This is the WFHB Local News for Wednesday, August 20th, 2025.

In today’s newscast, Indiana University has ordered the Palestine Solidarity Committee to cease and desist all activities while under investigation for allegedly violating student code. Correspondent Ella Cummings speaks with co-founder of the PSC Bryce Greene. More in today’s feature report.

Also coming up in the next half hour, Better Beware, your weekly consumer-watchdog segment on the WFHB Local News hosted and produced by Richard Fish. More following today’s feature.

But first, your local headlines:

Bloomington City Council Committee Weighs Time Limits on Reports

The Bloomington City Council held a Committee on Council Processes meeting on August 11th. The committee discussed introducing a 5-minute time limit for each presentation during reports for regular council meetings. The hope being, that by establishing a time limit for reports, that the overall time spent in city council meetings would be reduced.

Council Members Matt Flaherty, Council Administrator and Attorney Lisa Lehner, and Council Member Isabel Piedmont-Smith discussed if the time limit would change depending on how many reports were being given that night. Lehner asked for the limits to be applied in a uniform fashion.

Ultimately, the committee decided to officially vote on the matter in the next council meeting. The topic of consent agendas was also discussed. Consent agendas allow multiple agenda items to be passed at once, if they are routine and the council does not expect a need to deliberate them.

The next Council Processes meeting will take place on September 8th.

Feature Reports:

Indiana University has directed the Palestine Solidarity Committee to halt all activities while the group is under investigation for alleged student code violations. In today’s feature report, WFHB News Correspondent Ella Cummings speaks with Bryce Greene, co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Committee and organizer with the IU Divestment Coalition. We turn now to Ella Cummings.

IU has also placed sanctions on Professor Benjamin Robinson for allegedly violating Indiana’s recently passed intellectual diversity law. This came after Robinson received a complaint filed in November accusing him of using class time to criticize the university’s free speech policies and Israel, according to Indiana Public Media. WFHB News Correspondent Max Schneider interviewed Robinson in June of this year. We now revisit a portion of that story on the WFHB Local News.

People who work in downtown Bloomington will soon get access to training on how to de-escalate tense situations involving the unhoused. You might be surprised to hear that such training didn’t already exist, and you might be even more surprised to hear where the idea came from. Crystal Ritter from City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation and Shelby VanDerMoere from the Bloomington Fire Department participated in a popular impact training called Leadership Bloomington-Monroe County. Their group wanted to do something to help the unhoused. They discovered that frontline workers in downtown Bloomington don’t really get any kind of training on managing conflict with the local unhoused population. They produced a factfinding report and a de-escalation pamphlet, and soon, a de-escalation training video. They hope mediation techniques will reduce unneeded calls to 9-1-1. Link to the story here.

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