Pass: NIU offers low-priced tickets for game

NIU is offering a financially reasonable deal for those who want to travel to the upcoming MAC Championship football game.

NIU is providing students a chance to go to Ford Field in Detroit for $20. The fan package includes a coach bus ride to the city and back as well as dinner at Rub BBQ Pub.

I don’t know what the quality of the food will be, but the entire package looks like an affordable, stress-less beginning to the last weekend of the semester. If you’ve been studying all week then this might be a chance to get off the books and introduce some excitement to your routine.

The major downside to the package is spending long hours in a crowded bus to Michigan and back, but that provides students with enough time to study for their finals if they take their notes with them.

Even for the students who aren’t football fans, this is an opportunity for a college experience — seeing a different city, spending time with friends on a road trip and seeing NIU’s football team in a championship game could make for a memorable experience.

In addition to this package for students, NIU is offering free tickets to the first 100 staff and faculty employees who reserve them at the Convocation Center. Each employee is allowed one ticket. Even if NIU runs out of these reserved tickets, it is selling others for $20.

This university-sponsored event is a great way to become more involved with NIU by supporting the Huskies, especially if you’ve never been to a game.

Fail: Christmas music has started to spread

Christmas songs: the merciless genre of music that offers bleak chances of escape. It’s the broken record of December, making the world appear heartless.

These songs infest our lives after Thanksgiving, gathering momentum from the holiday cheer and spreading until there is no hiding place.

Public buildings will become compromised. Nobody will escape Alvin the chipmunk’s wish for a hula hoop playing on grocery store loudspeakers. The melody of “Here Comes Santa Claus” will repeat itself on radio stations until it becomes the soundtrack of nightmares.

Soon, people will be humming the songs throughout the day, spreading the madness from retail stores and gas stations. I’ll be lucky if my sanity can take another listening of “Jingle Bell Rock” by the time New Year’s Eve comes around.

Students: You don’t want the upbeat melody of a Christmas song stuck in your head while you’re taking an exam in complete silence. I advise you to take precautionary actions immediately if you want to keep your sanity intact for final exams.

If you discover yourself singing these songs in public, show human compassion and help halt the epidemic in its tracks. There is hope for treatment but only if symptoms are caught in the earliest stages. Even though these songs have started playing, there is still time to prevent others from infection.

In a couple of weeks, carolers will stroll through the neighborhoods. The horror, the horror.