Wednesday, March 29, 2017
IDS Indiana Daily Student | idsnews.com
Delay in rape case against Messel
LITTLE 500
ITTs
By Nyssa Kruse nakruse@iu.edu | @NyssaKruse
VICTOR GROSSLING | IDS
Alpha Sigma Alpha begins the second lap of qualifications Saturday at the Bill Armstrong Stadium. Alpha Sigma Alpha qualified for the 2017 Little 500 Bike Race with a time of 02:45.4.
Spring series kicks off today with ITTs By Patrick Wisdom pwisdom@umail.iu.edu | @wiskhalifa17
Everyone knows about qualifications and the Little 500 race, but the events between the two can often go overlooked. With individual time trials slated for Wednesday, it’s time to get to know what they’re all about. ITTs are part of a group of three events between qualifications and the Little 500 race known as the spring series. The events have no real effect on the race, but they do have some predictive trends. The top five women’s teams in last year’s spring series all finished in the top five in the Little 500 race. In addition to being a good forecast for a team’s race prospects, spring series helps riders fulfill some necessary requirements. To be eligible to participate in the Little 500 race, riders must compete in at least two spring series events, with ITTs scheduled as the first of the three. The
other two events, Miss N Out and team pursuit, will take place April 1 and April 9, respectively. There are a total of 95 heats in this year’s ITTs, with four riders in each heat. The heats are scheduled so they alternate between men and women. The first heat starts at 3 p.m., and the last heat is scheduled for 11:10 p.m. If spectators can only go for part of the time, Little 500 Race Director Andrea Balzano recommends going to the latter half. “Between 8:45 and 10, we have our fastest heats,” Balzano said. “At 8:55, we have our fastest men’s heat. At 9, we have our fastest women’s heats. We call that our power hour.” ITTs are different from other Little 500 events in that they are the only event that is individual-oriented. The four riders in each heat begin in a separate corner of the track. They are not allowed to be sitting on the bike before the gun sounds. When the gun goes off, the clock begins, and each rider completes four laps
Men’s ITT preview, page 5 Three of the top five finishers in 2016 will return for the 2017 individual time trials. IDSNEWS.COM LIVE TWITTER UPDATES | Follow @ids_little500 for updates from our reporters throughout the night.
around the track and finishes in the corner where he or she began. After the riders finish their fourth lap, the clock stops, and the riders are given their times. These times are then ranked from lowest to highest. With last year’s champion, Tabitha Sherwood of Phoenix, having graduated, there is no chance for a repeat winner this year. It’s reasonable to suspect the fastest time to come from the women’s heat slated for 9 p.m. The four women in the heat SEE ITTS, PAGE 4
Court proceedings for a new rape charge against Daniel Messel — the man convicted for the 2015 murder of IU student Hannah Wilson — were pushed back from Tuesday until the end of May to allow further investigation and preparation. Messel, 51, was charged with rape and other lesser charges in October 2016 after DNA evidence linked him to a rape reported in 2012 by an IU student. Messel is currently serving an 80-year sentence in Indiana State Prison for Wilson’s murder. In the 2012 case, a student reported that a man she did not know offered her a ride after she had been out drinking, according to the probable cause affidavit. He drove her to a secluded parking spot in the woods near Griffy Lake, where he forced his penis into her mouth. She tried to fight him off, and he hit her so hard it “knocked the contact out of her eye and she was spitting blood.” He drove away, and the student found help from residents nearby. The woman’s underwear was found at the scene the next day. After reading a news story about the Wilson case, the 2012 victim felt her case was “eerily similar” and called the IU Police Department to say she believed Messel might be her attacker. DNA collected in 2012 from under her fingernails was compared to Messel’s, and the samples matched. He was charged with rape only a few weeks after his trial for Wilson’s murder, and he is now appealing his conviction in that case. He has until April 13 to file a brief explaining his reasons for appeal, after which the appeal will be approved or denied.
IUSA ticket disputes election results, asks for judicial review By Jesse Naranjo jlnaranj@indiana.edu | @jesselnaranjo
FUAD PONJEVIC | IDS
The Muslim Students Association’s event included a break in the action for a prayer at sunset Tuesday evening.
Muslim Student Association encourages cultural understanding with awareness week By Kelly Evans evanskn@indiana.edu | @knickele5
The Muslim Student Association is in the midst of it’s Islam Awareness Week. They have organized one event each day to promote cultural understanding of their religion, whether that’s answering a question and receiving a root beer float or having several women discuss their experiences with Islam.
Tuesday evening, several Muslim women said Islam was a source of hope for them at the Muslima Monologues event. This is the third event organized by MSA for Islam Awareness Week. The presenters at this event discussed their personal challenges, including sexual assault and violence, societal judgment, and the meaning of the hijab, through storytelling and poetry-type
discussion. Monday was national Muslim Women’s Day and the first day of Islam Awareness Week at IU. Board member and public relations chair for the Muslim Student Association sophomore Luma Khabbaz said the organization didn’t intend for Muslim Women’s Day and the Muslima Monologues to overlap. SEE AWARENESS, PAGE 4
LIVE UPDATES | MULTIMEDIA | + MORE
Engage with IUSA filed a petition for writ of certiorari, or request for judicial review, in IU Student Association Supreme Court on Sunday after a five-ticket election resulted in the Empower IU ticket taking first place in preliminary vote rankings. The petition, filed Sunday, is an appeal to the Election Commission’s dismissal of Engage’s five complaints, which asked the court to review this decision and order the commission to accept the complaints. They were initially denied in a 5-4 decision because they were submitted as Word documents instead of PDFs. Engage’s case relies on the fact that the procedural election code, which IUSA bylaws state must be posted before the first day of the spring semester, was not published until March. The revised code was not approved by congress until Feb. 21. The Engage ticket also argues that because the PDF requirement isn’t contained within the election code, this should make its complaints’ dismissal void. The release of the petition comes in the wake of rumors that
final vote tallies were leaked to multiple tickets, though it is unclear where the allegations originated. This election season the commission announced it would calculate vote percent deductions and other campaign violations before looking at actual vote counts. The commission has said they are keeping to this rule. The only public documentation of the alleged leaks is a screenshot of a Facebook Messenger conversation between junior Samuel Patterson, of the disbanded Refund Supreme ticket,and a person on Empower IU’s campaign, which was presented as evidence in reply to a complaint filed by Patterson. The initial complaint was rejected for deficiency, but Empower’s presidential candidate Dan Niersbach, a junior, said his ticket replied to every complaint made against it at the suggestion of the commission. “We allege that Empower IUSA has violated election code section 307,” Patterson wrote in his complaint. “They have accessed the voter totals and leaked it, intentionally unblinding the election commission.” He went on to accuse the SEE IUSA, PAGE 4
idsnews.com & @idsnews
APRIL 1ST @ 7:00pm & APRIL 2ND @ 5:00pm Buskirk-Chumley Theater, 114 E Kirkwood Ave
Single Day General Admission $16.50
Festival Pass $30
Tickets on sale through the BCT Box Office 812.323.3020 w w w. b u s k i r kc h u m l ey.o rg
9=>/. ,CN
37?L38.3+8+L/.?l+->3@3>3/=l9?>.99<[+.@/8>?</=l/@/8>=L