Nontombi Naomi Tutu has been speak­ing out on mat­ters of injus­tice for more than thirty years.

The Globalization Initiative and Office of Diversity Inclusion brought Tutu to speak at Ferris’ Williams Auditorium on Tuesday, March 2.

Tutu, an activist for human rights, grew up dur­ing apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was a sys­tem of legal seg­re­ga­tion enforced by the National Party gov­ern­ment in South Africa between 1948 and 1994. White res­i­dents deter­mined the rights of black res­i­dents dur­ing this period.

Being the daugh­ter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nomalizo Leah Tutu, Tutu said her par­ents were for­tu­nate enough to send her to another coun­try. She has lived in Lesotho, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Tutu has been speak­ing at col­lege cam­puses about apartheid South Africa since the 1970s.

“I was raised in the sys­tem and peo­ple needed to know what was going on,” said Tutu.

The oppor­tu­nity to travel was what pushed Tutu to speak out on the effects of racism and seg­re­ga­tion, dur­ing apartheid and through­out the rest of the world.

Tutu said many “daily kinds of indig­ni­ties” took place in the sys­tem. She said she was not allowed to be free in her own country.

“We didn’t have free­dom of move­ment,” said Tutu. She said blacks had no access to beaches, as they were reserved for whites. Education sys­tems were seg­re­gated as well.

She said that she would reg­is­ter at the police sta­tion in order to see her grandparents.

“You had a pass­port telling you where could go and where you could be,” she said.

Tutu uses the South African model of “Truth and Reconciliation” to speak of South Africa try­ing to heal after the apartheid. Truth and Reconciliation is the model of sit­ting down and hear­ing one another, said Tutu. She said it was specif­i­cally a South African model, but it’s an idea to be used in other countries.

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The FOX ani­mated sit­com “Family Guy” knows how to push the but­tons of pub­lic figures.

During the Feb. 14 episode, the char­ac­ter Chris had a crush on a girl named Ellen with Down syn­drome and went out on a date with her. When he asked her about her par­ents’ jobs, she said, “My dad’s an accoun­tant and my mom’s the for­mer gov­er­nor of Alaska.”

That state­ment was meant to be a jab at 2008 vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and, yes, for­mer gov­er­nor of Alaska Sarah Palin. Palin did not take the “joke” very well. Palin’s one-year-old son Trig has Down syn­drome. (more…)

A new crime-reporting sys­tem, “Bulldogs Text Tip,” is avail­able for any­one in the Ferris com­mu­nity to report a crime via text message.

The Department of Public Safety (DPS) at Ferris decided to look more into con­duct crime report­ing, said Tricia Walding-Smith, assis­tant man­age­ment coor­di­na­tor of DPS. (more…)

At Ferris, there is no pol­icy or hard rule that states how long a stu­dent must wait for a pro­fes­sor if they are late.

“In 20 years, I’ve never been more than a cou­ple of min­utes late for class, and no one has ever left when I wasn’t there right at the begin­ning of the period,” said Associate Professor and President of the Ferris Faculty Association, Jim Rumpf. (more…)

Texting, Facebooking and Tweeting have opened many bor­ders in terms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and the “tech­nirev­o­lu­tion” just keeps expanding.

Being a jour­nal­ism stu­dent, it has come to my real­iza­tion that it is at times eas­ier to con­tact a source on Facebook for a story. Phone calls and e-mails are not always answered as quickly as a Facebook mes­sage. (more…)

A pop­u­lar rumor cir­cu­lat­ing at Ferris is that if a student’s room­mate dies, they will receive straight A’s for that semester.

Anne-Marie Gillespie, edu­ca­tional coun­selor and assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the College of Arts and Sciences, said this rumor falls in the fic­tion cat­e­gory. (more…)

“The East Campus Suites project is right on sched­ule,” said Jon Shaffer, Director of Housing and Residence Life.

The project is right on bud­get as well. “They’re going just as well as I could hope,” Shaffer said of the progress on the suites. (more…)

The Ferris Faculty Association held their “Critical Updates on Negotiations” meet­ing to dis­cuss issues asso­ci­ated with achiev­ing a new contract.

The FFA is an affil­i­ated unit of the Michigan and National Education Associations that con­sists of both fac­ulty and staff mem­bers, includ­ing the university’s administration.

Professor in man­u­fac­tur­ing & engi­neer­ing tech­nol­ogy and pres­i­dent of the Ferris Faculty Association James Rumpf said the meet­ing was “pri­mar­ily an update.” He said the goal of the FFA and the admin­is­tra­tion is to have a con­tract in place by the end of the spring 2010 semes­ter. (more…)

Students can pur­sue a hobby or inter­est by set­ting up a Registered Student Organization on campus.

Dennis Boyd Jr., chair­per­son of the Student Leadership and Activities Advisory Council (SLAAC) and senior in the new media print­ing and pub­lish­ing pro­gram, said many RSOs are started as hobby groups.

RSOs are set up based on inter­ests that con­sist of a vari­ety of things such as sports, pol­i­tics, faith, etc. (more…)

The ABC real­ity series “The Bachelor” is one of my guilty pleasures.

Jake Pavelka, this season’s 32-year old pilot from Denton, TX, is look­ing for his true love on the pop­u­lar real­ity dat­ing show that gives 25 women a chance at love. However, it dis­gusts to me wit­ness the motives of some of the women that par­tic­i­pate in the show who claim to be look­ing for “love.” (more…)