April 28, 2005
Indiana: Behind the times (but only half the year)
Spending my time at Purdue, in the great (sic) state of Indiana, I was regularly having to ask people one question: “Are we on Eastern or Central time right now?” To most of my readers, that seems like a daft question, because one should typically know what time zone one is residing in.
Indiana, however, is one of only two states in the contiguous US that does not observe Daylight Savings Time. The other state is Arizona. Now, I don’t really have anything against Indiana. Indiana just makes for a good whipping boy when you grow up in Chicago. The only people there that I have a problem with are the ones from “the region”, who happen to think they’re somehow associated with Chicago, even though all Chicagoans know they’re not worthy of that distinction. Indiana is, of course, a state whose tourism board would advertise to neighboring states with the slogan “There’s more than corn in Indiana”**. Hoosiers compensate for being laughed at by Chicagoans by in turn picking on Kentuckians, who make fun of West Virginians, who I believe can only look down on apes (at least the dumber apes). But I digress.
Indiana had the chance to make it all better, join the industrialized world, and adopt Daylight Savings Time. A bill was before the state legislature, as has happened before, to mandate changing the clocks. And as usual, they voted against it.
A bill to mandate daylight-saving time across Indiana failed to win final legislative approval Thursday despite a push by Gov. Mitch Daniels, who says the change would eliminate confusion and attract business.
Proponents could still seek another vote on the bill after its 49-48 defeat in the House because a 51-vote majority is required to pass or kill a bill outright.
To make it even more confusing, different parts of the state associate themselves with different time zones, and some time zones do follow Daylight Savings Time:
Most of Indiana now remains on Eastern Standard Time all year, but five counties in the southeastern part of the state ignore state and federal law and change their clocks with most of the rest of the nation. Five counties each in the northwest and southwest pockets of the state are in the Central zone and observe daylight-saving time.
So this all means that national TV schedules, communication with neighboring states, and anything else that requires schedules, will all be one hour different between two halves of the year. When I was in college, it was a mere annoyance, as the only thing to keep track of is whether I was an hour ahead of my parents, and what time Law & Order came on. But for businesses, schedule changes like this are more than just annoying.
**Oddly, despite the slogan, I failed to find whatever they were speaking of.
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Brad, Bonnie was in Indianapolis when we had the big time change to day light savings time. It really messed with her head. she travels to a different city every week with her job and between traveling and the different time zones it can get confusing sometimes. Lucy