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GV student dies on way to classes Friday

Grand Valley State University freshman Danielle Clouse was killed in a car accident Friday morning after dropping her sisters off at school.

Clouse was driving to the Allendale Campus for classes when a pickup truck driver ran a stop sign and crashed into the driver’s side door of Clouse’s Chevrolet Cavalier at 8:23 a.m., police said. It was unclear what caused the driver, Jerome Hitsman, 73, to drive past the stop sign, located at the intersection of New Holland Street and 96th Avenue in Zeeland, but Ottawa County police said Hitsman may face charges.

“This crash remains under investigation by the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Austin. “Upon completion of the report, a copy will be forwarded to the Ottawa County prosecutor.”

Clouse was taken to Spectrum-Zeeland Community Hospital, where she died shortly after arrival. Hitsman and his passenger, an unnamed 10-year-old, were treated for non-life threatening injuries.

A 2011 graduate of Black River High School in Holland, Mich., Clouse had yet to decide on her major, but family told the Grand Rapids Press she was a talented student whose interests included writing and art.

Visitation for Clouse will be Tuesday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Chappell Funeral Home in Fennville. The funeral is set for 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Construction, alumni giving primary focuses for university

University officials gathered officers from student organizations together Tuesday night for the What Every Student Leader Needs to Know About Grand Valley reception. A panel of speakers addressed student questions about state appropriations, fundraising and the university’s financial future.

The panel included Jim Bachmeier, vice president for finance and administration; Maribeth Wardrop, vice president for university development; and Matt McLogan, vice president for university relations.

As state appropriations have been cut back, the university had made up for the difference with private donations. In the past 15 years, Wardrop’s office has raised $200 million through private donations.

“All of the money that Maribeth has raised has either gone into facilities or student scholarship programs or financial aid,” McLogan said. “We do not use private money to pay the light bill, or pay anybody’s salaries.”

GVSU receives $58.3 million in state appropriations, or about $2,365 per student, the lowest of Michigan’s 15 public universities. State appropriations make up 17.2 percent of the univerity’s $309.7 million budget.

The state budget has been cut $4 billion since 2000, with the single largest cut going to higher education appropriations.

“State funding at Grand Valley is low,” Bachmeier said. “It’s very low, perhaps the lowest it’s been since it’s inception. We’re in the bottom five percent in the country, and I’d even venture to say we’re in the bottom two percent.”

The university hopes to transition the donor base from community members to GVSU alumni, Wardrop said. Currently, 6.3 percent of alumni give back to the university, a “pretty embarassing” statistic Wardrop attributes both to the youth of the university — the majority of GVSU alumni graduated in the 1990s — and the youth of the University Development office, which was created 15 years ago.

Read the full story at http://www.lanthorn.com/.

Allendale firefighters face increased calls, demands as township grows

Billowing black smoke clouded the dreary Allendale sky as sirens wailed and fire trucks zipped down Lake Michigan Drive on Oct. 14.

A team from the Allendale Fire Department unloaded into the field, unwinding their hoses as they combated the flames that threatened to devour stalks of corn. After several hours of effort, the fire was out.

The incident was one of the more than 800 fires that the AFD respond to each year. The number of incidents that the department responds to has grown in recent years as the township’s population increases. Calls to the department are up from about 700 incidents two years ago.

“As a fire department, it’s going to get busier,” said Mike Keefe, AFD fire chief. “We’re already seeing increases and it’s going to be a challenge to meet those needs in future years and make sure we’re still operating the way we are. That’s what the challenges are, and we’re going to have fun doing it.”

Chris Holmes, a firefighter and paramedic with the AFD, said calls such as Thursday’s create a rewarding but hectic lifestyle for Allendale’s 14 paid on-call firefighters.

“We live our lives the best we can normally, and when the fire pager goes off, we drop what we’re doing and go to whatever call we got, whether it be a structural fire, a medical emergency or a car accident,” Holmes said.

Keefe had one word for his firefighters’ dedication: “Awesome."

“They’re really good,” he said. “We probably have one of the best groups of guys and gals that are in the area to be firefighters. They’re well-trained, they do an awesome job when they’re on-scene and they’re great people.”

Holmes, who has worked with the AFD for four years, works for Allendale Township in addition to his full-time job as a paramedic in Grand Rapids. The job not only helps Holmes fulfill his life-long aspirations of helping others, it also allows him to follow in the footsteps of his mother, who worked as a firefighter for the AFD for five years.

The family tradition is a common thread throughout the department. Keefe said he was drawn to the profession because of his father, also a firefighter.

“You just follow in the footsteps,” he said. “When I became of age to be a firefighter, that’s when I started.”

Firefighters in the AFD go through extensive training to be able to respond to a variety of calls, which range from car accidents to medical emergencies to outdoor fires. Between training and the calls that come in, Holmes said the commitment can be difficult on his family. Holmes and his wife are expecting their first child in May.

“I’ve missed holidays because of calls, and now with us expecting, she knows I’m going to be missing things with our baby when that happens,” Holmes said. “… She’s proud of what I do, but on a personal aspect, she misses the fact that the time we’re supposed to have together gets taken away.”

Keefe balances work with family by coaching football, which gives him a chance to play with his two kids: Joey, 9, and Matty, 4.

“My family loves [my job],” he said. “They probably wouldn’t want me doing anything else.”

For more information on the AFD, visit www.allendalefirerescue.com.

GV student dies in I-75 crash

Oakland University officials confirmed Sunday that Grand Valley State University sophomore Rachel Ring, 19, died Saturday afternoon in a car accident on southbound I-75.

Police said a 60 something-year-old driver was at fault, but the cause of the accident was unclear. Alcohol is not believed to be a factor.

According to a report from Michigan state police, the accident involved four vehicles and 10 people.

Ring, who had recently transferred to GVSU, had previously attended Oakland. She and an Oakland student were riding in the back of a compact car when the accident occurred at about 2:58 p.m. Both of the passengers died; the car’s driver, a second Oakland University student, was removed from the vehicle with the jaws of life and sent to the hospital with injuries.

No one else was injured.

The girls were on their way to the John K. King Bookstore in Detroit when the multi-vehicle crash occurred.

“Any death among the Oakland University family diminishes us all, and the sudden death of two young, vibrant students is a particularly devastating blow,” wrote Oakland President Gary Russi in a campus-wide letter. “It is almost beyond our ability to comprehend such a tragedy.”

GVSU officials were unavailable for comment.

Voters to decide fate of The Grove in February election

GVL / Eric Coulter

The decision is the final step in a two-year battle over development of The Grove, a $20 million construction project funded by Campus Crest Communities that would add 648 beds in 248 units to the northwest corner of Lake Michigan Drive and 48th Avenue.

Greg DeJong, a real estate agent working with Grove landowner Stuart Becker, estimated that the deal would generate $500,000 in property taxes for Allendale public schools; however, vocal opponents of the deal, including Township Trustee David Morren and owners of other apartment complexes near Grand Valley State University, say the density calculations used to approve The Grove give the complex unfair competitive advantage.

The density calculations used for The Grove were different than those used in the development of Allendale’s most recent housing additions, such as Meadows Crossing and The Village at 48west.

Glen Turek, property owner of Meadows Crossing apartments, said the housing market in Allendale is already “saturated,” with significant vacancies in most complexes.

In June, a survey showed that Campus West occupancy was at 30 percent, and other units have faced similar struggles as the growth of the student body at GVSU has leveled out in recent years.

“The existing housing complexes all have fixed costs that need to be supported,” Turek said. “If the market is too saturated with beds, this will create more vacancy and will make it difficult for the fixed costs to be supported. …Some owners will not be able to pay property taxes. Some landlords could even end up defaulting on loan payments.”

Construction for The Grove won approval from the board of trustees 4-3 in July, but has been held in limbo by a lawsuit challenging the lot’s zoning. The suit, brought forth by Duane Thomas and several housing development owners, seeks to return the land from mixed-used commercial to light industrial, its pre-2010 zoning.

Read the full story at www.lanthorn.com.

Students unknowingly excluded from grant due to first-year limitations

GVL Archives

Unclear language that left number of seniors unknowingly ineligible for the Grand Finish grant during its promotion created confusion on campus, but Grand Valley State University officials said the grant is now available to all students who earn 90 credits within their first three years in school.

Fine print on the scholarship qualifications states that the first class of recipients must earn their 90th credit in the winter semester of their junior year. Students who had already surpassed 90 credits, including students who had taken a significant number of spring/summer classes at GVSU or tested out of courses through AP or IB exams, were not eligible since they had earned their 90th credits prior to the winter semester.

That stipulation is not a part of the qualifications for students who reached or will reach 90 credits after Winter 2011.

According to information posted last year on the Grand Finish website, “Currently enrolled students who earn 90 credit hours by August 2011 and are within three years of their first enrollment at Grand Valley are eligible.” A press released published through GVSU News and Information contained similar language.

For students who did not receive the Grand Finish, the exclusion came as a shock, as the limitations in place for the first year of the grant were not widely disclosed.

Andrea Blanchard, a senior English and social studies for secondary education major, learned of the Grand Finish during a discussion with a roommate who had received it. Blanchard, who carries a 3.99 GPA and is a member of the Honors College, assumed her exemption was the result of an oversight at first.

“I initially assumed a mistake had been made and called the Financial Aid Office to figure it out only to find out that I had attained my 90th credit too soon to be considered for the award,” she said. “In other words, I was too well prepared to be recognized by the Grand Finish.”

Lynn “Chick” Blue, vice provost and dean of Academic Services and Information Technology, said it was necessary to leave some students behind in order to begin giving out Grand Finish awards to earlier classes.

“There’s always a risk in starting a scholarship program mid-stride, for the very reasons that we’re talking today,” Blue said. “Somebody gets it and somebody doesn’t, so we typically start with an incoming class, and that was going to be Fall ’10. Then there was quite a bit of pressure put on the idea guy, and that was the president, and he decided through a lot of wrangling that they could scare up enough money to start in Fall ’11 and include students who would have matriculated in Fall ’08.”

Read the full article at www.lanthorn.com.