Mikado
See Arts B1 (Ben Block/Collegian)
Michigan’s oldest college newspaper
Vol. 137, Issue 16 - 13 Feb. 2014
31 returning ambassadors
www.hillsdalecollegian.com
29 graduating ambassadors
Admissions adds ambassadors to replace outgoing seniors Amanda Tindall Assistant Editor
For many college students, the first person they remember meeting on campus is their student ambassador. The student ambassadors provide a point of contact, a friendly face, and a person with whom to share concerns and ask questions. With 63 current student am-
bassadors, consisting of nine sophomores, 25 juniors, and 29 seniors, the admissions department is in the process of hiring more than 30 students to become the new face of the college to prospective students. Senior Assistant Director of Admissions Andrea Clark said admissions conducted an audit of the ambassador program in November and released those who could not commit to the
minimum number of hours required. Clark said hiring for the spring semester is the first round for new ambassadors. “We will be able to hire about 25 new ambassadors for this spring semester, which will help us handle the influx of visitors in March and April, our heavy months, without creating a shortage of hours,” Clark said. “Then, in the fall, we will need
to hire another batch of ambassadors to bring the program up to full strength when the seniors have left us.” After going through applications, junior Luke Bessmer, student director of the student ambassador program, said they’re very pleased with the turnout. “We had three times the number of applications that we needed,” Bessmer said. “All the applications were very good,
and the applicants are pretty well-qualified. Sometimes they just need a little more time on campus.” Admissions has already interviewed applicants and chosen most of the ambassadors for the spring semester. Training for new ambassadors consists of a four-hour session and shadowing experienced ambassadors. “This is an unusually large group of seniors for the pro-
Local prosecutors launch assault on synthetic marijuana Sally Nelson Opinions Editor First in a series They made $191,791 in under two months while pretending to sell tattoos and supplies in Camden, Mich., a town of barely 500 people. But Penny Hawkins, manager of The Clubhouse restaurant, said that everyone knew what the couple was really doing. “Cars came with liscense plates from Ohio and Indiana,” she said. “They spent two or three minutes inside and then left. Nobody gets a two minute tattoo.” On April 15, Hillsdale county residents Douglas Cardwell, 41, and Michelle Demayo, 42, will be tried by jury on six felony counts, all centering on accusations of the sale of synthetic marijuana known as “spice.” Because spice is a Schedule I narcotic and the couple possessed more than 1,000 grams, they face life in prison and fines up to one million dollars each. In Camden, south of Hillsdale, the couple ran a tattoo parlor, Addikted 2 Ink, and allegedly sold spice under the store’s guise from September through November 2013. “They never did a single tattoo and never had a licensed tattoo artist,” Hillsdale County Assistant Prosecutor Rod Hassinger said. “It was just a big front for their designer drug business.” After the Hillsdale Narcotics Enforcement Team made an undercover purchase of 3.5 grams of synthetic marijuana at the store in November, officers from
the Hillsdale Sheriff County Sheriff’s Office and Reading Police Department served a search warrant on both the shop and their residence. Officers confiscated more than 6.65 pounds of synthetic marijuana from both buildings, in addition to 500 glass pipes, 600 packages of rolling papers, and assorted drug paraphernalia. “They felt they could get around the law. They were armed with lab reports for their supplier and had confidence that what they were doing was legal,” said Neal Brady, Hillsdale County prosecuting attorney. Cardwell and Demayo simply didn’t read the Michigan statute, Hassinger said. Though the sale of spice has been prohibited in Michigan since June 2012, there have not been enough prosecutions to send a message, Hassinger said. Many prosecuting attorneys avoid such cases because they tend to be difficult and prohibitively expensive for most counties. The Hillsdale County prosecutor’s office, however, has taken a strong stance against the drug to send a message to dealers and manufacturers: Brady won’t back down. “Two days after we shut down the shop here in Camden, a shop stopped doing business in Sturgis, Mich.,” Hassinger said. “The word has gotten out all because of Mr. Brady.” Before Cardwell and Demayo moved to Camden, the pair operated out of another tattoo parlor under the same name in Angola, Ind. But when a two and half year investigation by Indiana law enforcement drove them out of the
Cardwell and Demayo allegedly sold synthetic marijuana out of this building in Camden, Mich., from September to November this fall. (Sally Nelson/Collegain)
gram,” Clark said. “Many times students will retire from the ambassador program during or before their senior year. We are very lucky that such a large group of seasoned hosts has chosen to remain with the program. They understand the college so well, and visiting students are really able to benefit from that. I will be sad to see them go.”
See Ambassadors A3
Saga loses power Jordan Finney Collegian Reporter
in the past year, according to the National Institutes of Health. “Whoever is marketing it did an intelligent job by attaching the word marijuana to it because a lot of people don’t think marijuana is dangerous,” Brady said. “If you called methamphetamines ‘meth marijuana,’ you would probably see an increase in popularity.” The term synthetic marijuana is, despite clever marketing, a dangerous misnomer. The drug merely mimics the effects of THC and has side-effects far be-
Saga Inc. staff, student employees, and some determined maintenance workers managed to coninue the normal meal schedule for 24 hours — without power. A main transformer that supplies energy to most of the appliances in the Knorr Dining Rom broke down at about 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 6, causing the cafeteria to lose about 90 percent of its ability to produce hot food. “It was really awkward and hectic at first, because we thought the power would come back on because it has shut off and come back before,” student worker and freshman William Persson said. “It didn’t.” Operations Manager Marty Morrison was sitting at his desk reading emails when he heard the machines shut down. “It sounded like someone took a hammer to the machines. You could hear them shut down,” Morrison said. “I got on the radio and notified [General Manager] Kevin [Kirwan] that we didn’t have any power, then checked with the staff to see exactly what equipment we had lost.” It was the first time that a transformer has shut down since the Grewcock Student Union opened in 2008. “Instead of one unit being
See Drugs A6
See Saga A3
They recorded $191,791 in sales over that two-month period.
Synthetic marijuana is a psychotropic designer drug that mimics tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main mind-altering ingredient in marijuana. Though synthetic cannabinoids emerged in the ’80s for medical use, “spice” was co-opted for illicit use in the early 2000s.
- Michigan Department of Community Health
state, they fled across the border. In just under a two month period from September to the middle of November 2013, Cardwell and Demayo recorded the $191,791 in cash sales in handwritten, business ledger, according to a police report. “They were making a lot of money off of this and really harming the community,” Hassinger said. Cardwell and Demayo operated within a gigantic, million-dollar web of synthetic marijuana dealers in the Midwest, centering on accused designer drug pro-
Q&A
Anders Kiledal/Collegian)
Names: Blaze, Bliss, Gold, K2, JK, LOL, Magma, Red Magic, Spice, etc. Side Effects: agitation, drowsiness, elevated heart rates and blood pressure, hallucinations, loss of physical control, paranoia, seizures, tremors and vomiting
ducer Barry Bays, the owner of Little Arm Inc. that distributes as B&B Distribution, according to Hassinger. “The guy who runs it has one deformed arm. He’s got a little arm,” Hassinger said. “But he’s out of business now.” Hassinger said use of the drug among teenagers and young adults is an epidemic. Spice remains most popular amongst 12 to 17 year old males, the Michigan Department of Community Health reports. Nationally, 8 percent of high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana
Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor at National Review.
He writes about a variety of subjects, including politics, foreign affairs, and the arts. He is a music critic for The New Criterion and City Arts. For National Review Online, he writes a column, “Impromptus.” He has won many awards, particularly for his work in human rights. Nordlinger’s most recent book is “Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World.” A native Michigander raised in Ann Arbor, he is a graduate of the University of Michigan. He lives in New York.
Compiled by Chris McCaffery. You wrote a book about the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. What inspired you to explore that? It was suggested to me by an editor. And I thought it was a good idea, a really juicy topic; moreover, one that I could handle. I was delighted by the suggestion. When Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, Adam Bellow suggested I write a “History of the Peace Prize” thesis, and I thought, “That’s an interesting idea,” but it turned into
a total backburner thing. 10 years later, I revived this idea. I started a new book just last week. It was my first time working on it. It’ll probably be called “Children of Monsters,” and it’s about the sons and daughters of dictators. I got the idea a long time ago when I visited Albania for the first time. How nice it is to say “visited Albania for the first time.” It happened twice. I was being shown around by a young man, my guide, and I asked about the late dictators — the late dictator was Enver Hoxha, one of the worst men in history. One of the
most brutal dictators in history, much more than the other Eastern European dictators. More like North Korea, Albania was, than like the rest of the world. And I said, “Did Hoxha have children? “Yeah! He had two sons and one daughter and this is what they do.” And I thought, “What must their lives be like? What must it be to have a last name synonymous with oppression and terror?” Another one of these things that was on the backburner for years. Some acting on that book just started last week.
Jonesville applies to be city
Charger track and field hosted its largest indoor meet yet. The men’s 4 x 4 team broke the previous school record. A8
See Q&A A3
INSIDE The end of Taco Tuesday After a recent student survey, Saga Inc. introduced other options for Tuesday lunches. A2
Learning music at a young age College students teach private lessons to young music students. B1
Annual classical school fair More than 42 classical and charter schools are a part of this year’s job fair. A2
Graduate School Students Get an inside look at the life of Hillsdale’s graduate school students. B4
(Anders Kiledal/Collegian)
Jonesville awaits a response from Gov. Snyder’s office about its proposed charter to incorporate into a city. A6
(Hailey Morgan/Collegian)
News........................................A1 Opinions..................................A4 City News................................A6 Sports......................................A7 Arts..........................................B1 Features....................................B3
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