As votes for the office of Mayor were tal­lied, a 33 year old Ferris pub­lic rela­tions stu­dent Jared Crockett waited with his fam­ily to hear the results.
“This has been an expe­ri­ence I won’t soon for­get,” said Crockett

Crockett, who lost the elec­tion to incum­bent Mayor Mark Warba 479 votes to 196 votes, is a Ferris State stu­dent and bar­tender at Applebee’s. Running under the slo­gan of “one city, one uni­ver­sity, one com­mu­nity,” Crockett hoped to include stu­dents in the elec­tion process.

For more infor­ma­tion on elec­tion results, check the Mecosta County Election Page.

The Ferris club disc golf team defeated Western Michigan at home

The Ferris club disc golf team defeated Western Michigan 70–49 at the Michigan Intercollegiate Disc Golf Challenge (MIDGC) third event on Sunday. The event was held at Northend Riverside Park and included four stu­dents from Ferris. Disc golf is played sim­i­larly to con­ven­tional golf in that there are 18 holes and your score is the num­ber of strokes total. Typically, events are scored using stroke-play, which is sim­ply based on the total num­ber of shots a com­peti­tor takes and the low­est score wins.

This event, how­ever, was match-play and each hole was awarded a num­ber of points. Brad Way, a senior in the con­struc­tion man­age­ment pro­gram, said the win­ner of the hole received two points; each per­son was awarded one point if they tied and the loser did not receive any points. This event was unique in that play­ers of all skill lev­els could play because play­ers were hand­i­capped to their indi­vid­ual average.

Senior Josh Pickard, a his­tory major, picked up 32 points in the dou­bles round and 33 in the sin­gles round. He is now in fifth place over­all with 126 points overall.

Dr. Leonard Johnson has been coor­di­nat­ing the MIDGC series since the fall of 2006. It was at that time that the club disc golf team was cre­ated at Ferris. Once a month, stu­dents from col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties around Michigan com­pete against one another in orga­nized events.

“The sport has grown so much that there is a tour­na­ment some­where in the state every week­end,” said Johnson.

This was the third MIDGC event of the sea­son. Ferris won the first tour­na­ment over Western Michigan 62–48. It was held on the final week­end in September in Three Rivers. Pickard and Way rep­re­sented Ferris in the victory.

The sec­ond event took place on Oct. 10 at Oshtemo Township Park near Kalamazoo. Ferris defeated Western Michigan in the dou­bles match, but dropped both sin­gles matches and lost 97–88 overall.

Johnson said that stu­dents from Central Michigan, Michigan State, Lawrence Tech, Schoolcraft, Grand Valley State and Western Michigan have all com­peted in var­i­ous events. Way said this sea­son Western Michigan and Ferris have been the only two schools con­sis­tently com­pet­ing in the events.

It costs $10 for the match-play and an addi­tional $10 to be counted for stroke play. Any per­son can win cash pay­outs for the low­est score of the tour­na­ment, accord­ing to Way.

Last sea­son Ferris defeated Western Michigan to claim the 2008–2009 MIDGC Championship. With the vic­tory on Sunday, Ferris now leads 220–193 over­all. The sea­son began in September and runs through May, with one tour­na­ment each month.

Less peo­ple are will­ing to get their hands dirty by fix­ing their own vehicle

More peo­ple take their vehi­cles to auto repair shops for sim­ple repairs than fix them on their own.

Last week­end, I was at home and told my dad that my check engine light was on. I told him my water tem­per­a­ture gauge was not reg­is­ter­ing any­thing and he said he would look at it. Three hours later, he had changed the sen­sor and it was fixed.

Our gen­er­a­tion has fewer and fewer peo­ple who are will­ing and able to make minor repairs to their own vehicles.

My abil­ity to fix or change any­thing on a vehi­cle is lim­ited. I can put air in the tires, add engine coolant or oil if need be, and even replace the air fil­ter, but that is it. If I took the time to learn, I could prob­a­bly change my own oil. Ultimately, I end up pay­ing some­one else to do the work for me rather than tak­ing the time to learn to do it myself.

Therein lays the rea­son that most peo­ple today do not fix their own vehi­cles. It takes longer than two min­utes to make any sig­nif­i­cant changes and peo­ple do not want to take that much time out of their day. Whether it is a mat­ter of lazi­ness or sim­ple lack of know-how, young peo­ple do not take the time to fix their own vehicles.

With that said, there are peo­ple, espe­cially stu­dents in auto­mo­tive pro­grams, that are capa­ble and will­ing to fix their own vehi­cles. Those indi­vid­u­als enjoy work­ing on cars and want to do that for their careers. The rest of us who do not enjoy it, how­ever, do not take the time to learn and there­fore pay some­one else to do it.

Auto repair shops have become promi­nent fix­tures of more recent times, since so many peo­ple take their vehi­cles in to be ser­viced. Quick-stop oil change busi­nesses undoubt­edly were founded dur­ing the tran­si­tion from past times of mechan­i­cal apti­tude to the way things are now. For some­thing that only takes the aver­age per­son about 20 to 30 min­utes to com­plete, less peo­ple still take the time to do it themselves.

Though tak­ing your car to a mechanic is the easy way to get it fixed, it is by far the most costly. Auto repair busi­nesses, espe­cially deal­er­ships, charge $50–100 per hour just for labor. They real­ize that peo­ple are in a rush to get their cars fixed and charge ridicu­lous prices to work on them.

Some projects, such as over­haul­ing a trans­mis­sion, do take extra time and have to be done pre­cisely or the vehi­cle will not run. There is a com­mon adage that mechan­ics “fix” more than what is nec­es­sary and there­fore charge more. It would seem to me that peo­ple would want to avoid mechan­ics so they do not get taken advan­tage of.

I am just as guilty as any­one else of not being able to fix my own vehi­cle. If the check engine light comes on, I take it to Auto Zone or have my dad look at it. The abil­ity to fix sim­ple prob­lems on a vehi­cle seems like a skill of gen­er­a­tions past. Though it might take sig­nif­i­cant time an effort, it might be worth the invest­ment for me to learn a lit­tle more about my car. Along with hav­ing some extra change in my pocket, the pay-off would be the sat­is­fac­tion of know­ing that I can fix my car myself.

As Third Eye Blind’s lead singer Stephan Jenkins closed the show at the Wink arena last Thursday, he said, “This is our first time at Ferris State, and now we know…”

The band, which goes by 3EB for short, made a stop in Big Rapids on their national tour. They played to a 1000-plus crowd in the Wink arena at 7 p.m., Thursday night. The opener was the up and com­ing band Hot Chelle Rae, which has accom­pa­nied 3EB at var­i­ous stops on this tour.

3EB recently came out with a new album, fol­low­ing a six year hia­tus, enti­tled, “Ursa Major.” Hot Chelle Rae was also pro­mot­ing a new album, “Love Sick Electric,” which came out on the Monday before the show.

3EB’s set included songs from their new album, as well as crowd favorites such as “Jumper” and “Semi-charmed Life.” The crowd cheered for an encore as the band left the stage.

Lori Armstrong, the sec­re­tary for the music indus­try man­age­ment pro­gram at Ferris, said that stu­dents had voted last Spring on what genre they wanted to see for Autumn Alive, and the Rock/Pop cat­e­gory won. Other bands that were con­sid­ered, but were unavail­able to come, were Jack’s Mannequin and Matt Nathanson.

Armstrong also said that they try to change the style of music for each show dur­ing the year to appeal to the whole stu­dent body.

It cost $41,000 to bring 3EB, and $500 for Hot Chelle Rae. Kelsey Fales, an FSU stu­dent and MIMA mem­ber who played a major role in coor­di­nat­ing this event, said that there are cat­e­gories of price range, and when a price is decided upon, they start with the first band in that range and move down the list. 3EB was con­firmed in late September of this year.

Armstrong also said that there were around 1,000 tick­ets sold prior to the event, and they were expect­ing about another thou­sand to be sold at the door. Sponsors of the event included The Gate, Y102 and the Student Leadership and Activites Advisory Council (SLAAC).

“I really enjoyed the band Hot Chelle Rae. I liked that they signed auto­graphs after the show,” said FSU junior Sarah Nagel after the show. “Third Eye Blind was pretty good…I’m glad I went.”

The Birkam Health Center has been inun­dated with students

Ferris recently received its sec­ond ship­ment of H1N1 vac­cines last Friday, con­tain­ing around 300 doses, which is being admin­is­tered to any­one under the age of 24 who wishes to obtain it.

Since send­ing out a cam­pus wide announce­ment that said the vac­cines were in, the health cen­ter has had mass quan­ti­ties of stu­dents show­ing up. The first ship­ment that came in a few weeks ago, which was admin­is­tered to high pri­or­ity groups includ­ing preg­nant women, care­tak­ers who look after chil­dren under six months old, clin­i­cal work­ers, and EMT and other pub­lic ser­vice offi­cials, con­tained 200 doses.

Paul Sullivan, PhD, the direc­tor of the Birkam Health Center on cam­pus, said that there will be another ship­ment com­ing in at either the end of this week or early next week con­tain­ing a few hun­dred more doses. Once all of the high risk groups and stu­dents under 24 years of age have received the vac­cine, it will be avail­able to everyone.

Sullivan also said that they have sat­is­fied the Center for Disease Control (CDC) require­ments, and are encour­ag­ing stu­dents to get the vac­ci­na­tion. There are two types of vac­ci­na­tions avail­able, one being a nasal spray, the other being an injec­tion. Most are given the nasal spray, as the injec­tion is reserved for those with con­di­tions that may put them at a higher risk if infected.

The dif­fer­ence between the two is that the nasal spray con­tains an active virus, which is a newer tech­nol­ogy for vac­ci­na­tion, and the injec­tion con­tains an inac­tive one. The nasal spray has also been found to be less effec­tive in peo­ple 50 years and older.

As far as the num­ber of H1N1 cases on cam­pus, Sullivan said that there have been around 130 since the begin­ning of the semes­ter, and the rate per day is no longer increas­ing. While the uni­ver­sity ran out of test­ing kits quickly, it is most likely that the cases with symp­toms resem­bling H1N1 are in fact that.

For stu­dents wish­ing to receive a vac­cine, if the health cen­ter fee of $47 has been paid, there is no charge. Only basic paper­work will be involved. Sullivan said that they could charge a fee for admin­is­ter­ing it, but decided not to.

“For all they’re worth…we will not charge any­thing,” said Sullivan.

The Bulldog Volleyball team is 18–9 over­all this season

The Ferris State vol­ley­ball team split its two road con­tests over the weekend.

The Bulldogs dropped a com­pet­i­tive 3–1 deci­sion to Saginaw Valley State on Friday. The Bulldogs lost the first two sets and were not able to rebound as they ended up los­ing in four sets (21−25), (20−25), (25−19), (20−25).

Junior Arielle Goodson led the Bulldogs on their offen­sive attack as she recorded 13 kills and a .357 attack per­cent­age. Redshirt fresh­man Samantha Fordyce recorded 37 assists for the Bulldog offense.

On the defen­sive side, sopho­more Lisa Tobiczyk recorded 14 digs and sopho­more Ashley Hunter con­tributed nine digs for the Bulldogs in the los­ing effort. The loss was the third straight for the team. Redshirt fresh­man Aly Brecht said the team let some mis­takes affect its over­all play.

“We let some of the small things get to us and they were able to go on a few runs,” said Brecht.

On Saturday, Ferris broke its three-match los­ing streak as the team swept the Lake Superior State Lakers 3–0 in straight sets.

Ferris jumped out to a quick start, as they were able to out­hit the Lakers .294 to .188 and coasted to a 25–17 vic­tory. The team then won the next two sets 25–17 and 25–23 to earn the sweep.

“We were able to get every­one on the team involved and we were just able to have fun out there,” said Brecht.

Goodson again led the Bulldog attack as she recorded 12 kills and a .417 hit­ting per­cent­age. Ferris had a .324 attack per­cent­age as a team, while the Lakers had a .174 attack per­cent­age. Fordyce led the women in assists with 36 and six digs for the vis­it­ing team.

Ferris has two more reg­u­lar sea­son matches before the GLIAC Tournament begins on Nov. 11.

On Nov. 6, Ferris will host the Michigan Tech Huskies who are 13–12 over­all and 9–5 in the con­fer­ence. Earlier this year, Ferris trav­eled to Houghton and defeated the Huskies in four sets.

The team will fin­ish the reg­u­lar sea­son on Nov. 7 as they host Northern Michigan, who is cur­rently 17–9. Ferris already accounts for one of their losses, as the Bulldogs were able to pull out a win in five sets on the Wildcats home court.

The results of the final two con­tests of the sea­son will deter­mine which seed Ferris receives for the con­fer­ence tour­na­ment. Northern Michigan is one game ahead of the Bulldogs in the GLIAC North Division while Michigan Tech has the same con­fer­ence record.

Governor Granholm signs remain­ing bills for a final bud­get elim­i­nat­ing fund­ing for var­i­ous programs

Governor Jennifer Granholm signed the six remain­ing bud­get bills on Oct. 29, final­iz­ing the $44.5 bil­lion bud­get for the 2009–2010 fis­cal year.

Her sig­na­ture con­cludes sev­eral weeks of nego­ti­a­tions and par­ti­san bick­er­ing over final­iz­ing the bud­get. Since the start of the fis­cal year, Oct. 1, the state had been oper­at­ing under a tem­po­rary bud­get that would have expired on Oct. 31.

Granholm denounced the pro­posed bud­get cuts from the Senate Republicans under the lead­er­ship of Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester). In the final bud­get, Granholm vetoed over 70 items, equiv­a­lent to roughly $128 mil­lion in state spending.

One of Granholm’s biggest bud­getary con­cerns has been the elim­i­na­tion of the Michigan Promise Scholarship pro­gram and she has been fight­ing the Republican led Senate over the cuts to the program.

The pro­gram was elim­i­nated from the final bud­get even after she had been hop­ing to find alter­na­tive fund­ing for the $120 mil­lion schol­ar­ship pro­gram which pro­vided state assis­tance to over 96,000 students.

However, the $31.7 mil­lion for the needs-based schol­ar­ship pro­gram for 35,000 pri­vate col­lege stu­dents sur­vived the Governor’s vetoes.

Other high­lights from the final bud­get include calls for spend­ing $44 bil­lion, includ­ing $1.4 bil­lion in fed­eral stim­u­lus spend­ing, and cuts of at least $292 per pupil in pub­lic schools, cuts to Medicaid and the elim­i­na­tion of the Michigan State Fair.

An 8 per­cent cut to Medicaid pay­ments to doc­tors resulted after the Senate rejected a 3 per­cent tax increase on gross doctor’s receipts.

Senate Republicans have been crit­i­cized heav­ily by Democrats for not com­pro­mis­ing on new pro­posed tax revenues.

The veto of the $7.1 mil­lion appro­pri­a­tion approved by law­mak­ers in attempts to save the 160 year old fair puts to end hope of sav­ing the fair in its tra­di­tional form. Supporters are look­ing into alter­na­tive means of funding.

Governor Jennifer Granholm approved a state bud­get for the 09–10 fis­cal year that elim­i­nated all fund­ing for the Michigan Promise scholarship.

The Promise schol­ar­ships, which would have pro­vided between $1,000 and $4,000 for over 90,000 qual­i­fy­ing Michigan stu­dents, were meant to help ease the cost of col­lege and pro­mote post high school edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties in the state.

One of the pil­lars of any strong econ­omy is an edu­cated soci­ety. As we con­tinue to elim­i­nate chances for the peo­ple of Michigan to par­tic­i­pate in higher edu­ca­tion, we pro­long our finan­cial detri­ment and cre­ate a gen­er­a­tion of ill-equipped young peo­ple to inherit the responsibility.

The prob­lem isn’t the bud­get process, it’s that those respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing this bud­get ben­e­fit more from the bat­tle and less from the progress. For months the Michigan Promise fund­ing has been up for debate. This didn’t sneak up on any­one. But it’s bet­ter if the can­di­date is shown shak­ing a fist and sput­ter­ing red faced in sup­port of or against an item, like the Michigan Promise, to keep inter­est and focus on the bud­get process so that sub­se­quent fin­ger point­ing after the sign­ing may commence.

There is a dev­as­tat­ing need for state level action in the time between elec­tions, not just the run-up to them.

Was the pro­posed amount for the Promise schol­ar­ships of $140 mil­lion too much to tell the lead­ers of tomor­row that the gov­ern­ment is putting its trust into them? It’s pos­si­ble that cut­ting the fund­ing helped to bring about a bud­get res­o­lu­tion and keep the deficit from get­ting any big­ger, but at the cost of Michigan’s future, that’s a pretty high price to pay.

The Ferris Recyclers, a reg­is­tered stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion at Ferris State University, will be host­ing A Night at the Recycling Center.

The event will be tak­ing place on Nov. 4 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the recy­cling cen­ter in Big Rapids, a time when the facil­ity isn’t usu­ally open.

Angela Eick, pres­i­dent of the Ferris Recyclers, said, “I had no idea where the recy­cling cen­ter was until my junior year here, so we are just hop­ing to spread the word about their facility.”

The Ferris Recyclers also began a pro­gram this year that tries to incor­po­rate recy­cling into res­i­dence halls. Four halls were cho­sen to par­tic­i­pate on cam­pus. The pur­pose of this was to try to give stu­dents some oppor­tu­nity to recy­cle at least a few times dur­ing the semester.

Eick also said that because this event is being held at a time when the facil­ity isn’t usu­ally open, it’s a chance for stu­dents to take advan­tage of the recy­cling avail­able here.

This event will have bev­er­ages avail­able for stu­dents and other planned activ­i­ties as well. Captain Planet, the famous envi­ron­men­tal super­hero, also might be mak­ing an appear­ance some­time that evening.

If you are inter­ested in bring­ing items to recy­cle, the group accepts cereal, tis­sue and shoe boxes, mail, mag­a­zines, paper, news­pa­per, tin cans, sty­ro­foam and many other items.

If you would like more infor­ma­tion on this event or the Ferris Recyclers orga­ni­za­tion, visit freewebs​.com/​f​e​r​r​i​s​r​e​c​y​c​l​ers.