Wahoo. Here is a provincial little editorial in the Muncie Star Tribune. It’s not that the paper comes down in favor of being in the eastern time zone. It’s Muncie, they’re on the eastern side of the state, eastern time probably makes more sense there. That’s fine. What is mind blowing is how dismissive the paper is about parts of the state that might see advantages to being in the central time zone:
Just when you thought the debate over Indiana and daylight-saving time was settled, now comes the brouhaha over which time zone the state should be in.
We suspect most people who supported getting Indiana on a time schedule consistent with the rest of the nation never considered that the state might become the easternmost state in the Central time zone.
Wasn’t it a big enough change to just agree to change our clocks twice a year without permanently falling back an hour to be on the same time zone as such nearby states as Kansas and Nebraska?
It hardly seems like a subject that should even be open to debate[.]
First, a lot of the discussion about whether to go on DST revolved around which time zone we’d be on. We’re current with central time half the year and current with eastern time half the year. Governor Daniels only got away with choosing eastern time because he gave assurances that he’d petition the USDOT for a review of the appropriate time zone. Second, nice rhetorical device to suggest Kansas and Nebraska as the states with which we’d be current in the Central Time Zone. The paper studiously ignores Illinois which is, obviously, the big draw for central time. They could just as well have derided eastern time by saying eastern time would put us on the same time as Georgia and West Virginia.
Then, the paper’s arguments for moving to eastern daylight time are a little too pat:
1. “The biggest reason for adopting DST is economic advantages. Indiana does most of its business with Ohio, Michigan, the part of Kentucky on Eastern time, and New York. Chicago is less important to Indiana than New York City.” This might be true, but I’ll venture a guess that the Muncie Star Press did no research and simply pulled this “fact” out of its posterior.
2. “The biggest reason for moving to eastern daylight time is an extra hour of light during the summer months.” Wait a second, I thought the biggest reason was economic?
if the state moves to the Central time zone the sun will set at the same time as it does now in the summer and the promised extra hour for golfing will be non-existent. Instead, what we’ll get is an extra hour of evening darkness during the winter – as if winter isn’t dreary enough. Most people would legitimately feel like they were victims of a giant game of bait-and-switch.
I’m guessing the folks at the Muncie Star Press didn’t do so well at astronomy. There are going to be exactly the same number of hours of light in the day. So, in the winter time, there will be more darkness in the evening and less darkness in the morning.
3.
Finally there is the simple issue of consistency. The biggest problem with being out of step with the rest of the country isn’t what time zone we are in but that because most people elsewhere don’t memorize the oddities of Indiana time they are baffled – particularly during the summer – as to what time Hoosiers follow.
But for most of the year the world understands that Indiana is on Eastern time. Switching to a different time zone will only create more confusion that will likely take years to put behind us.
Hoosiers are butts of jokes already for allegedly being a few decades behind the rest of the country. Adopting dayligh-saving time was a big step forward.
Maybe we could adopt proofreaders for our publications as another step forward. (Not to mention getting over our anti-gay hysteria trying to insert itself into our Constitution.) But, as to the time zone issue, we’ve been functionally half-in and half-out for decades. I’m just a little amused at the Muncie Star Press telling us what “the world understands.”
Don’t misunderstand me, I certainly see arguments in favor of adopting the eastern time zone statewide, but the Muncie Star Press’s editorial was pretty terrible.
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