On March 22, mem­bers of Ferris’ NAACP and a num­ber of other stu­dents helped draw aware­ness to the death of Trayvon Martin with a Hoodie March in the quad.

The march was one of many nation­wide ral­lies protest­ing the shoot­ing of 17-year-old Martin by neigh­bor­hood watch vol­un­teer George Zimmerman. Public fig­ures such as for­mer Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and the NBA’s Miami Heat have all been seen wear­ing dark hooded sweat­shirts in honor of Martin. (more…)

A recent sur­vey revealed col­lege stu­dents are not too knowl­edge­able when it comes to bor­row­ing loans to pay for their higher education.

The study by Young Invincibles, a U.S. national orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing cur­rent issues of 18 to 34 year olds, found nearly two in three stu­dent loan bor­row­ers were sur­prised by some of the terms of their stu­dent loans. (more…)

Dear Editor,

After read­ing an arti­cle titled “Going the Distance: is com­pet­i­tive run­ning the health­i­est choice for chil­dren?” by Grace Seymore I became very upset.  I run for Ferris’ Cross Country and Track teams.  Now, from time to time I read the Torch after we’ve com­peted at a meet and am often not sur­prised by the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the team’s accom­plish­ments at each per­for­mance.  This I tend to under­stand, espe­cially when there is not too great of a demand in how the run­ning teams vic­to­ries play out. (more…)

An explo­sive news arti­cle cir­cu­lated the Internet last week inform­ing peo­ple of what human resource per­son­nel have been prac­tic­ing at job inter­views: Asking for your social media pro­file pass­words and logins.

The first reac­tion I heard was “This has got to be ille­gal.” (more…)

Throughout my years as a jour­nal­ist for the Torch, I’ve reported on a num­ber of sto­ries involv­ing Ferris State University stu­dents. However, no sto­ries are more sad­den­ing than those involv­ing the death of an FSU student.

They’re sto­ries that impact the lives of fam­i­lies, friends and mem­bers of the FSU community.

In August 2011, the Torch reported on the death of FSU crim­i­nal jus­tice alum­nus James Ryan McCandless. McCandless was killed Aug. 2, 2011 after a sus­pect opened fire after a rou­tine traf­fic stop. (more…)

Smelling the pages of musty old books is largely becom­ing a thing of the past as more and more stu­dents use tech­nol­ogy to find their favorite books and their least favorite textbooks.

After a lot of sub­tle hint­ing to my boyfriend, he got me a Kindle as a present. Nothing fancy, just a stan­dard one that will hold enough books for me to stay happy for quite awhile. I imme­di­ately filled it with all the cheap­est books I could find, and one not so cheap one, a textbook.

I wanted to see how I would like using a Kindle to hold a text­book, and as it turns out it was pretty handy. I could look up words with its built-in dic­tio­nary and it was easy to use with the fancy-dancy touch screen. (more…)

On March 14, Greg Smith, for­mer Goldman Sachs exec­u­tive direc­tor, resigned from his posi­tion through a pub­lic col­umn in The New York Times dis­grac­ing one of the world’s largest invest­ment banks.

He claimed Goldman Sachs’ val­ues changed since he began work­ing for the firm straight out of col­lege. Smith noted a few key points as to why he was resign­ing. One being the com­pany was sim­ply focused on mak­ing money for the firm and not mak­ing deci­sions on what was best for the clients. Smith said lead­er­ship used to be about “ideas, set­ting an exam­ple and doing the right thing.” Now he saw lead­er­ship within the com­pany as who­ever makes the most money will be pro­moted. (more…)

On March 13, Ferris State University Director of Financial Aid Sara Dew addressed a room of uni­ver­sity mem­bers at President Eisler‘s Debt Forum. The forum tack­led the issue of fed­eral loan debt and stu­dent knowl­edge in regards to loan borrowing.

Passing two sep­a­rate stu­dent debt charts to each attendee, Dew sug­gested the “just give me the money” atti­tude regard­ing fam­ily loan bor­row­ing was a sig­nif­i­cant con­tribut­ing fac­tor in increased stu­dent debt.

Dew pro­posed pos­si­bly incor­po­rat­ing a finan­cial lit­er­acy seg­ment within FSUS to assist in edu­cat­ing stu­dents on the post-graduation effects of loan bor­row­ing. (more…)

On March 13, Ferris State University President David Eisler held a meet­ing at West Campus Community Center to dis­cuss stu­dent debt and grad­u­a­tion rates.

The meet­ing was part of a series of meet­ings to address the grow­ing issue of FSU stu­dents grad­u­at­ing with seem­ingly insur­mount­able loan debt. Among the nearly two-dozen mem­bers in atten­dance were finan­cial aid rep­re­sen­ta­tives, enroll­ment ser­vices rep­re­sen­ta­tives and var­i­ous FSU faculty.

As the meet­ing con­tin­ued, Ferris fac­ulty dis­played sta­tis­tics and data reveal­ing tuition growth, stu­dent debt and the increas­ing num­ber of years it is tak­ing FSU stu­dents to grad­u­ate col­lege. (more…)