Dimas tries make some noise for the women’s ten­nis team

Following an injury-riddled sea­son, Daniela Dimas is look­ing to stay healthy in her senior year.

Dimas, the lone senior on the Ferris State women’s ten­nis team, spent last sea­son deal­ing with a back injury that kept her out for most of the season.

“It was really tough because I really wanted to go out and help out my team,” said Dimas. “I thought I wasn’t going to be able to play at all and then I was told I could, but they changed their minds.”

Besides deal­ing with injuries through her career, Dimas has also had the task of adjust­ing to a new cul­ture. Dimas, who is from Mexico City, Mexico, had to deal with the obvi­ous lan­guage and cul­tural dif­fer­ences, but also had to adjust from life in Mexico City to life in Big Rapids.

“I’m from a big city that’s pretty crowded. I’m used to being in a car all day just to get any­where,” said Dimas, “Big Rapids is obvi­ously a lit­tle less crowded.”

Head women’s ten­nis coach Alex Palladino is also hop­ing she bounces back and has a good year after the strug­gles she has had to overcome.

“Daniela is some­what of a mys­tery for our team,” said Palladino. “She had to deal with those injuries and now she’s finally healthy. She could really help make this team bet­ter this year.”

Though Dimas had to deal with var­i­ous issues last year, she started this sea­son with some con­fi­dence by win­ning both her sin­gles and dou­bles matches at a con­test at Saginaw Valley State on Sept. 12, 2008.

“I was really ner­vous going into my first match, but my con­fi­dence improved through the match. Winning the match showed me that I can still win and I think it will carry through the sea­son,” said Dimas.

With a new-found con­fi­dence in her game, Dimas hopes that she can enjoy her senior sea­son, as well as be successful.

“I’ve got noth­ing to lose this year, espe­cially after last year. I just want to enjoy my senior sea­son and win as many matches as I can,” said Dimas.

At its most basic level, the idea of a national health care sys­tem, or any ser­vice pro­vided by the gov­ern­ment and funded by tax dol­lars, is a sys­tem of sharing.

At our most basic level, as chil­dren, we are taught to share what we have with oth­ers. It’s sim­ple to a child. The rea­son­ing is so vague and accept­able. We share because it’s the right thing to do.

If one lit­tle boy has a brand new base­ball and bat he can be very happy. For hours he can throw the ball straight up into the air and then ready him­self to swing upon the descent. Life, for this young man, is excep­tion­ally bet­ter than the other boy who has no ball and no bat.

But, all the first boy has to do is share to vastly improve the life of the sec­ond boy. He sim­ply sug­gests that the sec­ond boy pitch to him and then try to catch the ball if he hits it. They can take turns, they can try dif­fer­ent throws and swings and catches, but fun­da­men­tally this is just two peo­ple shar­ing. This is two peo­ple hav­ing a good time. Two peo­ple are happy from one ball and one bat.

Soon, other boys can join in. Now, there is a catcher, a pitcher, a cou­ple of infield­ers and maybe even an out­fielder or two. Still with just a bat and a ball.

Certainly there is more at stake than a fast­ball over the plate when we con­sider the impli­ca­tions of national health care reform, but we can apply this same idea to how we inter­act with each other everyday.

We can share what we have, whether a trea­sure or a tal­ent, with oth­ers both indi­vid­u­ally and across our country.

We should take that charge per­son­ally, to give.

President Obama vows to bring mean­ing­ful reform to the health care system

In his address to a joint ses­sion of Congress last week, regard­ing health care, President Barack Obama said, “I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am deter­mined to be the last.”

President Obama brought up the fact that for years, admin­is­tra­tion after admin­is­tra­tion has been attempt­ing to restruc­ture the health care sys­tem and his will be the one to do it, but I have lit­tle faith that his poli­cies will be the turn­ing point in reform.

In his speech, the President out­lined the goals he wishes to accom­plish with his gov­ern­ment health care plan. “It will pro­vide more secu­rity and sta­bil­ity to those who have health insur­ance. It will pro­vide insur­ance for those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our fam­i­lies, our busi­nesses, and our government.”

While his goals may be valiant and seem achiev­able in the­ory, it is my belief that the government’s attempts in accom­plish­ing these goals may over­reach the government’s role in the lives of its cit­i­zens and vio­late the mean­ing of diver­sity in a com­pet­i­tive market.

Much of his speech was also aimed at bring­ing Republican sup­port for his plan. He stated, “To my Republican friends, I say that rather than mak­ing wild claims about a gov­ern­ment takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legit­i­mate con­cerns you may have.”

While attempts at bipar­ti­san­ship and “reach­ing across the aisle” may sound good and appear to take the other side’s inter­ests into account, it’s dif­fi­cult for one party to accept such an offer when they oppose the reforms the other supports.

This is the case with Democratic attempts to sway Republican opin­ions. Traditionally, the Republican Party stands for smaller cen­tral gov­ern­ment and sup­ports the work of pri­vate com­pa­nies; and a gov­ern­ment health care plan inher­ently vio­lates these beliefs.

Now, it may seem that I strongly dis­ap­prove of every­thing the President said in his speech, but there were sec­tions that I found inter­est­ing and agreed with him completely.

He spoke of the busi­nesses that don’t pro­vide their work­ers with health care, because “it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their work­ers get sick, and gives those busi­nesses an unfair advan­tage over their competitors.”

He also brought up the fact that, “If there are afford­able options and peo­ple still don’t sign up for health insur­ance, it means we pay for these people’s expen­sive emer­gency room vis­its.” I per­son­ally feel that this is one of the major prob­lems with our health sys­tem and peo­ple take advan­tage of the fact that the emer­gency room takes patients no mat­ter what.

Overall, even though his address con­tained an inces­sant amount of attempts at call­ing on Republicans to end their oppo­si­tion towards his health care reform plan, the President still had words of wis­dom that should be taken seri­ously when address­ing health care
reform.

Bulldog foot­ball limps into rivalry game against Grand Valley State

To return to win­ning form, Ferris State will work to limit mis­takes against num­ber one ranked Grand Valley State.

After a solid out­ing in week one, the Bulldogs have strug­gled in their last two games, includ­ing a 43–7 loss against Findlay last Saturday. The Bulldogs had four turnovers and for the sec­ond week in a row, had a punt blocked in the game. Ferris will look to elim­i­nate turnovers and mis­takes if it hopes to be com­pet­i­tive against the num­ber one team in the nation.

Head coach Jeff Pierce was stunned at the way the game started, with his team allow­ing 31 points in the first quarter.

“That game was just unbe­liev­able. We were down by a ton before we even got to start play­ing ball,” said Pierce.

The Bulldogs head into the Anchor-Bone Classic on a down note as they are 1–2 over­all and have given up 87 points in their past two con­tests; includ­ing two touch­downs of over 75 yards.

However, the defense has not been the only issue as the spe­cial teams have com­mit­ted costly mis­takes, which have hurt the Bulldogs early in games. The Bulldogs allowed only two blocked punts last sea­son and have had three blocked in the past two games alone.

Grand Valley State, on the other hand, has so far lived up to early sea­son expec­ta­tions as it has rolled to a 3–0 start and has out-scored its oppo­nents 101–40.

Something to watch this Saturday will be the turnover bat­tle. It is dif­fi­cult to win any game when you com­mit more turnovers than your oppo­nent. Through three games, Grand Valley has turned the ball over twice, while Ferris has had eight turnovers.

After Kyle Parrish strug­gled in the first two games of the sea­son, sopho­more quar­ter­back Tom Schneider started against Findlay. Schneider com­pleted nine of his 18 passes for 75 yards, one touch­down, and two inter­cep­tions. As of now, Pierce is unde­cided as to whom will start on Saturday.

“Right now, our char­ac­ter is being chal­lenged but we are going to fight through it,” said Pierce.

Grand Valley is favored to win on Saturday, but Ferris will look to pull an upset.

Eric Lilleboe shot a school record 14-under par to lead the Bulldogs to a first place finish

Senior Eric Lilleboe recorded a school-record 14-under par in the Saginaw Valley State Al Watrous Memorial Intercollegiate Invitational last weekend.

Lilleboe’s three round total of 202 was seven shots bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous record of 209 strokes. Jim Lusk pre­vi­ously held the record, which had stood since 1998. The first place fin­ish marked the fourth in Lilleboe’s Bulldog career.

The men’s golf team opened the 2009–2010 sea­son with a nine shot vic­tory over Grand Valley State. Ferris as a team was 27-under par for the tour­na­ment and Grand Valley was 18-under par. There was a big gap between the top two teams as no other teams were under par. Host Saginaw Valley State fin­ished in third place with a 1-over par.

Prior to the tour­na­ment, the Bulldogs were ranked in a tie for 17th nation­ally in the Division II Golf World/NIKE Golf poll.

The team will com­pete next on Sept. 20 at the NCAA-II Midwest Region Tournament in South Haven, Mich. It is the first of three regional tour­na­ments through­out the course of the season.

Entertainment Unlimited starts out the year with comedy

Comedian Alex Thomas comes to Ferris.

The Rankin Center Dome Room will be filled with jokes and laugh­ter tomor­row, Sept. 17, from 8 to 9 p.m.

Alex Thomas, both a come­dian and an actor, began his enter­tain­ment career right after high school.

Coming from a tal­ented fam­ily, his mom a pianist and his dad a mem­ber of the band Earth, Wind, and Fire, Thomas went straight to the pros when Keenan Ivory Wayans and Damon Wayans saw him in the hit com­edy show “In Living Color.”

Once his career started bloom­ing, Will Smith saw Thomas per­form­ing at the Laugh Factory Comedy Club in Hollywood and hired Thomas to write for his show “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

After writ­ing for Smith’s show for three sea­sons, Thomas kept up with his com­edy career by star­ring in two one-hour com­edy spe­cials, Showtime’s “Straight Clownin’” and BET’s “Alex Thomas Live.”

Thomas also opened up for famous stars like: Sinbad, Jamie Foxx, Mark Curry, Damon Wayans, and Bill Cosby.

He also guest starred in famous tele­vi­sion shows, such as “The Jamie Foxx Show,” “Martin,” “Girlfriends,” “The Wayne Brothers,” “Moesha,” “The Parkers,” and “All of US.”

Thomas starred in such movies like, “The Players Club,” “Two Can Play That Game,” “Just Married,” “BAPS,” “The Wash,” and more.

Television and movies weren’t his only act­ing gigs. He also per­formed in music videos made by artists like: Kanye West, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, and Bow Wow.

Alex Thomas is well known in the com­edy world and has met a lot of well known musi­cians and actors through­out his career.

With a lot of expe­ri­ence under his belt he is sure to leave us with a few laughs.

These facts about Thomas are from black​com​e​dy​tour​.com.

For more infor­ma­tion on this event con­tact Leanne Day at dayl@ferris.edu or x2610.

Students may feel a real pinch in their tuition if fund­ing for the Michigan Promise is not approved.

Currently, the state leg­is­la­ture is work­ing on the annual bud­get for fis­cal year 2009–2010; bat­tling with a $2.8 bil­lion deficit with a pro­posed cut of the Michigan Promise pro­grams at $140 million.

The awards are based on results from the Michigan Merit Exam, for­merly known as MEAP. Students attend­ing col­lege in Michigan have received as much as $4,000 from the var­i­ous pro­grams annually.

Of the esti­mated 96,000 stu­dents receiv­ing ben­e­fits from the pro­gram, 1,825 attended Ferris last year, a total of $1,829,500 was disbursed.

Ferris’ Financial Aid web site states that 83 per­cent of Ferris stu­dents receive some form of finan­cial aid.

Director of Financial Aid at Ferris State University, Rob Wirt, said the Promise funds were not applied to stu­dent accounts. “They were only awarded so stu­dents could see them as part of their finan­cial aid award,” said Wirt.

Wirt said that the Promise funds are not part of any dis­burse­ment that a stu­dent will receive and stu­dents won’t have to repay any of those funds back from their dis­burse­ment if the bud­get item is not funded by the state Legislature.

John Yonkers, a senior in pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion and legal stud­ies, has already used his three years of eli­gi­bil­ity for the Promise pro­grams, but rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of this situation.

“If we want to revoke a promise for a future gen­er­a­tion we might as well ask for repay­ment from those who have already ben­e­fit­ted from the pro­gram,” said Yonkers.

“If you want to renig on a promise, it is not a promise any­more,” he added.

The state House sup­ported the ini­tial mea­sure for the full $140 mil­lion, but cuts by the Senate elim­i­nated the fund­ing for the full amount and left it at $100 to allow for poten­tial con­tin­ued action by the House.

Rep. Darwin Booher and Sen. Michelle McManus did not return Torch inquiries as of press time.

Wirt said that if the fund­ing is not approved, the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid will be avail­able to help stu­dents locate addi­tional finan­cial aid funds.

A com­pleted bud­get is expected by Oct. 1 for approval by Governor Granholm.

FSU has banned skate­boards for 18 years, but stu­dents still skate at their own risk

“It’s ridicu­lous a ban has been set for skate­boards,” said Ian Smith, graphic design major and skate­boarder, about the skate­board ban on Ferris State University’s campus.

Skateboards, along with roller blades, roller skates, coast­ers, and scoot­ers, have been banned from the FSU cam­pus since 1991. The ordi­nance, which is listed in the stu­dent Traffic, Pedestrian, and Parking ordi­nance handb­bok, was placed to keep pedis­tri­ans safe. Captain Jim Cook, assis­tant direc­tor for Department of Public Safety (DPS), is cur­rently rewrit­ing the ordi­nances to com­ply with new state laws con­cern­ing traf­fic code.

“We’re not out to get skate­board­ers,” said Cook. “We’re just try­ing to keep every­one safe.”

The board of trustees will review the new ori­danace and con­tinue the skate­board ban. Cook is unsure when the rewrite and review will be com­plete, or if the new ordi­nance will include roller blades. Although bikes can be equally dan­ger­ous, bikes are not included in the ordi­nance because they have breaks.

The bas­ket­ball courts between Bond and Cramer halls and the West cam­pus apart­ment area are the only des­ig­nated loca­tions skate­board­ers can travel with­out con­se­quence. Skateboarders are not typ­i­cally fined for their first offense; how­ever, per­sons caught repeat­edly dis­obey­ing the ordi­nance will be tick­eted. The fine amounts vary depend­ing upon the sev­ere­ity of their actions.

In addi­tion to pedes­trian safety, skate­board­ers per­form­ing tricks or “grind­ing” can cause dam­age to uni­ver­sity prop­erty. Although skate­board­ers can causes dam­age to prop­erty, Smith feels that the stu­dents pay enough in tution to cover the cost and should be allowed to skateboard.

Legal actions are another con­cern for the uni­ver­sity. If a stu­dent was injured on cam­pus, the stu­dent could sue the insti­tu­tion. Smith also feels this argu­ment is absurd.

“We assume all risks and respon­si­bil­i­ties for our actions when we skate,” said Smith. “If we get hurt, it’s our own fault.”

Although some skaters are out­raged, oth­ers find the ordi­nance reasonable.

“I under­stand the safety issue,” said Kevin Pulaski, pre-pharmacy major. “But it’s a tough call when so many peo­ple use skate­boards as transportation.”

The University of Michigan and Michigan State University also placed skate­board bans on cam­pus in 1991. U of M still fines skaters $25, who accord­ing to offi­cials dur­ing 1991, caused nearly $105,000 of dam­age annu­ally. Unlike U of M, FSU prefers to edu­cate skaters on the dan­gers instead of pun­ish­ing them.

“We talk to skaters and advise them of the ordi­nance,” said Cook. “We try to get them to tell each other about the ordinance.”

DPS is not plan­ning to increase enforce­ment against the ban on skateboards.

Skaters are not the only stu­dents con­cerned with the ordi­nance, many non-skaters do not view the ordi­nance as necessary.

“I don’t mind the skate­board­ers,” said Kyle Strickland, phar­macy major. “I could get just as hurt if a bike hit me.”

Eric Andrews, mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing major and Kappa Alpha Phi fra­ter­nity mem­ber, agrees that skaters are harm­less and should be allowed to skate.

“If skate­board­ing is what they like to do, that’s what they like to do,” said Andrews. “They’re not hurt­ing any one.”

Negative 65 degree weather doesn’t stop U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko from solv­ing a murder—or two—in the largest uncharted land­mass in the world—Antarctica.

Detective Stetko flies from the U.S. in hopes to get away from her past and ends up in a worse sit­u­a­tion than she expected. A body was found in the mid­dle of nowhere in Antarctica, and she now has only two days to solve the case before a huge win­ter hur­ri­cane hits the base leav­ing them stranded up there for six months.

What makes it more sus­pense­ful is, since it’s in Antarctica, the weather is deadly to the body; the white­outs that occur cre­ate much dif­fi­culty for the killer and Stetko, along with a U.N. Operative, Bryce, who comes to inves­ti­gate the mur­der, to find and catch each other.

The weather gets so bad you can’t even see six inches in front of you, mak­ing the out­side chases the best part.

The movie cer­tainly exceeded my expec­ta­tions. I was expect­ing it to be a typ­i­cal “I know how it ends after watch­ing the first half hour of it,” but I cer­tainly did not expect what I ended up see­ing. It was an edge-of-your-seat movie that kept the sus­pense going throughout.

It was a lit­tle slow in the begin­ning, but picked up pretty fast.

The act­ing was superb, as I expected, but the sto­ry­line I was uneasy about. I liked the actors enough that I took the risk and saw the movie, and it was
worth it.