IDS Thursday, April 3, 2025
INSIDE
LITTLE 500 QUALIFICATIONS RESULTS
‘Grieving over what would have been’ Former students still see the effects of the pandemic 5 years later
By Natalia Nelson and Chloe Oden XIAOFENG WANG
Professor terminated same day as FBI searches By Andrew Miller
ami3@iu.edu | @andrew_mmiller
Indiana University terminated professor Xiaofeng Wang on March 28, the same day that two of his homes were searched by the FBI, according to a document sent by the American Association of University Professors’ IU Bloomington chapter. The document, IU Provost Rahul Shrivastav’s email informing Wang of his termination, said it was Shrivastav’s understanding that Wang had accepted a faculty position with a university in Singapore. Shrivastav said in the email that Wang would not be eligible to be hired again at IU. The email also told Wang he needed to return all IU property to the IU Police Department as soon as possible. IUPD did not respond to a request for comment by publication. The Indiana Daily Student reached out to IU to confirm the document’s veracity, to which a spokesperson responded that IU will not comment on the investigation. “Indiana University was recently made aware of a federal investigation of an Indiana University faculty member,” an IU spokesperson told the IDS on March 31. “At the direction of the FBI, Indiana University will not make any public comments regarding this investigation. In accordance with Indiana University practices, Indiana University will also not make any public comments regarding the status of this individual.” The FBI has not given further information on the nature of the searches of the two homes belonging to the professor and IU Libraries analyst Nianli Ma. SEE WANG, PAGE 4
Sex crimes reported By Mia Hilkowitz
mhilkowi@iu.edu | @MiaHilkowitz
Editor’s Note: This story includes mention of sexual assault. The IU Police Department received two reports of rape, one report of sexual assault, one report of sexual battery and one report of fondling over the weekend, IUPD Public Information Officer Hannah Cornett said in an email to the Indiana Daily Student. Around 1:20 a.m. March 29 IUPD officers met with an individual who reported being fondled over their clothing by an unknown male outside Ashton Center. The victim had been assisting the male with directions, Cornett said. IUPD encourages anyone with information regarding the incident to contact the department at 812-855-4111. According to Cornett, the suspect was described as a lightskinned Black male who is approximately 5-foot-10. He has black hair and was wearing a black hoodie and jeans. IUPD also received three separate reports from the IU Title IX Office on March 31. In the first case, IUPD received a report of rape, domestic battery and intimidation, which the Title IX Office reported happened Jan. 31 at Willkie Quadrangle. SEE CRIMES, PAGE 4
nelsonnb@iu.edu | chloden@iu.edu
Aubrey Motherwell, class of 2020, was supposed to graduate on her birthday. She was excited — her family would be in town, and she would celebrate turning 22 the same day she walked across the stage in a cap and gown to accept her diploma. Instead, Motherwell received her degree in the mail. Her internship in Utah for the summer of 2020 was canceled, and her term as the captain of her ultimate frisbee team was cut short. She was devastated. In the five years since the COVID-19 pandemic began, former students are still feeling the loss of opportunities and socialization skills from the pause on in-person activities. Students left campus for spring break March 16, 2020, just as they did earlier this month, thinking they had an extra week off. They never came back to school that semester. Motherwell, who graduated with a degree in arts management with a core in music, had difficulties breaking into the industry after the pandemic began. “All of the venues shut down,” Motherwell said. “I couldn’t even find a job that was remotely what I wanted to do.” Cassidy McCammon graduated from IU in 2022 with two bachelor’s degrees in political science and management and hu-
man organization. She was a sophomore when the pandemic began. McCammon now works as the community engagement lead for Girl Scouts of Central Indiana. When students were first encouraged to vacate IU’s campus, McCammon was in Washington completing an internship at the U.S. House of Representatives. “It was really scary,” McCammon said. “I was a nervous wreck most of the time, especially because I didn’t quite — I was having all of this grieving over what would have been my internship experience.” McCammon said that although her plans being “ripped away” caused her emotional distress, she was glad she went home to her family in Terre Haute, Indiana. Her internship was moved online due to the general uncertainty at the time. When McCammon returned home, she began to look at her future plans with a different, dubious perspective. She had plans to work in a residence hall during summer 2020 that ultimately fell through. “We realized, ‘Oh, okay, this is going to be around much longer than we thought,’” she said. During this time, McCammon said, she learned more about herself and expanded her outlook. “When there's nothing to study or work towards, and you have to choose that for yourself, that brings in a lot of freedom that I feel
FILE PHOTO BY CARL COTE | IDS
An empty path is pictured April 8, 2020, outside the Frances Morgan Swain Student Building in Bloomington. Former IU students said they still see the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic five years on.
like many adolescents don't have the opportunity to have because our first 20 or so years are so scripted for us,” McCammon said. With the opportunity to write her own script, McCammon said, she became a different person than she would have otherwise. She said she is grateful for what she learned about herself in that time. Even though the extra time taught her about “enjoying the process more than the result,” McCammon said the pandemic changed the social atmosphere. After IU students returned to school in fall 2021, McCammon said there was a clear split between “the
people who cared about the restrictions and the people who didn’t.” On Tinder, McCammon said, some people in the area would require other users on the app to post a negative COVID-19 test on their profile before they entertained the possibility of going on a date. Others, McCammon said, didn’t wear masks and packed the bars. McCammon said now, among people her age, socializing takes more energy than it did before the pandemic. The social distancing and apprehension surrounding hanging out with people, she said, made it easy to self isolate. McCammon said she saw this impact dorm
culture throughout the rest of her time at IU. Research from 2020 to 2023 found that the increase in isolation from COVID-19 quarantining was associated with increased anxiety and depression among youth, and that young children especially have seen impacts on their ability to read emotions and form social skills. Kelly Richardson, director and curator of the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection at IU, said the pandemic did bring about a culture shift regarding being sick in public. Before, she said it was normal to be in public spaces when sick. SEE COVID-19, PAGE 4
FBI searches IU professor's homes By Andrew Miller
ami3@iu.edu | @andrew_mmiller
The FBI searched homes in Bloomington and Carmel belonging to an IU professor and an IU Libraries analyst March 28. The agency declined to comment on the nature of the search. An IU spokesperson did not say whether the professor, Xiaofeng Wang at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, was still employed at the university — and referred the Indiana Daily Student to the FBI for information. However, Wang does show up on IU’s scheduler for the Fall 2025 semester for graduate independent study. “The FBI conducted court authorized law enforcement activity at the home on Xavier Court in Bloomington Friday,” FBI spokesperson Chris Baven-
der said over a text message. “It was related to the FBI activity at the home in Carmel. We have no further comment at this time.” Both homes are listed on Monroe County and Hamilton County property records as belonging to Wang and Nianli Ma. Ma is a lead systems analyst and programmer at IU Libraries, according to its website. Neighbors told The Herald Times that agents at the scene were there for much of the day March 28. The Department of Homeland Security was present. Wang’s profile on Luddy’s Department of Computer Science website is no longer available. However, an archived version of the webpage described him as an associate dean for research. According to the archived page, Wang had served on projects totaling nearly $23 million by 2022.
COURTESY PHOTO | THE BLOOMINGTONIAN
Agents search a Bloomington home belonging to an IU professor and IU Libraries analyst March 28, 2025, in Bloomington. The FBI declined to comment on the nature of the search.
He joined the university in 2004. He’s also still listed as a director of IU’s center for Security and Privacy in In-
formatics, Computing, and Engineering on the organization’s webpage. According to the website, his research focuses on system security
and data privacy, specializing on security issues relating to mobile and cloud computing, and human genomic data.
IU dropout leads federally funded institute Nate Cavanaugh now leads the U.S. Institute of Peace, according to court documents
By Jack Forrest
jhforres@iu.edu | @byjackforrest
Nate Cavanaugh dropped out of IU in 2015. Now, he’s in charge of a federally funded institution meant to promote peace. And on top of that, he’s a staffer in billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an initiative of President Donald Trump’s second administration that's slashed federal agencies and thousands of jobs. Lawyers representing the U.S. Institute of Peace, a Congress-funded nonpartisan organization intended to prevent violence abroad, asked a U.S. district court judge March 28 to halt the transfer of its property to the General Services Administration. That judge, Beryl Howell, denied the motion April 1.
Documents show Cavanaugh was installed by top cabinet officials as president of USIP, as of March 25. According to reports, Cavanaugh is 28 years old. He was featured in Forbes’ 2021 “30 Under 30” for enterprise technology. Cavanaugh’s profile on that list states he founded the company Brainbase from his IU dormitory before dropping out. He wrote on LinkedIn he attended IU from 2014-15. A 2017 Medium article from Cavanaugh describes Brainbase as an intellectual property and trademark licensing management tool. The 2021 Forbes profile claimed the company had raised $12 million. Now, the original Brainbase website has gone dark, and the company seems to have been bought out. A different site, usebrainbase.com, promotes artificial intelligence
NATE CAVANAUGH
workers for companies. According to his LinkedIn, Cavanaugh left Brainbase in November 2022, but he is also the co-founder of FlowFi, which connects businesses with financial experts, according to its website. But photos of what it claims are experts appear to be AI-generated images. These images have a “glossy” look characteristic of AI photos, and reverse image searches for several yielded no results online. One reverse image search
found one photo is an Adobe stock AI image. Cavanaugh joined DOGE at some point following Trump’s executive order establishing it in January. WIRED reported last month he’d taken a role interviewing U.S. General Service Administration employees and earning a salary of $120,500 per year. That’s just shy of what DOGE says is the average annual salary of workers at GSA, $128,000. The motion filed March 31 includes a photo that shows an undated resolution signed by U.S. Secretaries of Defense and State Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio removing the U.S. Institute for Peace’s acting president Kenneth Jackson and replacing him with Cavanaugh. Jackson himself is part of DOGE. Last month, he and other DOGE members were part of a standoff with
USIP staff outside the building, ultimately gaining entry with the help of police. Hegseth and Rubio are both on USIP’s board of directors. It also directed Cavanaugh to transfer all of the institute’s assets, including its building, to GSA. Cavanaugh wrote in a letter to the GSA administrator, also attached to the motion, that the building has an estimated fair market value of $500 million. Russell Vought, U.S. Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 co-author, approved the building transfer at no cost in a March 29 letter. The move comes amid DOGE firing nearly all of USIP’s staff in recent days. The institute promotes research, policy analysis and education on conflict resolution, according to the Federal Register.