Logged in users recognized everywhere but index.php!?

I am experiencing some strange behavior where the wp-content/themes/inove/index.php file does not realize a user is logged in. All the others (archive.php, single.php, …) all realize when a user is logged in.

I inserted a little alert statement as the first line in these files (<script>alert('<?php echo $user_identity; ?>');</script>) and confirmed that index.php was the only one which printed the empty string when I was logged in while the others printed the user’s identity properly.

Any ideas why index.php is special? I’m not sure where it is included from to backtrack any further, so ideas in that direction would be helpful too. Thanks!

David Underhill