Nov. 22, 2005 | The Reflector

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VOLUME 84, ISSUE 5

NOVEMBER 22, 2005

“EDUCATION FOR SERVICE”

THE

INSIDE

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REFLECTOR

Swim teams win season opening dual meets. See Page 5.

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UNIVERSITY OF INDI HA N NA AVENUE I NDI

Faculty member researches fire fighting equipment. See Page 6.

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■ HANNA AVENUE

Plans to make Hanna Avenue safe to begin 2006 Shelly Grimes Opinion Editor Hanna Avenue will soon undergo a renovation designed to beautify the campus and enhance pedestrian safety on the busy street. The project is a partnership between the university and the City of Indianapolis and is expected to break ground sometime in 2006. The City’s multi-million dollar renovation of Hanna Avenue will stretch from US 31 to Carson. The university will incur the cost of renovation between Shelby Street and State Street, paying only for services above and beyond the city’s typical streetrepair package. The project is expected to cost the university approximately $1.2 million and will include upgraded lighting as well as plant life and trees along Hanna Avenue. “Pedestrian safety was our number one issue,” said Ken Piepenbrink, director of the physical plant. “The second issue was the opportunity to beautify Hanna Avenue and make it a showplace instead of just a hazard.” According to Piepenbrink the biggest change of the involves the metamorphosis of Hanna Avenue into a four-lane boulevard with a 12 to 16-foot median down the center, requiring the university to give up some land on each side of the street. “The center medians will be very wide, so that when you cross the street you only have to worry about the first two lanes of traffic,” Piepenbrink said. “Then, you’ll get to a safe haven area, and you can worry about crossing the second two lanes of traffic.” Another change includes moving the sidewalks away from the street so that

pedestrians will not walk right next to the road. Shrubbery will be placed between the sidewalks and the road, forcing pedestrians to cross only at designated crosswalks. The crosswalks will be 18 feet wide and paved with bricks, according to Dr. David Wantz, vice president of student affairs. “Our hope is that when you drive near campus, you’ll realize something is different due to the boulevard and the bricks, and that should immediately make [the driver] more alert,” Wantz said. A new stoplight will be added at the intersection in front of Nicoson Hall, which will force drivers to slow down. New lighting will be added so that “Hanna Avenue will be as illuminated as any of the parking lots,” Piepenbrink said. The new lights will be lower to the ground and strategically placed to enhance pedestrian safety. “Hopefully, by forcing students to go to certain locations [to cross] and by making those locations very visible and well-lit, it will make a big improvement without creating chaos,” Piepenbrink said. According to police reports, there have been at least seven students hit on Hanna Avenue since 2000. These accidents have resulted in injuries such as broken bones and concussions. According to Wantz, the majority of these accidents occur at times of poor visibility, such as at night or during rain. Wantz added, however, that the safety problem on Hanna Avenue is aggravated by the behavior of people crossing the street. “Students often step off the curb and walk without looking or making eye contact with the driver. They think that they are supposed to go and cars will

Photo by Valerie Miller

Students crossing Hanna Avenue during a mid-day class break. Hanna Avenue will be renovated in a partnership between the university and the City of Indianapolis in 2006. stop,” Wantz said. “The pedestrian has the right of way, but also has to realize that a couple-ton vehicle is more dangerous than the pedestrian’s right to cross.” The city began assessing the need to renovate Hanna Avenue in the fall of 1996. According to Piepenbrink, the city realized that there were several problems with Hanna Avenue that needed to be addressed, including flooding and pavement breaking up. The university got involved with the project, hoping that Hanna Avenue could be closed completely. “We were led to believe that we could close Hanna Avenue and reroute traffic along National,” Wantz said. “Unfortu-

nately, we didn’t talk to the neighborhood before holding a public hearing, and about 500 neighbors showed up at the meeting to yell at us. It was the worst night of my professional life to watch that happen. Here was this university that prides itself on being a school for every man that was seen as arrogant and not caring about its neighbors. We had to work very hard to overcome that.” Because of the dispute between the neighborhood and the university, the project was delayed. Neighbors remained adamant that Hanna Avenue should stay open and also opposed the idea of restricting traffic to only two lanes. The four-lane

boulevard proposal satisfied both the university’s needs and the neighborhood’s demands. Public hearings on the issue were conducted in early 2004, and the city approved the project. The project will begin whenever the city’s paperwork is complete, Piepenbrink said. A definite schedule has not yet been approved, but the project will last at least a year. Wantz said that while construction may be a nuisance, it will be worth while. “The students will have to bear with the construction,” Wantz said. “It is going to be really disruptive, but when it’s done, it will be magnificent.”

■ TORNADO

Rare fall weather hits Southern, Central Indiana The tornado that hit Southern Indiana on Sunday, Nov. 6, killed 22 people and left hundreds injured. Severe weather swept across Indiana again on Tuesday, Nov. 15. At Right: The counties with tornado symbols are where separate tornadoes were confirmed. Counties of the same color represent the tornadoes’ paths. Vanderburgh and Warrick Counties are shown in red, where an F3 tornado touched down on Nov. 6. On Nov. 15, tornadoes also touched down in Daviess and Martin Counties, shown in yellow, and Bartholomew and Shelby Counties, shown in orange. Those tornadoes were also measured as F3 tornadoes, with winds of 158 to 206 mph. An F1 tornado also touched down in Grant County, shown in blue, with winds of 73 to 112 mph.

Tonya Maxwell and Josh Noel Knight Ridder Tribune

Graphic by Valerie Miller

EVANSVILLE, Ind.--Hearing the winds whip outside his mobile home and the sound of breaking glass, Dustin Watts ordered his wife to get in the bathtub and then went to get his sons, ages 5 and 2. Watts, 28, doesn’t know what happened next. But he thinks the tornado that killed at least 22 people when it struck northern Kentucky and southern Indiana early Sunday, Nov. 6 tossed his home into the air. “I don’t know if it flipped over but it felt like it did,” Watts said as he sat on concrete steps that used to lead to his trailer but on that Sunday afternoon connected to nothing. The frame of his trailer sat about 20 feet away in Eastbrook Mobile Home Park outside Evansville, Ind. Though one of his boys suffered head injuries and was hospitalized, Watts and the rest of his family were relatively lucky compared to their neighbors in the trailer park, the site of the most fatalities from the tornado. By evening, Vanderburgh County officials estimated that at least 17 people had been killed in the trailer park, where 144 of the 350 mobile homes were either obliterated or left uninhabitable. Five other people died in nearby Warrick County, Ind. “If we’re lucky that’s going to be it, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to go up,” said Don Erk, Vanderburgh County coroner, who said three children were among the dead found so far. The death toll from the tornado, which struck around 2 a.m., was Indiana’s worst since 1974, when a string of twisters hit 13 states and southern Canada, killing 351 people, including 47 in Indiana, according to the Indiana Department of Homeland Security. The tornado more than tripled the U.S.

tornado death toll for the year. Until then, only 10 people had been killed in tornadoes this year, according to the National Weather Service. St. Mary’s Medical Center in Evansville and its sister hospital in Warrick County treated about 180 people for injuries from blunt head and chest trauma to broken bones and cuts. Thirty-two were admitted, including 14 in critical condition, a spokesman said. Deaconess Hospital in Evansville treated 46 people, admitting 31, including six in critical condition. Emergency rescue officials blamed the timing of the tornado for the number of injuries and fatalities. “If people are at work, they wouldn’t have been in their residences and there probably would have been more communication,” said Maj. Stephen Woodall of the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office. “At that time of the morning, most people are asleep.” Authorities said sirens blared in many of the communities, and the emergency broadcast system was activated to alert people to the coming storm. But officials believe many people slept through the warnings or could not hear the sirens because of the winds. While crews picked through debris looking for people, firefighters in Warrick County hopped on all-terrain vehicles, searching farm fields for storm victims, said Matt Timmel, assistant chief of the Newburgh Volunteer Fire Department. A man and wife were found dead in a bean field that was located about a quarter of a mile from their trailer, he added. In another incident, people were blown from their beds, waking up outside with cuts and bruises, said Sgt. Scott Whitlow of the Warrick County Sheriff’s Office. Tornado continued on p. 3

News at a Glance OBSERVATORY Sara Roberts Staff Writer The Noblitt Observatory in Lilly Science Hall was opened on Nov. 11 and 12 to give people a chance to see Mars. The observatory was opened because Mars was supposed to be closer to the earth than it has been for nearly 20 years. Tim Duman, assistant professor of physics and earth space sciences, said the observatory is usually only opened for viewings and special occasions. “The problem in Indiana to view the stars is it’s kind of hard to see through the clouds,” he said. “If you schedule a viewing you have to wait for the clouds to dissipate. It’s hit or miss.” On Friday Nov. 11 approximately 30-40 people attended the observation. Junior meteorology ma-

jor Mary Riedeman said she was interested in the chance to see Mars because she enjoys science. “I’ve always had an interest in astronomy. I’m interested in meteorology,” Riedeman said. “If it’s science, and I get a chance to experience it firsthand, I’m all for it.” Riedeman said it was hard to view Mars. “I really was hoping to see the color of Mars and maybe some features,” she said. “When I looked into the telescope, it was actually more like a white dot.” Duman said Mars and others planets are a little harder to view than stars and the earth’s moon; however most planets are viewable through the telescope. Some things he said were easily viewed included Jupiter and its Galilean moons, Saturn and its rings and solar eclipses.

MIX IT UP AT LUNCH Crystle Collins News Editor The University of Indianapolis participated along with schools across the country taking part in a national program to break down cultural barriers. The program called ‘Mix it up at Lunch Day,” encouraged students to sit with people outside of their cultural group. PRIDE instituted the program in order to get students to move outside their comfortable friend settings and meet new people. The program was started by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s of Birmingham, Ala. The center was originally founded in 1971 as a civil rights law firm. It is internationally known for tolerance education programs, including www.

Tolerance.org. “Essentially, the program was selected in response to a discussion organized by PRIDE earlier this semester in which the students expressed a serious concern about the cultural borders that are reinforced and refined on campus,” said Terrence Harewood, Assistant Professor of Education. The program is designed, according to Harewood, to promote cross-cultural contact on campus as a catalyst for deeper intercultural relationship and communication among all the various cultural groups. “The program was a great start but should be implemented more often, perhaps once a month to have a significant impact,” Harewood said. “Mix it up” took place in middle schools, high schools and universities all across the nation.


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Nov. 22, 2005 | The Reflector by reflectoruindy - Issuu