Herald-Times articles
Aug. 30, 2006
Court says IU doesn't have to reveal details of Knight firing
by Steve Hinnefeld
August 30, 2006
Indiana University doesn't have to make public a report on an investigation of whether Bob Knight choked an IU basketball player, a judge has ruled.
Morgan Superior Judge Jane Spencer Craney said two IU trustees were acting as attorneys, not university officials, when they investigated the allegations by former player Neil Reed.
That means their report was attorney "work product" and exempt from disclosure under the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, she said.
The ruling last week came in response to a public-records lawsuit by the Indianapolis Star, which wanted access to records related to IU's firing of Knight as men's basketball coach in September 2000.
Craney, serving as special judge in the Monroe Circuit Court case, initially ruled in favor of the university. But the Indiana Court of Appeals said in 2003 that IU might have to release the Reed report if the trustees, John Walda and Fred Eichhorn, acted as university officials.
The appeals court said another document sought by the Star - a police report on an altercation involving Knight and an IU student - was a law-enforcement investigation report and didn't have to be released.
Myles Brand, then the IU president, asked Walda and Eichhorn in 2000 to investigate Reed's claims in a TV interview that Knight choked him at practice, ordered Brand to leave Assembly Hall and waved soiled toilet paper at players.
Craney had a hearing in August 2005 on whether Walda and Eichhorn acted as attorneys. Brand said he turned to them because they were attorneys.
Walda left the IU board in 2002, and Eichhorn stepped down in 2005.
IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre said Tuesday that university officials were pleased with the ruling but hadn't studied it and couldn't comment on specifics.
Kevin Betz, an Indianapolis attorney who represents the Star, said officials at the newspaper had not decided whether to appeal.
In a related case, the state appeals court ruled in June that the trustees didn't violate the Open Door Law when they talked about firing Knight in closed-door meetings. The appeals court ruled the meetings weren't covered by the law because a majority of the board wasn't present at one time.
Ivy Tech enrollment increases by 21.7 %: Figures released Tuesday show 4,570 students at school
by Steve Hinnefeld
August 30, 2006
Ivy Tech Community College-Bloomington released final fall-semester enrollment figures Tuesday, and they set another record: 4,570 students, up 21.7 percent from last year.
John Whikehart, the chancellor of Ivy Tech-Bloomington, said new programs and the increased ease of transferring credits to Indiana University have spurred the growth.
"Actually I'm quite amazed," he said. When Ivy Tech moved to a new campus in 2002, he said, "we knew someday we would have close to 4,600 students, but we never dreamed it would be within four years."
Last week, the state office of Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana released figures showing Bloomington enrollment at 4,495 on Aug. 21, the first day of classes for 2006-07. The final number released Tuesday by Ivy Tech-Bloomington included 75 students who signed up for classes last week.
Whikehart said the campus has added course sections and hired more adjunct faculty. He said the growth is straining the four-year-old campus.
"Parking is going to be an issue even more quickly than classroom space is," he said. Faculty and staff park at the nearby Tree of Life building, but the Ivy Tech parking lot still fills up.
When the campus opened in 2002, it had 2,663 students. Since then it has grown by 72 percent. But with 23 Ivy Tech campuses around the state, Bloomington isn't at the top of the list for an expansion.
"We have the number of students in the building this year that it was projected we would have by 2011," Whikehart said.
Setbacks don't sink 78-year-old champion: Masters swimmer Monica Ullmann, 78, of Norway, working on her thesis at IU
by Dann Denny
August 30, 2006
Monica Ullmann has suffered a stroke, undergone a mastectomy and had her left knee replaced.
But those setbacks have not slowed the 78-year-old Norwegian, who remains a world-class swimmer.
She's won 48 Norwegian Masters championships, plus a dozen Scandinavian and European championships.
"Competing gives me a reward for all the training I do," said Ullmann, who's spending five weeks at Indiana University doing research for a thesis on Masters swimming for her master's degree in sports medicine.
"Because of my swimming, people know who I am and admire me."
Ullmann is a master understater as well as a Masters swimmer. In Norway, Ullmann enjoys rock star status in the world of Masters swimming.
Her dominance in the pool over the past two decades has made her Norway's unabashed ambassador for the sport.
She has helped spawn a surge of interest in Masters swimming - age-group swimming that begins at age 25 internationally, 18 in the U.S.
"The number of swimmers in the 20-to-30-year age bracket are fairly small," said Joel Stager, the director of IU's Counsilman Center for the Science of Swimming and Ullmann's host. "But there is a huge number of Masters swimmers between age 30 and 60."
Stager, an outstanding Masters swimmer himself, said more than 6,000 swimmers competed in the world championships this summer at Stanford University.
Started at age 60
In the 1980s, Ullmann was an out-of-shape attorney and real estate broker. "I was a workaholic," she said. "I didn't have time for exercise."
But while spending a few months selling property in Deerfield Beach, Fla., she decided to try swimming.
In 1988, at age 60, she joined a Masters swimming team in Florida.
Later that year, just three months after having her right breast removed because of cancer, she won three national Masters titles in Norway.
"During the 800-meter race, I thought I was going to drown," she said. "But I kept going because I wanted to show other women that swimming is the best medicine for all their physical problems."
'Like a big blue sky'
Today, Ullmann swims 1,500 meters a day, the equivalent of 60 lengths of the lap pool at the Monroe County YMCA.
"When I swim, I feel like I'm up in the big, blue sky," she said. "The water feels like silk around my body. I find it very inspiring."
Ullmann admits she would like to swim more each day, but said she's learned that overtraining yields diminishing returns.
"Three years ago, I swam 90,000 meters over six weeks (2,143 meters a day)," she said. "Two weeks later, when I competed in the Norwegian national championships, my arms and legs were dead."
A year ago, her limbs felt weak for another reason - she'd suffered a stroke.
"I couldn't even hold a telephone in my hand," she said. "And I couldn't put any weight on my left foot."
Ullmann had been training for the European Masters championships in Stockholm, Sweden, scheduled for five weeks later.
"My doctor would not let me drive for a month, so I couldn't get to the pool to train," she said. "I had to miss the championships. It was especially disappointing because that was the city where I was born."
Last Christmas, Ullmann's arthritic knee became so painful that she had it replaced. Ten days later, she was back in the pool.
Today, she has her sights set on the world championships in Australia, scheduled for the spring of 2008.
"It would be my first world championship meet," she said. "And I would be the youngest in my age class."
Exercise is life's best tonic
Ullmann now lives in Lillehammer, Norway, home of the 1994 Winter Olympic Games. When not working on her master's degree, she is in the water.
"The more I study Masters swimming in aging people, the more I see how important it is for aging folks to engage it at least an hour of physical activity every day," she said. "Even if it's just a brisk walk, you need that hour.
"When you exercise, you help your heart and strengthen the muscles in your arms and legs. That improves your quality of life and helps you continue living at home rather than a nursing home."
'I'm happy'
Ullmann is a two-time widow, losing her first husband in 1978 and her second in 1998.
"I have no husband to give me a hug, but I'm happy," she said. "I have my swimming and my research, and I have eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren."
She even has a shotgun, and knows how to use it.
"I love to go hunting for snowbirds in the mountains," she said. "It's really quite fun."
In brief
Monica Ullmann hasn't let a series of physical setbacks keep her from becoming one of the best 78-year-old swimmers in the world. She's won 48 Norwegian Masters championships, plus a dozen Scandinavian and European championships.
Now at IU doing research for a thesis on Masters swimming for her master's degree in sports medicine, she has her sights set on the world championships in Australia in 2008.
