The University Activities Board will hold Sparty's Spring Party from 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Saturday at Demonstration Field and IM Sports-West. This year's event kicks off with a 3-on-3 basketball tournament at IM Sports-West, with a women's bracket and an open bracket.
Spartans can walk it out and help find a cure for cancer at the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life at 6 p.m.
After working with male domestic violence offenders, Ted Bunch saw the need to integrate men into the fight against domestic and sexual abuse against women. Bunch is the senior program director of a domestic violence accountability program in New York.
A new nicotine anonymous 12-step program will take place from noon to 1 p.m. every Wednesday in 247 Olin Health Center starting on May 9. Those who would like to be free of their nicotine addiction may attend, even if they are still currently smoking.
The biggest opponent the MSU Disc Golf club faces in its quest to build a new course on campus? Dogs. "We don't want dogs chasing after the Frisbees or jumping on the players or participants," said Angela Michael, assistant director of Intramural Sports and Recreative Services. The club is set to begin construction next week on a disc golf course located at the 40-acre Ag Expo lot on south campus.
Want to celebrate your connection with Mother Earth? Sunday is your chance — it's Earth Day. The holiday was created in 1970, the culmination of the environmental movement of the 1960s, said Terry Link, MSU's director of campus sustainability. "There is a Mother's Day and a Father's Day," Link said.
Joe Genetin-Pilawa's summer paycheck depends on whether a class he is teaching off campus reaches its minimum enrollment requirement. The history graduate student is teaching Modern United States history this summer in Birmingham. As of Wednesday, nine students were enrolled in the class.
Eric Hinojosa is excited to "hit the ground running" in his second consecutive term as ASMSU's Academic Assembly chairperson.
Across the country, academic researchers are trying to solve the mystery surrounding Facebook.com, mainly why students use the social networking site. Three faculty members in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media are working on a series of student surveys about Facebook use to research both negative and positive impacts on social capital. Social capital is the benefit people get from their relationships with others, Assistant Professor Nicole Ellison said. "(We're) trying to figure out really what does it mean to be friends with someone on Facebook," Ellison said. For hospitality business sophomore Kristin Schweitzer, Facebook is a way for her to keep in touch with friends she has at other schools. "It's hard to keep up with what they're doing with their daily lives," she said, adding that she created her profile after she graduated from high school two years ago. In the past month, MSU researchers sent out a survey to 2,700 MSU students, of which 700 had been contacted a year ago. The questions on the survey were about students' use of the Web site and how that has changed over time, Assistant Professor Cliff Lampe said. One change that stood out, Lampe said, was many students have activated their privacy settings during the past year. "We've been tracking privacy settings all along, and (the number) has tripled," he said. Schweitzer said she has activated the privacy settings on her own account and also is careful of what information she provides on her profile. "I know companies are looking at your Facebook," she said, referring to potential employers.
For more than 10 hours Wednesday, education junior Natasha Smith was silent. She didn't speak, she didn't laugh.
A 10-foot inflatable rat with possessed-looking red eyes towered next to the construction site on Farm Lane Road and East Circle Drive. The rodent was supposed to symbolize non-union workers, said Ben Lyons, a laborer from the Laborers' Local Union 499. The Ann Arbor-based union began picketing at the site Monday because workers there are not unionized.
On Tuesday, silenced victims of sexual violence shared their stories. Some women described how they were raped.
When Jim Potchen came to MSU as a student in the early 1950s, he was an aspiring florist who had operated his own entrepreneurial business in high school — making corsages in his father's greenhouse and selling them for dances. Potchen, 74, has been the chairman of the MSU Radiology Department for more than 30 years, a department he built from the ground up, without a penny of university funding. On Friday a bronze statue of Potchen was unveiled in the Radiology Building's atrium, making him the third person at the university to be honored this way.
A new university-sponsored online guide for creating Web sites could make it easier for MSU faculty, staff and students to build pages for departments and class projects. After the university's home page was redesigned a year ago, many faculty and staff members expressed a desire to update their respective Web sites and requested resources from MSU's Web Team. "Sometimes, different places on campus may have a one-issue event they'd like to get a quick Web site up for," said Jeane Marty, a Web developer for University Relations.
The MSU Dance Team will be holding team tryouts Saturday and Sunday at Breslin Center. Registration for auditions begins at 8 a.m.
By Summi Gambhir For The State News About a dozen MSU students got some firsthand experience with horse-driven farming techniques at the fourth annual Plow Day on Saturday. The event, organized by the MSU Driving Club, gave students a chance to dirty their hands as they plowed two fields east of the Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education with experienced farmers in order to learn the finer skills of using traditional farm equipment. Rachel Meyer, an animal science junior, was excited to try her hand at managing the horses and a manual plow with her friends. "An experienced farmer can do this alone, but we are still learning," said Meyer, who also is the president of the club. Russ Erickson, a retired professor of dairy nutrition, started the draft horse class about seven years ago to "teach students about the pulling power of draft horses and manual plowing." The club grew out of the program. "It was hard to provide this kind of experience in class otherwise," Erickson said. Aimed at promoting the draft horse industry, the club now boasts five horses.
Diane Hoskins is in the "smuggling business." Or so she pretends. The Coldwater, Mich., resident acted as a look-out for the Underground Railroad, ensuring that escaped slaves had a way to get to Canada.
People sometimes say religion is a topic to avoid when talking with friends, but the MSU Wesley Foundation encouraged just this type of discussion Saturday. The group invited other religious organizations on campus to an event called Hoopla to promote understanding and acceptance between the groups. "We're not here to say who's right or who's wrong," said Tim Tuthill, a Mason resident and the campus minister at University United Methodist Church.
Carol Beard often encourages her clients to come out of the closet. No, not that closet. For the past five years, Beard has worked as a closet analyst, weeding through clients' clothes, pitching unattractive pieces and replacing them with more appealing articles. But in her spare time, Beard acts as the adviser for the Student Apparel Design Association, or SADA, using her knowledge to help MSU students' fashion dreams become runway realities. Since January, Beard and SADA students have gathered to plan Fashion Week.
A proposal to change Lyman Briggs School from a school to a college was presented to Faculty Council on Tuesday and was unanimously approved. On April 17, the proposal will be presented to Academic Council.