WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2013 | THE BALL STATE DAILY NEWS | BSUDAILY.COM | PAGE 3
NEWS
Pulitzer prize-winning author speaks Washington Post, MSNBC contributor discusses race, past KATE FITTES CHIEF REPORTER | EMMA emfittes@bsu.edu
DN PHOTO BOBBY ELLIS
The Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson speaks about the current state of racial relations in America on Tuesday in Pruis Hall. The event, which was part of Unity Week, featured a question and answer portion, during which Robinson addressed how media affects politics.
SHOOTING: Texas campus remain closed for hours | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 At least 10 police cars clustered on the campus’ west side as emergency personnel tended to the wounded and loaded them on stretchers. Students led by officers ran from the buildings where they had been hiding as police evacuated the campus. Keisha Cohn, 27, who also is studying to be a paramedic, said she was inside a building about 50 feet away from where the shots were fired. She heard “no less than five” shots and started running. She fled to the campus learning center, which houses computers and study areas. Eventually, a deputy showed up and escorted people out, she said. Like many students, she ended up leaving her car on the cam-
pus, which reopened after 4 p.m. Tuesday. Daniel Flores, 19, was in a second-floor tutoring lab with about 60 people when he heard a noise that sounded “like someone was kicking a door.” Once he and others realized the sound was gunfire, they fled to the nearby student services center, where authorities kept them for about 30 minutes before letting them go. Cody Harris, 20, said he was in a classroom with about six or seven other students waiting for a psychology class to start when he heard eight shots. He and other students looked at each other, said “I guess we should get out of here,” and fled. “I was just worried about getting out,” Harris said. “I called my grandmother and asked her to pick me up.`”
tional MSNBC family.” “Whoever says this country hasn’t changed in the time they’ve been alive, I’m here to tell you that it has,” Robinson said. Robinson said the Orangeburg Massacre of 1968, in which three young men were killed by state patrol officers’ fire during a nonviolent protest, happened maybe 400 yards outside of his childhood home. He credits that event with being “a lot of the reason” why he became a journalist, when two years later he wrote an awardwinning essay for his freshman English class at the University of Michigan. Robinson then fast-forwarded to the 2008 general election night with his MSNBC crew at the Rockefellar Center. “Something in the back of my mind is saying, ‘No this isn’t happening’… and at 10:45 p.m. we hear through our earpieces that the network is going to call the
Pruis Hall filled nearly to capacity with students, faculty and community members who came to hear a 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner as part of this year’s Ball State Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration. The Washington Post and MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson, focused his speech around the question, “Is America Living the Dream?” He gave his answer by highlighting a few events in his life from when he was born in segregated Orangeburg, S.C. in 1954 to experiencing President Barack Obama’s re-election with his “intense and dysfunc-
Amid criticism of Ball State’s evaluation program as a charter school authorizer, the university announced that several schools will not have their charters renewed. Ball State has chosen not to renew seven of its 20 reviewed charter schools based on their failure in three key criterion: academic performance, financial well-being and organizations compliance, said Robert Marra, executive director of the Office of Charter Schools. “The decision process was based on a cap review of each criterion,” Marra said. “We provided them [with] a meaningful opportunity to fix that [and]
from there we made our decision not to renew them.” As well as choosing not to renew seven schools, the Office of Charter Schools also resigned seven schools for a three-year period with performance conditions, a sign that these schools were on the edge of failing the renewal process. These conditions will be closely tied to academic performance and governance, Marra said, which allows Ball State to make a meaningful evaluation of scholastic progress at a more direct level. Two of the charter schools, Hoosier Academy in Muncie and West Gary Lighthouse Charter School in Gary, Ind., withdrew their application, for renewal. The schools could not be reached for comment at time of publication. Marra said his office had been working with the reviewed schools for the last two years on a framework to drive
| CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 While the 18- to 21-year-old group is not limited to colleges, binge drinking has its place among university concerns. “As academics, our true reason for being part of a community like this is that we have a strong affection for our students,” McGeary said. “I definitely get very concerned about these types of behaviors, because we do see in campuses with more binge drinking higher rates of crimes, accidents, all sorts of things. Death, even, in some cases from alcohol poisoning.” Some students said they think binge drinking has its perks. “You’re more sociable, you meet a lot of new friends and you have a good time in general,” Haley Hunter, a sophomore psychology major, said. “On the flip side, you can have a hangover, you sometimes do stupid stuff, the list goes on.”
For others, it’s just another form of entertainment. “I’d say I choose to binge drink on occasion for a lack of anything better to do,” sophomore telecommunications major Jack Smith said. Another area the group examined closely was income. “Our hypothesis was that people with high income tend to drink moderately, but according to these results, we’re going to have to reject our [hypothesis],” Mhlanga-Fichani said. About 17 percent of adults with annual household incomes from $15,000 to $25,999 binge drink, as opposed to 21 percent of adults making $50,000 to $74,999. “We do find that people drink heavier and binge drink more when you get older and you have higher incomes because it is kind of expensive,” McGeary said. “We see drinking increasing with income.”
LOSING CHARTER • Charter School of the Dunes • Imagine Indiana Life Sciences Academy-East • Imagine MASTer Academy • Imagine Schools on Broadway • Kenneth A. Christmon STEMM Leadership Academy •LEAD College Preparatory Charter School •Timothy L. Johnson Academy strong school performance. A major part of that was a stronger review process that was changed from every five years to annually. The schools that failed to reauthorize will lose their Ball State charter on June 30, which means students will not have to leave their school mid-semester. “There will be a school fair to give parents information, Ball State will oversee that,” Marra said. “We will make sure the parents and the students have adequate time to look at the
information and find a new school before the beginning of the next semester in August.” State law permits a child that has been removed from a charter school based on the school closing to bring their state funding with them to another institution. Students would still have to apply for acceptance to the new school. Moving forward, the Office of Charter Schools hopes this will make the Ball State charter school program more successful, Marra said, emphasizing the new standards in place to enhance student and school performance. “It is my hope for our framework to be the usable example for rigorous standards and accountability for other authorizers,” Marra said. “So we are not necessarily looking for five more schools to take these places, our whole priority is quality, so we will only looking for quality charter schools.”
GOVERNOR EXPLAINS VISION FOR IND. Pence plans to push vocational training, tax cuts in address | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mike Pence used his first State of the State address Tuesday night to lobby for a personal income tax cut, an expansion of Indiana’s school voucher system and improved vocational training. The new Republican governor highlighted the stories of three families he said showed the need to expand Indiana’s 2011 schools overhaul, improve veterans services and refocus the state’s education and business communities on the vocational training. “We can put Hoosiers back to work and make Indiana first — first in job creation, first in education and first in quality of life,” he said. Pence, who took office last
week, offered little new in terms of what he will seek in his first year in office, instead using his speech before a joint session of the Indiana House and Senate to lobby for an austere state budget built around a 10 percent cut in the state’s personal income tax. That would reduce the income tax rate from 3.4 percent to 3.06 percent. Pence was firm about the potential loss of $500 million a year in tax revenue. “Let’s be honest with our fellow Hoosiers: We can afford to do this,” he said. The GOP holds overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate. Republican leaders, however, have expressed skepticism at the idea of putting a tax cut ahead of school spending following years of education cuts. Democratic leaders praised Pence for his speech and thanked him for including some of their priorities in his
State alumna Clarise Mason said the event was a great opportunity for students and community members to hear from someone who lived through history. “I think it is always great to hear a personal story, and he was born in 1954, right in the middle of all of this.” Mason said. Jaxx Simmons, a freshman physical therapy major, enjoyed the speech but thought some of the audience’s questions were offensive. “I just think that some people should stop referring to others as minorities,” Simmons said. “Certain people who are unintelligent about something should not refer to others as minorities. It is very disrespectful, it is very rude and it is actually a racial term. She’s lucky she left. I wasn’t going to fight her, I was just going to tell her.” Robinson’s message was clear — America continues to progress toward equality.
ALCOHOL: Men, Hispanics more prominent in report
Ball State announces 7 charters will not be renewed after June 2013 University sponsored schools didn’t meet 3 key standards CHRIS STEPHENS CHIEF REPORTER | castephens@bsu.edu
election for Obama at 11.” Robinson said. “I thought, ‘When they call the election for Obama, they are going to turn to the black guy, so I have to figure out something to say.’” Robinson said he got to call his 92-year-old father during a short break to tell him that he had lived long enough to see the election of the first AfricanAmerican president of the United States, just a few months before he died. Robinson jumped once again to election night 2012, back again with his MSNBC family, this time without that voice of doubt in the back of his mind. “In our 400-year conflict with race that started in 1619, when the first slave came to Jamestown ... 400 years we’ve been at this,” Robinson said. “And it struck me that it might be even more significant that a black president could be re-elected.” Community member and Ball
first-year agenda, including a promise to send more state contracts to veteran-owned businesses. But they said they expected more from him, specifically on how he would create jobs. “I think I was hoping for a bit more of a bolder approach in terms of ideas and resources to really empower workers to bridge that skills gap,” said Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson. The audience of lawmakers, state officials, lobbyists and Pence’s family applauded the governor more than 25 times, standing five times as they saved some of their heartiest plaudits for the three Hoosier families Pence picked to highlight his priorities. Pence highlighted the story of the Rodney and Melita Davis family of Indianapolis, whose daughter attends the Trader’s Point Christian Academy, in backing a continuation of what is already the coun-
try’s largest private school voucher program. “I have long believed that parents should be able to choose where their children go to school, regardless of their income.” Pence said. “We must continue to expand educational opportunities, especially for those with the fewest resources.” Pence pointed to Bill Beach, owner of New Albany-based Beach Mold and Tool, as one reason to reinvest in vocational training for high school students. Pence said Beach’s father told him as a teenager that his brother would go to college while he would go to a vocational school since he was good working with his hands. Beach started his company is 1972. The governor called for creating regional councils that would work with businesses and educators to tailor high school vocational programs to available jobs.
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McGeary said she is also interested in how the economy and recession affect drinking in Indiana. “Because the alcohol tax hasn’t changed very much and hasn’t been adjusted for inflation, alcohol has gotten much more affordable, so the real price of alcohol has fallen tremendously in the last few decades,” she said. “Even though it’s become more affordable, it still costs money, when it’s between alcohol and feeding your kids.”
DN|BRIEF
Currently, alcohol in Indiana is taxed based on type. Beer is taxed at approximately 11 cents per gallon, liquor at $2.68 per gallon and wine at 47 cents per gallon. Heavy drinking, two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women, was also analyzed, where men were much more prominent than women and Hispanics more prominent than other ethnicities. Education seems to have little to no effect on binge drinking or heavy drinking. McGeary said the report could be a wake-up call for people who drink regularly. “Alcohol has not come under fire as much as, for instance, as smoking,” she said. “In general, I think it is one of the more dangerous behaviors that we have as a nation because of all of the problems that can happen. It’s something to be much more aware of than we are.”
MCT PHOTO
Nate Ruess of the band Fun. performs during the Inaugural Ball on Monday in Washington, D.C. Fun. will perform at Ball State on Friday, and ticket sales open for non-students today.
TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE FOR FUN. SHOW Tickets for indie pop band Fun.’s concert at Ball State are now available to non-students. Tickets were originally available for only Ball State students, but the John R. Emen’s Box Office announced in an email on Monday that tickets will go on sale today for students and one non-affiliated guest, as well as for faculty and staff members. The general public will be able to purchase tickets Thursday. Tickets are still limited to two per person, and are $5 for students and $10-$15 for all other tickets at the box office. Bob Myers, director of Emens Auditorium, said approximately 50 tickets were sold Tuesday. The highly anticipated show will take place Friday at 8 p.m. Opening for the band is Andrew McMahon of Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin. -EVIE LICHTENWALTER
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