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ISLAND OF THE DEAD:
Students use bizarre intellectual challenge event to raise money for charity » PAGE 3A
NEW VENTURE COMPETITION:
$65,000 in prize money awarded » PAGE 3A
Monday, March 25, 2013
cm-life.com COMING UP SHORT
CELEBRATING LIFE
Women’s basketball season ends with 78-73 loss to Oklahoma, despite Bradford’s effort » PAGE 7
Students, area residents celebrate annual ‘Pow Wow’ » PAGE 3A
SGA CA N D I DAT E PR O FI L E
SGA CA NDIDATE PROF ILE
Schuler, Hollis: Focus on the big picture
Reimers ticket pushes gender center, environment
By Ryan Fitzmaurice Senior reporter
Running mates Jonathan Schuler and Darby Hollis said their ticket’s focuses would be on reforming the Student Government Association’s culture to include more student voices and seeking increased cooperation with the university. In a meeting with Central Michigan Life’s editorial staff Sunday, Center Line graduate student Jonathan Schuler and Westland graduate assistant Darby Hollis, candidates for SGA president and vice president, stressed they would do more than just focus on specific projects wanted by few on campus and would instead look at the bigger picture, focusing on issues including tuition and student retention. “I think if you’re talking to students about their main concern, if they give you a pretty honest answer, I think most of them will say it’s figuring out how to go to school and afford it,” Schuler said. “I don’t think they’d be interested in working on projects that affect only a small group of Jonathan Schuler students.” Schuler said campus safety would be a top priority of his administration. “I don’t know what would make the safest campus. A lot of people’s ideas coming together would,” he said. “I would like to meet with those on campus who are responsible for safety ... (I know that) we rank fifth in the state, that doesn’t sound so great — we’re the fourthlargest school.” Schuler criticized the SGA’s handling of the academic calendar, saying he didn’t believe the group sought enough input from the university or student body. “I think the reason why the SGA rejected (the calendar change) was because the few in the SGA who were most in power didn’t want it to happen. I Darby Hollis don’t know if that was really (representative of ) the student body at large,” Schuler said. Schuler said SGA’s relationship with the university has to improve, and that will be one of his most important tasks when he is SGA president. He said the academic calendar was an example of how SGA has interacted with the university incorrectly. A SCHULER/HOLLIS | 2A
By Ryan Fitzmaurice Senior reporter
photos by victoria zegler/ photo editor
Tawas Military Science senior and Central Michigan University Cadet Sergeant Major Marshall Halas, left, Cedar Springs Military Science junior and Ferris State University Cadet Jacob Prahl, and Ann Arbor Military Science junior and Michigan State University Cadet Joseph Jansen fire off blank ammunition before turning in their M4 carbine rifles upon completion of their combined field training Sunday afternoon at Fort Custer in Augusta, Mich.
Soldiers in the making
ROTC members put in work over weekend at Fort Custer By Tony Wittkowski Senior reporter Editor’s note: This is the first of three stories to come about CMU cadets’ experiences at Fort Custer. AUGUSTA, Mich. – While other Central Michigan University students relaxed and refueled for the upcoming week, ROTC students put in work over the weekend for combined field training exercises. After the two-hour trip from campus, cadets found their destination at Fort Custer in Augusta and were introduced to the barracks and other cadets. LeRoy Military Science senior and cadet captain John-Mark Grabow said the weekend was preparation for cadets going to the Leadership Development Assessment Course, which requires cadets to work with others they did not know before. “Being able to work with people you have never met before on very short amount of time is really invaluable,” he said. “We give them a day for them to meet each other, and they are forced to do missions
Cadillac Military Science junior and Central Michigan University Cadet Aaron Ellison supports fire against opposing forces during his squads movement to contact tactical exercise Saturday at Fort Custer in Augusta, Mich.
Check out more photos from this past weekend in Fort Custer » PAGE 5A that really encourage them to form a kind of camaraderie in order to accomplish the task at hand.” After a cadet’s junior year, they go to LDAC in Fort Lewis, Wash., near Seattle, in the summer and meet with other ROTC cadets from all over the nation, Grabow said. “It’s a four-week long evaluation period where cadets are tested over what they have learned the past three years,” Garbow said.
“They grade them and send the scores home, and the scores determine where they might go.” The other cadets preparing for LDAC came from Eastern Michigan University, Western Michigan University, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame. Ferris State University also made the trip, being one of the satellite schools of CMU.
Student Government Association presidential candidate Marie Reimers and vice presidential candidate Patrick O’Connor say their ticket’s experience and platform goals best represent the student body. In a meeting Sunday with Central Michigan Life, Reimers, a Saginaw junior, said improving communication between SGA and the Marie Reimers student body is an important objective of their ticket. They plan to increase the roles of membership director and press secretary, and she said they will begin to release a weekly SGA newsletter. Just as crucial to the ticket is the establishment of a women’s center. “Sixteen-thousand students on this campus are women,” Reimers said. “We currently don’t have a (designated) safe space for women on this campus. I think that’s something that’s really important.” The ticket said SGA needs to start captivating interest in SGA leadership positions throughout the student body. Reimers and O’Connor said they will be performing a campus-wide search to find student leaders from outside of the SGA to fill vacant Senate seats. “We want to make sure that as many students as possible can apply,” Reimers said. “We know that there are leaders on this campus who are untapped because we haven’t been able to get to them.” Along with establishing a bik- sharing program, Reimers said her administration will focus on encouraging the university to divest in businesses Patrick O’Connor with policies detrimental to the environment. She said the university currently has dealings with Exxon and Chevron, whose practices she said are detrimental to the environment. “We will be letting the university know that these are our concerns,” Reimers said. “We know that this is a huge issue for the university, and it won’t be happening overnight, and we don’t expect it to happen overnight.” A REIMERS/O’CONNOR | 2A
A ROTC | 2A
Men’s basketball, football follow poor academic national trends By Justin Hicks Senior reporter
Editor’s note: This story is part four of a series on student-athletes’ academics at Central Michigan University. This comparison takes a look at the most recent APR on a four-year average, concluding with the 2010-11 academic year. The GSR comparison is of the 2002-05 freshman classes, each on a six-year window, ending in 2010-11. Central Michigan University’s football and men’s basketball pro-
grams are consistent with poor national graduation success rates and academic progress reports from those sports. The football team’s most recent GSR was 47 percent as of the 2002-05 cohort, while the men’s basketball team was 40 percent — both ranking last in the Mid-American Conference. “It’s no secret that in our football and men’s basketball programs (GSRs have) been low,” Director of Athletics Dave Heeke said. “We’re very focused on (figuring out) why in those sports.” Heeke pointed to the frequent
HUNTING FOR A
coaching transitions that affect football and men’s basketball as a contributor to the traditionally-low GSR. “The big reason is our football program with this group. (They’ve) had four different coaches with those student-athletes between 2002-11,” Heeke said. “That transition is very detrimental to retaining studentathletes and having that consistency through the program.” Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision Division I football programs have a 68-percent GSR as of the 2002-05
GREAT DEAL?
cohort — 21 percentage points higher than CMU’s rate for the same grouping, according to the NCAA Division I aggregate federal graduation rate data report. “For those two sports nationally, the trend is not in a positive direction,” Heeke said. “We want to build programs to help those, and that’s why we have coach (Dan) Enos and coach (Keno) Davis.” Enos took over as head football coach in 2010, upon Butch Jones’ exit. Junior running back Zurlon Tipton said the team’s academic
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A ATHLETES & ACADEMICS | 2A
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