A male Ferris stu­dent was fatally struck by a car around 8 a.m. on State street near the front of the IRC building.

The stu­dent was later pro­nounced dead at the Mecosta County Medical Center. Public safety offi­cials are cur­rently work­ing to con­tact the fam­ily of the victim.

Local and cam­pus author­i­ties responded to the acci­dent shortly after it occurred. A police offi­cer on the scene con­firmed that the acci­dent was fatal. Traffic in the sur­round­ing area was rerouted.

Ferris Department of pub­lic safety offi­cials, in addi­tion to local city police worked together on the scene.

Continue to fol­low the Torch online, as well as on twit­ter (@fsutorch) and our newly cre­ated tum­blr account for the lat­est news.

Students, com­mu­nity mem­bers come together to cure cancer

Joel Lawwell, senior in account­ing and com­puter infor­ma­tion sys­tems, got more than his two to three serv­ings of dairy on Saturday as he con­sumed seven con­tain­ers of yogurt to sup­port breast can­cer awareness.

“It’s painful, slightly deli­cious and when you get to the end and your body is telling you to stop, you just can’t quit,” said Lawwell. “I like yogurt because of the nutri­tional value, and my neigh­bor told me it was for a good cause,” he said.

Lawwell came in sec­ond for the com­pe­ti­tion, and the win­ner, Jake Larry, suc­cess­fully con­sumed 14 con­tain­ers of yogurt.

The event, spon­sored by Zeta Tau Alpha Sorority, was just one in a series of events the orga­ni­za­tion has planned and hosted through­out October in order to raise aware­ness and money for breast cancer.

Aaron Lodes, fundrais­ing chair for ZTA, said this was a very suc­cess­ful month for Zeta Tau Alpha in their efforts to raise money and aware­ness for breast cancer.

“I am so proud of the suc­cess that we have all had, the spirit and enthu­si­asm is spread­ing through­out the cam­pus and com­mu­nity,” said Lodes.

The Studio, a hair salon on S. Michigan Avenue, has been offer­ing pink streaks in clients’ hair for a $10 dona­tion. Bri Borgman, a junior in the edu­ca­tion pro­gram, is one of those ladies wear­ing her sup­port in her hair. “I thought it was a cool way to sup­port breast can­cer,” Borgman said.

The out­pour­ing of sup­port is expected to con­tinue through this last week of October, which is offi­cially rec­og­nized as National Breast Cancer Awareness month.

The ‘90s marked the golden days of Nickelodeon cartoons

When I reflect back on my child­hood, a pleas­ant mem­ory that comes to mind is watch­ing Nickelodeon car­toons back in the ‘90s.

In the past week, I’ve been in a nos­tal­gic mood. I’ve been watch­ing YouTube videos of Nickelodeon pro­mos and the com­mer­cials. The ones that would run just before “All That” came on. “All That” was the orig­i­nal Saturday Night Live for kids and, I believe one, of the great­est shows of the ’90s, along with “The Amanda Show”, “Rugrats”, “The Angry Beavers” and many more.

Who can for­get the catchy promo phrase “Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickelodeon!”? I sure can’t. Remember the green slime? Kenan and Kel and their orange soda? “Nick News with Linda Ellerbee” was my prime news source. Oh, and Melissa Joan Hart pre-“Sabrina the Teenage Witch” in “Clarissa Explains It All”.

Recently, a friend of mine and I were dis­cussing how great ‘90s Nickelodeon tele­vi­sion shows truly were. In our dis­cus­sion, we pon­dered why the tele­vi­sion shows and car­toons cur­rently aired today are not as appeal­ing or catchy as they were in the 1990s. One con­cept I’ve come to terms with is that many of the clas­sic “Nicktoons” had an edge to them.

One show in par­tic­u­lar that had edge along with humor and was absolutely a bit provoca­tive at times was “Ren and Stimpy”, which aired on the Nickelodeon net­work from 1991–1996. I won­der if it was that show that opened up the door for future shows to dis­play a bit of “toi­let” humor and sex­ual innu­en­dos. As a child watch­ing a show that was pri­mar­ily tar­geted for older audi­ences, I have to admit I was quite enter­tained by the deroga­tory, raunchy humor of the series.

The group of quirky ani­mals in “Rocko’s Modern Life” is another clas­sic. This is another great show embed­ded with sex­ual innu­en­dos and odd, sur­real moments. The writ­ers and pro­duc­ers of these shows are cer­tainly geniuses. No longer does Nickelodeon show­case ani­mated com­edy car­toons fea­tur­ing char­ac­ters with bizarre, witty qualities.

Then there was the car­toon that taught us about being caught up in a tough sit­u­a­tion and help­ing peo­ple with real-life issues; I’m talk­ing about “Hey Arnold!” which aired from 1996–2004. If you’re a ‘90s kid, you remem­ber in the show Helga who con­stantly bul­lied Arnold because she was secretly in love with him. This pro­ceeded to indi­cate that when some­one referred to you as “foot­ball head”, they had a crush on you.

The tele­vi­sion shows that are cur­rently on Nickelodeon will never com­pare to those of the ‘90s. What hap­pened to the golden days of Nickelodeon? Today’s “Danny Phantom” could never replace yesterday’s “Rocket Power.”

I sup­pose the rea­son for ceas­ing won­der­ful shows, includ­ing the well known “Double Dare 2000” on Nickelodeon GAS, could be due the fact that Nickelodeon Studios closed down on April 30, 2005. This sig­naled the end of what I could con­sider an “awe­some” era of game shows, chil­dren sit­coms and cartoons.

In ref­er­ence to “Boomerang”, the spin­off chan­nel from Cartoon Network that fea­tured many clas­sic car­toon shows, I hope Nickelodeon will one day come out with a sim­i­lar net­work fea­tur­ing Nickelodeon car­toons of the ‘90s. I’d sure tune in to that.

With the change of sea­son comes a change of fashion

As the days in Big Rapids begin to grow colder, cloth­ing styles begin to change across campus.

Flip-flops and shorts are start­ing to be packed away in boxes to take back to Mom and Dad’s house to be stored until spring rolls around. These items will be swapped for thick win­ter jack­ets and Ugg boots.

But who says your per­sonal sense of fash­ion has to die along with the leaves? It’s def­i­nitely pos­si­ble to stay warm and chic at the same time.

As most women would agree, a pair of skinny jeans is essen­tial for the fall sea­son. Skinny jeans are per­fect for tuck­ing into a warm pair of Ugg boots.

According to vogue​.com, small touches of fur on coats is in this sea­son. Also, expect to see plaids, pur­ples and vary­ing shades of gray. “You can never go wrong with a neu­tral, like ephemer­ally cool char­coal,” says lifestyle​.msn​.com.

A per­fect way to beat the cold is to layer your clothes; this goes for both men and women. Both gen­ders can add lay­ers to their looks by wear­ing a jacket over a com­fort­able hooded-sweatshirt. This not only increases your warmth, but also adds more color and visual appeal to your over­all look.

Scarves are no longer just for women. “Scarves are appear­ing more and more fre­quently in the pages of men’s mag­a­zines and are quickly becom­ing the must-have win­ter acces­sory for men,” says style​feeder​.com, “A scarf adds a touch of color to a dark look and looks espe­cially sophis­ti­cated when worn with office attire.” Men and women alike should uti­lize both the warmth and mod­ish look that scarves provide.

The cold weather does not have to equate to a loss of style. For more ideas and tips on fall fash­ion, visit lifestyle​.msn​.com.

Ferris sweeps open­ing home series for the first time since 2001–2002

The Bulldog hockey team defended home ice by sweep­ing the Connecticut Huskies in the first home series of the season.

Ferris began the week­end home stand with a 2–1 come from behind vic­tory Friday night.

The Bulldogs fell behind late in the first period when Connecticut’s Daniel Naurato shot a goal past sopho­more goalie Taylor Nelson. Ferris responded early in the sec­ond period with a goal by sopho­more Derek Graham, his first of the season.

After remain­ing tied for most of the sec­ond period, Ferris was able to break the tie with 1:31 left in the period. Freshman Travis Ouellette deflected a shot by junior Scott Wietecha for a power play goal.

The Bulldogs were able to hold the lead through­out the third period as Nelson made some cru­cial saves, includ­ing stop­ping the game-tying goal right in front of the net with five sec­onds left in the game. Nelson ended the night with 26 saves, 10 of which came in the third period. Head coach Bob Daniels was pleased with the effort from his goalie.

“Nelson had a lot of key saves for us,” said Daniels, “He really had some key stops in the third period and that makes a huge dif­fer­ence in a close game like this.”

After start­ing the week­end with a close win, the Bulldogs dom­i­nated the Huskies on Saturday, post­ing a 6–1 blowout win.

Ferris jumped on Connecticut early in the con­test as senior Blair Riley net­ted his first goal of the sea­son 9:35 into the first period. Junior Todd Pococke gave Ferris a 2–0 lead on his first goal of the season.

The Bulldogs con­tin­ued to pro­duce on offense in the sec­ond period, as senior Matt Case scored a power play goal with 7:05 left to give Ferris a 3–0 lead. Connecticut’s lone goal came from Sean Ambrosie late in the period to close the gap to 3–1 at the sec­ond intermission.

Ferris shut the door on a Connecticut come­back in the third period. Senior cap­tain Cody Chupp scored his first goal of the sea­son on a power play just 42 sec­onds into the third to put away the Huskies.

After sweep­ing the home open­ing week­end series, the team feels con­fi­dent about the start of the sea­son. Chupp said the week­end sweep was exactly what the team needed.

“It was huge for us to start the home sched­ule like this,” said Chupp, “We were look­ing to come out of this week­end with a sweep, so it feels pretty good being able to play well at home at the start of the season.”

One of the keys to the vic­to­ries was the power play, in which the Bulldogs were able to score three power play goals. Ferris had just one power play goal last week­end against Canisius College.

“I’ve been very happy with the way we’ve been able to pro­duce on the power play, espe­cially since we’ve had to switch up our lines because some of the guys have been bat­tling the flu,” said Daniels.

The Bulldogs host Robert Morris University (Pa.), who is cur­rently 1–1 in the sea­son, this week­end at Ewigleben Ice Arena. Last sea­son, the Bulldogs lost and tied in two road con­tests against the Robert Morris Colonials.

The dif­fi­cult Michigan econ­omy has many grad­u­ates con­cerned about job­less­ness post graduation.

Ferris State University stu­dents eagerly await grad­u­a­tion to break into the work­force, how­ever the tur­bu­lent Michigan econ­omy has forced pre-graduates to rethink their employ­ment strategies.

Finding a job post grad­u­a­tion is dif­fi­cult enough but even more so these days. According to the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth (DELEG), Michigan unem­ploy­ment rate reached 15.3 per­cent in September, one of the high­est com­pared to the nations aver­age of 9.4 per­cent. Nevada fol­lows closely with 13.2 per­cent, fol­lowed by Rhode Island, 12.8 per­cent and California and Oregon with 12.2 per­cent each. According the United States Department of Labor Oct. 2009 sta­tis­tics, nation­wide unem­ploy­ment is most acute among white males (10.3 per­cent) and African-Americans (15.4 percent).

Although the Michigan unem­ploy­ment rate has remained steady since June 2009, the 6.4 per­cent increase in unem­ploy­ment from the last year’s is still daunting.

Staying in Michigan is longer an option for many FSU grad­u­ates. Richard Howes, weld­ing engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy (WET) grad­u­ate and process engi­neer at Wabash Steele, relo­cated to Princeton, Indiana, after his May 2009 grad­u­a­tion. Howes felt con­fi­dent that he could have found a job in MI based on FSU WET program’s 100 per­cent employ­ment place­ment rate, how­ever the cost of liv­ing in Michigan would have dimin­ished his resources.

“I could have earned 20 per­cent more money in Michigan,” said Howes. “But liv­ing here (Indiana), I have about 40 per­cent more dis­pos­able income.”

National salary of weld­ing engi­neers is between $50,000 and 100,000 yearly. Michigan weld­ing engi­neers could earn up to $20,000 more com­pared to Indiana. Although a welder could earn more, the jobs are sim­ply not in Michigan.

Howes also worked at Bradford and White in Caledonia, MI for nearly two years, and could have had a job there, how­ever he felt that work­ing at Wabash would ben­e­fit his career more. And even though Michigan is not the only state strug­gling with unem­ploy­ment, Howes feels secure in his occupation.

“WET taught me well and I have proved to be invalu­able to my com­pany.” Said Howes.

A Detroit News April 2009 arti­cle said that 53 per­cent of University of Michigan grad­u­ates left the state after grad­u­a­tion. And more than half of Michigan State grads relo­cate, specif­i­cally to the Chicago area.

The News also stated that from Michigan Future Inc. Survey that Michigan pub­lic uni­ver­sity grad­u­ates that grad­u­ated in 2007 left the state within one year. This arti­cle also stated that 63 per­cent of Michigan grads, that relo­cate had no inten­tions of mov­ing back.

Post–grad unem­ploy­ment also largely depends on career. According to an arti­cle in the Detroit Free Press, September 2009, phar­macy tech­ni­cians are the most in demand jobs in Michigan. Likewise, jobs in the health­care fields also remain in demand. Students pur­su­ing med­ical, engi­neer­ing, and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy degrees are more likely to find a job nation­wide com­pared to other degrees. Meanwhile, auto­mo­tive and print jour­nal­ism careers are rapidly leav­ing the state.

The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times have reduced the amount of their daily news­pa­pers, while the Ann Arbor News closed its doors in July 2009, becom­ing a strictly online news source. Several General Motors (GM) and Chrysler com­pa­nies have also closed their doors statewide. GM most recently closed their Pontiac, Mich. plant while Chrysler closed down Sterling Heights’ plant.

In addi­tion to stu­dents’ dif­fi­culty in find­ing a job on their own, many job recruiters and intern­ships have reduced their fund­ing and pro­grams. This occur­rence is due to numer­ous com­pany lay-offs and reduced bud­gets. According to a March 2009 arti­cle in the Michigan Daily, intern­ships and entry– level jobs in many fields have been reduced to unpaid work.

Although some stu­dents plan to take their chances of employ­ment dur­ing the reces­sion, oth­ers plan on extend­ing their edu­ca­tion via grad­u­ate school to dodge the eco­nomic reces­sion. A Dec. 2008 Michigan Daily arti­cles said that 45 per­cent of University of Michigan grad­u­ates had applied for grad-schools to avoid the job market.

Whether stu­dents plan to face the uncer­tain econ­omy or pro­long edu­ca­tion with grad-schools, Hughes has one advice for stu­dents in all fields.
“Look for a job before graduation!”

The foot­ball team is amidst its worst los­ing streak in 25 years

Jeff Pierce, head coach of the Ferris State foot­ball team, has never lost seven regular-season games in a row– until now.

The Bulldogs have not lost seven con­sec­u­tive games in one sea­son since 1983. Senior quar­ter­back Kyle Parrish said that Pierce has dealt with the adver­sity very well.

“I’ve been on some los­ing teams and coach Pierce has han­dled it just about as well as any­body I’ve ever seen,” said Parrish.

The trou­bles on the field this sea­son can be attrib­uted to a num­ber of prob­lems. Athletics Director Tom Kirinovic said he feels the biggest issue this sea­son has been the num­ber of injuries to key play­ers, as well as the loss of many play­ers to grad­u­a­tion. The NCAA allows Division II foot­ball pro­grams to have up to 36 full ath­letic schol­ar­ships, known as Full Time Equivalency (FTE). Kirinovic said Ferris cur­rently offers 30 schol­ar­ships and they are typ­i­cally split between two or three play­ers. Rarely is a first-year player offered a full ride, accord­ing to Kirinovic.

“We’re now to the point where we are play­ing walk-ons against other teams’ schol­ar­ship kids,” said Kirinovic.

The Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference cur­rently has five teams ranked in the top 10 in the Super Regional 3 rank­ings and Ferris plays two of them, Saginaw Valley State and Hillsdale, in the final three weeks of the season.

“Our con­fer­ence does not give you a lot of oppor­tu­nity to catch your breath,” said Kirinovic, “If you’re beat up, you just have to deal with it.”

Kirinovic said that Pierce is an hon­est, hard­work­ing per­son who under­stands the edu­ca­tional part of ath­let­ics. Parrish said that he is always there to help the ath­letes when­ever they need it. Parrish said Pierce invites him to eat din­ner with his fam­ily, since he is from California and typ­i­cally can­not go home.

“Whenever I have needed some­thing, he is always there to help me,” said Parrish.

None of the coaches or ath­let­ics staff have employ­ment con­tracts for mul­ti­ple years, as seen at the Division I level. At the end of each year, Kirinovic said he will sit down with Pierce and the staff and eval­u­ate the season.

“We need to I think really scru­ti­nize every­thing,” said Kirinovic, “This is a time when you have to take a look at everything.”

Pierce has been a suc­cess­ful coach in the past. Ferris is 21–12 under Pierce in the past three sea­sons, though the Bulldogs’ win total has decreased each sea­son. Pierce has won 91 games as the Bulldogs’ head coach, more than any other coach in school his­tory. He has 10 win­ning sea­sons and recorded three con­fer­ence titles.

With the major­ity of the team return­ing next sea­son, Kirinovic is hope­ful that the team will turn it around.

“It’s tough to be patient when you’re get­ting your brains beat in, but if we can just try to stay pos­i­tive and be patient, it should help us next year because we’ll have all these guys that have played more than they prob­a­bly would have oth­er­wise,” said Kirinovic.

The chal­lenges that we face are com­plex and numerous.

This moment in his­tory has given us a bro­ken health care sys­tem and an aware­ness of the energy crisis.

Our broth­ers and sis­ters are on the front lines of two wars in a region that has been fight­ing for more than a cen­tury on the other side of the world. The rest of us are on the front lines of an eco­nomic upheaval that threat­ens our way of life. While the coun­try strug­gles, blame is dis­trib­uted and fin­gers are pointed, but to us, our gen­er­a­tion, there is no time for blame. We have this time to begin our life’s work.

Our grand­chil­dren and great grand­chil­dren will not look upon Tom Brokaw’s WWII era heroes quite the same way we do. The strug­gles of that time period will seem a world away. It is our his­tory that they will read. It will be our suc­cess and fail­ure that they will rec­og­nize and our action to improve upon the world which we have been given that will speak to our legacy.

Already, our peers are mak­ing the changes we need. Rallying in Lansing to show sup­port for fund­ing of the Michigan Promise Scholarship. Organizing food dri­ves and char­ity events for the less for­tu­nate and elim­i­nat­ing dis­eases. We will demand a clean earth and forgo imme­di­ate wealth with the under­stand­ing that the long term gains will be far greater than we can imagine.

In this pin­na­cle of our soon to be his­tory, we will stand strong. We will remind the gen­er­a­tion pre­ced­ing us that the earth is in capa­ble hands. We will teach our pos­ter­ity that his gift of free­dom is not to be taken for granted.

We are the gen­er­a­tion that will treat the ill; all of them. We are the gen­er­a­tion that will define the new sys­tem of envi­ron­men­tally fea­si­ble and renew­able energy. We are the gen­er­a­tion that will bring peace to the mid­dle east and sta­bi­lize and reverse the eco­nomic downturn.

The chal­lenges are great and many, but this is our time, our oppor­tu­nity. We will be the era our grand­chil­dren will read about, the gen­er­a­tion that they look to as mod­els of integrity and grace.

We will be the next great­est generation.

The future of the Michigan Promise is still unclear

Over 96,000 stu­dents are anx­iously wait­ing to hear the fate of the Michigan Promise Scholarship and they’re going to have to wait a lit­tle longer.

Freshman Michael Lewis calls the deci­sion to cut a pro­gram that stu­dents have become finan­cially depen­dent on unjust and hyp­o­crit­i­cal. “I’ve per­son­ally never been more dis­ap­pointed in my government.”

“This is yet another exam­ple of term-limit leg­is­la­tors act­ing in oppo­si­tion of the peo­ple they are sup­posed to rep­re­sent and con­tra­dict­ing promises made in the past,” said Lewis.

Prospects are begin­ning to look hope­ful how­ever, as Michigan law­mak­ers get closer to reach­ing a final­ized bud­get for 2009–2010. Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) is expected to send the six remain­ing bud­get bills to Governor Jennifer Granholm this week.

Gov. Granholm is expected to use a line-item veto on any cuts in the Michigan Promise Scholarship Program. She is also expected to veto por­tions of the bills in order to increase spend­ing for rev­enue shar­ing, Medicaid, school aid, local fire and police and other pro­grams she believes to be impor­tant to pub­lic health and safety.

Michigan cur­rently has a $2.8 bil­lion bud­get deficit, but law­mak­ers have looked to cut around $1.2 bil­lion in state spend­ing, includ­ing fund­ing for the Promise scholarship.

Democratic law­mak­ers how­ever are look­ing at new tax increases in order to restore fund­ing to some of these pro­grams, includ­ing the Promise.

The Democratic con­trolled House voted to sus­pend an infla­tion­ary increase in the per­sonal exemp­tion on Michigan’s income tax. This will save roughly $55 mil­lion but will result in tax­pay­ers not being able to claim an extra $4.35 per per­son deduc­tion on their income tax form.

The House also voted to place a three per­cent tax on doc­tors’ gross receipts to raise more money for Medicaid programs.

Evan Thompson, a fresh­man in the polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­gram said, “The last thing we need to do to Michigan cit­i­zens is increase taxes. I think both sides should be able to agree to that.”

It is his belief that the Michigan leg­is­la­ture never should have passed the bill fund­ing the Promise schol­ar­ship if the state didn’t have the money to pay for it in the first place. “But they [law­mak­ers] passed it and it’s law,” said Thompson. “They can’t renege on it now.”

It is unclear as to when Michigan’s law­mak­ers will final­ize the bud­get nego­ti­a­tions, but the tem­po­rary bud­get that they passed at the begin­ning of the month expires on Oct. 31.