10:20 a.m. The approval of the action items on the consent agenda has been passed.

No new business is coming before the board.

Meeting adjourned.

************

10:10 a.m. Trustee Kottamasu and Rao are discussing the accreditation of the planned medical school.

Rao seems to feel the accreditation institution thinks that CMU can help produce more physicians because of a foundation in science course offerings.

Rao said they are discussing an interim dean for the school because things are progressing “so rapidly.”

“We’re going to look at what are options are for adding that member to our team,” said Rao.

Trustee Torreano says she gets a lot of external positive feedback on the medical school.

***********

10:05 a.m. The capital outlay budget request is under discussion.

Vice President Wilbur has said CMU may be able to latch onto some of the stimulus money for infrastructure and capital projects for a planned bio-tech building on campus.

A contract with the Michigan Department of natural resources is under discussion.

The discussion has moved to the naming of several facilities within the soon-to-be completed Education Building on campus.

**************

10 a.m. The Board has authorized Rao to contract with Adidas to purchase athletics apparel and shoes.

Athletics director Dave Heeke spoke up, praising the football team for drawing positive public attention.

Heeke said New Balance also bid on the contract. Nike withdrew their bid.

***********

9:55 a.m.: Motions are being passed authorizing the purchase of the technology equipment mentioned below.

The motion to authorize the president to ratify and sign a collective bargaining agreement with the broadcast and office professional employees has been moved off the agenda.

*********

9:50: Facilities Committee report.

For property at 1120 S. Mission Street, near the Special Olympics building, the CMU received some land with contamination that have been cleaned up as much as possible, said vice president of finance and administrative services David Burdette.

They are riling a deed restriction on the property.

“This is really in the university’s best interest to file for this deed restriction, so the property cannot be used for any other purposes that what it’s now used for,” said university President Rao.

The motion has passed.

*************

9:45 a.m.: The recommendation of a new charter school in Taylor is under discussion.

Rao is highlighting the physicians assistant program, which has been garnering media attention around the world lately for several successful projects.

**********

Rao has said that through the efforts of vice president Kathy Wilbur, CMU has arranged to host a special meeting of Michigan Senators regarding the state budget.

Rao said that the school is still in the process of determining the amount of money CMU can expect from the federal stimulus package signed on Tuesday.

Rao said the school still needs to raise expectations despite the ongoing challenges.

$1.6 million will be spent totally on several pieces of equipment, a gas chromatograph spectrometer for the College of Technology, and a new Neuro Kinetics clinic rotary chair for health professions

*************

Board chair Gail Torreano has welcomed the new trustees John Hurd and and Sarah Opperman to the table.

“It’s an extremely strong board, and now it’s even more strong,” said University President Michale Rao.

A round of clapping ensues.

It’s a full room. Every seat is filled with faculty, staff and administrators wearing suits.

***************

The Central Michigan University Board of Trustees meeting begins at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 19.

Check back periodically for updates.

Talk about anti-climactic.

A year ago, while Dennis Lennox was busy raising a big stink about Gary Peters, were you to say he’d get his way – kind of – and that nobody would really care, I’d have laughed.

I guess that’s not fair, though. When the Board of Trustees updated the “political activity of staff members” policy Thursday, there was a lone voice of dissent.

Honors Program Director James Hill showed up to voice his concern that the policy was overly restrictive based on a comparison to policies at similar state universities.

Unfortunately, it was too little, too late. By a unanimous vote, the Board approved the new policy, which updated the procedures on the books since 1955 for employees who want to run for political office.

Perhaps Hill should have paid closer attention to what came before the contract bargaining team, as Faculty President and associate professor of finance and law Nancy White – who this year was herself a candidate for the state legislature – said they reviewed it.

Is the update too restrictive? Hill seems to think so. It certainly is thorough, no surprise. Perhaps Hill can thank Lennox for that, seeing as how it was he who caused the uproar in the first place.

It includes new restrictions that govern the procedure for employees to go about notifying Human Resources. Statements must be attained from a supervisor and the supervisor’s boss.

A whole new round of statements must be attained once the employee actually gains the office, through appointment or election.

Guess that is an extra layer of hoops to jump through. CMU administration is a bureaucracy, and any kind of added regulation within a bureaucracy tends to discourage the activity in question. It’s unavoidable.

The policy does address alternatives to the employee having to quit. Leave of absences for long periods or requests for substantial leave will be considered “upon presentation of a compelling advantage” to the university. Hmmm …

What’s the lesson to be taken away here? That uproar and change is bad and leads to added restriction? That don’t-rock-the-boat keeps everybody happy?

Lennox had a beef with Gary Peters, the Griffin Endowed Chair who was just elected to U.S. Congress, because he felt Peters was using CMU to indirectly finance his campaign.

Agree or not, he found the gray area and did his best to paint it black-and-white, throwing into stark contrast the shaky position a bureaucracy can find itself in when old policies leave too much ambiguity.

One can hardly blame the Trustees for rubber-stamping this thing with a thud, given the initial uproar.

However, It’s ironic that Lennox was not even in attendance when his big, tangible contribution to CMU was decided.

Nobody besides Hill spoke up about the policy during the meeting. The meeting agenda was full, and it’s one of the busiest times of the year.

But still, nobody? That’s kind of disappointing.

Central Normal Life

You could say the very first journalists at Central walked softly and carried a small, almost nonexistent twig.

“The Bulletin” served as Central’s first official publication until late 1919, when the 14-member staff decided to reorganize the small monthly magazine into a weekly newspaper.

“Go forth, Central Normal LIFE …” read the new paper’s first editorial. “You are a little fellow, just newly created, but you will grow. Do not strut forth arrogantly and challengingly, but walk with a humble spirit.”

The first issue hit the campus of Central Michigan Normal School on Dec. 2, 1919 with a top story on the basketball prospects for the upcoming year. The issue was four pages and cost five cents a copy. The bottom of most stories read “pay your subscription.”

Administrators held firm control over content, with then-President E. C. Warriner as the main editorial writer. Early stories showed a school experiencing steady growth, with headlines prone to hyperbole bordering on propaganda.

New faculty were “heartily welcomed” into the “Normal family.” The paper’s motto was “We make teachers who make good.”

“Slanguage” was bemoaned by mystified English majors, who called attention to weird phrases like to “flunk” out of a class, or the “grind” of intense studying. The president of the college was referred to as the “prex” or “prexy.”

The “Normalites” football team enjoyed steady positive coverage. An editorial in 1921 called for a system reorganization to be more accommodating to casual athletes. The team would become the “Bearcats” in the mid-20s.

Early faculty and staff like Mae Woldt, Ira Beddow, Webster H. Pearce and Clifford Wightman, a former Life editor, pop out of early coverage as recognizable campus building names of today.

President Warriner implored students to “carry on” on Dec. 9, 1925, two days after a Monday fire devastated the Main Administration Building, housing the library and auditorium.

Life slowly reflected the changes at Central, growing into a professional-style paper by 1925. Gone were the propaganda headlines. The management now included sports, society, alumni and news editors. An old English flag adorned the top and the new motto was “all that a man hath will he give his life.”

By the fall of 1927, the paper had become the “Central State Life,” to reflect the new name of the school, the Central State Teachers College. Journalism courses were added in 1928.

Central continued to expand throughout the ’30s and ’40s, through the Great Depression and World War II. Charles L. Anspach, a Chevrolet Motor Co. executive, replaced Warriner as president in 1939.

New dormitories and classroom buildings were added and the campus swelled with thousands of students. The paper began landing on a Wednesday and 1936 saw the first spoof/satire issue, the “Central Rost.”

On Wednesday, July 9, 1941, Central State Life became Central Michigan Life, to reflect the college’s name change to Central Michigan College of Education.

HEADLINES
“Fall enrollment of 950 establishes new record”
Sept. 30, 1925
The first three-year courses begin.

“Mute evidence of destruction wrought by flames in two hours”
Dec. 9, 1925
The Main Administration building is destroyed by fire in two hours.

“Use of new administration building ushers in era of efficient expansion”
April 13, 1928

news@cm-life.com

I nearly won a fancy cell phone the other day. Not really, but it was fun to pretend for a second.

An online pop-up ad blinked at me all of a sudden. “Win a Free Blackberry.” Obvious ad bait, but why not try, just once?

First, I had to “kick” a soccer ball past a virtual goalie. After seven misses, I was redirected to a flashy site that made it clear this was Gadget City: my “source for free Blackberrys.”

I really want a Blackberry. They gleam with technological cool. I’ve often wondered if every call placed on such a phone would be perfect.

The box to enter my e-mail address flashed at me provocatively. My fingers hovered over the keyboard .

Wait. Read the fine print. “Receipt of gift requires … completion of user surveys …”

Ugh. I hate surveys. And entering my e-mail means committing Spamicide. But I have a dummy address set up for forms like this. OK.

“Congratulations! Claim your free gift!” Sweeet. I was asked to hurry because the offer was for a “limited time only.”

Enter your mailing address (for shipping the Blackberry). Wish I had a dummy one of those. I entered my parents address (sorry, Dad).

Survey time! More free offers than I could count. Do I have belly fat? Get the No Diet Dieter’s Handbook! Sign up for Vonage! Become a paralegal, a dental hygienist or a geneticist. I clicked ‘no’ on all.

OK, next?

Another survey. Grumble. Actually, the same one, just formatted differently. I clicked ‘yes’ on the “send me free cigarettes” offer. I’m not a frequent smoker, but the game was starting to stress me. OK, next?

Another survey. Grrr – wait! An option to skip! Next.

Another survey. No option to skip. I clicked ‘no’ and ‘yes’ randomly. Next.

Another survey, for “Scholar’s Avenue,” asking if I’d like to get a degree with a leading university? Sure. Two options here: have an admissions representative contact me or skip on to the free promotion.

Duh.

I was pretty tired of the game at this point, but I felt the end was near as I finally clicked the button called “submit.”

“HTTP Status 404 – /path/

Type: Status Report

Message: /path/

Description: the requested path is unavailable.”

A dead end!! Arrgh!

I frantically clicked the back button and tried again. Same result. I tried backing up again and choosing the other answer to the last question. Nope, still the dead end. They got me. No Blackberry for Garret.

Moral: ignore the flashy offers. Your time isn’t free, so don’t waste it.

Oh, and I see I have some offers for herbal Viagra in my inbox. Swell.

I hate algebra. A lot.

I’ve always felt this way. Algebra homework is repetitive: the same problem over and over again, just with different numbers each time you solve it. It bored me to death in high school and still does today.

“Who bleeping cares?” I groan each time the poor couple leaves their house going opposite directions at a different rate of speed. How far apart they are after 20 minutes is totally irrelevant to me. I’m interested in what made them bolt in opposite directions in the first place. Did they get into a fight? Was the house wired to explode in an insurance scam? Are they driving sports cars?

I’m serious. Needless to say, my math teachers have never really liked me very much.

As a kid, I got basic arithmetic. Who didn’t? I think I remember starting this god-awful thing called algebra in 8th grade. I didn’t get it then and I barely get it now. I graduated – somehow. I even got an associate’s degree.

But if you think that meant I was done with algebra, think again. This horrible blight has stalked me with relentless tenacity. It was waiting for me in Mount Pleasant, laughing maniacally as I rolled into town. “Ellison thinks he escaped – buwahahahaaaa!”

In my head, algebra has beady red eyes and a handlebar mustache. He’s staring at me as I type this. You can run, he’s mouthing at me, but you can’t hide forever.

I guess like most monkeys on your back, this one’s my own fault. Math skills are foundational. You must build the basement before you build the first floor, and so on. I never built the basement.

There’s an unstated assumption here that needs to be addressed, though. Why build the stupid skyscraper at all? I’m not an architect; I’m a journalist. And I know you’ve heard this argument before – that everybody uses math – and I say: Yeah, but not everybody uses algebra.

I get the whole standardized education thing, and the concept of minimum requirements. Algebra users and fans argue that it teaches an important kind of deductive logic. Fair enough. I’m not saying it’s not useful, just that certain career paths don’t need it.

Call me lazy; deride me for not learning this when it was free in high school. Use this column to wipe your . chalkboard, but I have taken remedial algebra. I have taken intermediate and college algebra. I will NEVER like it, nor do well. I can’t play the guitar, either. It’s just the way it is.

Sarah Hayes realized something was wrong as soon as she noticed the strange man, red in the face and breathing heavily, sitting at a computer near her.

Hayes was studying with a friend on the fourth floor in the Charles V. Park Library on Tuesday night.

The following events could only be described as “weird” by the Bellaire senior, who had a front-row seat to a spectacle that captured the attention of the entire building.

“I thought he was having a heart attack,” Hayes said, who approached the man after he began to stumble away from his computer toward the bookstacks. “He turned around and he was crying and holding a clear crystal in his hand.”

It was about 8:30 p.m. and the man, Chad Blakley Pell, a Prudenville resident, was having a very bad day. Gratiot County Court Judge Jeffrey Martlew had issued a bench warrant for his arrest that morning, Pell’s third such warrant in the last two years for falling behind on child support payments.

Students would later tell Central Michigan University Police detectives that Pell, 37, had been composing a “love letter” and doing some kind of religious research in the library that night, which ended with Pell in the Gratiot County Jail, 226 East Center St.

Before he got there, he would be physically restrained by a decisive student onlooker after shouting apocalyptic statements to the entire library.

The fourth floor was taking notice as Hayes approached Pell, who told her, crying, that he needed a piece of paper.

“He was annoying me, really, because I was trying to do homework,” said Cameron Charron, a Burton junior who was studying nearby. “Then he got down on his knees and started sobbing really hard.”

Hayes raced downstairs. By the time she had returned with a library staff member, Pell was shaking and praying very loudly.

“He started yelling ‘God, I’ve passed your test,’” she said.

Then Pell stood up and moved briskly toward his belongings at the computers near the elevators on the library’s south side.

He grabbed what looked to Hayes like a handful of black rocks in his right hand, and a teardrop-shaped clear crystal of some kind in his left. Then he strode over to the railing overlooking the building’s circular atrium and stretched his arms out in a cross.

“He was yelling about how we were being judged and God was watching us. He had the library’s full attention,” she said. “At first we thought he was going to jump.”

Hayes and her friend, Mallory Esch, got underneath their desk. Esch dialed 9-1-1.

Then Pell threw the thing in his left hand, which shattered on the ground floor tiles. He started back toward his computer and that was the last straw for Charron.

“I thought, ‘Oh crap, now he’s going to grab a computer and throw it,’” he said.

Charron approached from behind and snaked his arms around Pell’s shoulders, placing him in a full-nelson arrest and stepped backward, sweeping Pell’s feet from underneath him.

Telling him to relax, Charron face-planted Pell and held him there with minimal struggle until campus police arrived five minutes later.

Officers took Pell into custody, discovering the bench warrant.

Sgt. Cameron Wassman determined that Pell was no longer a threat to himself or others and disposed of the shattered glass on the ground floor, which had not hurt anyone and contained nothing harmful.

Wassman then drove Pell to Ithaca, where he was lodged overnight in the Gratiot County Jail. Pell stood before Judge Martlew at 9 a.m. Thursday morning.

According to court documents, Pell was behind several thousand dollars in child support. He was divorced in 2003 and his ex-wife has primary physical custody of their two children.

No charges are being issued for the incident in the library.

“The man violated no laws as far as our jurisdiction goes,” said CMU Detective Sgt. Mike Morrow. “I don’t know if what he did fits the elements of (disturbing the peace).”

After giving statements to police, Hayes, Esch and other witnesses left the library that night very confused.

“In my six years of being here, I’ve never had that entertaining of an evening at the library,” Hayes said.

news@cm-life.com

The former motel clerk who was in cahoots with a man who he told police robbed him at gunpoint has several years of jail hanging over his head after his sentencing Monday, according to court documents.

James Mikeal Smelley II, 22, of Mount Pleasant pleaded guilty last month in Isabella County Circuit Court as a habitual offender for his role in a Sept. 6. sham robbery at the Super 8 Motel, 2323 S. Mission St.

Smelley plead guilty to one count of false report of a felony and one count of larceny between $200 and $1,000. Prosecutors dropped a second false report and a misdemeanor embezzlement charge.

Isabella Trial Court Judge Mark Duthie sentenced Smelley to one year in jail with 45 days credit and five years of probation.

He was also sentenced to one year and 167 days in jail for violating his probation on a 2007 conviction for selling marijuana. Smelley can avoid the jail sentences by not violating the terms of his probation again.

He must undergo a cognitive change program under the Michigan Public Act 511 of 1988, which allows non-violent offenders to earn early release time for good behavior.

Smelley was ordered to pay $500 restitution to the Super 8 Motel, which is owned by LaBelle Management. He received $3,433 in total fines and costs.

He must also serve 104 hours of community service and testify against his co-defendant, Donald Ladon Jones, 25, of Detroit, the alleged gunman in the staged robbery.

Smelley reported that a black man with a muscular build and a hooded sweatshirt held him up at gunpoint at 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 6. He told police the man fled southbound on foot with the money from the front desk drawer and the surveillance tape.

Acting on tips from residents, Mount Pleasant Police detectives determined that Smelley had lied in his police report and that he and Jones were acting together.

Super 8 management fired Smelley immediately after the robbery. He turned himself into police and was arraigned Sept. 29.

MPPD Public Information Officer Dave Sabuda said the Isabella County Prosecutor’s office has not issued charges yet on Jones, a convicted felon on parole from state prison.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “That doesn’t rule out charges.”

news@cm-life.com

My girlfriend and her friend both screamed as we pulled into the gas station this weekend.

“Oh my God … It happened!” I broke into a smile.

We were driving back to Mount Pleasant on Friday, having spent the day in Traverse City. The sign at the gas station in Cadillac held a shocker: Regular Unleaded: $1.96.

A crowd of people were standing underneath, taking pictures with their cell phones. I stopped at the pump and my two passengers jumped out to join them.

“Never thought I’d see it,” said a guy filling-up next to me, with a great big grin on his face. I concurred. This was cause for a mini-celebration, yet the whole thing was slightly troubling.

I had watched the price fall over the past couple months, each 10-cent decrease taking it lower and lower … and lower. When it neared $2.50 per gallon a couple weeks ago, I hesitantly acknowledged the possibility it might drop below $2.00 per gallon.

I sold my 1994 Jeep Cherokee this summer during the height of the price spike. It hurt to see her go. That Jeep was a trooper and I’m convinced she will run forever.

But it belched smoke and cost close to $10 a day to drive. I bought a little Saturn four-door, which gets about 27 miles per gallon, and $20 fills her up for a week.

This story is not unique. Millions of Americans shed their gas-guzzling vehicles this summer when oil shot over $140 per barrel and a gallon of gas averaged more than $4.

Now, it appears we might be falling off the wagon again. On Oct. 30, the New York Times headline read “As Gas Prices Go Down, Driving Goes Up.” Here is the money quote:

“‘Driving habits die hard, and they can reincarnate quickly,’ said Christopher R. Knittel, an economist at the University of California, who studies gasoline demand. ‘If oil prices continue to fall and the economy recovers, I would expect consumers to return to wanting larger and less fuel-efficient cars.’”

And that, friends, is the curse of falling gas prices. With all the talk about renewable energy, green building, foreign oil addiction and energy independence, it really sounded like a paradigm shift.

Now, if prices stay low, expect to see commercials about how now is a great time to get a deal on an SUV, which are overflowing car lots, unable to sell.

Inescapable from all this is the question of oil supply. The International Energy Agency is warning that the supply problems that caused the spike this summer are far from over.

The IEA expects prices to average more than $100 a barrel through 2015, and possibly hit $200 a barrel by 2030.

I saved my receipt from the Friday fill-up. Why? Not sure, but call me a healthy skeptic. Hopefully I’m not the only one.