What's the Deal With the Blue Light?

No one has asked us this yet, but we're sure it's on the minds of the thousands upon thousands of intelligent, talented, witty, irreverent, beautiful people who log on to the Indiana Review blog every day.

In order to fully understand the story of the Blue Light, you must first understand the story of a man named Elisha Ballantine, a former president and mathematics professor at Indiana University in 1854. Well, maybe all you need to know about Elisha Ballantine is that Indiana Review is housed in a building, Ballantine Hall, that was named after him.

When it was first constructed in 1959, at an eye-popping price tag of over six million dollars, the building was the largest academic building in the world. What's that got to do with the Blue Light? Well, Ballantine's hallways are longer than allgetout, so we put the lamp out in front of the office to let people know when we're in. And thus, a legend was born.