A roundup of recent Indiana newspaper editorials

Lawmakers should leave IHSAA, high school basketball alone

In an idyllic world, Indiana could restore its fabled single-class high school basketball state tournament, and thousands of fans would pour into gymnasiums from Angola to Corydon in hopes of witnessing another "Milan Miracle" year after year after year.

Just as they did in the 1940s and '50s.

But, like it or not, that genie can't be put back into its bottle, as a proposed bill in the current session of the Indiana Legislature would seek to do. The Indiana High School Athletic Association board of directors uncorked that unique vessel in 1996, with a 12-5 vote to end the one-class tourney. The IHSAA member schools' principals affirmed the board's decision 220-157, allowing a new four-class system that eliminated the dramatic David-vs.-Goliath match-ups in boys and girls hoops.

The change amounted to a foreclosure on the old Hoosier Hysteria, a March tradition that was once the envy of the other 49 states. State tournament attendance, which had declined since the '50s heyday, dropped even more so after the four-class tournament began in 1998. Ticket sales at the girls state finals, for example, slid from 12,000 in 2010 at Fort Wayne to 8,000 last year in that northern Indiana town. Thus, the site of that event will shift this season to Terre Haute, a more centrally located city. Three years ago, IHSAA moved its girls state finals outside of Indianapolis for the first time since the female tournament began in 1976 because of scheduling conflicts at the possible venues.

The IHSAA tourney once was the top priority.

Still, while the dismantling of the single-class tournament erased nostalgic appeal, it also gave students at smaller schools a more realistic chance to enjoy long runs in a postseason playoff. The casual fans may no longer attend, but schools such as North Vermillion, Triton, Shenandoah, Rossville, Jac-Cen-Del and Oregon-Davis enjoyed state championships. Before the change, Milan accounted for the last little-guy victory way back in 1954.

The current four-class scheme is far from perfect. Private schools, with no enrollment boundaries, tend to dominate the smaller classes. The match-ups in regionals and semi states sometimes are geographically illogical, with bizarre driving distances involved. Still, there is little support inside the IHSAA membership to revert to the abandoned one-size-fits-all tourney. A majority of the schools favor playing schools of similar enrollments.

That's just the way it is, now.

Given that reality, Indiana lawmakers have no business meddling in high school basketball policies. A state senator from Oldenburg, Jean Leising, has prepared a bill that would prohibit schools from participating in an IHSAA tournament that is anything other than single-class in format. The Legislature's track record of intervening in prep hoops is not good. Under pressure from the General Assembly, the IHSAA conducted a Tournament of Champions in the first two years of the class tourney, pitting the four divisional champs in a post-postseason playoff that became a poorly attended afterthought. The T of C was wisely scrapped.

The ideal 21st-century remedy already exists in Terre Haute. For the past 12 years, the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic has recaptured the energy and drama of the former boys state tourney during the Christmas-New Year's break. Local small schools take on the big guys from Terre Haute, and seats are hard to find in the key duels. Coming at midseason, the Classic allows teams such as Sullivan and Rockville to test their mettle against rivals three or four times their enrollment size, while still looking forward to a state title chase in March.

The Classic represents the perfect way for some to fulfill a yearning for the past. The PHWVC, it could be argued, has become the success that it is, in part, because of class basketball. It validates the purists' sentimentality, and allows them to remind the IHSAA and the rest of the world that Indiana's one-class tourney was once a gem.

The Pizza Hut Classic needed no state law to organize, grow and thrive. Likewise, the Legislature should let the IHSAA schools craft and conduct their own state championships.

- (Terre Haute) Tribune-Star | Jan. 8

Only the top public schools may apply

If you're trying to come up with a gold standard for anything in Indiana, Carmel is a good place to start. If there could be a way to replicate the classroom benefits that come from living in one of Indiana's most affluent towns, think of how great things would be everywhere in Indiana.

But that's not close to reality. Real solutions for our schools can come out of places such as Carmel - where blue-collar commonplace or, worse, the drag of poverty aren't in play. But those solutions should be applicable to a wider selection of schools, not just to the elite ones.

We're definitely open to the suggestion of Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, who wants to give districts some flexibility when it comes to the school calendar. His idea, set out in Senate Bill 236: Schools could opt out of state requirements for a minimum of five- or six-hour school days, depending on the grade level, and a 180-day schedule. That would open the door to flexible scheduling of all sorts -- three- and four-day weeks, varying class schedules and more. Just use your imagination.

The catch: Only "high-performing" districts could apply.

Why Delph targets schools already performing at high levels to test new ways to do things is a bit confusing. If this is a good idea -- and it very well could be, if districts can get around how a shifting schedule could affect home lives and more -- why not give the option to all schools?

So much about school reform dictated by the state comes across as punitive instead of motivational. This proposal just sounds like a new way to rub rich privileges into the noses of the poorest districts.

- Lafayette Journal & Courier | Jan. 6

Occupy 'identifiers' slipped from advocacy to anarchy

The people who identify themselves as Occupy Bloomington should declare victory and move on.

Mayor Mark Kruzan really had no other responsible choice but to end the occupation of Peoples Park. The folks in the park had been there for nearly three months in violation of city park policy, which could put the city in a ticklish situation when the next group — The homophobic church-goers from Campbellsburg? A coalition of bankers? Advocates of right-to-work legislation? — decides to set up camp in Peoples or Bryan or Cascades park. There had been reports of alcohol and drug use, irresponsible waste disposal, illegal fires and of course, the New Year's Eve "dance party" that moved from the park to the streets and resulted in charges being filed against two people.

The people who identify themselves as Occupiers — that's how they refer to themselves and recoil at other labels — have a good issue on which to hang their banners: the growing wage gap between the very rich in this country and everyone else. They made many people more aware of that and were able to leave the park without an ugly confrontation that would have tarnished their main objective. For that, they can declare victory.

But as the occupation went on, their missions started to blur, and their statements became more and more bizarre attempts to justify their actions.

Comments when they were told they would be evicted centered on their concern for the homeless people who had joined their ranks. The rest of their agenda seemingly forgotten, their naiveté and paternalism shone through as they implied no one else could take care of the homeless — no matter that Bloomington has a strong network of services for anyone who needs a place to stay or something to eat. And yes, there is a low-barrier shelter for people who have alcohol problems to sleep when it's cold.

In the last days of the encampment, they tried to say the large group of people gathered on New Year's Eve wasn't an Occupy event, even though social networking tools "identified" as Occupy-driven promoted it.

The "dance party" was taken to the streets outside the Justice Building to give the jail's inmates some joy on New Year's, as their Solidarity Statement said, because "It must be remembered that EVERY PRISONER IS A POLITICAL PRISONER. ...

"Until every cage is empty,

"Until every prison closes,

"Until every person is free."

"Against prison, and the world that maintains them," it concluded.

They sent out a video to support their case that police brutalized an Occupy sympathizer — a clip dominated by angry screaming at police, in which variations of the F-word were invoked at least 23 times in less than 2 minutes, and other crude words and phrases were hurled at officers as well.

They maintained there were no Occupy events or an organization, only a "concept" or a "strategy" — but a "concept" or "strategy" needn't have a tent, let alone a city park to occupy.

The folks who were consumed with the Occupy movement don't have much use for the H-T, so they likely won't agree with anything written here, if they read it.

But from here it looks like the truest believers turned their mantra on its head: They are the 1 percent who believe no one should be in prison, that no one but them has compassion for the homeless, that they should be able to stop traffic when and where they wish and that it's all right to verbally abuse police officers who are trying to keep order downtown.

Many, many people can side with them on the wage-gap issue and the excesses of financial institutions. But they would be smart to stick to messages of advocacy, rather than anarchy.

- The (Anderson) Herald-Times | Jan. 7