An opinion

By Janice Dembosky

U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster's  March 24  "Beware the Ides of March" article in The Indiana Gazette brings to mind another Shakespearean quote:  "Talking isn't doing . . . words are not deeds."  

Rep. Shuster's words are not unique.  It's the usual Republican rhetoric:  By magic they will cut taxes, cut spending (on programs for the middle class), cut the deficit, create jobs and all will be well.  

By The HawkEye staff

The Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association announced March 4  that it will award one of its top collegiate prizes for watchdog reporting to three IUP Journalism Department students.

Editor's note: In 2012, chemistry professor Mike Briggs, Ph.D., retired from IUP. On Jan. 6, Briggs, 66, a wounded Vietnam War platoon commander and former tire-manufacturing plant manager in Morocco, set out from Flagg Mountain, Ala., on a northbound hike along the Appalachian Trail.  His goal is to complete a 2,185-mile trek to the trail's northern end in Baxter State Park, Maine, by Oct. 10 -- a rate of 15 miles a day, by his reckoning.

During the hike, Briggs plans to file occasional reports and ruminations to The HawkEye, composing on a Google tablet and filing from Wi-Fi hotspots at accommodations along the trail.

This is his first installment.

By Mike Briggs

DALTON, Ga. -- Why is it so hard to get something to work the first time you encounter it?  A change of place and perspective -- hiking all 2,185 miles of the Appalachian Trail -- prompts some thoughts during hours alone in the woods.  

Like most things in life, you can look at adversity from several perspectives. Readers can list the downsides. My purpose here is to list the benefits.

Adversity is hard in that it requires exercise of muscle, mind or tool in ways that are new or different.  For example, walking 15 miles should be easy. We know how to walk, and most of us walk some distance every day.  

By Amanda Miller

INDIANA -- When Kelsey Elizabeth Bryner came to Indiana University of Pennsylvania in fall 2009, she was convinced she would graduate on time in four years. Three years later, Bryner, a 22-year-old art history major, prepared to watch her friends graduate without her.

Bryner said she had planned to graduate in May 2013 at the end of what was supposed to be her senior year. Instead, she said she will be graduating in May 2014. The reason: Every academic year, she had trouble enrolling in classes required for graduation.

"I should be graduating with my friends," said Bryner, during an Oct. 12 interview at her home on School Street. "But now I have to suck it up and watch them graduate without me."

For the past four years, Bryner said she knew she needed to take science classes to graduate, like geoscience and biology. Every time she scheduled for classes, however, all of the science spots were filled.  This year, Bryner was prepared to make sure that she got into the science classes she needed.

But when she met with her academic adviser, she discovered that all of the science classes were already waitlisted, which meant the courses were already filled. Students who wanted to enroll had added their names to a waiting list on the University Records and Systems Assistant, or URSA.  

By Natalie Hotaling

INDIANA -- Snow lightly circles through the air on a chilly morning in mid-November. As a harsh wind picks up, Isaac J. Samay pulls his knit cap lower on his forehead. He steps his beat-up sneakers into the straps on his bicycle pedals and takes a deep breath.

His daily commute to campus begins.

Samay, 23, of Johnstown, is a political science major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The senior has been biking as his sole means of transportation since enrolling at IUP in 2009.

For Samay, the snow is not a deterrent to his commuting. The campus, on the other hand, is.

By Abbey Zelko and Aleda Johnson

INDIANA -- On a summer evening in July 2004, John A. Minda visited his sick wife at Latrobe Hospital to show her his newly minted transient vendor license from the Indiana borough.

She took the license into her hand and smiled, Minda said.  A short time later, she fell asleep and never woke up.

By Colleen O'Laughlin

INDIANA  −  Late one night early in the spring semester of 2012, Walter F. Aguirre, 28, a senior marketing major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, was hanging out with his Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers when he got a craving for tacos. 

He didn't want pizza. He didn't want convenience-store carry-out. He wanted the food he grew up eating in the Hispanic neighborhoods of Los Angeles, where street vendors are plentiful and popular.

His friends didn't understand his specific hunger. At first.

"None of them really understood what I meant by that," said Aguirre in a November interview. "Then one night, I made some at home for my wife and kids.  This idea just kept coming back to me."

By Emily Weber

INDIANA -- In the middle of a class discussion about socioeconomic status, Ignacio J. "Nacho" Alarcón, 20, a philosophy major in Indiana University of Pennsylvania's  Robert E. Cook Honors College, found himself a minority in more ways than one. When the professor asked the 20 students seated around the long table in Whitmyre Hall's ornate Painting Room to evaluate the diversity of their peers, many turned to look at Alarcón.

"I was one of a few men," Alarcón said in a Nov. 2 interview in Whitmyre. "And the only person who wasn't white."

An opinion