A look at drink­ing respon­si­bly for pleasure

Why do I drink? To answer hon­estly, I drink because I enjoy it. I don’t do it to escape some hor­ri­ble real­ity of life and I don’t do it to show off, I do it because it is enjoy­able and can enhance sit­u­a­tions if used properly.

I’m not one to go out and drink 15 cheap beers on a Friday night, but I do make my way out to those par­ties occa­sion­ally. I don’t go to the bar and order shots of whisky until I pass out, but I do like the atmos­phere of a bar and enjoy a few bour­bon and cokes with some friends.

If you are some­one who enjoys being three sheets to the wind and mak­ing a fool of your­self, by all means go ahead. As long as you don’t drive or throw up on me, that’s your choice. Continue Reading…

Steven Neshkoff is a vet­eran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and is now a full-time Ferris student

Upon grad­u­at­ing high school, Steven Neshkoff’s mom gave him two choices: get a job or move out of the house. He decided to do both.

Neshkoff joined the United States Air Force in July of 2002, and served for six years. He is a vet­eran of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I did nine months in Iraq, and a quick three month stint in Afghanistan,” said Neshkoff.

Neshkoff also worked secu­rity for dig­ni­taries includ­ing the United States Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, mem­bers of Congress and the House of Representatives, the first lady and President Bush.

“Anywhere they needed to fly, I pulled secu­rity for their air­craft while they were on the ground,” said Neshkoff.

He had the oppor­tu­nity to meet many high-ranking American offi­cials at the time and trav­eled the world. Neshkoff said he has now seen 22 per­cent of the world.

While in Iraq, he was sta­tioned in the south­ern end, only a short chop­per ride away from Kuwait.

While those serv­ing in the armed forces have many dif­fer­ent rea­sons for their deci­sion, Neshkoff said his was not a polit­i­cal one.

“You can pick a side, but a pres­i­dent gets elected and he is your Commander in Chief and you do what he says,” he said. “You can like him or dis­like him, but he is still your boss.”

He is now a sopho­more at Ferris and runs for the Ferris track and cross coun­try teams. At first, he had a hard time adjust­ing to col­lege life.

“Going from being told this is where you have to be at this time, look like this…now going to col­lege you are told ‘be who you are,’” said Neshkoff of his ini­tial strug­gle adjusting.

He is very pos­i­tive when look­ing back on his time in the Air Force. He talked of the ben­e­fits that he now receives, which includes a full ride to col­lege. He is a his­tory edu­ca­tion major with a minor in geography.

Neshkoff is also the pres­i­dent of the Veterans RSO here on cam­pus. He said that he wants to help oth­ers like him to not go through what he did in strug­gling to adjust to college.

“I’m glad I did it (joined the Air Force), it made me who I am today,” said Neshkoff. “If you see a vet, thank him. These guys lay their lives on the line…and some of them didn’t come home.”

Health Care: The final install­ment in a six part series cov­er­ing health care sys­tems around the world

Here we are, at the end of this series of arti­cles, and at a pos­si­ble major turn­ing point in the American health care system.

I began this jour­ney unbi­ased, some­what apa­thetic and, in ret­ro­spect, inad­e­quately informed. Through research­ing the health care sys­tems of many other advanced nations, third world coun­tries and read­ing T.R. Reid’s book “The Healing of America,” I have become both edu­cated and pas­sion­ate about the American health care dilemma.

The con­clu­sion I came to is the one that most Americans would agree with; the health care sys­tem in our coun­try needs to change. In my analy­sis though, I had a much more pro­found real­iza­tion. If Americans are to change our ways and look out for our fel­low cit­i­zens, there needs a change of mindset.

We have all heard the argu­ments, both ratio­nal and irra­tional and from both sides. The ques­tion to ask, though, is, “how do we live in a soci­ety?” Many cit­i­zens argue that indi­vid­ual lib­erty is the essence of our nation, but liv­ing in a soci­ety also means hav­ing a sense of those around us and inter­act­ing with one another in a man­ner that sus­tains the whole most effectively.

In Switzerland, for exam­ple, instead of hold­ing the word “free­dom” sacred like Americans do, they hold the word Solidaritat, or sol­i­dar­ity, close to their hearts. They under­stand that they have four dif­fer­ent offi­cial lan­guages, and to coex­ist like ratio­nal humans, they need to teach their chil­dren these lan­guages in school. They live along­side each other speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages but hold­ing in com­mon an appre­ci­a­tion for each other. This mind­set of the com­mon good is some­thing that America sorely lacks.

In Switzerland, it also fol­lows that they don’t see health care as a polit­i­cal issue, but a basic truth of mod­ern life, just like a good school sys­tem or a good rail­way sys­tem. We are on the same lines with the for­mer of these two by hav­ing them as pub­lic enti­ties, but we lack in the latter.

The most basic, fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with the cur­rent sys­tem is where the eco­nomic inter­ests lie. With for-profit insur­ance com­pa­nies, these inter­ests lie in not pro­vid­ing pre­ven­ta­tive care that is cheap, but wait­ing until a patient needs more seri­ous surgery that is extremely expen­sive. In these other devel­oped nations who have uni­ver­sal health care, they stress pre­ven­ta­tive care very much, and because they are not for profit, their inter­ests lie in keep­ing patients healthy so that more expen­sive care, which will cost the sys­tem more, will not as often be necessary.

America can change. Though the task may be daunt­ing and chal­leng­ing, it is pos­si­ble. Nations such as Taiwan and Switzerland have both had a major revamp­ing in their health care indus­try, and after hav­ing non-systems or pri­va­tized sys­tems, they both saw how badly they needed a uni­ver­sal sys­tem that does not leave a good num­ber of cit­i­zens pay­ing out of pocket, and is not for profit.

America spends more per GDP as it is than any other nation on health care; why not spend it more wisely and adopt a sys­tem that is sim­i­lar to a Bismarck or Beveridge or a hybrid of them and cover more peo­ple by spend­ing less. People will get the care that they need, and eco­nomic inter­ests will lie in keep­ing peo­ple healthy, which is always a pos­i­tive thing.

In writ­ing this series of arti­cles I have learned that many dif­fer­ent options for health care reform exist and that reform is in the fis­cal inter­ests of both the American econ­omy and its cit­i­zens. If this is to truly take place, cit­i­zens must get past par­ti­san talk­ing points and look at the num­bers and moral­ity behind this issue, and real­ize that reform can only stand to ben­e­fit both of these areas.

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle is part of a series, to view the rest of the arti­cles, visit the links below:

1. The Health Care Debate
2. Health Care: The Bismarck Model
3. The Beveridge Model of Health Care
4. Health Care: The National Health Insurance Model
5. Health Care: Out-of-Pocket

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.

Throughout this series of arti­cles, I have cov­ered sys­tems of health care such as the Bismarck, Beveridge and National Health Insurance mod­els, but this week it is a dif­fer­ent type of sys­tem. It is actu­ally a non-system. This is what is referred to as pay­ing for health care out-of-pocket.

The out-of-pocket model is what is used in most of the poor­est coun­tries on earth. While many of these coun­tries have min­i­mal health insur­ance avail­able, a large major­ity of their pop­u­la­tion does not even come close to being able to afford it. If cit­i­zens need health care, they pay for it on the spot or they don’t receive it at all.

Some of the coun­tries that have the high­est rate of cit­i­zens who pay out-of-pocket for their care, accord­ing to a World Health Organization report from 2003, include Myanmar at 82.2 per­cent, India at 82.1 per­cent and Nigeria at 76.8 per­cent. The rate in the U.S. is 14.7 per­cent and 3.1 per­cent in the U.K.

In these coun­tries, where more than three quar­ters of the pop­u­la­tion have to pay for health care each time they receive it, the aver­age life expectancy is under­stand­ably lower. Some of the coun­tries with the low­est aver­age age expectan­cies include Mozambique at 32 years, Zambia at 35 and Malawi at 38, accord­ing to the U.S. Census Bureau. As expected, these coun­tries are in the cat­e­gory of hav­ing non-systems.

While the out-of-pocket model is gen­er­ally thought of as being present only in poor coun­tries, it is a real­ity for many Americans. This is what the sys­tem looks like in America to the 40 million-plus who are unin­sured. Hospitals in the U.S. can­not turn away some­one who is acutely ill, even if they are unin­sured. This prac­tice is usu­ally reserved only for those on the verge of death. Otherwise, patients have to pay out-of-pocket or go with­out treatment.

The rate of cit­i­zens who are insured is much higher in America than some of the coun­tries I men­tioned who can­not pro­vide any kind of care for their cit­i­zens. We are a wealthy nation though, and 40 mil­lion cit­i­zens is a lot to have left out to dry.

We truly are the only advanced nation who does not have a sys­tem set up to pro­vide for every cit­i­zen. This is a moral issue, and since we have the means to accom­plish pos­i­tive reform, why haven’t we done so?

This doesn’t mean that a Beveridge or NHI model is the right thing, but I hope that this series has helped to show that there are other options on the table. Avoiding an out-of-pocket model of health in any sense and for any num­ber of cit­i­zens should be the goal of any nation that con­sid­ers itself to be an exam­ple for the rest of the world.

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle is part of a series, to view the rest of the arti­cles, visit the links below:

1. The Health Care Debate
2. Health Care: The Bismarck Model
3. The Beveridge Model of Health Care
4. Health Care: The National Health Insurance Model

In a car-pedestrian acci­dent that occurred early Friday morn­ing, Fumitoshi Yonemura died after being struck by a vehi­cle on north­bound State Street near the Interdisciplinary Resource Center (IRC) building.

Yonemura, 18, was cross­ing State street at 7:56 a.m., accord­ing to the police report, when struck by a red truck. The police report, filed by Sargeant Craig S. Brockette, stated that eye­wit­nesses con­firmed that the vehi­cle had the green light, and that the walk sign showed a solid red. Yonemura was thrown onto the side­walk upon collision.

The dri­ver was Richard Weisenberger of New Hudson, Mich. Statements from eye­wit­nesses also said that there were cars on the inside lane of north­bound State Street that obstructed the view of both the dri­ver and the pedes­trian. The author­i­ties on scene included the Big Rapids Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the FSU DPS, among oth­ers. No charges have been issued.

A state­ment released by Leah Nixon, direc­tor of news ser­vices at Ferris, stated that local author­i­ties were attempt­ing to con­tact the fam­ily and friends of Yonemura shortly after he was con­firmed dead.

Yonemura, a fresh­man at Ferris State from Novi, Mich. was pro­nounced dead at the Mecosta County Medical Center. He was a stu­dent in the biotech­nol­ogy program.

Ferris President David Eisler said that this is a very sad day at Ferris. “I ask that you remem­ber the Yonemura fam­ily in your thoughts and prayers.”

Fumitoshi Yonemura, known by his friends as “Fumi,” died early Friday morn­ing after being struck by a vehi­cle on State Street. He was seen by fel­low stu­dents as a quiet young man who smiled a lot.

Yonemura, 18, from Novi, Mich., was a fresh­man in the biotech­nol­ogy pro­gram and a sprinter in his first year on the Ferris Track and Field team. He lived in Henderson Hall.

Roland Razburgaj, a home­town friend, recently shared some thoughts with the Torch about Yonemura.

“I will never for­get the last day I saw him…unfortunately, I no longer have the priv­i­lege of see­ing him here on earth, but I hope the day will come that I’m for­tu­nate enough to join him in heaven and see him once more,” said Razburgaj.

Razburgaj and Mardan Sattar, another home­town friend, both attested to Yonemura’s skills as an artist. He had promised to help Sattar fin­ish a draw­ing over Thanksgiving break that they were work­ing on.

“The draw­ings mean a lot to both of us, and we will cer­tainly keep them for­ever,” said Razburgaj.

Another char­ac­ter­is­tic that his friends remem­bered him for was his smile.

“What I will always remem­ber about Fumi is that con­ta­gious smile of his. All he had to do was smile, and what­ever wor­ries you might have had would just dis­ap­pear for that moment,” said Razburgaj.

Yonemura was also a track run­ner in high school and an accom­plished stu­dent, choos­ing to attend Ferris over the University of Michigan for its biotech­nol­ogy pro­gram. He took advanced place­ment classes in mul­ti­ple areas and had a strong work ethic both in the class­room and out on the track.

His track friends here at Ferris, although only know­ing him for a few weeks, have felt the impact of los­ing a teammate.

“We were just start­ing to get to know each other,” said track coach Steve Picucci. “He had only been train­ing with us for about six weeks, so this came at a pretty tough time.”

“Fumi was a very sur­pris­ing addi­tion to our team, he was a very quiet kid that no one really knew much about,” said team­mate Justin Price. “The sur­pris­ing part came dur­ing our try­outs just a week before his death, when he shocked a lot of the older guys on the team with his speed and explosiveness.”

There have been two Facebook groups cre­ated in Yonemura’s remem­brance where fel­low stu­dents and friends have been leav­ing com­ments in his mem­ory. The ser­vice for Yonemura was held on Sunday, Oct. 25 at the O’Brien-Sullivan funeral home in Novi.

“He came from a very respectable fam­ily. They are some of the nicest, most won­der­ful peo­ple any­one can ever meet. It was truly an honor to be a part of Fumi’s life. He will be deeply missed,” said Razburgaj.

A rebut­tal: why gen­eral edu­ca­tion matters

In an arti­cle writ­ten by the Torch’s Opinions Editor Megan Coady in last week’s Torch, she made the argu­ment that gen­eral edu­ca­tion classes are detri­ment to stu­dents’ pock­et­books and to their abil­ity to grad­u­ate on time, and shouldn’t be required. I believe otherwise.

I agree with the fact that this costs stu­dents more money and that it may take longer to grad­u­ate; this is not arguable. What is arguable, though, is whether they should still be required.

The defin­ing aspect that dif­fer­en­ti­ates a uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion from a trade or tech­ni­cal school one is that classes are required which are out­side the cur­ricu­lum of a student’s con­cen­tra­tion of study. Here at Ferris these go by the famil­iar names of sci­en­tific under­stand­ing, global con­scious­ness, cul­tural enrich­ment and oth­ers sim­i­lar. All stu­dents who grad­u­ate with a degree are required at least this min­i­mum of courses.

If you don’t want to take classes that do not directly apply to your degree, fine, but do not call it a uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion. A col­lege edu­ca­tion is about much more than study­ing one field. It is about bet­ter­ment of self, enrich­ment of knowl­edge, and look­ing at the world with a deeper under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion for it. 

These can­not be gained from sim­ply study­ing one area. Yes, some of these skills can be learned in a class more rel­e­vant to a student’s major, but that is still leav­ing some­thing out. It does not allow the stu­dent to expe­ri­ence other edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties. A high per­cent­age of stu­dents change their major at some point in col­lege, and gen­eral edu­ca­tion can help pro­vide an under­stand­ing of where to go next.

In another sense, gen­eral edu­ca­tion require­ments pro­vide another ser­vice for many stu­dents. Upon arriv­ing on cam­pus, many first year stu­dents have not decided what they want to study, and oth­ers are unsure if the pro­gram they have cho­sen is really the right fit for them. General edu­ca­tion classes can help pro­vide those stu­dents with a way of fig­ur­ing out what they enjoy or what is a worth­while path for them to take educationally.

My fresh­men year of col­lege, I came in as a hos­pi­tal­ity man­age­ment major. After tak­ing English classes, I decided that hos­pi­tal­ity wasn’t for me, and that I wanted to write for a liv­ing, which is why I switched to jour­nal­ism. I also took a phi­los­o­phy class, which made me real­ize that I wanted to study phi­los­o­phy as a minor. 

I most likely would not have taken these classes if they were not required of me, thus never dis­cov­er­ing what I truly wanted to do in life. Not only does a solid gen­eral edu­ca­tion foun­da­tion pro­vide a sense of guid­ance in edu­ca­tion, it makes stu­dents well-rounded in many dif­fer­ent areas. For exam­ple, HVAC majors can become fine-tuned in English, com­mu­ni­ca­tions majors can become fine-tuned in math or sci­ence, and any other com­bi­na­tion you can think of.

Taking classes not directly related to a career or major is exactly what a uni­ver­sity is about. It is the essence of higher edu­ca­tion and a neces­sity for any­one hop­ing to bet­ter them­selves edu­ca­tion­ally by com­ing to college.

Part four in a six part series cov­er­ing health care sys­tems around the world

The name of Canada’s health care sys­tem has been one of the most abused and mis­con­strued of any other coun­try through­out the recent debates sur­round­ing health care reform in the US. They are often invoked as the coun­try that embod­ies social­ism and long waits.

While yes, Canada does favor poli­cies that are more “social­ist” than America, and yes, there may be longer waits for some ser­vices, this pic­ture is too much of a gen­er­al­iza­tion for a sys­tem that has been around since the early 1960s and was voted in by an over­whelm­ing major­ity of the Canadian parliament.

The model of health care that Canada uses is the National Health Insurance model. This sys­tem is also used by other coun­tries such as Cuba. This model bor­rows aspects of both the Bismarck model and the Beveridge model, both of which were cov­ered in this series in pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Torch.

Thomas Clement Douglas was the man who first brought the idea of uni­ver­sal cov­er­age to Canada. He had a knee injury as a child, and when his finan­cially trou­bled fam­ily moved from Scotland to Canada, the only rea­son he was able to receive surgery for his both­ered knee was because he hap­pened to have the offer of being a sub­ject of an exper­i­men­tal sur­gi­cal technique.

This pro­ce­dure was a suc­cess, but Douglas was wor­ried by the fact that at that time only a wealthy per­son could get such a surgery and many fam­i­lies were left out. He wanted to make sure that every­one had equal access to health care. He per­ceived health­care to be a neces­sity to life regard­less of class or age or income.

This idea was fleshed out into a gov­ern­ment pro­gram in Saskatchewan, which was so suc­cess­ful that the rest of the coun­try demanded the same. The basics of the sys­tem are that it is funded through tax payer money and any cit­i­zen can walk in to receive ser­vice with­out pay­ing a bill at the end.

The five main points included in the Canadian Health Act of 1984 include pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion (not-for-profit), com­pre­hen­sive­ness, uni­ver­sal­ity, porta­bil­ity and acces­si­bil­ity. This free ser­vice only counts for “med­ically nec­es­sary” ser­vices. Private insur­ance, which is optional and very cheap and often cov­ered by employ­ers, cov­ers things such as pri­vate hos­pi­tal rooms, pre­scrip­tions and child birth classes, among others.

On the doctor’s side of things, there is an expected dif­fer­ence from America’s sys­tem. A fam­ily doc­tor in Canada will gen­er­ally make about half as much as an American one would. An exam­ple cited in T.R. Reid’s “The Healing of America” shows a Canadian doc­tor who is still able to drive a BMW and belong to a coun­try club. While they may not hold quite as high of a sta­tus as in the U.S., they seem to still live an above-average lifestyle.

The para­dox in com­par­ing our sys­tem with that of our friends to the north is that while they have a com­pletely gov­ern­ment run sys­tem, they still spend far less than we do. 

This type of approach to health care is for­eign idea to Americans. We do not live this kind of lifestyle. Americans are staunch indi­vid­u­al­ists who do not have the same sense of respon­si­bil­ity over their fel­low cit­i­zens that many other coun­tries do. 

The under­ly­ing argu­ment that I have made through­out this series of arti­cles is that America should be able to make some type of effec­tive reform to use our money that is already put toward health care more effi­ciently. I don’t think that a sin­gle payer sys­tem will be accepted by most Americans, but a major­ity has spo­ken out in favor of reform. 

We need to get past petty argu­ments and mis­con­cep­tions of inter­na­tional sys­tems so that we can remain indi­vid­u­al­ists, but still pro­vide health care (pub­lic or pri­vate) for every American.

Editor’s Note: This arti­cle is part of a series, to view the rest of the arti­cles, visit the links below:

1. The Health Care Debate
2. Health Care: The Bismarck Model
3. The Beveridge Model of Health Care