WELCOME BACK
Welcome Back Edition 2019
IDS
THIS IS YOUR GUIDE TO WHAT HAPPENED WHILE YOU WERE AWAY.
Just because the majority of IU students leave campus doesn’t mean things stop happening. We have all the stories to get you caught up. From a tornado devastating some Monroe County homes, to Indiana farmers struggling with
Indiana Daily Student | idsnews.com
Bob Knight buys local house, could move back
environmental effects on crop yields, to the twentieth anniversary of the murder of an IU graduate student by a white supremacist, the summer has been eventful. In this special edition, you can read some of our coverage from this summer.
NEWS • PAGES 2-7 PHOTOS • PAGES 9-13 SPORTS • PAGES 15-22 ARTS • PAGES 23-27
In June, a vendor at the farmers’ market was accused of ties to a white supremacist organization. What followed was dramatic. A protestor was arrested. A city struggled to quell tensions. Here’s how it all started.
By Dylan Wallace dswallac@iu.edu | @Dwall_1
After former IU basketball Coach Bob Knight returned to Bloomington for his first-known public appearance on April 6 for a IU vs Penn State baseball game, speculation circled about whether or not Knight missed the city in which he coached at for 29 years. His return made Hoosier fans happy, and now Knight's face could potentially be seen much more in Bloomington. Recently filed property transfer records in the Monroe County Assessor's Office obtained by The Herald-Times show that a just-built house in the 1500 block of South Andrew Circle in the Shadow Creek neighborhood was sold to Robert M. Knight and Karen Knight, his wife, on July 2. The 4,800-square-foot house reportedly has five bedrooms and four bathrooms and sold for $572,500. Knight was fired from IU Sept. 10, 2000, after winning three National Championships with the program, along with 11 Big Ten Championships and 661 wins, making him the winningest coach in program history. He was fired after violating a zero-tolerance policy that was put on him in May of 2000. Fans were upset and protested the streets, but Knight officially bid farewell to the program Sept. 13 in Dunn Meadow in front of an estimated crowd of 6,000 people. He went on to coach at Texas Tech University in 2001 and decided to retire in 2008. Knight declared his intent to never return to IU on The Dan Patrick Show in 2017. “Well, I think I've always really enjoyed the fans, and I always will. On my dying day, I'll think about how great the fans at Indiana were,” SEE KNIGHT, PAGE 16
H A T E IDS FILE PHOTO
By Ellen Hine emhine@iu.edu | @ellenmhine
During the market season, people rise at the crack of dawn, grab their reusable bags and head downtown to stock up on bright red tomatoes, rainbow-colored carrots and crisp green beans. The Bloomington Farmers’ Market has been a touchstone of the community for years. But over the past week it’s become the center of a fierce debate about white supremacy and freedom of speech. On June 4, IU Ph.D. student Abby Ang submitted a letter
with more than 200 co-signers demanding the removal of a vendor named Schooner Creek Farm from the Bloomington Farmers’ Market. The letter claimed owners of the farm, Sarah Dye and Douglas Mackey, are members of Identity Evropa, a white nationalist group. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies Identity Evropa as a hate group. The group posted fliers in 2017 on the office doors of faculty members of color in IU’s Maurer School of Law and Ballantine Hall. Ang presented messages found in white supremacist chat rooms she and others claimed were post-
ed by Dye under the name Volkmom. She also linked to FBI testimony from Nolan Brewer, who will serve 3 years in federal prison after vandalizing a Carmel, Indiana, synagogue. Brewer identified Volkmom as a woman named Sarah and said he had met her and her husband Douglas through Identity Evropa. That couple was the same couple running Schooner Creek Farm, Ang said. She and the other co-signers demanded the farmers’ market remove them as a vendor or face official complaints to the Indiana State Health Department
Posso, Flores plead not guilty in son’s death By Annie Aguiar aguiara@iu.edu | @annabelaguiar
Editor's note: This story contains details of child neglect and abuse some readers might find disturbing. In the last days of 12-year-old Eduardo Posso's life, he told his 9-year-old sister he just wanted to juggle and be free. Instead, he grew weaker and more emaciated, restrained with chains and made to wear an electric dog shock collar in the bathtub of room 108 at the Economy Inn his father Luis Posso, 32, and stepmother Dayana Medina Flores, 25, were staying in with him and his three siblings, according to a probable cause affidavit. Last Friday, at 2:52 a.m., Posso carried an unconscious Eduardo into the emergency room of IU Health Bloomington Hospital. Thirteen minutes later, he was pronounced dead. A week after Eduardo's death, Posso and Flores appeared in court to enter preliminary pleas of not guilty at an initial hearing at the Charlotte T. Zietlow Justice Center in downtown Bloomington. The pleas will become formal pleas of not guilty within 20 days unless Posso and Flores enter differently. Both are charged with murder in addition to neglect of a dependent, criminal confinement and battery. They are being held with-
ALEX DERYN | IDS
A photograph of Eduardo Posso sits on a table May 28 at the Monroe County Sheriff ’s Department. Eduardo, who was 12, experienced neglect of a dependent and domestic battery before being pronounced dead.
out bail and were both assigned public defenders. Posso and Flores worked as promoters for Cirque Italia, travelling state to state handing out fliers for the circus. Posso told Judge Marc Kellams the family lived from paycheck to paycheck. Flores, who only speaks Spanish, was accompanied by interpreter Lisa Hernandez for her initial hearing. Flores sniffled as she walked into the courtroom. Flores told police Eduardo be-
came sick May 23, eventually becoming too weak to feed himself or form coherent sentences. Early in the morning of May 24, Eduardo was cold to the touch, unresponsive and wasn’t breathing. Posso and Flores decided then to send him to the hospital with Posso. At the hospital, Posso was unable to explain what was wrong with Eduardo, only describing him as skinny. At a Tuesday press conference, Monroe County Sheriff ’s Office Lt. Jennifer Allen said Eduardo had
0% body fat. He weighed about 50 pounds. Posso and Flores were sent to the sheriff ’s office for interviews based on the condition of Eduardo’s body. He was severely emaciated and covered in bruises, lacerations and ulcers. A later autopsy revealed signs of starvation, neglect and physical abuse. Posso admitted to spanking Eduardo with a leather belt, a flip flop and his hand in an interview with police at the hospital, but denied withholding food from the child. The family is originally from Florida, and Flores told police they have no permanent address and moved from place to place every couple of weeksfor work and lived out of hotel rooms. The family had been living at the Economy Inn for about a week. Police searched Posso’s cell phone, hotel room and car. A text in Spanish sent between Posso and Flores’ cell phones on April 16 was translated to read, “Eduardo was almost out of the chains.” A search of the hotel room discovered metal chains, cordage, restraint cuffs, padlocks, an electric shock dog collar and a wireless surveillance camera. The items were found underneath the box springs of one of
SEE POSSO, PAGE 6
People walk through the aisles of vendors at the Bloomington Community Farmers' Market near City Hall. A letter sent June 4 alleges a vendor at the market, Schooner Creek Farm, is owned by white supremacists.
and United States Department of Agriculture. The Bloomington Farmers’ Market responded. It told Ang it would not remove Schooner Creek Farm. “To our knowledge, this vendor has not shared these views at Market and has treated customers with respect,” said Marcia Veldman, program/facility coordinator for Bloomington’s Parks and Recreation Department, in an email response to Ang. “The City is constitutionally prohibited from discriminating against someone because of their belief system, no matter how abhorrent those views may be. The City may only intercede if an individual's actions violate the safety and human rights of others.” * * * The first comment is innocuous enough. “Thanks @Deleted User,” Volkmom posted Sept. 9, 2017. It’s the start of a year and a half of comments on the popular messaging app Discord. Unicorn Riot, a reporting collective focused on covering social and environmental issues, released Volkmom’s messages in March 2019 as part of a 770,000-post leak from Identity Evropa servers on Discord. The leak revealed Identity Evropa helped plan the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to a post on Unicorn Riot. Volkmom posted frequently on the group’s main server, “Nice Respectable People Group” and another titled “MacGuyver - Skills & Academics.” “Volk” is a German word for people. It and the adjective “voelkisch,” which means "people’s", were used by the Nazis to distinguish Germans from those they labeled inferior, according to the BBC. In some of her comments, Volkmom wrote about farming and posted pictures of her vegetables under the hashtag “gardening.” Some of her comments were a mixture of the mundane and the extreme. She wrote about homeschooling her kids and giving people rec SEE MARKET, PAGE 4
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