Over the course of two days, Superstorm Sandy managed to kill 119 people in the United States and inflict $50 billion worth of damage, according to The New York Times’ website. Fox News reported more than 7.5 million power outages.

Indiana Wesleyan University student Jade Miller (sr), from Manhattan, N.Y., went four days without any contact with her family because the phone lines were down. “It [was] super nerve-racking, not knowing what’s going on,” she said.

“I was angry for being here,” Miller said. “There’s nothing I can do, and I don’t know if anyone’s safe or what’s going on. Are they hurt? Are they OK? Did they leave? I had no idea. It was unsettling.”

Two days after Sandy hit, Miller finally received word that her family and apartment back home were safe. The General Motors Building where her mother worked, however, had suffered serious damage.

Erika Drake (fr), from Binghamton, N.Y., “got really lucky,” because Sandy had not greatly affected her hometown. Drake said her biggest struggle during the storm was being so distant from her family.

“It’s not fun being [so] far away. You wish you were there,” Drake said. “It gives you this feeling of extreme homesickness because you just want to be there with them. It doesn’t matter if [the situation is] dangerous; you just want to be going through it with them.”

Miller and Drake said during the week of the storm, many Indiana Wesleyan University students from New York met and supported each other through the tough time.

Jenna Ferguson (so), who has family and boyfriend in New York, was also unable to contact them during the storm. Her boyfriend, Joseph Franco, a fireman, is stationed in Long Island to help with cleanup and flood victims.

Miller said one of the priorities now for her family is to keep warm as the first snows have come into the area.

Another major concern, according to Ferguson, is the lack of food. In response to this, free banquets and barbeques are being held for those that need the nutrition.

Franco reported dozens of the million-dollar beach homes along the Long Island shore have been destroyed, and the families are coming back to nothing. Several families had no insurance; the idea of a superstorm destroying their home was nothing they ever considered.

“New York was not prepared for that kind of a situation, and the people don’t know how to handle it,” Miller said.

Drake, whose home was devastated by a flood six years ago, can relate to the victims who were more severely affected by Sandy. She said the best thing to do is remain positive.

“You have to find the blessings of each day,” Drake said. “You need to focus on the blessings in your life and know that there are thousands of others who are going through the same thing you are. You are not alone. The world is watching, and the world is ready to help you.”

Since there is nothing she can physically do to help those in need, Ferguson said just sending prayer and positive thoughts over to the Sandy victims will “play a big role” in the recovery process.

“You just [have] to get through things,” Drake said. “That’s just how it is, and I think that’s an attitude that a lot of New Yorkers have. They’re strong-willed people, and they can move on and get over it.”

During chapel on Friday, Nov. 9, Dr. Jim Lo, dean of the chapel, announced the “Will You Give 10?” offering. This special offering encouraged students to give $10 into the offering plate during chapel the following week. The proceeds will go to the benefit of Superstorm Sandy victims.

Rick Santorum pulled out of the Republican presidential race Monday, April 9, putting Mitt Romney in more than a 30 percent lead over the other two candidates. Romney currently has 42 percent support and has been in a consistent lead since late February, according to Gallup.com

Ron Paul has 10 percent support, with Newt Gingrich tied at 10 percent, according to the most recent data from Gallup.

As of the most recent primaries, on April 3, the Associated Press estimates that Romney has 658 delegates of the 1,144 available. And some pundits are already claiming Romney as the nominee to run against President Obama in the fall.

The November election looks like it will be a close race. According to a poll conducted by Gallup, 49 percent of registered voters said they would vote for Obama, compared with the 45 percent who would vote for Romney.

The next primaries, in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, will take place April 24. The Indiana primary will take place May 8.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments March 26-28 concerning President Obama’s signature domestic achievement: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, derisively known as “Obamacare” by its opponents.

As summarized by The New York Daily News, the 2-year-old law aims “to provide health insurance to more than 30 million previously uninsured Americans, while trying to restrain costs and prevent disruptions to the majority already with coverage.”

Opponents contend, however, that the requirement that Americans purchase health insurance is unconstitutional.

The three-day oral discussion, untelevised or broadcast in any way, started on March 26, with a 90-minute argument about whether court action is premature, since no one has paid a fine for not having health insurance yet, according to The Daily News.

The following day, March 27, covered the most controversial issue of the act in a two-hour argument upon whether requiring most Americans to have health insurance by 2014 or pay the penalty was, as the plaintiffs claim, unconstitutional.

The March 28 argument was twofold, with a 90-minute session upon whether the act could remain intact even if the individual mandate to require health insurance was taken out, then another hour apportioned to discuss the threat to cut off federal aid to states that don’t comply with the expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program for low-income people.

Although the justices aren’t expected to rule until late June, the L.A. Times sought the opinion of a few constitutional law experts to see what they predict to be the court’s conclusion.

Henry T. Greely, Stanford professor of health law and policy, stated that, from his point of view, “It looks like there are clearly four justices in favor, three opposed and [Justice Anthony M.] Kennedy somewhere in between, and Chief Justice [John G.] Roberts with leeway to go either way.”

Greely also said that he thinks the individual mandate is more likely to survive, while Adam Winkler, UCLA constitutional law professor, said that he wouldn’t be surprised if the individual mandate were struck down, but that it is “less likely that [the entire law be struck down] as that would be a clearer case of aggressive judicial activism. The law has thousands of different provisions, many of which have nothing to do with the individual mandate.”

Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, an organization described by the L.A. Times as a “libertarian think tank,” also agrees with Greely that the individual mandate is not likely to be struck.

Neither Dr. James Fuller, dean of the graduate school at Indiana Wesleyan University, nor Dr. Keith Newman, executive vice president of IWU, believes that the PPACA will have an effect on the development of the university’s health sciences initiative. The establishment of the initiative began in response to the needs of the economy, and the health care act hasn’t changed those needs, so Fuller and Newman said the school’s plans will not be affected, regardless of whether the court rules in favor of the act or not.

The Sojourn reported in October 2011 that IWU’s health sciences initiative is the planned development of a new science and nursing facility on IWU’s Marion campus, with the eventual establishment of a college of osteopathic medicine, which will not be built on the university’s Marion campus, though its location has not been determined.

“The need for nurses, therapists, and doctors is great, and it will continue to be a challenge to educate enough of these health professionals,” said Dr. Henry Smith, president of IWU, in an email. “Statistics show there are serious shortages now and will get worse in the coming years.”

With health care services making up one-sixth of the American economy, a recent study found by the Chicago Tribune stated that “more than 250,000 additional public health workers would be needed nationwide over the next 12 years.”

Michael Borowitz, senior health policy analyst for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said the United States is “the only wealthy country that does not have universal access,” meaning that not all citizens are under a partially or fully publicly funded health system, according to the PBS “NewsHour” webpage.

According to the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine site, 57 of the 92 counties in Indiana are considered medically underserved.

Restating that the development of the health sciences initiative is in response to the needs of the economy, Newman refuted the idea that the initiative was created in response to IWU’s recent decrease in traditional undergraduate enrollment.

“I don’t think anyone looked at the health sciences initiative and said this is the magic bullet to solve our enrollment challenges,” Newman said.

Newman did say the university anticipates an increase in enrollment based on the health sciences initiative. Though IWU is only in the first phase of its 10-year plan, new programs will be offered throughout this period. Newman projected that, by the year 2020, there would be another 1,500 graduates and another 700-1,000 undergraduates at IWU.

Invisible Children, Inc., a San Diego-based nonprofit group, released a 30-minute documentary film titled, “Kony 2012” March 5, advocating for the arrest of Ugandan rebel and warlord Joseph Kony.

For more than 20 years, Kony and his rebel army, the Lord’s Resistance Army, have been capturing, arming, torturing and abusing children in the African country of Uganda. The International Criminal Court charges Kony with crimes against humanity including murder, sexual slavery, rape and abduction, according to the documentary. These are war crimes that 99 percent of the world knew nothing of, according to Jason Russell, a co-founder of Invisible Children.

To raise awareness, Invisible Children created the “Kony 2012” documentary “to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”

Since its release, “Kony 2012” has attracted more than 80 million views on YouTube and become a top trending subject on Twitter. Kony was a household name only five days after the documentary’s debut, according to a press release by PRNewser.

As a result of the video, “Twitter hashtags #StopKony and #Kony2012 have caught fire,” according to the release, and sales of the $30 action kits created for the campaign “skyrocketed.”

It raised “hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations on the first day alone,” according to a New York Times report, which added that the video “is turning out to be the fastest growing social media video campaign.”

“In that sense, the organization and its mission is being praised,” said PRNewser. “People are energized.”

This is the first time that a nonprofit has generated this much success with such a “shrewd strategy,” as it is described in a CBS report.

Dr. YoungAh Lee, assistant professor of public relations at Indiana Wesleyan University, and Kristen Fuhs Wells, communication director of Indiana Humanities, a grant making agency, attested to the power of the communication strategies used by Invisible Children.

“Nonprofits now have the opportunity to go viral,” as Invisible Children has, said Wells. “We have never had the ability to reach this many people with such little money.”

“I think this campaign has shown the power of great storytelling using social media,” said Lee. “Nonprofit organizations often have to promote very abstract and remote causes to people. The Kony 2012 campaign has shown that it can be done through personal storytelling using social media and word-of-mouth.”

But the campaign has generated widespread criticism for its simplicity, commercialism and lack of timeliness.

“It is the right message, but it’s 15 years too late,” said Col. Felix Kulayige, a Ugandan military spokesman, in a CNN report. “If people cared 15 years ago, then thousands of lives would have been saved, and thousands of children would have stayed at home and not been kidnapped.”

Laurel Stone (sr), an IWU student studying international relations and public policy, contends with this critique. She is secretary-general of the campus’ Model United Nations student organization.

“No human rights abuse, no matter how big or small, can be considered outdated, but at the same time … I think I do agree with them saying that this is about seven or eight years too late,” said Stone.

Okot Patrick, a local government official in the Ugandan northern town of Gulu, said he believes the issues surrounding Kony and the LRA are no longer relevant.

“People have more pressing problems such as poverty and diseases,” he told the Wall Street Journal. Stone shares similar sentiments with Patrick.

“While it’s still good to advocate for a human life,” said Stone, “there are a lot of other abuses that are happening.” She described more relevant issues as being those in Syria, the Congo, Sudan and Afghanistan.

Critics have also come out saying that the video oversimplified a complex issue, “for downplaying government abuses under Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, and accused of commercializing the conflict to profit from it,” according to The New York Times.

Invisible Children responds to this scrutiny on its website: “In our quest to garner wide public support of nuanced policy, Invisible Children has sought to explain the conflict in an easily understandable format, focusing on the core attributes of LRA leadership that infringe upon the most basic of human rights. In a 30-minute film, however, many nuances of the 26-year conflict are admittedly lost or overlooked. The film is a first entry point to this conflict for many.”

“I can understand why they’d want to simplify it,” said Stone, “but at the same time, they’re losing a lot of ground with the public … because that’s not the main problem.”

“You can’t just say, ‘We’re going to go in there, and we’re going to arrest Kony, and that’s going to be the end of it,’ because Kony himself, while he has been a problem, is not the source of the problem,” said Stone. She referred to the Ugandan government, which she said has committed some human rights violations similar to those perpetrated by Kony.

In the Wall Street Journal, Norbert Mao, an opposition party leader appearing in the film, said that “both sides are guilty of massacres” but that “the filmmakers decided to concentrate only on LRA.”

In oversimplifying the issue many argue that its severity was blown out of proportion as well. The Wall Street Journal quotes the Ugandan president’s office warning against the overdramatized effects of the documentary.

“We are grateful for renewed efforts which seek to contribute to the arrest of Joesph Kony and the elimination of the LRA. … The Government of Uganda, however, would strongly urge that any awareness campaign fully takes into consideration the current realities of the situation,” said the presidential spokesman.

“You have all these different things in the world that are really terrible,” said Stone, “and, yes, Uganda and the LRA falls within them. But, I mean, compared with other things in the world, it’s not really as big on the radar map as other things should be or are.”

Many also accused Invisible Children of misusing funds by spending too much on marketing and not enough on the victims in Africa.

In an interview with CBS News, Invisible Children Movement Director Zach Barrows countered these critiques: “We’ve never pretended all the money goes to the ground because we don’t believe that’s the best use. The best use is spreading the word and then doing the highest-impact programs possible on the ground.”

Criticism aside, Stone, like many others, could not dispute that the documentary was “well- done.” However, she does not see the campaign as a be-all-end-all peace solution.

“I think it’s a good way for people to recognize the need for peace and to recognize that there are ways that we can find peace and make peace happen, but it’s not the solution for peace to actually occur,” said Stone. “There’s a lot of other stuff that needs to occur as well.”

Stone encourages viewers to consider the hope and the scrutiny surrounding the campaign and to become well-informed about complex international issues depicted in “Kony 2012.”

“People can’t just stop with watching the documentary, or they can’t just stop with listening to what they’re proposing as a policy,” said Stone. “I hope that it would motivate them to learn more and explore other topics of interest as well and kind of dive more heavily into the human rights issue or the central African problem.”

“This is a great opportunity to take a subject that you didn’t know about and learn about it … invest in understanding more about what the problem is and the complexity of the issue,” Stone said. “This, in turn, could be something that inspires them to learn about other conflicts as well.”

—–
Originally published March 22 at 12:51 a.m. EDT, this version of the story was updated at 4:41 p.m. to correct a textual error. The “Kony 2012″ video was released March 5, not March 15 as initially reported.