By Kody Fisher for WISH-TV.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the WISH-TV-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration

Two student leaders at Purdue University want to change the Indiana Lifeline Law.

The law gives legal protection to anyone who calls 911 to get an underage drinker medical attention. However, it does not protect the person needing medical attention.

The students are trying to lobby lawmakers at the Statehouse in Indianapolis to expand the law to give legal protection for everyone involved in the situation, including the person who needs medical attention.

Purdue Student Body President Jason Packard said, “A lot of students don’t know about the protections that they have, and they don’t seek medical help.”

Purdue Student Body Vice President Rebecca Siener said, “Students do hesitate in these circumstances because they aren’t familiar with the policy, or the person in need of medical attention isn’t protected.”

Packard told I-Team 8 he used to be an resident assistant at a dorm on campus. In that roll he was responsible for calling 911 if one of the students in the dorm needed medical attention because of alcohol poisoning, “This is something we saw a lot within the dormitories. Within Tarkington Hall that I worked in, we probably had to call for an ambulance multiple times every single weekend out of the semester.”

In 2012 when the Lifeline Law was introduced, it initially had full legal protections for everyone involved in the situation. “Unfortunately, this does get negotiated down and it only protects the caller and those who assist the caller,” Siener said.

Now, Packard and Siener are trying to break the stigma around the law and it’s impact on underage drinking.

Seiner said, “I think often what people use as a counterargument to this is that it incentivizes, or it encourages, underage drinking, but several studies have shown that reported underage drinking has gone down since implementing the Indiana Lifeline Law.”

Packard and Siener also want to work with students at other universities in the state to put pressure on the Legislature to expand the law.


Kody Fisher wrote this article for WISH-TV.


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Palm Beach County schools are working to curb chronic absenteeism, which has surged since the pandemic.

Nearly 39% of Palm Beach County students missed 11 or more days of school last year.

Keith Oswald, chief of equity and wellness for the Palm Beach County School District, said families often face a combination of challenges triggering absences, so the district uses a variety of strategies, including sending notifications to parents when students reach five, 10 or 20 missed school days.

"I would say the more common where we see the 10 to 20 day range, I think it's a bad habit that we picked up from COVID of not coming to school that's stuck," Oswald observed. "Thinking that I could just miss a day or two a month is not a big deal but really, we're trying to educate people that it is a big deal."

The 2024 Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count Data Book revealed chronic absenteeism nearly doubled nationwide after the pandemic, with 30% of students missing significant amounts of school. The report also emphasized the long-term economic risks of learning loss, with U.S. students potentially facing $900 billion in lost lifetime earnings due to decreased academic achievement.

According to the Florida Department of Education, the statewide average of kids missing 21 or more days of school has modestly improved from a record high of almost 21% in the 2021-22 school year to 19.4% last year.

Oswald said the district also organizes problem-solving meetings with families to address concerns like transportation and housing instability, which can be primary causes of absenteeism.

"Sometimes it comes with employment; there's sometimes mental health issues in the family," Oswald outlined. "Food insecurity can come up at times. In our most severe cases, I think it's a sense of despair that a family gets into and needs additional support."

When community outreach fails, Oswald noted Palm Beach County has more formal procedures like working with a local judge on truancy interventions to help families understand the law and find solutions. He added the district needs more support staff to help with this dedicated outreach.

According to the Kids Count data, students in poverty and children of color are disproportionately affected by chronic absences, further widening the achievement gap.


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By Katherine Hill for the Ball State Daily News .
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Ball State Daily News-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

The walls of Maplewood Guest House are etched with history. Photos of Ball State’s original first family hang on the walls — carefully dusted and fawned over by inquisitive visitors — serve as a reminder to residents who reap the benefit of the family’s generosity to do good by the community.

The house, with its still fully-functioning original fireplace, now serves as a residential hub for third and fourth-year students — a collaboration between Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine and Ball State for students earning a medical degree or working on a clerkship in East Central Indiana, according to the Guest House’s information page.

Guest House manager David Martin was at the forefront of the collaboration project when he took on the residential community’s first-ever management role. 

Although Martin stepped into the position in August 2017, there were discussions between Ball Brothers Foundation, Ball State University, Indiana University and IU School of Medicine about the collaborative housing effort in the year prior.

“The discussions were to find out whether they could use the space, which had been vacated by Ardahl Corporation,” Martin said. “They wanted to find use for this building that would help the community.”

The solution was to make the housing complex a so-called “epicenter” for medical students and provide immersive learning opportunities.

Martin came to Maplewood Guest House having worked as an adjunct professor and in Ball State’s Housing and Dining departments for 15 years prior.

When it came time to manage the Maplewood property, he applied policies and procedures from the university’s housing models because he didn’t “need to reinvent the wheel.”

He also worked with Ball State property management and hospitality students to figure out how to best maintain the building's antiquarian structure and honor the Ball Brothers' legacy.

Beyond the general upkeep of the Guest House, such as through inventory monitoring and spreadsheet bookkeeping, there is a responsibility to make sure students know about the opportunities the property offers. Martin and his team of Ball State immersive learning students knew this.

“We created basically everything here in 2017, everything you can think of to successfully run a business, including social media. I found it really exciting to start the building from the ground up, so to speak,” Martin said, noting that the house itself was built in 1898.

Martin remembered a February 2020 phone call, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the IU School of Medicine, urging all students to go home. Despite the closure of surrounding universities, the housing complex remained open and maintained “almost the majority of the time that COVID was here,” he said. 

Even so, the building was vacant for several months before students returned to their medical practice rotations — a discouraging and stark reminder of how young and exciting the collaboration project had been at that time.

Muncie was the ideal localized space for the undertaking that was Maplewood Guest House. 

According to Optimus Primary, which partners with the Ball Brothers Foundation, “Muncie has something no other city in Indiana has: an array of healthcare anchor institutions located in close proximity to one another, making it one of the leading physician training centers in the state.” 

This is a pipeline program for medical professionals, in partnership with the Ball Brothers Foundation.

The city has a reputation of consistently being within the top five best destinations to study medicine in the state, largely because of IU Ball Memorial Hospital, which is three minutes from Ball State and IU School of Medicine.

“Muncie was number nine in a location, as in terms of locations that students wanted to come to to serve their rotation at the hospital. [By 2017], the city became number two in the state outside of Indianapolis. We are number two in the location of destination students want to come to [when they] do their clerkship,” Martin said.

To help drive those numbers, Martin enforced the residential community to foster a welcoming environment for all students who pass through its doors, which is especially important because students are only actively living in the community for only three to four weeks at a time while in rotation.

“One of the things that we've developed is programming and events for medical students. Every week, on a Wednesday or Thursday, we have a welcome event or some type of event that brings them all together,” he said.

These events feature popcorn, pizza and “provide a chance for students to connect,” something particularly important to Martin. For Martin, his favorite part of the job is connecting with students and talking with them about their future goals.

The bonding opportunities between IU and Ball State students simultaneously debunk a common misconception, the rivalry between Ball State and Indiana University.

“IU School of Medicine isn't a competitor of Ball State. Indiana University may be, but IU School of Medicine isn't,” Martin said. “The partnership has provided several opportunities for research between me and other faculty members. We were given the Housing Impact Award from the Housing Education and Research Association. That was for some of our work with immersive learning with Ball State students.”


Katherine Hill wrote this article for the Ball State Daily News.


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Advocates for public education are reacting to the North Carolina House passing legislation to funnel millions of state dollars into private school voucher programs.

House Bill 10 allocates more than $460 million for what are known as "Opportunity Scholarships." Supporters' goal is to clear the current waitlist of 55,000 applicants for private school scholarships. Critics are worried about money being siphoned away from public schools.

Heather Koons, communications director for the group Public Schools First NC, said expanding the voucher program comes at a cost, affecting everything from teacher pay to school maintenance.

"We have data showing that they could have hired more than 2,100 school health personnel," Koons reported. "That would have been enough to make sure that there is at least a nurse in every school. And we need counselors, we need school social workers. They could have done that instead."

She noted it could also affect the economy, as public schools are a top employer in 91 out of 100 counties. The measure requires local sheriffs to report to federal immigration officials if someone is charged with specific crimes and it is unclear if they are a legal U.S. resident.

A recent South Carolina Supreme Court ruling struck down the state's voucher program, declaring it unconstitutional to use taxpayer money for private schools, in a narrow 3-2 decision.

Beyond financial concerns, Koons' group also questioned the equity and constitutionality of the North Carolina bill. She explained many private schools that benefit from voucher funds are religious institutions and have their own rules about who can attend.

"These private schools also discriminate in their admission policies," Koons emphasized. "They don't provide school lunches, they don't provide services for students with disability, in addition to many of them not accepting students outside of their religion, or students who are LGBTQ+."

The bill is now on Gov. Roy Cooper's desk. While a veto is possible, some worry Republican supermajorities in both the House and Senate could override it.