood, Calif., on Jan. 16, 2018. San Franciscoworked with the nonprofit organization Code for America to automatically clear eligible convictions under Proposition 64, the district attorney’s office said.

The program automatically fills out the required forms and generates a completed motion in PDF format. The district attorney’s office can then file the completed motion with the court.

After about a year of work, Gascon announced on Monday they’d found 9,362 cases that were eligible to be expunged. All that’s left to be done is for the courts to process the requests, he said.

“It was the morally right thing to do,” he

CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

said. “If you have a felony conviction, you are automatically excluded in so many ways from participating in your community.”

Limitations that some people encounter after they’ve served their sentences are less well known, Gascon said, like barriers to education, housing, employment and even being barred from a child’s school field trip because of a conviction.

Proposition 64 legalized, among other things, the possession and purchase of up to an ounce of marijuana and allowed individuals to grow up to six plants for personal use. The measure also allowed people convicted of marijuana possession to petition the courts to have those convictions expunged as long as the person does not pose a risk to public safety. People also can petition to have some crimes reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, including possession of more than an ounce of marijuana by a person who is 18 or older.

“This isn’t a political thing. This is about dignity. People pay their debt to society.

People pay the consequences for something we no longer consider a crime,” he said. “They should not be jumping through hoops for this. They should just get it.”

Only stand-alone marijuana convictions were eligible for expungement, Gascon said. Marijuana convictions that were tied in with other offenses in a single criminal

in 2016 and again in 2018. The measures aimed to restructure Washington’s economy around measures to combat climate change — through either a tax on carbon or a market-based cap and trade system. That’s the kind of action climate activists say will be crucial to keep warming below the threshold that climate scientists warn would be catastrophic. Voters balked.

A parallel legislative effort championed by Inslee has also fallen short, although he argues that there is now renewed energy behind the measures after climate-conscious Democrats flipped several legislative seats in November.

“Social change takes time,” Inslee said during the interview in Washington, D.C., where he had just participated in a news conference touting the plans of the seven new Democratic governors he helped elect while chair of the Democratic Governors Association. “And during that period of time you lose, and you lose and you lose, and then you win.”

The governor, who is the author of a book about climate

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Sandhya Raman The Senate is poised to vote Monday evening on a bill that Republicans say would guarantee additional protections to an infant who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.

The Senate bill is expected to fall short on a procedural vote despite lobbying efforts by anti-abortion groups and support from President Donald Trump.

The vote comes after Democrats have pursued legislation on the state level to increase access to abortion during the later stages of pregnancy. Recent action in New York and Virginia to ease restrictions on abortion after 24 weeks has sparked a national debate over viability and how late in a pregnancy states should permit the procedure to be performed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.3 percent of abortions are conducted after 20 weeks gestation, but conservative groups argue that number likely underestimates its frequency because states are not required to submit this data to the CDC. State-level bans that target abortions in early gestational periods, some as little as six weeks, have been struck down by the courts that ruled that they conflict with the terms of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion.

Some Republicans hope that by focusing on infants born during late-stage abortion attempts, they can find common ground with some Democrats, although most in the party support abortion rights.

The bill by Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., would not outlaw abortion at any stage of pregnancy, but rather seeks to provide protections for an infant who survives the procedure.

“There is nothing here that is controversial or should require any courage. A baby is a baby, and that should have nothing to do with your politics,” Sasse said in a radio interview hosted by the anti-abortion Family Research Council on Feb. 21.

Democrats have largely stayed silent on the bill, but Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Patty Murray has spoken out in opposition.

“As leading medical groups have repeatedly said, this politically-driven legislation should never become law — and Democrats are going to stand with women, doctors, nurses, and everyone who truly cares about women’s health and rights to make absolutely sure it doesn’t,” the Washington Democrat said in a statement.

Trump recently met with advocates, including abortion survivors, at the White House before conducting a conference call with anti-abortion supporters praising the Sasse bill.

Historically, few Democrats have joined Republicans in voting for anti-abortion legislation in the Senate. Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., are expected to vote in favor of the Sasse bill, but it’s unlikely that other Senate Democrats will shift their stance.

House Republicans are also pressuring Democratic leadership to bring up that chamber’s version of the same bill. A number of lawmakers — including Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

— have requested the bill to be considered by unanimous consent, but were denied each time.

“We will continue to ask the House for unanimous consent until the Democrats join us in recognizing that the right to life is the foundation of freedom itself,” McCarthy said in a Feb. 22 blog post.

Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, launched a campaign last week to pressure 28 moderate House Democrats to sign a discharge petition to force a vote on the bill. Scalise and Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., have spearheaded the petition process but will need 218 votes, meaning a number of Democrats would need to pivot on the issue.

“Many Democratic Congressmen campaigned on a moderate platform, against their radical party leadership. For them, refusing to

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is betting he can ride climate change to White House Evan Halper

Senate to vote on abortion legislation

indianastatesman.com OSCARS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 crystal ball: Last September, “Green Book” surprised a lot of moviegoers and critics when it won the coveted “people’s choice” audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Four of the last 11 years, a win in Toronto serves as a harbinger of the Oscars. This was one of those years.

The retro genius award goes to: Whoev-

WASHINGTON FROM PAGE 2 Iowa, New Hampshire and other states early on the primary calendar, climate is already emerging as a bigger concern than in any prior election. A new poll commissioned by the liberal Center for American Progress found the warming climate to be virtually tied with health care as the top issue Democratic voters are concerned about in five early primary states, including California. That is a notable shift in public opinion compared with previous

SAN FRANCISO FROM PAGE 2 case such as a robbery, burglary or DUI, were not expunged, officials said.

In the end, the project removed what had been a disproportionate number of convictions hanging over the heads of the city’s blacks and Latinos. Though San Francisco is about 5 percent black, that community saw a third of all marijuana-related convictions. Latinos make up about 15 percent of the city, but 27 percent of marijuana convictions, Gascon’s office said.

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019 • Page 3 er chose Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther” theme as the playoff music accompanying the best director award. Seeing Alfonso Cuaron strolling into the wings with his friend and comrade Guillermo del Toro to Mancini’s deathless music was one of the evening’s sweetest moments.

The disarming honesty prize goes to: Olivia Colman, winner of the best actress Oscar for her witty, quicksilver portrayal of Queen Anne in “The Favourite.” The fa-

vorite in that category was Glenn Close, of “The Wife.” “This is not how I wanted it to be,” Colman said, statuette in hand, grinning, winning over countless millions.

She called Close her “idol,” and basically apologized to her for winning.

Best way to look at the “Green Book” win: Remember when “Moonlight” won two years ago? It’s not going to be like that every year.

Winds of change, part two: Last year

928 new members joined the academy, diversifying the ranks to a considerable degree.

The glass-half-full award goes to: Me. I scored my worst-ever percentage with the Oscar ballot: 12 out of 24. At the last minute I changed my “Green Book” prediction to “Roma,” based on the oddsmakers affiliated with the state of New Jersey’s first-ever (legal) Oscar betting. So I blame New Jersey for everything.

years, when climate ranked substantially lower among voter priorities.

“It has taken on a much more important role,” said Geoff Garin, one of the pollsters who conducted the survey. “Democratic voters see climate not only as an existential threat, but also see President Trump as doing real damage to the country’s climate policies. They are motivated on this.”

That could create an opening for Inslee.

“The moment may be ripe for a ‘climate first’ candidate,” Garin said. “Especially in a large and crowded field, somebody who

sees climate as the kind of existential crisis that deserves this kind of focus may really stand out. … Voters notice when candidates single out an issue and attach greater importance to it than any other issue.”

Inslee, though, doesn’t have a lock on climate voters. Whether his agenda will be bold enough to satisfy them also remains to be seen. He will be running against several candidates who embrace a Green New Deal that demands full decarbonization on a schedule that the Washington governor has suggested may not be realistic.

Like other dark-horse presidential candidates before him — particularly those who occupy a governor’s office — Inslee compares himself to former President Jimmy Carter, who was the relatively unknown governor of Georgia when he jumped into the 1976 race. But he says he has something Carter didn’t: more experience than arguably any of his competitors in confronting an emergency that voters increasingly see as not just urgent, but existential.

Gascon, who is not seeking a third term in office, said his ambition is to show what Code for America’s algorithm did in San Francisco and take that approach statewide.

“Until something has been shown, it is hard for people to believe it will work,” said Jennifer Pahlka, founder and executive director for Code for America. “Our theory of change is if you show what’s possible you can reset the expectation bar.”

The expungements only date back to 1975, the earliest digitized records that San Francisco prosecutors maintain, Gas-

con said.

In Los Angeles County, District Attorney Jackie Lacey said last year that petitioning through the courts would be faster for people seeking relief than waiting for her office to review the case files.

The same month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion to develop a plan to help make it easier for people to reduce or clear minor pot convictions.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office estimates there have been 40,000 felony convictions involving

pot-related offenses since 1993. It is unclear how many of those people are eligible for relief or how many have petitioned for it.

Code for America plans to expand the pilot program to other California counties with the target of clearing 250,000 convictions by 2019. The organization has previously delved into the realm of criminal justice. In 2016, it created Clear My Record, an online application that connects people with lawyers to clear criminal records across California.

SENATE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 sign a discharge petition would be breaking a major campaign promise and a total violation of their constituents’ trust,” said Tim Chapman, Heritage Action’s executive director.

A previous version of the bill passed the House 241183 in 2018, with six Democrats joining all present Republicans.

It’s unlikely that any type of abortion legislation could pass now with a divided Congress.

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Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019

This book on NASA’s glory days will inspire all of us Drew Tewksbury

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Jules Verne’s space dreams began with a gun. A big one. In his 1865 sci-fi novel “From the Earth to the Moon,” Verne spins a yarn about the Baltimore Gun Club, a weapons society that built a massive cannon _ the Columbiad space gun which would launch three people, including a French poet, in a lunar-ward projectile. When America first landed its men on the moon a little over a century later, the idea was essentially the same, scratch the poet. Three men, an oversized bullet, a little math and a lot of rocket fuel was the recipe to make history forever. In Taschen’s titanic tome, “The NASA Archives: 60 Years in Space,” Verne’s tale serves as a gateway to a galaxy of lavish images, essays and actual mission transcripts that trace our trips to the moon and beyond.From NASA’s early days slinging monkeys through the stratosphere to the Mars rover’s recent red planet selfie, the book catalogs with beautiful detail the rapid pace of scientific and engineering advances during the 20th-century space race. “It’s hard to imagine that a period shorter than a single human lifespan bridges the gulf between the first powered airplane, hand-built out of wood and fabric by a pair of Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop owners, and the first Moon-bound spaceships, jointly constructed by some 400,000 people working across an entire nation,” writes essayist Roger D. Launius.

Whereas Russia’s space race found its roots in mysticism _ Russia’s godfather of rocketry, the cosmist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, lived in a log cabin and dreamed of eternal life among the stars _ American astronauts were often shown as military men, death-defying test pilots, cowboys of the sky extending manifest destiny to the moon.

The first half of “NASA Archives” reflects that vision of postwar America, flyboys with buzz cuts and aviator sunglasses, eggheads in headsets flipping switches at mission control. Much like the Damien Chazelle film “First Man,” we witness the unsung heroics of number crunchers and the daredevils who pushed their mind and bodies to the limit. A choice snippet from Chuck Yeager’s October 1947 transcript, just moments before he was about to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 jet, says it all: “Hell, yes, let’s get it over

with.” Another moment recounts Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s thoughts as they took their July 20, 1969 lunar stroll. Armstrong: “Magnificent sight out here.” Aldrin: “Magnificent desolation.” Maybe the poet reached the moon after all.

AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM There’s a romanticism in the full-bleed images of Aldrin’s space-walk self portrait backdropped by the azure arc of Earth’s oceans, or the crew of Apollo 1 testing their space suits in a Texas swimming pool. There’s Margaret Hamilton, whose team at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory created the software for Apollo’s onboard computers, standing next to paper printouts of her code stacked as tall as she is. “Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust,” she says, “there was no choice but to be pioneers.”

Looking back on the purity of that pioneering spirit _ never mind the ongoing pressures of the Cold War or, if you’re into tinfoil hats, the hidden-in-plain-sight cover that space tech afforded nuclear arms proliferation _ there’s a nostalgia for that unified time, whether you lived it or not.

With ingenuity, and a blank government check, anything was possible. Says astronaut Alan Bean: “We were so focused on one thing: making this impossible dream come true.”

INNER SPACE The book is evocative beyond its extraordinary images. For some, it’s a journey into their own memory; the recollections of our own impossible dreams. As I turned the enormous pages, a Kodachrome slideshow of fuzzy images flipped in my mind.

There’s the smell of a hot-glue gun as my mother affixes an American flag onto the arm of a silver spacesuit. It’s a Calico Corners pattern. I slip into it, I close my eyes as she puts my helmet on. I curl my toes into the carpet; I’m a vertical baked potato, ready for liftoff. It’s my earliest memory.

I blink.

Now I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor as our teachers struggle for the words to tell us the Challenger has just exploded. A teacher was on board, they say, her name was Christa McAuliffe. Her photo was later put on our library wall.

I blink again.

I’m a teenager. The local news announces a mysterious line of lights hovering on the

Taschen

“The NASA Archives: 60 Years in Space” by Piers Bizony, Andrew Chaikin and Roger Launius

Phoenix horizon. I walk outside and there they are, a floating V above the silhouette of our mountains. For a minute, I entertain the prospect of abduction, my last great chance for space, taking me away from our desert landscape speckled with saguaros and Circle Ks. The military said it was simply weather balloons, which was a standard cover-up, according to “X-Files.” I close the book, and I’m back in the present. NASA just tweeted that the Mars rover Opportunity is dead: “We loved that rover.”

A LAST SNAPSHOT Today our shared experiences happen on small screens and social media, but “NASA Archives” shows how space stoked our collective memory. Now there’s no mystery to space. We have gone to Mars, it looks like Arizona.

And somewhere along the way, space has become kind of embarrassing.

Our greatest discoveries have become meme-able jokes. The 2016 visit to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko revealed that the bulbous rock resembled a butt, an intergalactic occurrence that not even George Clinton could have predicted. When the mysterious object Oumuamua made a cameo in our galaxy, it looked like a tightly rolled space spliff. And then we get our first up-close images of Pluto: it has an enormous heart-shaped form on it; a planet-sized emoji punctuating the end of our solar system.

The awe-inspiring moments evoked from space’s heyday have become social media punchlines.

But in the pages of “NASA Archives” there’s a return to wonder, and perhaps even a call to once again ponder the great beyond.

As Tsiolkovsky once wrote: “Earth is the cradle of the mind, but humanity cannot remain in its cradle forever.”

‘Roma’s’ Alfonso Cuarón takes home three Oscars and sparks a dialogue about representation Carolina A. Miranda

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

It was a film that began as a reflection of a painful period in his childhood. Now it has earned him three more Academy Awards.

Alfonso Cuaron, whose meditative family drama “Roma” told the story of Cleo, an indigenous domestic worker who faces a battery of personal struggles as the family she serves falls apart, won three of the Oscars’ most important categories: foreign language film, cinematography and directing.

In accepting his directing Oscar for the film, Cuaron noted the rarity of seeing a character such as Cleo represented on screen.

“I want to thank the academy for recognizing a film centered around an indigenous woman, one of the 70 million domestic workers in the world without work rights, a character that has historically been relegated in the background in cinema,” he read from his notes. “As artists our job is to look where others don’t.”

The film has been a deeply personal journey for Cuaron, who based the character of Cleo on the housekeeper who raised him: Liboria Rodriguez, a Mixtec woman who cared for his family even as she suffered personal heartbreak and loss.

In an interview with The Times late last year, he said of Rodriguez, “I’m talking about one of the humans or one of the people that I love the most.”

“Muchas gracias a Libo,” he said, thanking Rodriguez in Spanish by her nickname.

The awards mark another professional pinnacle for the Mexican director, who already had two Oscars to his credit, in the editing and directing categories for the 2013 space drama “Gravity.”

“Roma” entered Sunday night’s ceremony with a whopping 10 Oscar nominations _ tying for the year’s most nominations with Yorgos Lanthimos’ royal court drama, “The Favourite.”

“Roma” ultimately took home three awards _ and it failed to nab best picture, which went to “Green Book.” But it nonetheless busted through plenty of barriers.

Jay L. Clendenin | Los Angeles Times | TNS

Alfonso Cuaron, middle, with his children Olmo Teodoro Cuaron and Tess Bu Cuaron during arrivals at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2019, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, Calif.

It is the rare foreign-language picture to make it into the best picture category. The first was Jean Renoir’s French war film “Grand Illusion,” in 1938. The last, in 2012, was Michael Haneke’s “Amour” _ the mordant French drama about an elderly couple contending with the ravages of aging. “Roma” was also the first Mexican film to win in the foreign-language category.

And Cuaron’s win demonstrates the continued dominance of Mexican directors. Five of the last six Oscars for directing _ starting with Cuaron’s award for “Gravity” _ have gone to Mexican filmmakers.

In addition, Cuaron’s Oscar for cinematography was groundbreaking and symbolic: He is the first person to win that award for a film he also directed. _ and it comes on the heels of the director’s very public spat with the academy over the category.

Earlier this month, the academy had announced that it was going to yank the cinematography award from the telecast and hand it out during the commercial break, along with the awards for editing, hair and make-up, and live action shorts. Cuaron was one of the first filmmakers to speak out _ vociferously _ against the decision.

“In the history of CINEMA, masterpieces have existed without

sound, without color, without a story, without actors and without music,” he tweeted (capital letters his). “No one single film has ever existed without CINEMAtography and without editing.”

The academy later retracted its decision and all four awards were presented during the broadcast. In his acceptance speech for the cinematography award, Cuaron nodded to the famed German American filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch and Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki (who has three Academy Awards to his credit _ including one for his work on “Gravity”).

“It’s well known that in Billy Wilder’s office there was a sign that said ‘What Would Lubitsch Have Done?’” stated Cuaron. “For me it’s ‘What Would Chivo Lubezki Have Done?’”

Ironically, “Roma” was an unlikely Academy Awards juggernaut.

The film was shot in is black and white. It features actors unknown to U.S. audiences. The dialogue is in Spanish and Mixtec, an indigenous language from southern Mexico. It was released not by a legacy studio, but by the streaming service Netflix.

“Of everything I’ve ever done, this is the one I expected the least,” Cuaron told reporters during a

news conference backstage. “This is not what you would call an Oscar date.”

But “Roma” nonetheless struck a nerve.

There was the story of the film’s lead: a young indigenous woman from a small town in Oaxaca who had never so much as tried out for a school play when she landed the principal role in Cuaron’s film.

Yalitza Aparicio, a schoolteacher from Tlaxiaco, Mexico, portrayed Cleo in a role that demanded subtlety and quiet resilience, and for her performance she received a lead actress nomination _ the second Mexican actress and the first indigenous woman to be nominated in the lead actress category.

She did not win the Oscar (it went instead to Olivia Colman, who played a discombobulated Queen Anne in “The Favourite”), but the role _ and Aparicio’s resulting stardom _ brought important social issues to the fore, such as the treatment of domestic workers and indigenous representation in the culture and large. (Aparicio is of Triqui and Mixtec heritage.)

This awards season, Aparicio has been the rare indigenous face on red carpets. She is also the first Mixtec woman to be featured on the cover of Vogue Mexico, a pub-

lication whose chosen standards of beauty are decidedly European.

The actress’ achievements have been met with celebration, but also plenty of bigotry. An early fashion shoot for Vanity Fair, for example, was greeted with racist invective online. Later, a Spanish-language entertainment site reported that a group of Mexican actresses had allegedly conspired to keep her from being nominated for the Ariel, the country’s most prestigious acting award.

For Aparicio, her status as a barrier breaker is one that she is keenly aware of. In an interview with The Times earlier this month, she noted: “I know that everything that I am doing _ if I do something wrong, they might think we are all that way. So I have to take good care of that image, our image.”

Cuaron said the film has raised all kinds of issues related to representation.

Backstage at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, he noted Hollywood’s habitual blind spots.

“There’s so much talk about diversity,” he said. “I mean some progress has been made, but definitely the Hispanic Americans _ and specifically, Chicanos _ are really badly represented still.”

At this year’s Academy Awards, only two U.S.-born Latinos were nominated for awards: Phil Lord, a Cuban American producer behind “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” (which won the Oscar for animated feature) and Frank Montano, who was part of the team that worked on sound mixing on “First Man.” No U.S.-born Latino actors were nominated in any of the acting categories.

Ultimately, if “Roma” paid tribute to the people that shaped Cuaron, it also pays tribute to Mexico, the country where he was born and that shaped his worldview _ at a time when references to Mexico in the U.S. have been filled with political xenophobia.

“This is a Mexican film,” he told reporters backstage. “This award belongs to Mexico. ... This film doesn’t exist if it’s not for Mexico.

I would not be here if it’s not for Mexico.”

Times staff writer Ashley Lee contributed to this report.

indianastatesman.com

Tuesday, Feb. 26

The Vagina Monologues The Vagina Monologues took place Feburary 22nd and 23rd in Dede 1 this past weekend. It was directed by Kate Forness and Katherine Smith. All proceeds that were given during this production went to benefit the Terre Haute Council on Domestic Abuse along with the V-Day foundation that acknowledges to help fight gendered and domestic violence. This event was sponsored by Feminist Majority and the ISU Gender Studies Program.

Cast List included...

Alexa Mayer Rebecca Moore Kate Forness Andie McKeighan

Olivia Neese Katie Auer

Danielle Guy | Indiana Statesman

Top is Olivia Neese, Below is Kate Forness. To the far right is Andie McKeighan along with Alexa Mayer to the left of Andie.

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OPINION

Page 6

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019

How to Heal a Broken Heart 101 Erin Bradshaw Colunmist

Step 1: Nobody knows. There isn’t a definite way to heal from your heart after being broken. Everyone has a different way of coping and dealing with things.

However, there are some universal tips for stitching your heart back together.

First of all, take care of yourself. Get your butt up off the couch, set that family size bag of Fritos down and just take a walk.

Breathing in the fresh air will refresh your mind and bonus points if it is sunny outside. Studies have shown higher levels of Vitamin D are linked to happiness.

Serotonin is the neurotransmitter in our brains that is connected to our moods, so more serotonin equals more happiness.

Take some time for yourself. Force yourself to dress your best just for one day and you will see your mood drastically improve. Taking time can also mean eating a healthier breakfast or seeing a therapist.

Do the things that make you happiest. I know for me personally when I’m dealing with a break-up, I immediately turn on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Some-

thing about Kate Hudson in an early 2000s film just makes me believe in love again. However, I do not sit and wallow after the movie is over. I get up, and remind myself that I am worth more than what some manipulative significant other has made me feel like.

Another idea is to create a vision board.

Vision boards sets of pictures of things they want to happen in their life. The goal is that by putting this up in a place you can see it every day, it will remind you of the goals and aspirations you have. Although, it doesn’t even have to be a vision board! You could simply write your goals down, or even achievements you have.

Doing this will remind you of the amazing, independent person you are and may even give you a reality check. Often times, people put themselves in disabling relationships. Relationships are supposed to be building each other up as individuals, but sometimes people get stuck being too comfortable with each other and then they don’t blossom. Writing down your aspirations may help you regain a sense of self and where to go in life.

Find a new place to put your time. Of-

ten, we put all of our care and effort into one single human and when they are gone we don’t know where to put that effort. Use this remaining care and put it into extracurriculars; spending more time with friends, or rediscovering things you once cared so much about.

Do yourself a favor. I know it may be tempting to check up on that person every so often, but do not do it. Checking up on them will bring back all the hurt and pain you once had. Go ahead and block them. This isn’t petty or mean, it is helpful. By blocking and deleting their number, you have absolutely no way to contact them. Have your friends keep you accountable too! Tell them not to let you use their social media to check on that ex.

This goes with the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind”. If you don’t see them, you won’t think about them. Why would you want to think about someone who broke your heart? Also, revenge is not cute on anyone. It is not a good idea to go sleep with your ex’s best friend or their brother. In the end, Brad and Chad will still be best friends and your heart will still be broken.

Lastly, and most importantly, learn from this experience. Even if you have lost so much of yourself from a toxic relationship, you can at least learn from the issues you had. Figure out the problems you faced, not just from that ex, but things you did wrong too. If you learn from these mistakes, it is likely you won’t bring them into your next relationship. The goal is to always improve whether that is a relationship, job, or life in general. Moving on isn’t quick or easy, it takes time. Whatever you do, don’t go back to this person. You separated for a reason. The important thing is to make progress no matter how small. It’s okay to be hurt and feel bad for yourself for a little while in the beginning, but there comes a point where you have to pick yourself up by your boot straps and realize that Brad from Statistics 241 was not the one for you.

Outrage culture is out of control Nancy Rommelmann

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Dreamstime | TNS

Get a $5 discount on Uber with purchase of two 20-ounce Dr Pepper products, up to $25.

Uber should take a lesson from the film industry on how to treat its workers David P. White

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The tide may be turning for workers in the so-called gig economy as it becomes increasingly obvious that gig work is not the win-win proposition that the Ubers of the world like us to believe it is.

Just this month, in response to mounting protests, the supermarket shopping platform Instacart reversed what it conceded was a “misguided” policy of counting tips as part of its workers’ base pay. The move came on the heels of successful efforts by drivers for Uber and Lyft to win what amounts to a minimum wage in New York City and the groundbreaking Dynamex decision by the California Supreme Court, which sharply limited who can be considered an independent contractor rather than an employee.

This shift in sentiment shouldn’t be surprising. New research confirms what many of us have long suspected: Most gig workers are not otherwise employed people looking for a quick and easy way to earn a few extra dollars. Rather, they are breadwinners who depend on these jobs for most or all of their income. Unfortunately, it’s also becoming clear how difficult it is to earn a living wage with gig work.

But as gig workers have started to win small concessions from their employers and victories in the courts, the companies have been pushing back.

In California, for example, gig companies including Uber, Lyft, Instacart and TaskRabbit are lobbying state officials for a legislative or administrative fix that would allow them to keep treating workers as independent contractors in the wake of the Dy-

namex decision. The distinction matters, since independent contractors lack the basic rights to a minimum wage, overtime pay, protection from sexual harassment, and collective bargaining that employees enjoy.

Forcing gig companies to grant their workers these protections would obviously increase the companies’ costs of doing business — decreasing the chances they’ll ever earn the outsized profits envisioned by their starry-eyed investors. But the companies cited loftier motives in their request for state intervention. Allowing the court ruling to stand, they warned darkly, would inevitably wind up “stifling innovation and threatening the livelihoods of millions.” This gloomy prediction was echoed by the California Chamber of Commerce, whose president talked apocalyptically of whole sectors of the economy being “hamstrung” unless gig companies were free to continue their current practices.

But is that true? Is it really the case that the companies can’t survive without exploiting gig workers? History — and the experience of the union I work for — suggest otherwise.

The fact is, companies such as Uber and its ilk that maximize flexibility while minimizing costs by treating their workers as independent contractors are not quite as innovative as they would like us to believe. A similar business model was employed by apparel manufacturers in the early 1900s. The idea was to create a piece-work system in which seamstresses were paid according to their output and manufacturers avoided any responsibility for the conditions under which clothing was produced. Back then, of course, the companies weren’t considered innovators in a gig economy; the

term of art for their operations was sweatshop.

The first gig workers may well have been entertainers — itinerant actors, musicians, and other performers who for centuries had traditionally drifted from job to job, with long-term employment rarely an option. It was jazz musicians who first started using the term “gig” back in the 1920s to mean a temporary engagement — in their case, a club date or concert tour or recording session. And before long, actors and other performers were using it as well.

It was around the same time that the predecessors of what’s known today as the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began organizing these early gig workers. The unions’ main concern was (and remains) protecting and empowering performers. But in the process, the unions also accomplished something else: demonstrating that companies can prosper, even when required to provide their gig workers with the same rights and protections regular employees have.

And it’s not just the experience of performers that demonstrates this fact. Virtually every worker involved in film and television production — writers, directors, designers, electricians, teamsters, hairdressers — is a gig worker. And on most productions, the workers enjoy the same protections as regular employees, including guaranteed pay rates, health benefits, pensions, protection from harassment, and, perhaps most important, the ability to bargain collectively. Has this hamstrung the industry or stifled progress?

Quite the contrary.

Is there a lesson here for the Ubers of the world?

Editorial Board

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019 Indiana State University

www.indianastatesman.com

Volume 126 Issue 40

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.

It was 9:30 at night when my husband slid his iPad across the bed to me. On it was an email an ex-employee had sent to current and former staff of his coffee-roasting company in Portland, Ore. The ex-employee explained that a new YouTube series I was hosting, #MeNeither Show, in which another journalist and I discussed, among other topics, some excesses of the #MeToo movement, was “vile, dangerous and extremely misguided.”

She considered the show hostile to assault survivors, and felt it her duty to alert several newspapers that my opinions posed a potential threat to my husband’s female employees and the community at large.

I told my husband it would blow over. After all, there was no suggestion in the email that he’d ever been inappropriate; only that my views were dangerous.

And I hadn’t worked in the business in anything but a supportive capacity for two years.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. It blew up, and in less than a month, a 15-year-old business with a spotless track record is now in danger of collapse. Baristas quit and wholesale accounts fled, their unease fed by a local press that keeps banging the drum.

This is the current pitch of outrage culture, where voicing an opinion someone says she sees as a threat qualifies you for instant annihilation, no questions asked. Why ask questions, when it’s more expedient, maybe more kickass, to turn anything you might disagree with into an emergency?

A sense of emergency is what people on all sides have developed an addiction to. Show us the next person to hate and we are so there; we take an animalistic pleasure in destroying the kid in the MAGA hat, in fashioning a decades-old interview with John Wayne into a knife with which to posthumously eviscerate the actor. And then we look for the next target.

Because we need that next hit, we need it right now. Being in a constant state of emergency — a condition in which people notoriously make terrible decisions — is like having a fire raging inside the body, one that needs to be fed. It needs new fuel, and so we seek new enemies.

Meanwhile some of us are watching from the sidelines, trying to stay out of the way, hoping not to be next. (Good luck with

that.)

Maybe the fractiousness in which we are currently living, people sectioning themselves into smaller and smaller tribes, is a side effect of the addiction.

It needs an unlimited supply of people to hate, and the smaller the in-group, the larger the potential enemy pool. That this creates rancor and instability for everyone is a price addicts are willing to pay; indeed, it may taste like victory.

While those engaging in these fights may be a tiny but vocal minority, they are nevertheless a contagion. They value feelings over facts. They reject direct confrontation, preferring to scrap it out online or letting the media do their work for them.

Those of us who can still stomach cable news watch as opponents chew each other’s faces off in prime time. Pundits and politicians who should wait for the truth to be revealed instead turn today’s story into a cudgel and, when proven wrong, refuse to walk it back, and who cares anyway? There will be a new epidemic of hate-shredding in the morning, in an hour, and as soon as it’s there, we engage. Or we don’t, and are spattered with the blood regardless.

It can be enlivening, certainly, to get caught up in a fight. However, one should come armed with courage, rather than, say, surreptitiously taking photos of me in public and posting them on social media, or anonymously calling all my husband’s vendors and telling them to stop working with a company that supports “rape culture.” Yes, that’s a quote.

This campaign, led by so-called feminists, sees no irony in trying to drive a man out of business because his wife voices opinions of her own.

Still, I don’t regard the people pitching this battle as evil.

I see them as unwilling to confront the world beyond their small chosen groups. Humans are hugely nuanced and complex and fascinating, and they are great to talk to. Why anyone, especially young people, who in Portland are in the main the ones waging these campaigns, would want to experience less of humanity strikes me as profoundly sad.

I have been asked whether I hate the people who started this.

The answer is I don’t. I see them as afraid of the ideas of others.

With this in mind, I have several times offered to have conversations about issues they evidently find dangerous enough to go to war over. No one has taken me up on the offer.

Opinions Policy The opinions page of the Indiana Statesman offers an opportunity for the Indiana State University community to express its views. The opinions, individual and collective, expressed in the Statesman and the student staff’s selection or arrangement of content do not necessarily reflect the attitudes of the university, its Board of Trustees, administration, faculty or student body. The Statesman editorial board writes staff editorials and makes final decisions about news content. This newspaper serves

as a public forum for the ISU community. Make your opinion heard by submitting letters to the editor at statesmanopinions@isustudentmedia.com. Letters must be fewer than 500 words and include year in school, major and phone number for verification.

Letters from non-student members of the campus community must also be verifiable. Letters will be published with the author’s name. The Statesman editorial board reserves the right to edit letters for length, libel, clarity and vulgarity.

indianastatesman.com

Tuessday, Feb. 26, 2019 • Page7

Pinterest strikes back at online disinformation. Are you paying attention, Facebook?

The Times Editorial Board Los Angeles Times (TNS)

In the two years since the fake-news problem on Facebook and other major social media networks burst into the spotlight, the companies have taken one dramatic action after another to try to rid themselves of disinformation. At Facebook, for example, the company deleted more than 2.8 billion bogus accounts from Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2018; those accounts are the frequent launching pads for spam, scams and fake news. Twitter periodically announced similar crackdowns, such as its takedown of more than 10,000 accounts in late 2018 that spread false information to try to deter Democrats from voting in the midterm elections.

The task seems Sisyphean, however. As Facebook dryly noted in its latest community standards enforcement report, although it removed more fake accounts in the first half of 2018 than in the previous six months, “the increase did not have any effect on prevalence of fake accounts on Facebook overall.” Those continue to

represent 1 out of every 25 to 33 sign-ups.

The number is so high, the company explained, because “bad actors try to create fake accounts in large volumes automatically using scripts or bots.”

In other words, these platforms continue to be gamed to spread disinformation and manipulate their users.

That’s why it was encouraging to see Pinterest, a social scrapbooking site online, take a dramatic step to combat another damaging form of misinformation online: the spread of debunked or outright false health claims. Instead of trying to stop people from expressing potentially harmful views, it’s trying to stop itself from spreading them.

Pinterest’s action focuses on the “pins” — that is, pictures or graphics copied from other Pinterest users’ pages or other sites, accompanied often by comments — that discourage childhood vaccinations or promote fake cures for terminal or chronic diseases. The company actually barred users from posting that sort of content in 2017, but vaccine myths and fake cures kept making their way onto the site.

Last week, the company revealed that it

has taken an extra step, disabling searches related to these topics. Now, searching on Pinterest for “vaccine harms” will return a blank page with the explanation, “Pins about this topic often violate our community guidelines, so we’re currently unable to show search results.” The same happens on a search for “diabetes cures,” for example.

The change acknowledges how hard it is to keep a site free of potentially harmful material when the site relies on users to supply the content. Given that reality, it makes sense to try to limit what gets found and shared.

There’s a trade-off, though: Simply disabling searches to cut off misleading information can also hide factual and useful content. When Pinterest has gone this route before, on searches for pins related to suicide, eating disorders and self-harm, it redirected users to pages offering support for those who need help.

The company is moving in that direction on the newly filtered searches, but that’s a work in progress.

Meanwhile, blocking search results tees up a never-ending game of whacka-mole, as the barred search terms (“vac-

cine harms,” for example) get replaced by alternatives that are not (“vaccine risks”).

That’s a problem not just for Pinterest, but for any platform trying to weed out content that violates its rules.

Pinterest is still looking for better ways to stop its platform from being used to distribute fake health news. Part of the answer lies in developing algorithms that don’t unwittingly promote that sort of thing just because it’s in high demand among a portion of the site’s users — again, a challenge common to social networks in general. Another part is to enlist other sites that are rife in health misinformation in the effort to weed it out too.

Anti-vaxxers may bristle at the censorship Pinterest is imposing and complain that their speech rights are being infringed. But as a private company, Pinterest has the right to enforce its own rules for what gets shared on its site, and to define the line between idle chatter and harmful misinformation. We welcome its efforts on the health front, and hope it blazes a trail for other social networks to follow.

TREES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8 doors wide open. After Iona walked Chris Ayers with the bases loaded, Hunter Lewis would double to left to plate three more for the Trees.

ISU scored one more in the seventh inning and two in the ninth inning to win 10-0. It’s always easier pitching with the lead and senior Tyler Whitbread makes it look effortless. He pitched eight innings, allowing only one hit in the sixth inning.

A well-rounded weekend for the Sycamores allowed ISU to continue with strength. ISU outhit their opponents 19-10 over the weekend in a display of dangerous the team could be this season. ISU will stay in the Tar Heel State this week with games against Western Carolina Tuesday, Feb. 26 and Wednesday, Feb. 27.

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SPORTS

Page 8

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019

Athletic Media Relations

Althletic Media Relations

Ashli O’Neal dribbles past Drake player during the game on February 24 at Drake.

Iona walked. No. 34, Chris Ayers, with bases loaded during Sunday game in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Women’s basketball falls Sycamore baseball short during weekend games continue winning streak Emari Washington Reporter

The ISU women’s basketball team went up against UNI and Drake College this weekend on Friday and Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately, Friday evening did not end too well for the ladies, as they lost to UNI by eight despite their late game heroics.

What really set the tone for the game was the 22-6 score difference in the second quarter, which pretty much summed up the score differential by the end. Tamara Lee led both teams with 18 points and Ty Battle was also able to muster up another double-double to match the one she got last game.

Battle had a career-high 14 boards and 15 points to go along with that achievement in the loss against UNI. Coach Vicki Hall had a few words to say about the loss; saying,” They fought back… Ty Battle had a wonderful game… Ashli O’Neal came and played really hard as well… But you don’t have to be proud of their effort to come back and not lay down and die and to make it a game.” Very strong words coming from a seemingly frustrated coach

showing clear signs of disappointment in the loss.

The Sycamores then moved on to play Drake on Sunday evening at the Knapp Center in front of about 2,900 fans. ISU ended up making a season-high with 11 three-pointers made in the 96-77 loss to Drake. Tamara Lee ended the game with 19 points leading the ISU pack. Up until the third quarter the game was a pretty good one with the score being 48-43 with Drake leading the Sycamores by halftime.

After halftime, the Sycamores went on a drought only shooting 2-14 while Drake went on a barrage getting 28 points in the Third. The fact that ISU could not keep up with Drake was ultimately the turning point of the game.

Coach Vicki Hall says, “We were making our shots, we were playing hard defensively… as the game wore on and we got to the third quarter, we didn’t have any legs anymore. Our shots didn’t fall like they did. That makes it hard to play against Drake and play zone for 40 minutes in a game.”

More optimistic about this game, coach Vicki sees what things she has to get her team to improve on as they get ready to

Garrett Short Reporter

Indiana State destroyed the competition at the Hughes Brother Challenge in North Carolina this weekend, outscoring opponents 15-1 to improve to a 6-0 record thus far into the season.

ISU’s pitching was their greatest asset over the weekend. Senior southpaw, Triston Polley kicked off the weekend with a shutdown start against UNC-Wilmington Friday. He peppered the strike zone striking out eight batters and allowing only three hits. He went six innings and was relieved by Jake Ridgeway and followed

by Tyler Grauer. Between the three, ISU struck out 14 to start the weekend.

Despite a shutout performance, Friday’s win didn’t come easy. The Sycamore bats were quiet, but not silent. The team gritted out a victory thanks to a fourth inning sacrifice fly by Joe Boyle that allowed Jarrod Watkins to score.

Over the course of the next two days, ISU would wake up in the batter’s box, to the dismay of Marshall and Iona. Against the Thundering Herd Saturday Jake

Means, Max Wright and Romero Harris would each tally two hits in a 4-1 victory.

ISU racked up 10 hits in the game, although they didn’t need it with how they pitched. Redshirt junior Collin Liberatore, pitching in his first season at ISU, threw six innings and allowed one run. Tyler Ward came in and finished the game out allowing no baserunners in three innings.

Progression is one of the best things for a coaching staff to see. Progressions was on full display this weekend as the Sycamores improved in every aspect of the game as the days passed. ISU played their most complete game of the weekend Sunday against Iona. They were strong defensively and offensively against the Gaels, with a final game score of 10-0.

The offense got a late start Sunday, but once it started, it never stopped. Like Friday, the scoring started with a sacrifice fly, this time by Luke Fegen. The Sycamores scored two more runs in the fourth inning thanks in part to an RBI single by Spencer Wiskus. Leading 3-0 going into the sixth in Wiskus. Leading 3-0 going into the sixth inning, ISU would blow the

TREES CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

Bittersweet ending for ISU track team Andrew Hile

Altheltic Media Relations

The Indiana State Women’s Track & Field team battled to a second place finish and the men took third overall at the Missouri Valley Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships this weekend at Northern Iowa.

The Sycamore women fell to Illinois State by a score of 165-135, but they defeated Southern Illinois (85), Northern Iowa (73.5), Missouri State (57), Loyola (56.5), Bradley (39), Drake (7), Valparaiso (6) and Evansville (0). The men finished third with 95.5 points and were defeated by Northern Iowa (144.5) and Illinois State (159). Finishing behind ISU was Bradley (86), Southern Illinois (79), Drake (52), Loyola (38), Valparaiso (8) and Evansville (0).

“Today was a little bittersweet, but both teams fought really hard and we just ran out of spots and places to score points,” Head Coach Angela Martin said. “We had some big points from tremendous athletes and on paper Illinois State was supposed to beat the women by over 60 points and we got it down to 30. We just didn’t have enough bodies to finish it off, but they did a great job. The guys had some high point scorers in each event and we just need to find a couple guys to add some depth and we had some areas where we didn’t score many points, so we’ve got to hit the recruiting trail.”

Senior Ayanna Morgan earned the highest honor of the championships as she was named the Most Valuable Female Athlete of the meet, meaning she scored the most points out of all competing athletes. She was also named the Most Outstanding Female Track Athlete of the meet. The Barbados native earned her second title of the meet on Sunday with a dominant performance in the 60-meter hurdles where she clocked the fastest time in school history of 8.28 en route to victory.

Morgan followed that performance with another All-MVC run in the women’s 60-meter dash finals where she clocked a time of 7.52 for third place. In the final event of the day, she was also a member of the third place 4X400-meter relay team alongside Imani Davis, Imani Hall and Rebecca Odusola. Entering the last leg of the relay in fifth, Morgan used what energy she had left to propel the team to third with a time of 3:49.32.

In the shot put, Cassaundra Roper unleashed the best throw of her career to win the crown. The redshirt senior was in an early battle with four Redbird throwers, but her first throw of finals of 16.35m (53-

Athletic Media Relations

Sycamores ended the season at Missouri Valley Conference indoor championships day two this past weekend at Northern Iowa. Jocelyn Quiles runs with her teammate Brooke Moore.

07.75) would clinch the victory and improve her fourth-best mark in school history.

Erin Reese and Kristine Lindow also pulled points in the shot put for the as Reese placed seventh at 14.66m (48-01.25) and Lindow placed eighth with a mark 14.19m (46-06.75).

Reese walked away the Most Outstanding Field Athlete for her performance in the weight throw on Saturday.

Pulling triple duty on the track on Sunday, Brooke Moore rose to the occasion and played a crucial role in the success of the women’s team. The distance star started her day with a championship in the mile run, clocking a time of 4:58.40. She then earned All-MVC by placing second in the 800-meter run, crossing the finish line at 2:10.32. Her last performance of the evening came in the 3K where she raced to a time of 10:05.16, good for eighth.

The Trees swept the podium in the women’s mile behind as Jocelyn Quiles and Jessi Conley finished second and third for All-MVC honors. Quiles raced

close behind Moore for the entire race and clocked a time of 4:59.19, while Jessi Conley battled and overtook Niamh Markham of Bradley on the backstretch to secure third with a time of 4:59.85.

“Brooke Moore, Ayanna Morgan and Imani Davis all ran four-plus races this weekend and put their bodies through torture for their team and had amazing finishes,” Martin said.

Jumping her way into the top-three in the triple jump was junior Tasjia Thomas for the blue and white. Thomas produced a strong performance to claim All-MVC honors and third place with the seventh-best jump in school history of 12.00m (39-04.50). Freshman Brittney Walker grasped a point for ISU in the triple jump as well, taking eighth with a mark of 11.07m (36-04.00).

Impressive performances weren’t limited to the women’s side of the meet, as the men picked up five All-MVC performances on the final day of competition in Cedar Falls.

Freshman sprinter JaVaughn Moore was honored as the MVC Male Freshman of the Year as he had his best performance in a Sycamore uniform on Sunday, racing to a second place finish and All-MVC honors in the 60-meter dash with the fifth-fastest time in school history of 6.78.

Moore fell to first place by just .006. He also earned a strong seventh place finish in the 200-meter dash, sprinting across the line at 22.33.

Youth continued to play a key role for the men in the 60-meter hurdles with freshman Matthew-Lewis Banks earning a spot on the podium after finishing second and posting a time of 7.97. Also scoring for the blue and white in the hurdles were Stephen Griffith in fourth with a time of 8.13, Avery Taylor in seventh at 8.26 and fellow freshman Daryl Black crossed the line in eighth at 8.31.

The distance duo of Quentin Pierce and Ryan Cash ran hard in the men’s mile run finals, with Quentin Pierce taking AllMVC honors with a time of 4:14.13 and a third place finish. Cash took the group out hard with Pierce and ended up placing fifth with a final time of 4:14.73.

Making his MVC debut, Richard Griffith came up with a huge performance for the Sycamores in the pentathlon. The redshirt junior won four out of the seven events, including all three events on Sunday to place third with 5050 points, the fifth-best point total in Sycamore history, en route to All-MVC honors. Josh Perry also upped his game and placed fifth to score for ISU with a score of 4462, the ninth-best total in school history. Noah Rogers placed eighth in the heptathlon in his first ever time doing the event with 4254 points.

In the high jump, Schultz recorded a new personal-best height of 2.06m (609.00) to take fifth place overall and make sure the Trees earned a top-five finish in the event.

All three male pole vaulters scored for Indiana State on Sunday as well. Antoine Howard led the delegation, recording a vault of 4.75m for fifth place, while Callan Whitehouse also recorded the same mark with a seventh place finish. Riley Smith rounded out the scorers in eighth at 4.60m.

The conclusion of the MVC Championships brought an end to the indoor season for both teams, but Erin Reese currently sits in 12th nationally in the weight throw with a majority of the conference championships completed. The top-16 athletes in each event go to the NCAA Championships in Birmingham, Ala., from March 8-9.