Feeling the pres­sure as the month winds down, Nicole Raymond has to write the sec­ond half of her novel before the National Novel Writing Month dead­line Nov. 30. Photo By: Kelsey A. Schnell | Editor in Chief

Raymond, a senior in the Technical Professional Communication pro­gram, is about half-way fin­ished writ­ing her novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

“It isn’t for class. I just love writ­ing,” said Raymond, who will be grad­u­at­ing in December.

Raymond said she has been strug­gling to find time to write her novel lately due to class assign­ments, work and main­tain­ing her blog on hor­ror movies, grue​somede​tails​.word​press​.com. Continue Reading…

Being able to han­dle and learn from crit­i­cism is an impor­tant trait to have in order to be suc­cess­ful in our society.

Most of us will leave uni­ver­sity life and hope­fully find a great job that we love. Most of us will receive some type of feed­back that requires us to change how we per­form at that job and how we react and absorb that cri­tique is impor­tant. Right now we get that feed­back in the grades we receive on papers and assign­ments. It’s less direct, less per­sonal. It doesn’t feel so much like an attack on our integrity or a maneu­ver by an antag­o­nist, but an eval­u­a­tion of our effort. Continue Reading…

Battling Hearts: Yesterday was the release of John Mayor’s new album, “Battle Studies.” The new sound the album dis­plays may cause some unease for fans ded­i­cated to the tone of his pre­vi­ous work. Photo Courtesy of MCT

Yesterday’s debut of the album came after a series of teasers, snip­pets and sam­ples were released through rhap​sody​.com, iTunes and a music video for the first sin­gle off the album, the con­tro­ver­sial “Who Says”… con­tro­ver­sial because one of the lines alludes to Mayer’s pref­er­ence to do what he wants with his life, includ­ing get­ting stoned. Though Mayer’s peo­ple have said that the lyric is more open to inter­pre­ta­tion and a cen­sored ver­sion has been released for main­stream radio audi­ences of a more G-rated level, fans are squirm­ing to defend and rebuke him for the sin­gle line, rather than just chill out and enjoy the music. Continue Reading…

U4U Magazine is a semi-annually printed pub­li­ca­tion for col­lege stu­dents. Operated by Barnes & Noble book­sellers, the 2010 cover design for the pub­li­ca­tion is the focus of a nation­wide competition.

Written entirely by stu­dents, this is the first year the mag­a­zines front cover will be designed by a student.

“We’re really excited about the com­pe­ti­tion,” said Marie Policastro, Barnes & Nobel College Booksellsers’ man­ager of part­ner­ship mar­ket­ing. “It will give the mag­a­zine even more of a stu­dent influ­ence – from the inside out.” Continue Reading…

The last thing most col­lege stu­dents want to be reminded of is how those who qual­ify will not be receiv­ing the Michigan Promise funds, bar­ring some inter­ven­tion dur­ing the appro­pri­a­tions process.

Monday, the University announced that it would be using $1.3 mil­lion in fed­eral stim­u­lus dol­lars to pro­vide aid for the fall semes­ter to nearly 10.5 per­cent of the stu­dents of Ferris State.

According to a press release issued by the uni­ver­sity two days ago, the 1,312 stu­dents who had been antic­i­pat­ing Michigan Promise aid and the 616 expect­ing the Michigan Competitive schol­ar­ship, who also saw a cut in pro­posed fund­ing by 50 per­cent, can expect a lit­tle finan­cial help from Ferris.

This is great. A mil­lion bucks to help a lit­tle more than 10 per­cent of the stu­dents is a won­der­ful thing and I’m glad the uni­ver­sity is tak­ing this action to ease the finan­cial bur­den that dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times have caused.

I only ask that maybe, just maybe, we sneak a few bucks in there for 12,000 of my clos­est friends and me with­out a “promise” but still a need.

The Ferris Board of Trustees, who unan­i­mously sup­ported the use of these funds to aid the scholarship-expecting stu­dents, is also respon­si­ble for approv­ing increases in tuition, like the one Ferris had at the begin­ning of this year.

Maybe we could have saved a lot of time and headache if instead of charg­ing stu­dents more, then giv­ing some of them money back, we just didn’t charge them more to start with.

So please, Ferris, keep on giv­ing. The stu­dent body will let you know when to stop… probably.

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.

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.

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.

In any col­lege sport, the turnover of ath­letes can cause highs and lows in the his­tory of a program.

The last four sea­sons of women’s soc­cer under the direc­tion of head coach Neathan Gibson has cer­tainly seen the low end of that cycle.

With one of the largest recruit­ing classes in Ferris soc­cer his­tory, 12 new play­ers, and a large ros­ter over­all, 27 to start the sea­son back in August, the team’s efforts proved to not be enough as they fin­ished with the sec­ond worst over­all record in the his­tory of the pro­gram at 3−13−2. Not since the first year of the soc­cer pro­gram in 1999 when they lost every sin­gle game of the sea­son has the win­ning per­cent­age been so low.

All of the ingre­di­ents were there for the Bulldogs to have a record-breaking sea­son. The Bulldogs had strong play­ers and lead­er­ship from upper class­men, a sched­ule that spaced long dis­tance road games, like matches in the Upper Peninsula and Ohio, away from each other, and Grand Valley State University’s for­mer All American goalie, Kristin Nasturzio join­ing the staff. This sea­son should have been a feast of vic­to­ries, but instead resulted in the destruc­tion of a team’s record.

I have been attend­ing Ferris soc­cer games for the Torch for years and can say with­out a doubt that the result­ing wins and losses do not appear to be the prod­uct of a lack of ambi­tion or fit­ness on the part of the play­ers, but rather an inabil­ity to direct affec­tively by Gibson. While his past records with other teams and as a player him­self have shown for­mi­da­ble skills, it just does not seem that this is a good fit for Gibson.

If Ferris wants to start post­ing win­ning sea­sons again, a recon­sid­er­a­tion of Neathan Gibson is crucial.

A life is a string a moments, min­gled with the moments of oth­ers. And from one moment to another things change, lives change.

One of those moments was this past Friday when an acci­dent resulted in the death of a student.

It is in these moments that we pause for reflec­tion on our own mor­tal­ity. These moments, fleet­ing, remind us to cher­ish and sup­port one another.

For each mem­ory that is shared, we must persevere.

For each heart­beat that is extin­guished, we must fol­low our own hearts.

For each dream that did not come true, we must fur­ther strengthen our resolve.

A moment, a pulse, a thought or prayer, all of them are fleet­ing and all of them are chang­ing our world.

In this instance, we share in a moment of tragedy, and while there are so many moments in our days, there are never enough to waste on anger. There are not enough to blame or hate.

Eventually there will be peace for the fam­i­lies of those stu­dents impacted by this tragedy. One can only hope that their moment comes soon.