LIFE CENTRAL MICHIGAN
Saving rock and roll
WEDNESday, SEPT. 3, 2014 | MOUNT PLEASANT, MICH. | ISSUE NO. 5 VOL. 96
Life in brief HEALTH
Minimum wage raised over Labor Day By Malachi Barrett Senior Reporter
The conclusion of Labor Day weekend filled not only American stomachs, but their wallets as well. Michigan workers earning minimum wage will see their wages rise for the first time in six years. Starting Monday, wages rose from $7.40 an hour to $8.15 an hour thanks to Senate Bill 0934, which
Service dogs at CMU
Students struggling with depression and anxiety look to furry friends for respite. Read about how CMU students utlized canine friends to coax them out of troubling time and into academic success.
Friday Fall Out Boy took the stage at the Soaring Eagle this weekend. See photos on »PAGE 7
gradually raises the minimum wage to $9.25 by 2018. Mount Pleasant workers, either student or local, will see the effects over the next four years. Economics Professor Larry Brunner said these effects are not likely to be as positive as intended. “You don’t do it to benefit minimum wage workers because it doesn’t,” Brunner said. “The higher unemployment will more than
counteract the pay raise. There is a trade-off for people who keep their jobs, but I think you can argue that the people who don’t have jobs are worse off.” Businesses compensate for the raise in other ways, Brunner said, such as cutting back on fringe benefits for their employees. He speculated that there wouldn’t be a “huge effect” on prices, but instead on the workers.
Brunner argued the real winners of raising minimum wage are those who already make more than it, their wages usually increase accordingly. “There is question of the positives of raising the wage versus the normative situation,” Brunner said. “(Some) believe it is the right thing to do to pay workers more, I think that as well but there is a way to do that; have economic growth.” w minimum wage | 7
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STUDY ABROAD
Project peru The third and final entry in a series of photo essays from photo journalism students visiting Peru brings readers further into the culture and customs of the country. w 6
FOOTBALL Greg Cornwell | Staff Photographer
Bring the pain
Jacob Mercury forces Uncle Hector into the corner during a match for Imperial Wrestling Entertainment at Mac TV Studios Saturday.
Big boys
CMU’s offensive linemen are are the unsung heroes of the program. Read about this squad, and their plans moving forward into the season w 8
Childhood dreams come alive as local wrestling company brings body slams to Mount Pleasant By Adrian Hedden Managing Editor
politics
Motionless in the middle of the ring, John Campbell’s body slumped into the canvass. While his foe snarled and paced above him and the studio lights shown down upon his face, one thought rushed through the fallen grappler’s mind: “Wiggle your big toe.” After being hoisted high atop the shoulders of his adversary, his shoulder blades almost seven feet in the air, Campbell had been sent crashing
John Campbell’s first matches. Today, eight years later, he leads professional wrestling promotion company Imperial Wrestling Entertainment. IWE is based in Mid-Michigan and records professional wrestling events at MAC TV Studio in Mount Pleasant. An event Saturday marked the second taping for BattleZone TV on Charter Communications public broadcast channel 191. Amid the stress of setting up the ring and planning out six matches a night, Campbell takes pride that the injuries he sustained were not in vain. w Wrestling | 2
Power outage not to blame for Wi-Fi interuptions
Political fair
By Jordyn Hermani Staff Reporter
Students were exposed to several options for political involvement and registered to vote w 5
LIFE INSIDE
EDITORIAL: The War at home CM-Life analyzes the situation in Ferguson, Mo., and addresses the implications for our community.
down to the canvas on his head. The move was called a Death Valley Driver. The botched move fractured several bones in Campbell’s neck. The wrestler struggled to make sense of what happened. Then he remembered a line from one of his favorite movies. “I thought my career was over. I was just lying there thinking about that line from ‘Kill Bill,’” Campbell said “I didn’t go on much longer, but of course I finished the match. I had him pin me shortly after.” That was 2006 during one of “Gentleman”
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Many students expressed concern during the first week of classes about interrupted Wi-Fi service on campus. But the connectivity problems that users experienced when registering their wireless devices had little to do with a power outage, and more to do with individual problems. Kole Taylor, the Communication Manager for OIT, said the power outage was an isolated incident occurring alongside student Wi-Fi problems.
“[The Wi-Fi’s] not always going to be perfect,” Taylor said. “We want to make sure we’re providing the best service possible.” It’s important, Taylor notes, to dispel the idea that there are too many users online at the same time. “We have a fast network, it’s not going to significantly bog down the network as more people log on,” Taylor said. “The network is made to have this many number of people. This is its normal speed.” Last Tuesday, 18,382 concurrent wireless devices accessed the Wi-Fi. By today, it is projected that roughly 20,000 concurrent wireless devices will access the devices
at the same time, higher than any other number in school history. As someone who identifies as “relying heavily” on Wi-Fi, said freshman Lindsay Harrison of Sandusky, Ohio that she has a hard time with moving her laptop from class to class, as it loses signal quite frequently. “I live in south campus, but I can’t use it in north for some reason,” Harrison said. “Other than that I don’t have too many complaints.” Individuals like Ashley Betts, however, are satisfied overall with the performance of the campus’ Wi-Fi.
“It’s fast enough for what I need,” said Betts, a pre-professional biology major. “I like that I can take my computer everywhere because there’s Wi-Fi all over campus.” Taylor said problems might persist for users in the result of bringing their own wireless routers or trying to access their printers wirelessly. “There’s a finite amount of space in the wireless spectrum,” he said. If you pack a bunch of the same wireless signal in the same part of the spectrum it starts to interfere with each other because they have similar wavelengths.”
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