The March 30 meeting in the Elliott Hall Auditorium was attended by a group of students in support of the proposal. College of Arts and Sciences Dean Ronald Sudol, who opposes the program, was present at the beginning of the meeting, but walked out before the proposal was brought before the board.

“I would like to thank our students who have been waiting patiently and very eagerly for this day, which we hope will be a happy outcome,” Susan Hawkins, chair and associate professor of English, said at the beginning of her presentation.

English professor Ed Haworth Hoeppner said creative writing began as a formal discipline at the University of Iowa in the 1930s and has seen an uptick in popularity across the nation in recent years.

“In 2004, there were 80 institutions of higher education who offered a BA or a BFA in creative writing. In the last seven years that number has doubled, so now there are currently 160 programs nationwide who offer undergraduate majors in creative writing,” Hoeppner said. “Oakland’s program would be only the third in the state.”

Hawkins said the program would be ready to launch in the fall “without major expenses or any major outlay in terms of funds.”

The first two tracks would be fiction and poetry. The English department would hope to add television and screenwriting by the second year, but trustees Jacqueline Long and Henry Baskin said the program shouldn’t depend too heavily on Michigan’s film industry in light of the uncertainty of its tax incentive program.

“However, there are corporations who do their own film work, in-house film work, such as Ford,” Baskin, who serves as chair of the board, said. “General Motors is coming online with it. So there is a need for people who are creative, creatively thinking and writing for the medium.”

The proposal will now be sent to the President’s Council, which next meets in June.

Last semester, Trpko Blazevski was on campus every weekday. He never packed a lunch nor did he spend a single penny on food.

Still, he never went hungry.

Around noon, Blazevski, a freshman studying information technology, would tour the Oakland Center circuit — Fireside Lounge, the Banquet Rooms, the Gold Rooms, etc. — and almost always find an event offering free food.

“Fireside Lounge always usually had guest speakers, they’d have food there, or up in the Gold Rooms,” Blazevski said. “Or they’d have guest speakers in the Banquet Rooms. There’s always sandwiches or chicken or something.”

Blazevski has a noon class this semester, but his once-daily excursions for food beg the question: Oakland University has a lot of campus events, and many of them offer free food — but is it worth it?

Event-full

On Feb. 17, the Albanian American Student Organization celebrated the third anniversary of Kosova’s independence. Like many events on campus, it was held from noon to 1 p.m. in Fireside Lounge. Fifty plastic folding chairs faced a podium and a projector. In back was a table adorned with standard Chartwells fare: Pizza, chicken strips, fruit and vegetable trays, water and lemonade to drink, plus chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert.

A few moments after all the food was set up, a line of students about 15-deep formed, spilling into the hall.

Brittany Kelley, a sophomore studying English and French, stood in line to get a little of each. She said she read about the event on OU’s website and “thought it’d be interesting to check out.” Food, she said, had “a little bit” of an impact on her decision.

Like Kelley, most students said they attend based on the event itself, but admit that food is a major enticement.

One item in particular drew junior Dom Borowicz.

“If they got pizza, that’s usually the best,” Borowicz said.

By 12:10, most of the 50 seats were filled while almost half the food was gone. A few minutes later, the pizza and chicken strips — typically the most popular food items to students — were gone.

Borowicz said he comes to such events once a week. He loaded up his plate as another current events discussion was set to begin.

“It’s always interesting eating food and seeing people talk about the world’s problems,” Borowicz said.

Not exactly ‘free’

Alaina Farber, president of the Jewish Student Organization/Hillel, said that when she promotes her group’s events, she can always expect to hear one question: “Will there be free food?”

“It seems that just by putting ‘free food’ on a banner or flyer it increases your numbers,” Farber said.

But the food isn’t exactly free.

According to spreadsheets posted on OU Student Congress’s website, student organizations spent $45,087.28 on food in the Fall 2009 semester.

In Winter 2010: $47,456.66. Numbers aren’t presently available for either Fall 2010 or the current semester.

To receive funding, student organizations must fill out an allocation form and submit it to the Student Activities Funding Board, a standing committee of Oakland University Student Congress. SAFB, which consists of up to six members, is a direct-funded student organization. Its budget comes from the $25-per-student-per-semester student activities fee, of which it receives 24 percent.

Brandon Hanna, who has served as SAFB chair since the beginning of Fall 2010, said he receives about 40-50 allocation requests per week, most of which contain food requests.

All student organizations are eligible to receive up to $3,000 per semester from SAFB, no more than half of which can be spent on food. All beverages must be PepsiCo products. Events held inside the Oakland Center and Vandenberg must be catered by Chartwells; outside food is allowed at other campus locations.

“I would say over 90 percent (of food requests) are for Chartwells food,” Hanna said.

Student organizations have had mixed, though mostly positive, experiences with Chartwells.

“We have had excellent experiences with the brownies, quesadillas and chicken tenders,” Dylan Tanner, Phi Alpha Theta president, said. The honor society spent $493 on food last semester and expects to spend around $1,000 this semester. “We purchase those items more than any other. On the other hand, we have had a few bad experiences with their cheese and pepperoni pizzas, and we won’t be ordering them again.”

According to the student catering menu on OU’s website, a Chartwells cheese pizza costs $11.22; pepperoni pizzas cost $12.50 each. Appetizers range from $35-40 per platter. Beverage-wise, Chartwells sells various other hot and cold beverages priced at $9-9.52 per gallon.

Chartwells also works with student organizations to make food not on its menu, as it did for the Muggle Quidditch League of OU’s Feb. 28 event, a screening of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” The group served three gallons of butterbeer — priced at $44 per gallon, according to club president Nichole Seguin — specially made by Chartwells.

For outside events, Little Caesar’s Hot-N-Readies are a popular item.

“You can’t really go wrong with $5 Hot-N-Readies and a couple two liters,” James Norris, eminent archon of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, said. “It’s something that will bring the public out because most college students are ‘broke college students’ so it saves them money in the end and brings our organization a crowd, whether it’s for a recruitment event or philanthropy event.”

According to Hanna, there are currently about 220 student organizations — over 40 of which are new since the beginning of Fall 2010. SAFB’s budget increases proportionally with enrollment, but with such an influx of new student organizations, Hanna said they’ve had to become especially efficient at doling out funds.

“As long as student orgs don’t order too much food for their events, I think food is a great thing,” Hanna said.

Effect on attendance

While he went to events with the goal of finding free food, Blazevski said he’d often end up being drawn into the panel’s discussion or the presentation being given.

“I’d usually sit there. I mean, maybe not the whole thing, but I’d kind of feel bad just going, grabbing food and walking away. So I’d usually sit and listen to part of it, if not the whole thing,” Blazevski said.

When Jane Choi’s professor told her about Not For Sale — a Feb. 15 event that aimed to educate students about the global sex trafficking industry — the professor didn’t fail to mention there would be free food. And while Choi, a junior studying political science, enjoyed some of the pasta salad and veggie wraps that were offered, she said the subject matter was a bigger draw.

“I always go based on the topic or if it’s something I’m interested in,” Choi said.

But Greg Bastien, president of OU’s Film Makers Guild, said too many students came to his group’s events just to get free food.

“OU’s Film Makers Guild unanimously decided to stop having food at events because it was taking money from our budget that could be spent towards making films,” Bastien said.

The French club, which has spent about $500 on food this semester, has had more positive results, according to club President Ashley Thomas.

“Free food brings in a lot of people. Not only do they like to try new things, because we like to have traditional French pastries and other European foods, but they love to come and mingle while eating. We always have big turnouts at our events and meetings when there is food involved,” Thomas said.

The Saturday morning before finals last semester, the Social Work Club/Phi Alpha held an event in the Oakland Center featuring massages, yoga and, of course, food.

“We had fruit trays, veggie trays, cheese and cracker trays for our healthy food to go along with our self-care curriculum. And then we also had cheese sticks, chicken tenders, cookies and brownies for comfort food,” club president Meredith Parish said. “We figured students are stressed during finals so we balanced the ‘comfort’ food with the ‘healthy’ food.”

For Oakland’s many student organizations, offering free food at events continues to be a balancing act between attracting audiences and not letting the message of their events get lost.

Does anyone remember cassette tapes? It’s quite a shock when you realize that you remember an age when you had to switch the tape to go from your Disney theme songs to “We will, we will rock you.” There was no such thing as a shuffle mode. Freshmen, I apologize for the involuntary shiver that statement just caused.

None of that should matter though, right? Of course we want the newest, the best, the coolest thing we can possibly get.

But let’s think about this for a second.

It’s gotten to the point where the second we buy something and take it out of the box, it is obsolete. If each new version did something revolutionary, or even meaningfully improved the product, we wouldn’t care. But what are we really getting?

I use a popular speech recognition product that came out with a new version about six months after I purchased it. The big selling point? The new version was supposed to be up to 99 percent accurate. The problem? They said the same thing  about the previous version when I bought it. Something doesn’t jive here.

Every other week it seems like there’s a new version of iTunes. I consider myself somewhat of a tech geek, and I would be hard pressed to tell you what the difference was. What’s the big deal about that you ask? It’s not like we’re paying for it. Maybe we aren’t, if our time is worth nothing. That’s 20 minutes that I can’t rock out to “Walk This Way.” My family is probably thankful to be rid of my off- key singing, but that’s beside the point.

Steve Jobs, we love your iPod. It has great functionality, and its design is aesthetically pleasing. However, you force me to make a citizen’s arrest for the crime of time theft.

Apple isn’t the only company with this problem. I love Windows 7. It’s beautiful and runs very quickly. At the same time, if I’m really honest, all it really does is fix all the bugs in Windows Vista. Why would I have to pay for an entirely new system that just fixes your mistakes? Consumers are getting hoodwinked.

And while we’re at it, there are just too many cell phones. At the time of this writing, there were nine new devices listed on the websites of AT&T and Verizon alone. That’s probably more than the number of times Charlie Sheen gets high every week.

Video games might be the worst offenders. “Call of Duty” is a rehash of the same gameplay every time. It’s even having an adverse affect on the vocabulary of our youth. I hear my brother talking about “cod” and I have to remind myself he’s not talking about the fish.

Of course, this is not a Johnny-come-lately issue. The masses have been eating this stuff up for years. Could someone please tell me what the difference is between “Pokémon Red” and “Pokémon Blue?” (Cue the angry letters to the editor from Pokémon diehards). What I’m about to ask is sacrilege to nerds everywhere, but it needs to be brought up. How many times does Bowser have to trap Peach before she learns to stay away from the guy?

To be clear, I’m not asking for the stifling of innovation. I benefit as much, if not more than most from advances in technology. I’m merely asking that you don’t make us update every time you come up with a new color for the menu.

That being said, when the new Madden comes out next year, odds are it’s going to end up on my Christmas list. After all, they did update the roster.

“It’s odd to be a sort of landscape or nature poet and all of a sudden have the world intrude upon the imagination,” Ed Haworth Hoeppner, an English professor at Oakland University, said.

Haworth Hoeppner’s newest collection of poems, “Blood Prism,” is the winner of the 2010 Ohio State University Press Award in Poetry and centers on three themes, including politics, which Haworth Hoeppner said he’d never explored before poetically. The award comes with the publication of his manuscript by The Ohio State University Press and a $3,000 prize.

“It’s really a way of … trying to bring that sort of news into the world, into the daily life of the person who’s walking around 1,000 miles from that kind of stuff, and see how it enters into the imagination and changes reality a little bit,” Haworth Hoeppner said.

Memory and age make up the other two sections of the book, with the former section featuring poems about the death of Haworth Hoeppner’s parents. The three themes are connected through the concept of “blood” — the blood of family, the often-violent nature of politics, and age resembling the coming of the end of one story in a bloodline.

“I’ve always been surprised previously to see what my dominant mood was for this period of time. One time, I did a book and I thought, ‘Wow, a lot of these poems are about being a father for the first time,’” Haworth Hoeppner said.

Haworth Hoeppner, who’s taught at OU since 1988, has published about 300 poems since the 1970s. “Blood Prism” contains about 65 poems that were written over the last several years. In addition to exploring new topics, he said he also experimented with various technical forms, such as prose, internal rhyme and staggered lines.

With such a small audience for poetry, Susan Hawkins, chair and associate professor of English, said it’s a rare feat for poets to have their work published.

“What the general public doesn’t understand is just how difficult it is to get poetry published in America,” Hawkins said. “Almost all of it is done by really small presses and/or academic presses like Ohio State. And even there this is a contest, so over 700 submissions, all these people are sending in manuscripts, and Ed’s manuscript gets it out of 700.”

Haworth Hoeppner said books of poetry usually sell between 1,000-5,000 copies, and that often poets will be paid in copies in lieu of money, which he has no objection to.

“It’s not a money game at all for 99.9 percent of poets; it’s something else,” Haworth Hoeppner said.

“Blood Prism” will be published later this year, and will be available through The Ohio State University Press and at major booksellers.

One of Oakland University’s colleges could soon have a new major — with or without the approval of its dean.

In 2007, Ronald Sudol, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, told the English department he supported the “further development of creative writing,” according to a Feb. 16 letter addressed to the University Senate.

The English department crafted a proposal for a BA in creative writing, which has since been approved — unanimously — by the Committee on Instruction, the College of Arts and Sciences College Assembly and, on Feb. 17, the University Senate.

In the Feb. 16 letter, however, Sudol wrote that he did not support the current proposal, creating “a point of contention between me and the English department.”

Michelle Piskulich, associate provost, said the program still has two more steps to go through: the Board of Trustees and the President’s Council, which looks at programs across the state. It’s unclear, however, what would happen if the proposal passes those two stages despite not being favored by the dean.

“The process has to be completed before we would even begin to think about what to do next,” Piskulich said.

The next Board of Trustees meeting is March 15, but an agenda is yet to be released.

The dean’s objections

In his letter, Sudol wrote a BA in creative writing “is an oddball degree and extremely rare across the country” and the proposed budget is “totally unsupportable” — though Susan Hawkins, chair and associate professor of English, said there are initial costs, but the program is a “money maker for sure.”

A BA in English with a creative writing track, Sudol wrote, “would be a much more effective credential.”

“I have offered financial assistance to launch  and promote such a track. The department has declined the offer. The offer has been withdrawn,” Sudol wrote.

Outside of his letter, Sudol declined to make any additional comments regarding the creative writing proposal.

A spirited Senate meeting

Many faculty members spoke in support of the proposed creative writing program at the Feb. 17 Senate meeting.

Some said Sudol’s letter, dated one day before the Senate meeting, was written too late.

“It is unthinkable, when work has been done, there hasn’t been any contest over the principles and the content of the proposal, and yet we get this kind of backlash at the end of the day,” Kellie Hay, associate professor of communication, said. “I urge us to support this, and there’s good reason why deans have term limits.”

Kevin Grimm, associate professor of English, said Sudol — who was not present — showed “contempt for the process” of governance.

“I put it to you that someone who is the chief administrative officer of a legislative body (and) issues a public document that says he cannot support a program approved unanimously by that body, in which he has a vote, is failing to do his job (and) should resign,” Grimm said.

After the present voting body voted unanimously in support of the creative writing proposal, Provost Virinder Moudgil said “the process has worked” and that he would take the verdict to the next level.

In an interview with The Oakland Post the following day, President Gary Russi said that when the proposal comes to him,  “I will support it and I will take it to the board to pass it.”

Liberal arts programs are a focal point of Russi’s, as he stated at the university update.

“From a better logical point of view, reading and writing are the most important things as a foundation for anybody who’s educated,” Russi said. “When I talk to a lot of CEOs and those graduated from college, they really, really value those people who can read and write.”

What the program would be

OU would be the third school in Michigan to offer such a program, Eastern Michigan University and Saginaw Valley State University being the other two. There are 159 undergraduate programs in creative writing across the U.S., up from 10 in 1994.

The proposed major would require 44 credits and a creative thesis, such as a collection of poetry. Possible jobs for creative writing majors include freelance writer, publications manager and technical editor.

The English department had 444 students at the start of the Fall 2010 semester, up 7 percent from 2009. But all programs within the English major are down, with the exception of Cinema Studies, which started in 2009 and currently has 61 majors. Still, there’s been a demand for creative writing.

“We’re responding to what’s become the most popular request in our English student surveys … which is more courses in creative writing,” English professor Ed Howarth Hoeppner said.

Jason Storms, a junior studying English and psychology, said a creative writing BA would be a “great opportunity” for OU. He said the program could set him up for a M.F.A. or Ph.D. in creative writing and provide him with “artistic skills I could enjoy throughout my life,” regardless of whether he used them professionally.

“I think it is no secret that Oakland University has some phenomenal artistry being crafted across the disciplines, and I think it is time that we bring our literary artistry into the light more, which I think a creative writing major would do,” Storms said.

Hoeppner said the program would be ready to launch in the fall with existing faculty, though it wouldn’t be able to roll out the second phase — screenwriting and TV writing — for a few years.

OU currently has one faculty member hired as a creative writer, but whether the university will have a creative writing major remains unknown.

“We’re into an area nobody really understands,” Hawkins said. “Stuff may just sit … we just don’t know.”

Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget cut could reduce Oakland University’s state appropriations by almost a quarter.

It still needs to pass through the state legislature, but if approved, Snyder’s budget would severely strain the budgets of Michigan’s 15 public universities.

Central Michigan University is projected to face the highest possible cut — 23.3 percent — while Eastern Michigan University should see the lowest, a 19.3 percent reduction. OU is expected to receive a cut of up to 22.6 percent, the second highest.

Each university, however, has an opportunity to see only a 15 percent reduction.

Russi explained that Snyder recommended taking the five-year average of the tuition increase for all 15 public universities and staying under that number, which is 7.1 percent or less. OU’s projected cut ranges from $11.5-7.5 million, depending on whether they earn the tuition incentive grant.

Russi said it’s too soon to tell what the university will have to do to make up for the loss in state revenue, and the future is even less certain.

“(Snyder) proposed a two-year budget,” Russi said. “The second year is really critical. What they’re proposing is that it would be formula-funded. This would be the first time in the history of education — but the formula is not defined. So 2013 is still up in the air and will really represent a clean slate, so the money that we were to get this year … is not guaranteed for ’13, so we’re trying to figure out what all that means and at this point we don’t know.”

OU’s current state appropriation is $50 million. Its general fund is $180 million, according to Tom LeMarbe, director of budget and financial planning. LeMarbe’s department works toward planning and developing the university’s operating budget and must account for changes like the upcoming fiscal budget.

“I haven’t had a chance to meet with Dr. Russi yet, (but) my guess is we’ll be looking at everything as we try to balance the ’12 budget, including reserves,” LeMarbe said.

In a meeting on Feb. 18, Russi and others confirmed OU’s four priorities: Support strategic visions, protect and enhance the academic mission, provide excellent student services and minimize net tuition cost.

“These are extremely important because these are guideposts to the reductions that will occur on this campus,” Russi said. “Without these … you just sort of randomly go through with proposed cuts and just pick them and so on. You can’t do that. You really need to establish some solid foundations for why you’re cutting and what you’re going to protect. This is what we’re going to protect.”

With 86 percent of OU’s budget going toward “fixed costs” — salaries, utilities and insurance, to name a few — Russi said the university doesn’t have a lot of room to move around.

“In other words, we don’t have a lot of flexibility. When you have fixed costs, those are things that you have to make major changes to deal with them,” Russi said.

At the Feb. 17 University Senate meeting, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Virinder Moudgil said the university needs to “start planning now.”

“I was at a national provost’s meeting last week, and I’ll tell you, almost all were scared,” Moudgil said. “There were Michigan provosts there who said they did not know how they were going to do their job with the budget cuts coming their way.”

Russi is asking for campus-wide feedback from faculty, staff and anybody that has an idea on how to fix the budget by the end of the day on March 7.

“We’ve got to move our agenda along, so we have a sense of urgency and we need this feedback,” Russi said. “We need it as quickly as we can get it, so I’m excited about the opportunity to listen and hear, and (the vice presidents and deans) will look at every idea.”

— Kay Nguyen contributed to this report

It was the kind of story a journalist hopes to never have to write. The haunting imagery, the burden of research, the emotional toll — it was almost too much to bear. But it had to be written.

Two years ago this week, I wrote a Mouthing Off about Snuggies. The wearable bedspread has haunted me ever since.

When I first heard of the item, it seemed like nothing more than something you feared your aunt would mistakenly gift you. Slowly, it grew into a fad that, I thought, would last no more than a few months. By some cruel twist of fate, however, these blanketed behemoths sold in record numbers and continue to exist.

Apparently the world failed to heed my message. The tragically dorky commercials were a hit. The family featured in them, despite appearing to be on some type of psychotropic drug, became America’s family.

Seeing an opportunity to capitalize, dozens of Snuggie knockoffs flooded the market —the Slanket and the Toasty Wrap, to name a few. They attained celebrity status when the cast of “Today” wore them and Weezer came out with its own version. Enough Cleveland Cavaliers fans wore them to earn a spot in the Guinness World Records.

As someone who barely follows popular culture, I was able to sidestep much of this. However, friends, family and coworkers who do pay attention to such meaninglessness notified me of every new development in the world of Snuggies. My phone was bombarded with images of “Snuggie for Dogs” with captions that read, “You should write about this!”

I tried to laugh it off, but to no avail. Humorists such as myself served only to increase the grotesque garment’s popularity.

It turned out people were all too glad to give up their dignity and self-respect simply to spite us. They wore them on pub crawls. Someone with way too much free time made a music video titled “Teach Me How To Snuggie,” a parody of Cali Swag District’s hit song. A book called “The Snuggie Sutra” — well, I’ll let you research that depravity on your own.

Even The Oakland Post office, it pains me to report, is home to two Snuggies. But the final straw came when the fond memories of my childhood were forever tarnished when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sold out. Yes, the heroes in half-shells became the weirdos in sleeved-blankets.

By this point, I had ample proof of mental anguish, so I sought legal action. Within days of filing my court brief, however, I received a threatening letter — not from Snuggie, but the judge who was to hear the case. I figured he’d have recognized Snuggies as imposters, intruding on judges’ fashion monopoly, but even he was a Snuggie sympathizer. If judges were indoctrinated, there was no hope.

I no longer knew where to turn or who to trust. I couldn’t fall asleep at night, for fear I’d wake up trapped inside my blanket.

On a deadly mixture of overexposure to “We Wish You a Snuggie Christmas” and a lack of sleep, I set out to put an end to these arm-abiding afghans once and for all.

I knew I could not slay the Snuggie on my own. The beast was too powerful; I would need assistance. With the rest of the world on the Snuggie bandwagon, it would have to be someone who suffered greatly from its advent. The answer was obvious: The traditional blanket. Abandoned, neglected, cast aside, normal blankets felt like a first-born child after a newborn comes along.

After overcoming my bedtime fears, we formed an alliance and set out to destroy that which had irrevocably wronged us.

While it would’ve given us infinite joy to ruin the wearable blankets thread by thread, we’d need something more direct, so we settled for the next best thing: Shrinking them.

The blankets and I amassed every Snuggie we could locate and dumped them into the biggest Kenmore the world had ever seen. The Snuggies shrieked as they shrank.

Things were going perfectly until I heard the screams of my brotherly blankets in arms. They were being dragged into the dryer, falling prey to the same treatment as our enemy.

The situation was dire. When all hope seemed lost, the blankets offered to make the ultimate sacrifice: Their selves. They would forfeit their own fabric to fill the armholes of Snuggies, rendering them just blankets.

The plan went off without a hitch. While the Snuggie population dwindled to zero, blankets experienced exponential growth — it was truly a win-win situation.

While the world may never be free of awful ads and unfortunate fashion fads, we can rest easy knowing that one less monstrosity exists.

An Oakland University professor awaits trial after being charged with stalking a former student.

Srinarayan Sharma, 43, was arraigned and charged with stalking on Jan. 21 after an alumna reported him to the OU Police Department. Sharma, who’s been at OU since 1996, is an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems in the School of Business Administration.

When it all began

According to an OU police report, the contact began in Fall 2009, following a class the student had with the professor. She soon started to receive e-mails that made her feel uncomfortable. In December 2010, she contacted the Dean of Students.

The contact escalated on Jan. 14 when the woman, who graduated in December, received two e-mails where Sharma stated he wanted to leave the country with her and encouraged her to kill his wife and children. He included personal information about his family members, as well as photos.

OUPD was then notified. Following a mental health evaluation, Sharma was arraigned and released on 10 percent of a $10,000 bond Jan. 21.

Defining the charge

Michigan Compiled Laws defines stalking as repeated or unwillful conduct “that would cause a reasonable individual to suffer emotional distress and that actually causes the victim to suffer emotional distress.”

It becomes a felony if it’s a second offense, a restraining order or probation is violated, or there’s been a believable threat against the victim, the victim’s family or another individual living with the victim.

Oakland County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Paul Walton said Sharma was charged with a misdemeanor, because none of those situations applied to him.

“The threats were never against the victim. Ironically, they were against the defendant’s own’s family. That’s why he couldn’t be charged with a felony,” Walton said.

Stalking charges are not uncommon, according to Walton.

“They unfortunately occur a fair amount,” he said, most of them being misdemeanors.

OU’s policy

According to the police report, the woman was hesitant to report the professor while she was in his class because she was worried he would fail her.

Breanne Thomas, an undecided freshmen, wasn’t surprised it took so long for the student to report the incident.

“I think it’s understandable that she didn’t right away, but I’d take it to authority,” Thomas said.

Other students agreed they’d have told someone about it before too long.

“I would have reported it,” said Helen Marsack, a senior social work major. “I don’t think I would have taken too kindly to repeated e-mails from someone who I’m supposed to know in an educational and professional sense. It’s so personal.”

If a student feels he or she has received an unfair grade or feels harassed, Dean of Students Glenn McIntosh said students shouldn’t hesitate to report it.

“If the grade dispute cannot be resolved between the course instructor and student, it should be advanced to the course department chair,” McIntosh said. “The chair works to resolve the dispute through the department’s grade appeal process.”

Thomas Lauer, Management Information Systems Chair, said the process to appeal grades is easily accessible.  He would not comment further on the case.

“It’s in the realm of gossip,” Lauer said.

McIntosh said there are several options for reporting incidents of harassment, including OUPD, the Provost’s office, the office of inclusion and intercultural affairs and his office.

He said he hadn’t received other complaints regarding Sharma, and that such complaints about a course instructor are rare.

“When they do (occur), students should feel comfortable sharing their concerns with university officials, trust us to investigate their concerns and take action to resolve the problem,” he said.

Damon Duncan, an undecided freshmen, said he’s never been in that kind of a situation before and feels no one ever should be.

“If it got to the level of uncomfortableness where I didn’t like them as a teacher, I would just switch out. But if it got as
serious as stalking, I would probably let somebody up the list at OU know,” Duncan said.

Present and future

Sharma is currently on house arrest with a tether. Judge Julie A. Nicholson of 52-3 District Court granted the prosecution’s request Monday morning that Sharma have no contact with his wife and two children.

Defense attorney Jerome Sabbota said there’s “no reason to believe he’s a danger.”

He is voluntarily moving into an apartment in Troy while his family will remain at its Rochester Hills home. He is allowed to leave home for court-related business, medical appointments and to shop for personal items.

Sharma, who has tenure, is currently suspended. As for his future at OU, Media Relations Director Ted Montgomery said Sharma would have to go through the reinstatement process, but first OU would “have to see how this plays out in court.”

“The criminal issue and employment issue are two different things. They’re not necessarily intertwined,” Montgomery said.

A pre-trial hearing is set for Feb. 15, with the trial beginning March 4.

— Rhiannon Zielinski and Kay Nguyen contributed to this report

In an additional discovery hearing at 9 a.m. Monday, Jan. 31 at 52-3 District Court, 700 Barclay Circle, Rochester Hills, Judge Julie A. Nicholson modified Sharma’s house arrest.

Srinarayan Sharma, 43, an Associate Professor of Management Information Systems in the School of Business Administration, was recently charged with stalking a female graduate.

Defense attorney Jerome Sabbota said Sharma’s wife is “not afraid” and that there is no evidence she’s in danger.

“(There’s) no reason to believe he’s a danger,” Sabbota said.

The prosecutor said that some of the e-mails sent to the victim contained personal information — including social security numbers — regarding Sharma’s family. The prosecutor asked that Sharma be on house arrest away from his family.

Sharma is voluntarily moving to an apartment in Troy. He is allowed to leave home for court-related business, medical appointments and to shop for personal items.

On Sharma’s behalf, his attorney asked the judge to allow phone contact with his family.

“At this point, I’m not going to (allow phone contact),” Nicholson said.

The pre-trial hearing was rescheduled to 8:30 a.m. Feb. 15. Jury selection will take place at 9 a.m. March 4.

“Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a —.”

You had it right the first time. Why did you continue guessing?

For those of you not living under a rock — which, it turns out, is the only safe place to live nowadays — thousands of birds have died from yet-to-be-determined causes over the last couple weeks.

First, 5,000 red-winged blackbirds were found dead throughout Beebe, Ark., giving this small southern town as many dead birds as residents. A few days later, another 500 birds reached a similar fate just a few hundred miles away in Louisiana.

For those fearing that the U.S. is again a target of another terrorist attack or finally paying the price for being too stubborn to seriously combat climate change, this is happening elsewhere, too. Thousands of turtle doves crashed from the sky in Italy on Friday — apparently their hard shells and propensity for peace couldn’t save them. Another 50 birds were found dead in the streets of Sweden last Wednesday.

Experts initially laid the blame on fireworks, but not all of these fowl fatalities occurred on New Years Eve. Some suggested the deaths were caused by hail storms, but you would think birds are used to severe weather by now. My theory is that people were trying to bring the Angry Birds game to life. None of these explanations, however, explain why fish have also been dying mysteriously.

Millions of dead fish, it’s been reported, have washed upon the shores of Maryland, Brazil and New Zealand. Scientists are citing “natural causes,” but they’re yet to say definitively that it wasn’t just bitter fishers using poisonous bait.

This may sound like something out of a movie, but — hey, wait a minute…

‘The Sky Really Is Falling’

It starts with a group of children playing in a park. One girl strays from the group to chase a butterfly. She starts screaming. A mother runs frantically toward the piercing noise to discover her daughter staring, mouth agape, at a pile of dead birds.

The next scene shows teenagers on their way to the beach. Decked out in bathing suits and suntan lotion, the teens are filled with visions of riding a few waves and catching some rays. The fun ends before it even gets to begin, however, when they pull up to discover the shore covered with dead fish.

News reports relay several such incidents happening throughout the world. Birds falling from the sky. Fish floating to shore. Names evoking the apocalypse or using “gate” as a suffix are splashed across TV and the Internet, and conspiracy theorists become regular guest panelists on cable news shows.

Environmentalists are up in arms, demanding strict regulations to fight global warming. Al Gore makes a comeback ala Rocky.

People are instructed to stay indoors and to only leave home when absolutely necessary. NASA receives a massive influx of money as the U.S. prepares to colonize the moon.

Of course, no movie is complete without a love interest. Experts say these mass die-offs are commonplace, but one young man knows better. He sets out to discover the truth and, in the process, discovers some truths about himself and falls in love with a female lab assistant.

I won’t give away the ending here, but let’s just say there will likely be a sequel.

Granted, similar movies have been made before. But how many of them are “based on a true story?”

Meanwhile, back on Earth…

Back in the real world, scientists continue to postulate over what’s causing mass quantities of animals to die at random.

Maybe the birds were late in migrating for the winter — held up by TSA agents, no doubt — and the sudden warmth was too much for them to handle and the fish, perhaps, were driven out of the ocean by fishstick-craving pirates.

Or maybe Senior Editor Dan Fenner was right to fear that the end of the world is nearer than the Mayans told us it is.

The world may never know.

Regardless, these incidents are a clear indication that both the skies and the seas are no longer safe to inhabit. Only land appears to be safe — for now.

If you need me, I’ll be under a rock, fearing for my life.