Pistons vs Nets
By: Rebecca Koscielniak
4/1/2018
The Detroit Pistons will travel to Brooklyn, New York to face the Nets in their fourth and final match-up of the regular season.
The Pistons are currently in 9th place followed by Nets in 13th in the Eastern Conference. The Pistons have won six of the last ten games and are on a three-game winning streak. The recent surge in the Pistons could be due to the return of point guard Reggie Jackson. Jackson was a key player in Monday nights’ match up against the Los Angeles Lakers where he scored 20 points and in Thursday nights’ game where he had eight assists.
The Pistons have won two of the three games played against the Nets this season; one on the road and one at home. This time though the Pistons will have to overcome losing power forward Blake Griffin to a bone bruise on his right ankle. The last time the Pistons played the Nets Griffin lead in points, totaling 25 points and seven assists, accelerating the Pistons to a 115-106 win. The odds still favor the Pistons to win though, even without Griffin.
The last time the Pistons played the Nets in Brooklyn they won 114-80 without Griffin and Jackson. Both teams are coming off zero days’ rest where the Pistons have a .500 win% over the Nets .286 win%.
8th The Detroit Pistons will travel to Brooklyn, New York to face the Nets in their fourth and final match-up of the regular season.
The Pistons are currently in 9th place followed by Nets in 13th in the Eastern Conference. The Pistons have won six of the last ten games and are on a three-game winning streak. The recent surge in the Pistons could be due to the return of point guard Reggie Jackson. Jackson was a key player in Monday nights’ match up against the Los Angeles Lakers where he scored 20 points and in Thursday nights’ game where he had eight assists.
The Pistons have won two of the three games played against the Nets this season; one on the road and one at home. This time though the Pistons will have to overcome losing power forward Blake Griffin to a bone bruise on his right ankle. The last time the Pistons played the Nets Griffin lead in points, totaling 25 points and seven assists, accelerating the Pistons to a 115-106 win. The odds still favor the Pistons to win though, even without Griffin.
The last time the Pistons played the Nets in Brooklyn they won 114-80 without Griffin and Jackson. Both teams are coming off zero days’ rest where the Pistons have a .500 win% over the Nets .286 win%.
St. Louis Cardinals
vs Milwaukee Brewers
By: Rebecca Koscielniak
4/2/2018
Baseball season is in full swing and the St. Louis Cardinals will be on the road again this week to face the Brewers at Miller Park. The Brewers are coming into this match-up hot after 3-0 start sweeping the Padres in San Diego. The Cardinals will be coming into this game 1-2 after playing the New York Mets.
Miles Mikolas is expected to be the Cardinals starting pitcher today. Mikolas signed with the Cardinals during this off-season after playing a few years in Japan. He will be making his first start in America since 2014. The Cardinals are hoping for another huge performance from Paul DeJong for Monday’s game. On Sunday’s game DeJong hit two home runs to continue his solid start into the 2018 season. Jose Martinez is currently leading the Cardinals at bat where he has gone 5-for-11 with one homerun and three RBI.
The Cardinals should expect the Brewers to be armed and dangerous going into opening day at Miller Park. Zach Davies is expected to be the Brewers starting pitcher. In Davies three year career his record is 31-18 with a 3.91 ERA. The Cardinals will also have to watch out for Lorenzo Cain. Cain was acquired from the Kansas City Royals and has really been on fire so far this season. He has gone 8-for-14 with three doubles, three runs, three RBI and three steals in the three games against the Padres. Christian Yelich also had a solid three games against the Padres with seven hits and three RBI.
MLB Betting Trends
Cardinals:
St. Louis is 1-12 ATS in its last 13 games
St. Louis is 2-6 SU in its last 8 games
St. Louis is 1-5 ATS in its last 6 games on the road
St. Louis is 1-4 SU in its last 5 games on the road
Brewers:
Milwaukee is 5-1 ATS in its last 6 games
Milwaukee is 6-1 SU in its last 7 games
The total has gone UNDER in 9 of Milwaukee’s last 13 games
Milwaukee is 1-4 ATS in its last 5 games at home
I’d say go with the Brewers! The Brewers have home-field advantage and are going into this with one day of rest. The Cardinals are coming off no rest and have to compete with opening day at Miller Park. Mikolas also hasn’t started in the Major League since 2014. While Davies has won each of his last four starts against the Cardinals. The Cardinals should be in for a tough match.
Mental Illness Awareness at IUPUI
By: Rebecca Koscielniak 5/2/2017
As if being black and gay and adjusting to college at Ball State University wasn’t hard enough, a break up with the one-person Elgin Reese, 18, really thought loved him didn’t make things any easier. Having no support system in Muncie to confide in, he felt lonely and started to become depressed. At one point, he even considered suicide. A story like this is far from uncommon for many young adults.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. and among college students. 1 in 100 young adults have anxiety lasting longer than 2 weeks. Anxiety and depression can cause distorted thinking and make people feel as if their brain is fogged. Anxiety and depression don’t just affect you mentally, but they also have physical repercussions. People with anxiety disorders are three to five times more likely to go to the doctor and six times more likely to be hospitalized for psychiatric disorders.
A group of students on the IUPUI campus led by Reese have set out to bring more awareness to anxiety and depression among college students. Reese said, “Depression is real, I’m slowly coping with my own. I’ve been watching a lot of motivational videos to help with my own. This project is good because you never know what people are going through, whether it’s a break-up or hard family time.” Many people affected by anxiety and depression don’t seek medical treatment because of the stigma surrounding these diagnoses. A lot of people that don’t understand depression and anxiety disorders think it is just something you can “snap out of’, but it is a mental disorder. Because people don’t understand what their friends are going through, it can be hard for individuals with depression and anxiety to open up and talk about it and seek the right help. Depression and anxiety are treatable conditions. Often treated through psychological counseling and/or with antidepressant drugs victims are able to live long productive lives.
Reese and the students hosted an event to bring attention to anxiety and depression disorders and the voices of silence surrounding them. On Thursday, April 20th during the day in Taylor Courtyard they set-up a booth at the Communications Involvement Fair focusing on their social action project. At their booth, they had a poster lined with facts about depression, anxiety, and suicide, along with pamphlets people could take dealing with these illnesses and where to seek help. The group read a survey that stated that depression in a person can be a factor in bringing down the mood of others that are associated with that person. To spread positive vibes at their booth, they used post-it notes and pens for students and visitors to write positive comments about others and personally deliver these notes to them.
IUPUI does have some mental health resources available to students. IUPUI Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) offers individual and couples counseling to IUPUI students along with an online screening for anxiety and depression. Reese’s group also made a website that is all about depression and suicide. On the site, it goes into what depression is, facts about suicide, where to get help, and stories from people who have been affected by either depression, anxiety, or suicide. The site went up on April, 20th and everyone in the group is hoping the stories tab could become a sounding board for victims of anxiety or depression. The site is https://jablonskibrian84.wixsite.com/heretohelpindy/others-suffering-from-depression. The big issue with depression is that people feel alone. By reading stories from other people maybe readers won’t feel so timid and afraid about getting help.
Brian Jablonski is a student in Reese’s group that shared his personal story on the site. Jablonski has had depression since he was a child but never knew the symptoms and was afraid to talk about what he was feeling with other people. When he got into high school and college he was exposed to drugs. His experiences with drugs started out as just an occasional social use, but as he did them more often he began to become hooked. He started doing heroin daily. Illicit drugs like heroin made him feel better when he could never figure out why he was upset, because of this he became an addict. He knew the drugs were harming him but he was addicted and couldn’t stop without having withdrawal symptoms. Drugs almost took his life twice. After some time, he became so dependent on the drugs that when he didn’t take them his depression was overwhelming. He thought about suicide all the time and plotted his death. After being sent into a drug induced coma for two days Jablonski awoke with neurological trauma and was sent to live back with his parents under strict supervision. At the time, he felt like life was against him but two years later and clean now he’s realized getting the help he needed was the best gift he could’ve ever gotten. He tells his story because he wants others to know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and nobody is alone. It was Jablonski’s idea to put a spot on the website where people can share their stories anonymously.
Jeff is a graduate student at IUPUI who also struggles with depression. When asked about IUPUI’s mental health services he said “I personally think that mental health services at IUPUI are not adequate. I see outside professionals, and am on medication, though I have observed many people on campus who seem to be suffering from depression.” Reese’s group is trying to improve IUPUI’s services and awareness of these disorders by changing the stigma and making people know that IUPUI is a community.
Lisa Dowdell, a therapist from Midtown Mental Health in Eskanazi Health Services, stated that the reason counseling sessions with a therapist are often more helpful than just speaking to a family member or friend about ones’ depression is that the therapist lets the depressed client know that it is okay to feel the way they do and not to be guilty of their feelings. The therapist explains that they should not be ashamed of their disorder as a lot of people are dealing with the same feelings. She said, “Depression often causes clients to express themselves and their feelings in a negative way. We try to get them to express themselves and their needs in a more positive way.” She went on to say that their counselling sessions focus on coping with underlying causes that can lead to depression and anxiety such as low self-esteem and traumatic experiences. The therapists give them the tools they need to deal with their feelings, express their feelings to family and friends and increase their self-esteem.
Reese’s group is taking the first steps in creating a culture of awareness about young adult depression. Now it is up to depressed individuals and the support systems surrounding them to break the silent stigma of these disorders. By continuing to focus on community involvement of the issue, taking the time each day to build up others self-esteems, and lobbying for colleges to offer more counselling services to young adults with anxiety and depression, the numbers of young adults opting for help in times of need will increase so that they can live healthy, productive lifestyles.
Sources:
Elgin Reese reeseelgin@gmail.com (317)640-5842
Brian Jablonski bjablonski@gmail.com (317)361-0733
Jeff (317)679-5467
Lisa Dowdell lisa.dowdell@eskenzihealth.edu (317)672-8295
Optimistic About the Earth is the New Trend
By: Rebecca Koscielniak 3/1/2017
Indiana University graduate Jeremy Pingul hopes to solve global problems through clothes. The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world. In the current consumer driven world, people just want massive amounts of goods. This commercialistic mindset leads to the development of sweat shops and poor working conditions including long hours and inadequate pay. The result of all of this consumerism is the buyer obtaining more and more clothing items that just end up as huge quantities of waste.
When I interviewed Pingul, he told me he learned about these issues in fashion when he was in college. He wanted to learn more about this topic of waste in clothing so he studied further in Germany. As a result of his studies, he started a company named Connect One Threads in 2011. His company makes clothing out of 100% organic cotton from farmers in Turkey. His company is totally transparent. He pays the farmers fair wages directly to their farms avoiding the middle man and market inflation. He also brought seven artists from Europe together to create T-shirt designs signifying global interconnection encouraging consumers to think about clothing’s impact on the world. He came up with this artistic component to his company after he met up with an ex-UN soldier in Istanbul named Martin Nore, who started his own NGO called Artists for Peace spreading transnational unity through art.
Pingul states, “Most clothes are linked to global problems, ours is the solution.” All of his clothing is grown organically without GMO chemicals or pesticides. No chemical laced seeds are used to grow the cotton for his shirts and no trees are cut down in the cotton production process. In the Spring of 2014, his company won a $2500 grant from Kenneth Cole Foundation at a nationwide college entrepreneurial competition for his model of conscious consumption.
Pingul’s work in consumer conscious consumption goes even beyond his companies cotton right down to the ink used in the T-shirt printing. He was networking with Kornet, a digital printer and ink company at a conference in Istanbul. Kornet’s ink is non-toxic and water based and the company is certified by the global organic textile standard. No harsh dyes or chemicals are found in their ink which now is used in all Connect One Threads shirts.
Connect One Threads aphorism “ethical, sustainable, and traceable” needs to be the future of fashion. Connect One Threads isn’t the only company working towards a brighter tomorrow. There is a rising number of shops starting to sell products through fair trade rather than free trade. Global Gifts located on Mass Ave. only sells products that they get from certified fair trade vendors. All their products also come with a label that says where they were made. I went to Global Gifts and talked to Joy Hess. The shop must get a lot of questions on fair trade because she was ready to answer questions and had a brochure on what exactly it meant ready to hand me.
It isn’t that the resources aren’t in place for sustainable companies to take off, it’s that people would sadly rather act blind to the problems just to keep products cheap, so they can have a stock pile and wear things only once.
Prom Budgets Go Up
By: Rebecca Koscielniak
4/5/2017
With prom season, just around the corner get ready to break your piggy banks prom-goers and parents alike. Elaborate promposals, fancy dresses, stylish up-dos, stretch limos, pricy tickets, and dancing the night away don't come cheap. According to VISA Inc.’s annual prom survey the average prom-going teen spends $919 on prom. That cost includes attire, limousines, tickets to prom and post prom, flowers, pictures, food, and accommodations.
In 2014, VISA added promposal spending into their survey regarding the total cost of prom. They found teens spend about 1/3 of the total cost of prom just on the proposal. Brandee Law from Decatur Central High School was asked to prom with a new pair of Nike running shoes and a note that asked her to "run away to prom" with her boyfriend. This proposal was one of the more expensive, as the Nike shoes are not cheap and cost just over $100. In comparison with teens that line up softballs spelling out the word "prom" or putting rose petals in a locker the cost is great but the sentiment is still there. Guidance counselor and prom chair at Decatur Central High School, Sarah Wilson, said "These promposals are getting out of control! They're becoming more elaborate than marriage proposals." Why can't we go back to simpler times?
For most girls the most important part of prom is dressing like a Hollywood scarlet in the perfect dress with a glamorous hair style and manicured nails. After interviewing a number of teen girls at Decatur Central High School the average cost for a prom dress is approximately $470. This is the tag price for a dress they will probably only wear once. Special shoes to wear with that dress can cost anywhere between $50 - $100 just to be kicked off on the side of the dance floor as they bust a move barefoot. The cost of getting their hair styled for prom can cost between $50 - $80. Most girls wear acrylic nails to prom which cost around $60. Don't think for a minute that girls are the only ones spending money though. Guys spend around $150 - $300 to rent a tux. Derek Deaks, a Roncalli High School graduate, stated he spent $175 on his tux and shoe rental for his junior year prom.
Limousines are the most expensive rides to prom costing any where between $125 - $300 per hour quoted in limostand.com but a parent's car would be a cheaper ride costing only a few dollars for gas. Matching flowers can run anywhere from $10 to $30 for a corsage to $8.00 to $10 for a boutonniere. Let's not forget pictures of this special night which cost anywhere from $30-$300 depending on the photographer and what photo packet one purchases.
Prom tickets can be expensive too. However, Sarah Wilson states that Decatur Central has one of the cheapest prom tickets around. Prom costs her $17,000 to host and the ticket price is $35.00 per ticket. She says other schools that serve meals at proms must cost $35,000 or more to host making ticket prices around $50- $60. Derek Deaks recalls that he paid $50 for his ticket and another $50 for his dates ticket. Roncalli had there prom at the Indianapolis Children's Museum that year and it included dinner.
A good estimate on post prom activities is difficult to assess as post prom events vary widely from teenager-to- teenager and high school-to-high school. Some teens go to amusement parks like Kings Island or Cedar Point on their own or on school rented buses which usually runs about $50 - $70. Others may have after prom parties like bonfires at their homes which have minimal cost involved. Roncalli and Center Grove High Schools host fun nights with large inflatables and carnival like games that the teens can attend. Usually tickets for these types of events are $25.00/person.
The VISA prom survey found that Northeastern families will on average spend $1169 on prom. However, Midwestern families spend on average $733 which is the lowest of all four regions of the country. The survey also found that families with household incomes below $50,000 a year plan to spend $1,109 on prom, while families who make over $50,000 will spend on average $799. These prom packages all include pricey transportation, fancy flowers, food and professional pictures plus after-prom activities.
Despite all the money that is spent, prom is taken as a very serious night for some teens. According to Kristen Livingtone, a senior at Decatur Central High School, "For a lot of high school seniors, prom is one of their final good-byes that they'll give to their high school. It's one of the last times their class will be able to be all together before dispersing among different colleges or joining the workforce or military."