Collegian 2.25.21

'An Exceptional Man': Remembering former Hillsdale Hospital CEO Chuck Bianchi

This weekend in theatre: 'Light in the Piazza' premieres during Parents' Weekend.

Opinion: Add Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to the Liberty Walk

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Vol. 144 Issue 20 - February 25, 2021

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U.S Olympic shooting team makes Hillsdale home

City, profs react to wage hike proposal By | Emma Cummins Senior Reporter The old arguments over minimum wage, filled with statistics, studies, and moral arguments, are taking a front seat again as the Democratic Party pushes the issue in President Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office.

On Jan. 26, U.S. House and Senate Democrats proposed legislation gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 for full time employees in 2025. The current federal minimum wage for full-time employees is $7.25.

“If you take federal minimum wage now and adjust it for inflation, people are making less on minimum wage than they were in the 1960s,” Hillsdale County Democratic Party chair Ed Fogarty said.

“This is not a good thing.”

Biden issued an executive order on Jan. 22 recommending all federal employees be paid a minimum of $15 per hour.

If the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 is done gradually, Fogarty said a place the size of Hillsdale could absorb it.

“If it is phased in over several years, which the proposal is going to do, yes, it will be absorbed,” Fogarty said. “I don't really foresee that as a problem.”

Restaurant owners in Hillsdale say it may not be so easy.

Cottage Inn Pizza Owner Donna Olmstead said that for those in the restaurant industry, the change in pay between a part time employee and a full time employee would be substantial.

“That’s a heck of a gap to fill.

As soon as they’re 18 years old, you have to pay them $15. You have to find a way to make up $6 more per hour,” she said. “In the food service industry, $15 is usually for a management position.”

Hillsdale College Professor of Economics Charles Steele said a $15 minimum wage would also disproportionately

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By | Elyse Hawkins Collegian Freelancer

James Madison covered in a blanket of snow. Collegian | Andrew Dixon

Moore, Murphy named outstanding seniors By | Brooke Hillis Collegian Freelancer Barrett Moore and Taryn Murphy were named this year’s outstanding senior man and woman on Feb. 17.

Moore, a double major in history and Spanish, said he was “very honored and very humbled” when he heard he won.

Murphy, a philosophy and religion double major, said the honor was even more special, given her four-year friendship with Moore.

“I felt very humbled,” Murphy said. “The most exciting part about it for me was that I got to share it with Barrett and we could represent the senior class together.”

Both students are deeply involved in the Hillsdale community. Moore is head resident assistant of Simpson Residence, a member of the Hillsdale Shotgun team, a member of the Catholic Society, and a student ambassador. Murphy is head resident assistant in New Dorm, a Center for Constructive Alternatives Student Assistant, and volunteers with A Few Good Men. “Barrett is a very gentle but strong leader,” Murphy said.

“He's not in your face when

it comes to being a leader.

He doesn't boss other people around, but he always embodies very admirable qualities and he just makes people want to be like him. He has always been the most gentle, respectful friend and I'm really glad he's being recognized. He may not be the loudest person in the room, but he is an example for people by his character and friendship, and his love for God. So I'm really happy for him.”

Moore had high praises for his female counterpart.

“It’s an honor to win with Taryn. She is a very good woman and an even better friend,” he said.

The two seniors said they have immense love for their school and the growth that has come through four years at Hillsdale.

Moore said that Hillsdale felt like home when he first got to campus in 2017.

“You were immersed in this sense of this love that people had for each other and a shared love of what they were doing here,” Moore said. “That was what attracted me to Hillsdale.”

Murphy said her time at Hillsdale has broadened her understanding of what learning should be.

Chargers win back-to-back conference titles By | Christian Peck-Dimit Collegian Reporter The Hillsdale College men’s basketball team used a dominant game from the bench to trounce Ohio Valley University and clinch the outright regular season conference crown for the first time since 2012 on Saturday. A win over Tiffin University on Wednesday improved the Chargers to 18-1 with a conference-leading 15-game win streak.

In the 2019-2020 season, the Chargers shared the regular season title with the University of Findlay, who had a matching conference record. This year, a win streak that more than triples any other team in the conference led Hillsdale to its first ever outright G-MAC title.

“What our guys have done throughout the whole length of the season, I’m really proud of them, and anytime you win conference championships, whether they’re shared or not shared, it’s pretty special,” head coach John Tharp said. “I’m really proud of our guys. Winning is a hard

thing to do.”

Claiming the regular season conference crown means that during the G-MAC tournament, set to begin on Tuesday, March 2, the Chargers get home court advantage, regardless of opponent. The winner of the tournament will be awarded an automatic bid into the Division II National Championship tournament.

Hillsdale dominated OVU from tip to buzzer, winning with a final score of 107-66. The Charger’s 107 points are the most in a single-regulation game in more than a decade.

“We were really clicking, there was a stat that we had 28 assists, which is big. We were sharing the ball, with everyone contributing,” sophomore guard Kyle Goessler said. “Of course we had the big guys inside who were finishing, they make things really easy.”

Sophomore forward Patrick Cartier and senior guard Connor Hill led the team in scoring, with 22 and 20 respectively.

It marked the 10th time that Cartier, who leads the G-MAC

in scoring with 19.8 points per game, has scored 20 or more points this season. Hill’s scoring has picked up significantly in recent weeks, as he scored 20plus for the third time in the last four games.

Cartier’s solid day came on an astounding 9-12 from the field. With a minimum of 160 shot attempts, Cartier’s season shooting percentage of 63.24 leads not only the G-MAC but the entire nation. His 129 made field goals this season is second in the nation for those who have played 17 games. While his stats are impressive, Cartier commends his teammates, sophomore forward Tavon Brown and senior forward Austen Yarian, for their help this season.

“It’s really important for us to have that inside presence, especially because we’re an inside-out oriented offense,” Cartier said. “Tavon and Austen also being down there help us have a great presence down low.

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“I realized that the beauty of going to a liberal arts school is that we're not here to study one thing to get a job that we're going to do for the rest of our lives,” Murphy said. “And so I felt the freedom to be able to study what I was really excited about, opposed to what I thought was gonna get me a job.”

Both of the winners said they have gotten to know the faculty well on campus.

Professor of Ancient History Kenneth Calvert, who had Moore in several classes, said that he respects Barrett a great deal.

“He has a sharp mind and a keen willingness to learn,” Calvert said in an email. “In my classes, Barrett speaks little, but when he does he has something substantial to add.”

Moore said Calvert is someone he looks up to.

“I really admire that he strives to put Christ first and that allows him to love everybody else around him,” Moore said.

Assistant Professor of Spanish Todd Mack had Moore freshman year in Spanish 101.

Mack said in an email that he was “impressed at how Barrett wants to do good and be good. He has some specific

career plans, but regardless of what he chooses to do, I know that he will do it well and it will help make the world a better place.”

A couple of weeks ago, Mack was very late to class because of a meeting, he recounted. The following class, Moore was also very late.

“I thought he was trying to get back at me, but he had just risked a pre-class nap that ended up getting away from him,” Mack said. “He was pretty embarrassed, but I thought it said a lot about his character that he would wake up and come, despite being so late.”

Murphy said Associate Professor of Philosophy Lee Cole has been a significant influence on her during her time at Hillsdale College.

“It was definitely Cole who made me excited about philosophy,” Murphy said in an email.

“He was so clear and practical and inspiring. I had always thought that philosophy was kind of goofy, but he was able to show our whole class why it was fundamental to all the questions we were asking.”

Cole said that Murphy “weds intelligence with a rare degree of diligence and attention.”

Hillsdale students who participate in shooting sports soon will have the opportunity to train alongside Olympic athletes thanks to a new 10-year partnership between Hillsdale College and USA Shooting, the national governing body for American shooting sports.

The college also plans to build new ranges and facilities at the John Anthony Halter Shooting Sports Center, according to a press release from the college.

The news has garnered national attention. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that “starting this year, USA Shooting will relocate three major competitions and some team training camps to the college, and has agreed that Hillsdale can call itself the home of the U.S. national shooting team.”

“It’s an unbelievable opportunity for both us and USA Shooting,” said Hillsdale graduate Jordan Hintz ’18, a three-time All-American while a member of the college’s shotgun team. He is now the team’s head coach.

The current political climate is making it increasingly difficult for the USA Shooting Team to operate at its other facilities, said Bart Spieth, the Halter Center Rangemaster who led the college’s shotgun team to its first national championship in 2012.

“Hillsdale College is a leader in supporting knowledge of our heritage and sound thinking well beyond the walls of classrooms on campus,” he said.

Spieth said that he thinks these developments have been a long time coming. This door was finally opened since the coronavirus pandemic, and the struggles that USA Shooting has faced due to lockdowns and the closing of their training center, not to mention the complete postponement of the 2020 Olympic Games.

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Q&A: Katy Faust By | Sofia Krusmark Culture Editor Katy Faust is an advocate of children’s rights and the author of “Them Before Us: Why We need a Global Children’s rights Movement.” She spoke on Hillsdale College’s campus on February 18.

Q: Tell me about your childhood and how it influences your work.

A: My parents were married until I was 10 and then divorced. Then, my dad dated and remarried and my mom partnered with another woman, and they've been together since I was like 10 or 11. I love them both, but I do not have two moms. I have a mom and a dad just like everybody else. But I really love my mom and I love her partner, and I consider her my friend. I didn't get into this like crusading over some kind of absence that I had in my childhood, because I stayed connected to both my mom and dad through it. I really got into the battle because I heard the other side saying during the marriage battle that kids don't care if they're raised by two moms or two dads, and that all kids need is to be safe and loved.

And the problem with that is that if kids are raised by two dads, that means they have lost their mom, and if kids are raised by two moms, that means they have lost their dad. The main reason I got into this was this lie that the other side was telling you about who children are and what they need. The problem is not the gay parent. The problem with gay parenting is there's always a missing parent. And when you do that unintentionally to a child, it's an injustice. And then, it was the added bonus of people saying that traditional marriage supporters are haters and bigots, and they're not right. I love my mom, I love my gay friends, just like pretty much every other Christian and conservative out there. It's not bigotry and homophobia that fuels our support for a traditional marriage. For most of us, it's because we recognize that marriage is the cornerstone of society and life offers a social good that no other institution can.

Q: What do you mean by “Them Before Us?” A: The whole world, our whole society, has an “us before them” mentality which is us, the adults, before them, the children. My needs come first. And that's not true.

We actually know what kids need to be happy, and there’s three staples of a child's social emotional diet and it's the mother's love, the father's love, and stability. The only place you’re going to get all three of those is in the home of their married mother and father. The idea is we have to put them, the children, before us, the adults. My husband is a pastor, so we didn't do a lot of marriage counseling. Working through a difficult marriage is hard, really hard. But if the adults don't do the hard work and put the children before us, the adults, what adults who take that easy divorce road are really saying is “we don't want to do the hard work here, kids, you do the hard work instead.” Divorce has these massive lifelong implications for children's mental, emotional, and physical health. And so, in all of the conversations about marriage and family we say, “put the kids before the adults.” That’s the point of the nonprofit.

Q: How do you integrate your faith with your defense of children, and also your defense of marriage between one man and one woman?

A: I actually say these two things should not go together in public policy. Marriage and family advocates have failed to not make their case based on natural law, and using the best stories, and the best studies. We have so long quipped “God made

Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” and walked away.

When we're talking policy issues, we need to appeal to the common source of authority, and that's natural law, and the Constitution in matters of the United States laws. So, Christians have to become experts and we have to get off of the lazy excuse of always saying “that's not what the Bible says.” And we need to do the hard work of really being able to understand and defend children's rights appealing to the common authority. We just published a book, and there's 30 pages of footnotes because we just crammed it full of studies and research, so that we can go into these conversations well-armed.

We have the five major religions of the world on our side, we have common sense on our side, and we have biology on our side. But we didn't have the stories.

The other side humanized their arguments. They told a better story. They pulled out the empathy and we've never been able to do that. So that's one reason why “Them Before Us” has a story of kids who were created through sperm and egg donation or surrogacy, or kids who lost a parent to no fault divorce or abandonment, and those who had same-sex parents, so you can look these kids in the face and see how that went. When you really hear the stories, that is what changes hearts and minds and then you follow up with the gut punch of a massive amount of data.

Q: Where do you pull these stories from?

A: A lot of people submit their stories to us directly, because it's one of the few places where they know they're not going to be outed.

A lot of these kids will not tell the truth, even about divorce, even if they're 50 years old. I've got people who won't use their real name when they're talking about their parents’ divorce because they're still trying to balance two Christmases. They're still trying to be the intermediary between their mother and father who have been at war for 40 years or so. In terms of headlines, we try to flip the headlines. For example, New York’s law just came into effect legalizing commercial surrogacy. So, all of the news outlets are celebrating this is a great way for parents that have kids. What we do is we take that headline, and we flip it and say, “let's tell this from the child's perspective.

In all of those articles, we tried to share at least one or two stories from real life kids who have lived through the kind of thing that the media is celebrating.

Q: What do you see as the biggest issues facing our culture today?

A: The thing that is affecting the most children is cohabitation. There’s a rise of shacking up and believing that it's the same as marriage, or at the least a step toward marriage, when it's 100% not.

Cohabitation is incredibly risky for kids. It's extremely risky if you're cohabiting with someone who's not the biological father of your child. Statistically, that guy is the most dangerous person in the child's life, the person that's most likely to abuse and neglect them. Even if it's the child's biological mother and father living together. It's still incredibly risky. Number one, the couple are drastically more likely to break up than a child's married parents. The child is more likely to perform poorly in school and also more likely to be neglected and abused.

So, marriage does something for children in terms of bringing stability and bringing protection that no other relationship can do. But the rise of cohabitation reiterates the lie that marriage is just a sheet of paper.

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Katy Faust spoke to students about children's rights last Thursday.

Andrew Dixon | Collegian

'Them before us': Children's advocate decries cultural attacks on family By | Meg Patrick Collegian Freelancer Intentionally stripping parents from their children is one of the greatest injustices inflicted upon youth, and by extension, the world.

That’s how Katy Faust, an advocate of children’s rights, framed her lecture on the intentional attacks upon children by adults who force them to lose out on a parent because of their preferred sexual attachment, whether that be in a same-sex union or a divorced couple seeking new love.

In a Feb. 18 lecture hosted by the Dow Journalism Program, the department of philosophy and religion, Intervarsity Fellowship, and the Catholic Society, Faust spoke about her new book, “Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement,”which seeks to bring awareness to the natural rights children possess and how those rights are being stripped from them by the world’s attack on biological families.

As a child who was raised in a lesbian relationship, Faust said she seeks to combat the popular narrative that kids don’t need both a mom and a dad in order to develop normally.

“Losing one’s parent out of intentionality is an injustice,” Faust said.

Faust argued that children possess an inalienable right to one father and one mother who are biologically related to the child. Faust said these natural rights exist before government institutions, are inherent, and are equally distributed among every person on the planet.

The biological aspect is important, Faust said, as it fosters the deepest, most connected, and most involved parental relationship possible compared to a child with same-sex parents or who had a surrogate mother.

“Children receive biological identity and intrinsic value from their biological parents,” she said.

Faust also spoke about how stripping away a child’s parent creates a “father-hunger” or “mother-hunger” in the child.

This is characterized as a need for the opposite sex in their life to help them in the formation of their identity. Faust spoke from personal experience, as a child whose mother divorced her father to live with a woman. While Faust stated she loves her mother and the woman who helped raise her, the experience provoked her to write an open letter to retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, as he deliberated on the Obergerfell v. Hodges case that would legalize samesex marriage, detailing how dangerous it is to children

to allow same-sex couples to parent.

According to Faust, multiple studies done by pyschologists have proven that kids of both sexes perform better both in school and socially when parented by one father and one mother, yet that research is ignored and essentially thrown out when discussing children parented by same-sex couples.

Freshman Emily Jones said she loved hearing someone finally say children were the actual victims in broken families.

“Coming from a broken home, I had never heard that before from an adult,” Jones said, adding that she appreciated the focus on the children in need and less on the adults’ wants.

Faust said it is easy for Christians to oppose same-sex unions as proof of broken families. But, she argued, focusing on only one aspect of broken family life contributes to the losing fight.

One of the main problems the church has failed to face, has been dealing evenly with all aspects of motherlessness and fatherlessness, which includes reproductive technologies such as surrogacy, sperm donation, and, Faust emphasized, no-fault divorce.

In order to successfully begin fighting back, Faust said Christians must be unafraid to go where kids’ rights are being

violated, even if that involves divorced church members or your homosexual friends.

She then went on to detail how various reproductive technologies like sperm donation and surrogacy are harmful to children, rather than creating new opportunities for families.

“Surrogacy cuts the bond between the birth mother and child and inflicts a wound that is intentional, and that is an injustice,” Faust said.

Likewise, surrogacy and sperm donation intentionally erase one parent from the equation and intentionally deprive a child from their right to a balanced, stable, two-gender parent relationship.

Faust then spoke about the need to emphasize kids’ rights over parents’ rights, and stressed that true parents’ rights will never be in conflict with kids’ rights.

Nathan Schlueter, professor of philosophy and religion, said the breakdown of the family is not talked about enough in our culture.

“There is no stronger correlation, statistically, to human flourishing, than the family structure,” Schlueter said. “All social crises start with the family and therefore the most effective way to combat such crises is to start with the family.”

questions before opening up the discussion to students.

Portteus said Trump changed the course of America and the political party system in a way he was blind to before.

“I was standing at the Hillsdale County Fair with my 9-year-old son waiting to ride the scrambler. And I looked around, and it was just a sea of people with MAGA hats on,” Portteus said. “And look, I've been here for the 2008 cycle, 2012 cycle. This is a Republican area, so people would be taking their McCain signed back home with him from the fair, but people were taking 30 Trump signs home looking to pass out to all their friends and relatives. This was late

September, and that's when I figured out yeah, he's actually got a chance. If this is happening in Hillsdale, Michigan, it is happening all over the country.”

Moreno said Trump did something the country has never seen. He was anti-Republican Moreno said, and that is what resonated. But Moreno added that he fears what political repercussions there may be from the Trump era.

“Talking about the sort of the perils facing political thinking, about the perils between even intellectuals within Hillsdale College, can be labeled as abetting domestic terrorism,” Moreno said. “I think there's

a real threat, not to cultural conservatism, but religious conservatives and intellectual conservatism.”

YAF Vice President Carl Miller, a senior, said he was excited to host the two guests, and found the talk very beneficial.

“I thought it was really insightful,” Miller said. “I thought that it helped provide some direction for where conservatism is heading, with the Republican party as its electoral vehicle, and how we can pursue real, meaningful wins against the onslaught of leftist policies.”

Professors' perspective: Conservatism after Trump By | Reagan Gensiejewski Assistant Editor America is trying to redefine what conservatism is going to be, Professor of Politics and Director of American Studies Kevin Portteus said at the “Conservatism after Trump” forum sponsored by Young Americans for Freedom on Feb. 24.

The event on Wednesday featured Portteus and Professor of History and Dean of Social Sciences Paul Moreno, who addressed a group of nearly 20 students on the future of the conservative party, post President Donald Trump. Senior and YAF President Sean Collins asked the speakers six

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“Her disposition in class is really exemplary. Everyone has days where they don’t feel at their best, but you’d never know that with Taryn,” Cole said. “She always gives you her full attention.”

Murphy said she admired Cole’s humor and ability to make the class engaging.

“I appreciated that there was a professor that acknowledged that it didn't have to be serious all the time, and was able to engage our interests, through his humor and his love for the topics that we were discussing,” Murphy said.

Overall, Murphy said her four years were about “realizing that I'm learning new things every day, and I'm constantly challenging and refining the beliefs that I've had for 18 years before I came here.”

The 18 years before she came to Hillsdale still taught her valuable lessons, Murphy said.

“I come from a family that is very much about being self-starters,” Murphy said.

“They're all entrepreneurs.

That taught me growing up, that you have to be some-

vice for the rising seniors.

“Fall semester of my senior year, I was grieving the fact that I knew I had to leave Hillsdale. And I think that comes from adults telling us

Barrett Moore and Taryn Murphy are outstanding senior man and woman. Andrew Dixon | Collegian

one that takes initiative and responsibility. The first step to even try something, the effort is 75% of the success.”

Murphy shared some ad-

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that college is the best four years of our life,” she said.

“But I think Hillsdale actually teaches us the exact opposite.”

The four years students

spend at Hillsdale prepare them to thrive after college, Murphy explained.

“I would say to rising seniors, you don't have to mourn the fact that you're going to be leaving Hillsdale soon because this is the beginning of a life well lived,” she said.

In addition to Murphy’s wisdom, Moore said he wanted his senior class to be remembered as “doing what was right for the right reasons.”

“You look around and you notice that Hillsdale is different. It's not like the rest of the country. The way people treat each other and our understanding of life is just different,” Moore said.

Moore credited Hillsdale's unique environment for shaping him and Murphy into the people they are.

“Iron sharpens iron,” he said. “Taryn and I wouldn't be who we are without everybody else.”

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'Bread of Life' GOAL program offers physical and spiritual nourishment to community By | Michael Bachmann Collegian FreeLancer “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

For junior Clay Ward, Jesus’ words from the gospel of John aren’t just scripture; they were the inspiration behind starting the GOAL program’s newest addition, Bread of Life.

The organization, which was launched last month, seeks to provide spiritual and bodily nourishment to the Hillsdale community by assisting Christian food banks and encouraging them in their mission to share the gospel through their ministries.

Associate Dean of Men Jeffery “Chief ” Rogers approached Ward to lead the ministry last semester.

“The idea was given to me by Chief, who had it in his heart to go help Hillsdale Baptist Church specifically, and then broaden into helping Christian food banks in general,” Ward said. “He asked me if this is something that I would like to do. I said yes, and we wrote the mission statement and proposal together.”

Once they were ready to become an official volunteer group, GOAL Director and senior Michaela Peine said she was happy to welcome Bread of Life to the

GOAL program.

“We like programs that create a new niche,” Peine said. “We have different programs like Salvation Army in which part of their mission involves lunch kitchens, but this is our first food pantry program, which is exciting.”

Every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m., the group arrives at Hillsdale Baptist Church to help run the church’s weekly food bank. According to junior Ashley Warden, the volunteers’ responsibilities change from week to week, but their main tasks include unpacking donuts from the Jonesville Bakery, setting up tables, and restocking food.

“It's a really eye-opening experience,” Warden said. “Within the Hillsdale bubble it's hard to get your eyes off homework, but going on Tuesday mornings is a good way to do that.”

Since the ministry’s focus is “to glorify God through the sharing of His Gospel,” volunteers also set up a prayer table each week with Bibles, Gospel tracts, and prayer intention cards. Although the response among the food bank’s visitors was initially small, it has begun to grow.

“I’m praying that the people who do come to me are the people who need it,” Warden said.

The ministry currently has 17 volunteers, and Ward said he

is hopeful that the number will continue to increase.

“This program really exists

in the community; it exists for those who seek to form relationships with the local community

Junior Clay Ward started a new GOAL program, partnering with local food pantries.

Courtesy | Clay Ward

for people who want to serve the Lord by meeting both the spiritual and physical needs of those

at a church,” he said. “It's about service, evangelism, and discipleship.”

Classical Liberal Organization hosts discussion on libertarian thought Both viewpoints of anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism share the goal of limited government, according to Classical Liberal Organization faculty advisor and Chairman of Economics Charles Steele.

In a Feb. 18 event hosted by the Classical Liberal Organization and alumnus Christian Betz ’20, students discussed the viability of anarcho-capitalism and the similar ideology of libertarianism.

Steele, who joked that he alternates between anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism depending on the day of the week, opened the event with brief remarks on the topic of “What is Anarcho-capitalism?”

“I believe the government should be as small as possible,” Steele said. “It’s a good saying to get that across.”

He defined anarcho-capitalism as a system in which the private sector provides all goods and services on a for-profit basis, including public goods typically associated with government, such as law enforcement services.

After Steele’s remarks, Betz, who joined via Zoom, summarized similarities and differences between anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism. He presented each ideology’s view of the role of government, the efficacy of the free market to provide goods and services, social contract theory, and the non-aggression principle (the idea that the use of force on a person or his property is inherently unjust.)

While Betz noted that he grew up with sympathies for the “ancap,” shorthand for anar-

cho-capitalist, he credited his Hillsdale education for shifting his beliefs toward minarchism, a school of libertarian thought which argues that the scope of government should be limited to providing a few essential public goods like law enforcement, a military, and courts.

“I can’t say any particular professor, but my education overall at Hillsdale pushed me in a direction toward minarchism coming from a more ancap set of ideals before that,” Betz said.

“Just my time at Hillsdale, growing up, learning more, etc., my views shifted more gradually.”

After Betz spoke, the event was opened up to discussion among the roughly 25 audience members. Nearly everyone in attendance contributed to the discussion.

Junior Luke Sherman spoke in favor of anarcho-capitalism, criticizing libertarians for holding an inconsistent view of social contract theory.

“Anarcho-capitalism is the logical conclusion of libertarianism. There’s a lot of problems with social contract theory,

mainly the idea that if you don’t like it you can leave, which denies private property rights,” Sherman said. “If you start from the premise that the government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, you ultimately have to say that individuals can choose to not consent to government without leaving. You have to have explicit consent from each individual member of society in order to claim that the government derives its power from consent.”

Senior and Classical Liberal Organization President Haakon Santaella praised the quality of discussion and enthusiasm of participants.

“There were a lot of energetic participants to discuss the presentation between each side,” Santaella said.

“It was a good, open, intellectually honest discussion. Both sides presented fair points.”

In addition to focusing on which ideology is morally correct, Santaella said he would have liked for the discussion to address which position would be more practical.

“Implicit in the libertarian argument was that this is some-

"I believe the government should be as small as possible," Steele said.

"It's a good saying to get that across."

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“It was just meant to be,” he said. “It is wonderful to see that come to pass. In these times of great uncertainty for the Olympic shooting team, Hillsdale College has the opportunity to provide support and leadership.”

Rich Péwé, chief administrative officer at Hillsdale College said he was excited about the partnership.

“We welcome Team USA to campus and look forward to seeing how this partnership enriches our students and furthers the college’s educational mission.”

“I’m very excited for Hillsdale’s shotgun team to have the opportunity to see and perhaps shoot alongside Olympians on a regular basis going forward,” said senior Barrett Moore, a member of the shotgun team.

“To share a home range with Olympic athletes is a once-ina-lifetime opportunity.”

Another member of the team, senior Kylar Kuzio, agreed.

“The opportunity to meet and shoot alongside Olympic champions is an experience I will never forget,” she said.

Kuzio and Hintz also encouraged all Hillsdale students to take advantage of the Halter Center via courses the school offers, or by considering joining one of the teams.

“It was a great facility before but now that it is an Olympic training facility,” Kuzio said.

“How could you not take advantage of the opportunity?”

Kuzio said she was proud to graduate from a school that makes a point of providing proper firearms handling edu-

In Brief:

Hillsdale in D.C. to host WHIP info session By | Alexa Robbins Collegian Reporter

What is anarcho-capitalism?

By | Thomas Curro Collegian Reporter

February 25, 2021 A3

cation to interested students.

“I am overjoyed for the shooting sports community that Hillsdale and its supporters take shooting sports seriously enough to be considered a location fit for USA Shooting to lay roots,” she said.

USA Shooting’s desire to partner with Hillsdale College is a testament to the mission of Hillsdale Shooting Sports as well as the school itself, according to Spieth.

“No other college in the United States has the opportunity Hillsdale College has,” Spieth said. “It is a perfect fit,” he said. “We have the chance to make a difference in so many young people's lives. Truly it is meant to be.”

thing that works and is desirable as opposed to anarcho-capitalism,” he said. “There is a question about whether the outcomes of anarcho-capitalism are desirable and whether they are desirable in contrast to the outcomes of social contract theory in the U.S. Constitution.”

Steele agreed.

“Another thing is whether an ancap system can exist or function,” he said. “I think the answer is yes, but certain conditions must be met for it to be a stable system and function the way we hope it would. On the other hand, these may be the same conditions for a limited state like we supposedly have under the Constitution. It’s a two-edged sword.”

Despite the differences between libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism, most participants seemed to agree on the importance of coming together to tackle a shared enemy: the tyranny of unlimited government.

“The person a libertarian hates the most is a libertarian who believes slightly differently than them,” Betz said. “We agree on a lot of things and want a lot of the same ideals. We can all support each other and push towards that ideal.”

Sherman agreed.

“My position is that I think if we’re going to have a system of government, I think you should be involved in the process, and I don’t think it’s self-contradictory to the anarchist position,” he said.

“At the end of the day, libertarians and anarchists have much more in common than we do differences.”

Hillsdale in D.C. will be hosting an informational session in the Formal Lounge on Saturday, Feb. 27 at 1 p.m. for students who may be interested in applying for the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program.

Though an art major, WHIP Coordinator Jennifer Lessnau spent a semester in D.C. in the spring of 2019. She interned at the Museum of the Bible, where she helped photograph and catalogue ancient Torah scrolls.

“I am excited to talk about what WHIP was like for me,” Lessnau said. “WHIP was one of my favorite semesters in college.”

Matthew Spalding, vice president of Washington operations and dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government, serves as one of the professors who works at the Kirby Center, where students take classes.

Lessnau and Spalding will give a general overview of the WHIP program. They will discuss how students can apply

and share what a typical WHIP semester looks like.

Because WHIP is a hybrid semester in which students work full-time in an internship while taking night classes, Lessnau and Spalding will give students some information on what to expect and how to prepare.

Following the informational portion of the meeting, there will be a Q&A period with WHIP alumni.

Senior Tess Ens, who went on WHIP last spring, said her time interning at the Capital Research Center reinforced her belief in the importance of hard work and a great attitude.

“CRC was an amazing place to work,” Ens said. “The people I worked with are incredibly smart, driven, and dedicated to advancing the same set of values that I am dedicated to.”

Lessnau said WHIP provides real job and professional experience for anyone, regardless of any intended or declared major or minor. She encourages students of any interest to come check out the meeting, as it could be a vital asset to add to their college experience.

Freshman named G-MAC Athlete of the Week Residence, Burke’s dorm comBy | Claire Gaudet munity has also expressed their Collegian Freelancer support for him.

Galloway House Mom JoAnn Freshman Jamahl Burke Arendt praised his focus. recently received the Greater “Jamahl’s a good student,” Midwest Athletic Conference Arendt said. “It’s good to have award and was named the G-MAC Athlete of the Week in him in the dorm. He’s very focused on what he has to do track and field for the week of and I love to cheer him on.”

Feb. 15. The recognition came Despite the accolades, Burke after he received the second said he alfastest time ready has his in the coneyes on the ference in the next goal.

400m race on “I was Friday Feb. aiming for 12. a lot faster,” This would Burke said. be an im“But it was a pressive feat bit rewarding for any athto know that lete, but it’s your efforts particularly are paying noteworthy off. The whole for Burke, thing brought who has only me back to been with the earth, and I’m program for a reminded to semester. celebrate the Head Track Freshman Track and Field small victoathlete Jamahl Burke.

Coach Anries.” drew Towne Courtesy | Jamahl Burke Burke said has been he is thankful working with Burke throughout the year and for the work of those around said he couldn’t be more proud him and feels proud to have earned this distinction on their of his recent victory. behalf.

“Jamahl has been great to “I’d like to thank Coach work with,” Towne said. “His Andrew Towne — he’s the one future is very bright.” who has me in shape for the Burke’s athletic family aren’t 400 — and all my teammates the only ones excited about his who keep encouraging me,” award. A member of Gallway Burke said.

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

A4 February 25, 2021

(517) 607-2415 Online: www.hillsdalecollegian.com

Editor-in-Chief | Carmel Kookogey Associate Editor | Allison Schuster Associate and Design Editor | Cal Abbo News Editor | Madeline Peltzer Opinions Editor | Rachel Kookogey City News Editor | Ben Wilson Science & Tech Editor | Victoria Marshall Sports Editors | Calli Townsend & Liam Bredberg Culture Editor | Sofia Krusmark Features Editor | Elizabeth Bachmann Web Editor | Callie Shinkle Photo Editor | Kalli Dalrymple Circulation Managers | Patricia Fernandez & Callie Shinkle Ad Manager | Benjamin Raffin Assistant Editors | Virginia Aabram | Hannah Cote | Reagan Gensiejewski | Maggie Hroncich | Ashley Kaitz | Josh Newhook | Haley Strack | Tracy Wilson Faculty Advisers | John J. Miller | Maria Servold The editors welcome Letters to the Editor but reserve the right to edit submissions for clarity, length, and style. Letters should be 450 words or less and include your name and number. Send submissions to the Opinions Editor at rkookogey@hillsdale.edu before Saturday at 3 p.m.

The Weekly:

Parents Weekend is about relationships The opinion of the Collegian editorial staff Most colleges host a Parents Weekend. It’s once a year in the fall, and it’s geared toward giving the parents of freshmen a window into campus life.

Fewer colleges do another such weekend during the spring semester, because other schools don’t hold parent-teacher conferences.

The way Hillsdale does Parents Weekend, each semester the professors who are currently teaching us get at least one weekend to better understand their students by meeting who

we came from. Likewise, it gives our parents a glimpse of the subjects that we are learning — directly from the instructor. We admire the high-quality professors here at Hillsdale, so it’s a blessing to have the opportunity to share these mentors with our parents. It’s an opportunity to deepen the relationships of everyone involved.

We often quote “college is a partnership” to emphasize the importance of student self-governance when demanding greater freedoms on campus. But that partner-

ship is not limited to students, professors, and college administrators; partnership involves our parents, too.

They’re the reason we’re all here in the first place.

As students, we also have the opportunity to deepen our relationships with our friends by getting to meet their parents this weekend.

We make a big deal about “meeting the parents” of boyfriends and girlfriends.

Why should it be any different with our friends’ parents?

Parents Weekend provides the atmosphere for us to

deepen our friendships, better understand one another, and have a good laugh at how similar our roommate and her mom are.

Instead of complaining about parent-teacher conferences or grade reports, embrace Parents Weekend for its goal: building relationships. You might even get a free dinner, if your folks aren’t here and you’re lucky enough to be treated by your roommate’s parents.

Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn should be next on the Liberty Walk By | Sarah Weaver

“Let your credo be this,” the prophetic and prolific Soviet dissident Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn once said. “Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

During his life, Solzhenitsyn stood out as the greatest dissident of communism in the Cold War. He published multiple books, at great personal peril, that uncovered his own government’s authoritarianism. His numerous essays and lectures exposed the evils of communism and warned the West of its dangers.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but socialism is making a comeback. As young Americans are increasingly comfortable with and supportive of socialist ideology, Hillsdale students should be reminded of a man who confronted socialism played out in his own country, and who spoke the truth in a world hostile to those who did so. That man, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, should be the newest statue on the Liberty Walk.

Solzhenitsyn, a former commander in the Soviet Red

Army, was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Stalin in a private letter. His crime fell under the infamous Article 58, which allowed for the arrest of anyone suspected of “counter-revolutionary” activities.

Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in Soviet prison camps, then three years in internal exile in Birlik, a remote village of the Soviet Union. During his time in exile, he wrote “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” the first novel to portray with honesty the evils of the Soviet labor camp system.

In 1958, Solzhenitsyn began his most famous work, “The Gulag Archipelago,” an exhaustive account of his time in the Soviet prison camps.

Solzhenitsyn dedicated the three-volume work to “all those who did not live to tell it,” adding, “And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it.” Written piecemeal over a decade, “The Gulag Archipelago” was smuggled under the nose of a suspicious KGB. In 1973, one copy of three that existed in the Soviet Union was confiscated by the Soviet Union after the KGB questioned one of

Solzhenitsyn’s trusted typists. ton to Winston Churchill to (The woman, Elizaveta VoFrederick Douglass, Hillsdale ronyanskaya, was later found College’s campus statues comhanging in her apartment — memorate individuals who whether from suicide or mur- stood for liberty and against der is unknown). Six weeks af- tyranny. Several of our statues ter Solzhenitsyn approved the commemorate individuals work’s who publidid so cation in the in fight Paris, against he was comforced muinto exnism ile, and during moved the to Cold AmeriWar. ca. UnRonald til his Reagan, death the in 2008, AmerSolzican henitpressyn ident warned who the underWest of Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn speaking to a crowd in stood the en- Germany in 1974. Courtesy | Wikimedia Commons the croachthreat ing dangers of communism in which Soviet expansion posed essays, books, and speeches. A to American national securiyear after his death, in 2009, ty, faces Margaret Thatcher, Russian schools made “The the British prime minister Gulag Archipelago” required who aided Reagan in his fight reading in schools. against communism. But From George Washingwhile these leaders served an

didn’t know who might overhear them. “If we are engaged in the messy work of destabilizing a kids [sic] racism or homophobia or transphobia — how much do we want their classmates’ parents piling on?” he wrote.

This race-centered approach to education stretches beyond Philadelphia. Efforts like the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which dates America’s founding to the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia, have spread this ideology nationwide. The project seeks to “reframe” American history through the lens of slavery, teaching readers to reject our founding and principles as racist and fraudulent. The Pulitzer Center has converted the material into a K-12 history curriculum, which has been adopted by more than 4,500 teachers across the country, according to its annual report.

Such views of American history are based on Critical Race Theory, which uses Marxist techniques to divide Americans and pit them against one another, framing some as oppressors and others as oppressed. It judges people not by their individual abilities, talents, and accomplishments but by physical characteristics. It breeds discord among Americans by stoking resentments among the groups, making them ripe for manipulation. For far too long, we have let our public schools instill this worldview into the next generation.

Black students are told they are oppressed; white students are told they are inherently racist and must “do the work” of antiracism, and yet we are confused why so many America’s youth suffer from mental health issues. Our schools teach students to embrace communism, reject capitalism, and hate America, and then we wonder why young people put matches to American flags and chant “burn it down” in the streets

of Washington, D.C. — something that actually happened earlier this month, according to journalist Andy Ngo. Teaching the full story of American history — the glorious and the shameful — is noble. Highlighting the struggles and accomplishments of black Americans is a worthy goal.

Letting students wrestle with the ugly episodes in our history and trusting them to come to thoughtful conclusions is important. This is not what is accomplished through lesson plans that rewrite reality, strip history of its complexity, and advance an agenda instead of the truth. Concerned citizens must push back.

With many public schools continuing to hold classes virtually, parents have an unprecedented opportunity to observe what their children are being taught and, if they object, take advantage of school choice. State legislatures and school boards must reject efforts to adopt critical race theory curricula in their school districts — lawmakers in five states have already introduced bills to defund schools that teach the 1619 Project. Likewise scholars, regardless of race or political affiliation, must refute, debunk, and offer an alternative to the New York Times’ screed. To this end, the 1620 Project of the National Association of Scholars, 1776 Unites, and the 1776 Commission (to which several Hillsdale College faculty contributed) have made a good start.

Abraham Lincoln noted, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Those who love this nation must expose identity politics as the poison it is and teach young people the truth of America’s founding. A grassroots movement got us to this point and it will take a grassroots movement to get us out.

Fight woke indoctrination of children By | Madeline Peltzer

A fifth-grade social-studies teacher in Philadelphia recently forced students to celebrate Black History Month by honoring “black communism” and Angela Davis, a communist activist and former Black Panther. The news created a stir on social media but should come as no surprise to those who have followed the radical agenda infecting every level of America’s public education system. Citizens must resist this toxic trend by combating it in their school boards, state legislatures, and children’s classrooms.

Students at William D. Kelley School were required to participate in a mock Black Power rally to “free” Davis, who was briefly jailed in the 1970s on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping, according to a report by Chris Rufo of City Journal. Pictures provided by a whistleblower show elementary students holding signs bearing slogans like “#BlackPowerMatters” and “Jail Trump, Free Angela.” In the school auditorium, children chanted about ancestral power and shouted from the stage, “Free Angela!”

Philadelphia public schools have pushed a radical agenda in other ways, too. Earlier this month, a Philadelphia teachers organization produced a video explaining the need for “antiracism” training for educators. The video states that “racism is steeped into the foundation of our country” and that the United States is “a settler colony built on white supremacy and capitalism.” The solution, according to the group’s website, is to “uproot white supremacy and plant the seeds for liberation and empowerment.” Similarly, a teacher at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy tweeted last summer about his anxiety that teachers couldn’t effectively accomplish their “equality/inclusion work” over Zoom classes because they

Madeline Peltzer is a senior studying politics. She is the News Editor of the Collegian.

invaluable purpose in the fight against communist tyranny, there is one man missing who experienced these horrors firsthand — Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. His story could provide a unique inspiration to a generation of young people who find themselves, like Solzhenitsyn, confronting tyranny in their own country.

Hillsdale College is a rare exception to Leftist tendencies in American academia. Where colleges across America caved to the woke mob on affirmative action admission policies, critical race theory in academics, or revisionist American history, Hillsdale has continued to teach the academic and intellectual principles that matter. As Clarence Thomas said in 2016, Hillsdale is a “shining city on a hill.” Institutions like ours can take heart in the words of the Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn himself when he said, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to partake in the lie.

One word of truth outweighs the whole world.” Like Solzhenitsyn, Hillsdale students have the opportunity to speak that one word of truth.

In a 1975 speech in Washington, D.C. titled, “Words

of Warning to America,” Solzhenitsyn challenged the United States for its passive apologies to the Soviet Union and constant capitulating to her demands. But he ended the speech on a hopeful note, saying, “New generations are growing up which are steadfast in their struggle with evil; which are not willing to accept unprincipled compromises; which prefer to lose everything — salary, conditions of existence and life itself — but are not willing to sacrifice conscience; not willing to make deals with evil.”

Perhaps Hillsdale students are such a generation, albeit living some 45 years after Solzhenitsyn spoke. As Hillsdale students strive to be “steadfast in their struggle with evil”, they should be reminded of Solzhenitsyn’s own fight against communism by a statue in his honor on the Liberty Walk.

Sarah Weaver is pursuing a master’s degree in the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship.

Don’t divide over non-essential doctrine By | Josh Newhook An awkward freshman year experience: After just picking up lunch at the Knorr Family Dining Room, you encounter an intense debate at the circular table where you plan to sit down. The topic: religious doctrine.

Veteran cafeteria-eaters know to turn the other cheek to such fruitless bouts of emotion, even to the point of having “religion-free” tables to stop the discord from taking over every meal, but everyone has probably gotten stuck in it at one time or another.

Such fierce debates are not over the resurrection or deity of Christ, however. No, it’s usually about less vital matters: predestination, transubstantiation, and the like.

While some of the conversations admittedly end up with some insight or change of heart, most feature individuals who are unwilling to waver from their points of view and only participate because they enjoy the activity of debate.

Witnessing such dreadful conflict between friends leads one to wonder: how important are these religious differences? For Christians, isn’t it enough that they are united under Christ?

This brings up the conversation of non-essential versus essential doctrine. Should we split over some things but not others?

Equip Ministries sought to address these questions at their Pastors’ Forum on Thursday, Feb. 18. Pastor Scott Cress of First Presbyterian Church, Father Adam Rick of Holy Trinity Parish, and Pastor Bob Snyder of Countryside Bible Church were the representatives who took questions on the subject.

Snyder started out by describing the positive aspects

of differences.

“Essential doctrines create a center for unity,” Snyder said.

Snyder also said that the adiaphora, or matters of indifference, are natural in the church. Snyder said we need to keep this in mind as we interact with others.

“Beyond the Gospel and the moral law, let things be done in faith and love,” Snyder said. “These things are matters in which Christians are going to do things differently.”

Cress supported this diversity in form of worship.

“I think we are too worried about institutional unity sometimes,” Cress said.

“If you know the person in the church down the street is a Christian, and you don’t question it, and they are doing their thing and you are doing your thing, have you really disobeyed Christ?”

C.S. Lewis, for example, has the analogy of different denominations as rooms, Cress said. We can still have unity in Christ but in different gatherings.

Rick noted that pastors from different denominations can get along.

“We partner over a lot of things,” Rick said. “We can support what other pastors are doing down the street even if we don’t attend the same services.”

Indeed, it’s the freedom of a Christian to do things differently. Like Paul and Silas in Acts 15:39, who separated from Mark and Barnabas after a “sharp disagreement,” Christians can go their separate ways while still loving and supporting one another.

They can still be brothers and sisters even if they have different convictions. Paul made it clear that he did not consider Mark as a lost brother when he later wrote in 2 Timothy 4:11, “Mark…is

helpful to me in the ministry.”

In addition, Snyder said that churches can even unite in certain ministries, even if they do not worship on Sundays in the same way.

“Churches can end up doing things together, even if they might be able to be under the same house because they practice such things differently, they can still recognize each other as Christian and cooperate together in various endeavors,” Snyder said.

Nevertheless, this unity does not mean that our convictions and minor doctrines are not important.

“Non-essential does not mean unimportant,” Cress said.

Furthermore, a person should not make an unessential doctrine a requirement for the faith, as the early church tried to do concerning circumcision.

“If someone does not give that up after warning, they are to be rejected according to Titus 3:10,” Snyder said.

“Not because we differ with them on those particulars, but because they are being divisive and facetious.”

So next time you sit down to have a theological debate about a non-essential doctrine, remember that you are not speaking to a lost brother or sister, but to another of the same fold. Go into the conversation with the goal of learning, not converting, and try to keep things civilized.

As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Josh Newhook is a sophomore studying English and German. He is an assistant editor for the Collegian.

Opinions

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February 25, 2021 A5

What Noam Chomsky taught me about Donald Trump By | Victoria Marshall

Captain Sidney Crosby celebrates the Pittsburgh Penguins’ win at the 2008 Winter Classic in Buffalo. Courtesy | Facebook

The NHL will remember Crosby’s 1000 games

By | Luke Morey Every hockey player has a childhood hockey hero — someone they try to imitate as they weave the puck back and forth, pretending they’re in a shootout and going for the game-winning goal.

Mine was Sidney Crosby, the Pittsburgh Penguins’ captain, who just last week was the first franchise member to play 1,000 games.

Even casual fans of the National Hockey League know the Cole Harbor, Nova Scotia native, whether for his temper tantrums early in his career, his backhand shot that seems to float past the goaltender each time, his iconic matchups with rival Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, or his three Stanley Cups.

Crosby’s significance in the league is evident in how younger stars are measured.

Edmonton Oilers center Connor McDavid, one of the greatest forwards in the league, has been compared to Crosby since he entered the NHL in 2015. Both of them have tremendous speed, creative plays that leave defenders baffled, and stickhandling

that will make you twist your head 360 degrees trying to keep up.

Colorado Avalanche winger Nathan MacKinnon, also from Cole Harbor, practices with Crosby every offseason and has taken on a style of play similar to the Pittsburgh Penguin.

“You learn from Sid,” MacKinnon said in an interview with NHL.com writer Mike Zeisberger. “He always does extra. He’s the one guy who’ll get mad if it’s not enough work.”

Crosby has come back from numerous concussions, having missed 114 games in his career simply due to head injuries. He has also missed around 80 games to core muscle surgery, a broken jaw, a high-ankle sprain, and other injuries. His tireless work ethic to make it to 1,000 games despite these misses is an exemplary attitude of constantly developing your craft and refusing to quit.

Crosby also contributed to some of the most memorable moments in recent hockey history.

2008, Buffalo: The inaugural Winter Classic game, where the teams play out-

doors in football or baseball stadiums in one of the team’s hometowns. Snow was pouring down the entire game, keeping scoring low, so the Sabres and Penguins went to overtime and then a shootout.

It was a situation every hockey player dreams of: final shot, game on the line, game on your stick. With the last shot in the shootout, Crosby skated to center ice, picked up the puck and slowly skated down towards Ryan Miller, one of the top goaltenders in the league at that time. In a move that later became Crosby’s staple for shootouts, he stickhandled back and forth slowly, baiting Miller to try and poke the puck away, and then snapped the puck between Miller’s pads into the back of the net. Game over.

2010, Vancouver Winter Olympics: The Golden Goal.

Team USA and Team Canada were deadlocked 2-2 going into 5-on-5 overtime for the gold medal. Same two opponents, Ryan Miller versus Sidney Crosby, same outcome as the Winter Classic. In the video, you can hear Crosby yell “Iggy!” at his teammate, Jarome Iginla, as Crosby raced toward the net. Iginla got the

puck to Crosby and Crosby did the rest, again beating Miller and winning gold for Canada.

Crosby’s backhand is one of his most iconic moves.

Even with the back side of his stick, he is still able to send the puck to the same height as the crossbar, six feet off the ice. Countless times Crosby has skated into the opponent’s zone, stayed low to keep his defender on his left side, and flicked the puck over the goalie’s shoulder and into the net, often with only one hand on the stick.

Crosby was also one of the first players to use an almost completely flat stick — most players will have a curved stick to allow for better snapshots. Not Crosby. He knows the danger of his backhand and his flat stick allows the puck to climb higher than goalies expect — over their shoulders into the net.

Love him or hate him, Crosby has had an incredible 1,000 games with the NHL, and he should be celebrated as one of the greatest players of all time.

Luke Morey is a sophomore studying history.

Netflix is the best streaming service for students By | Josh Hypes

Watching Netflix is the perfect pastime to decompress after a long day of studying, writing papers, and extracurriculars. Sometimes we need time to step away from the breakneck pressures of academics, clubs, and other activities. When an opening in the schedule finally appears, why not take the time to indulge in a little enjoyment?

With several streaming services offered to the consumer, why Netflix? The online streaming giant offers different content ranging from award-winning originals to nostalgic shows, movies, and documentaries. Original series like “The Crown,” “The Queen’s Gambit,” and “Ozark” are just examples of recent critically-acclaimed shows that have bolstered Netflix’s roster. The extensive content library of 3,781 movies and 1,940 TV shows ensures that the consumer is never starved for content.

Netflix customizes each user’s main page to match their likes depending on what the user watches. Each experience is custom-tailored by Netflix, which recommends various

shows that fit the user’s profile, ensuring that the content matches their preferences.

This custom experience sets Netflix apart from its contemporaries. Finding new quality content could never be more accessible: it’s just a few scrolls and a click away.

The age of cable is dead.

Who has the time to sit through almost 15 minutes of advertisements per hour of content? Our friends who subscribed to Hulu+ have not gotten the memo. With all of its subscription options, Netflix offers its content ad-free; Hulu+’s basic package ($5.99) forces its users to sit through approximately six to seven minutes of advertisements per episode. Advertisements in modern streaming services disrupts a show’s flow and incentivizes their users to switch to their premium plan ($11.99).

Moreover, Hulu+’s complicated ownership by Disney places its future as a viable streaming option in uncertain waters. In 2019, Comcast’s stake in Hulu+ was bought out by Disney, giving the entertainment heavyweight complete control over Hulu+’s future. However, later

that year, Disney unveiled its streaming service “Disney+,” causing Disney, ABC, and Fox content to leave Hulu+ and join the Disney+ roster.

What remains for Disney’s strange amalgamation of the current version Hulu+?

Honestly, Disney doesn’t even know what to do with it. In December 2020, Disney rolled out the Disney-Hulu-ESPN+ package, offered for the reasonable price of $12.99.

However, upon closer inspection, this bundle has several problems.

All these different subscriptions are not centralized onto one platform. This sacrifices the efficiency and customizability of having one central platform while giving the illusion that these three streaming services are separate from the shared corporate entity: Disney. Compared to Netflix, Hulu+ and the rest of the bundle can not offer the same customizable experience that Netflix can create — at the price of just $8.99 for a basic profile.

Another issue is that the bundle is overpriced, considering that Hulu+ and ESPN+ have ads. Once again, the consumer is forced to sit through

a stream of advertisements that disrupt the content’s flow.

Now you can upgrade the package so that you can have Hulu+ ad-free. However, this this causes the total package to cost $18.99, a far greater price than the standard Netflix subscription.

Finally, Hulu+’s “exclusive” library is ultimately a facade, since many of the shows touted as unique, such as “Rick and Morty” and Marvel’s “Agents of Shield,” are also a part of Netflix’s library. Avid consumers will also note that by using a VPN, they can access these shows and many others that Hulu+ has, thereby dropping Hulu+ into further irrelevance.

College life can be overwhelming; it is important to take a break every once in a while and splurge with an episode of a series you enjoy. However, it is vital to acknowledge how the current streaming market takes advantage of the consumer at the cost of their time and money.

Choose your service wisely.

Choose Netflix.

Josh Hypes is a freshman studying politics.

Noam Chomsky is a radical leftist, but he taught me more about Donald Trump than any other public intellectual.

In his 1988 work, “Manufacturing Consent,” the political activist, philosopher, and linguist described how elites manipulate public opinion — and in doing so, he anticipated the fall of Trump.

Chomsky writes that manufacturing consent is the explicit job of the news media, who spew out propaganda on behalf of those in power so as to construct political reality.

America’s mass-communication media, Chomsky says, “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion.” Essentially, he argues that the purpose of the media is to build support for those who hold economic and political power. In this model, the media is not objective, free, or unbiased. It fixes the very premises of discourse so as to control what the public sees and understands. In this way, those in power are able to maintain control as they dictate what the media covers, and are thus able to “manufacture” the consent of the governed by molding their opinions.

In 2016, Donald Trump threatened this model. Despite vicious attacks by mainstream institutions, the corporate media, and both Republicans and Democrats, Trump prevailed and was elected president. The manufacturing consent model failed, and the governing elites had to change their strategy. But they did not change their strategy; they beat back harder.

During Trump’s presidency, the media and our governing class — politicians, public intellectuals, and members of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and universities — screamed “bloody murder” about the horror of the new administration, exhausting the public and pummeling it into submission. The public, to make the constant screaming stop, submitted to the ruling elite’s worldview, which constantly stated that Donald Trump was a very-bad-no-good-evilracist who was on the verge of starting World War Three.

In her book, “Resistance at All Costs: How Trump Haters are Breaking America,” Kimberley Strassel describes the media’s constant fear-mongering, and, as a consequence, the molding of public opinion.

Strassel writes that during the age of Trump the press “embraced its bias, joined the Resistance and declared its allegiance to one side of a partisan war. It now openly declares those who offer any fair defense of this administration as Trump ‘enablers.’ It acts as willing scribes for Democrats and former Obama officials; peddles evidence-free accusations; sources stories from people with clear political axes to grind; and closes its eyes to clear evidence of government abuse.”

During the Trump administration, the mass media did

everything to paint the White House in a bad light, further cementing public opinion against the president — all to the dictum of the elites. What the elites thought of Trump the media reported as fact, blinding the general public and obscuring its understanding of political realities. This is a threat to any democratic society, for whoever has the ability to shape public opinion to his own ends holds the real power, not the people.

The people are most in power when they are able to decipher political reality themselves, and not be swayed by a one-sided, biased, and corrupt mass media. This is why the people were most in power when Trump was elected. Trump was a repudiation of the neoliberal governing class, and even though he was painted as a villain by that class, enough people rejected that characterization and voted for him. The manufacturing consent model was disrupted, the elites lost their grip, and Trump was sent to the White House.

Throughout his entire presidency, Trump was characterized as “unpresidential,” lacking the tone and manners fit for a president. His brazen characteristics were probably one of the most important features Trump offered, as they represented a symbolic repudiation of the type of person who principally composes the ruling class (and hence, manufactures consent). Those who rejected Trump because of his character did not understand that was his primary appeal. Trump was the first non-politician in the White House in a long time, and voters recognized that. They were tired of slick-talking cogs who force open borders, sexual immorality, and East Coast orthodoxy down their throats. Trump was unabashedly Trump, and people realized they could rely on that.

Trump was (and is) important because he represented voters’ ability to think outside of the institutions that manufacture their consent.

But after a world-wide pandemic, a summer of burning cities, and bitter partisanship, the elites molded public opinion back in their favor, and Trump only served one term. Joe Biden is now president, and the manufacturing consent model rages on. Puff pieces on the 46th president come out on the daily (a nice respite from the weeping and gnashing of teeth that marked coverage of the 45th). There are actual news pieces about Biden’s choice of pants (“A Grateful Nation is Relieved to Once Again Have a President Who Wears Jeans,” the Washingtonian gushed). The New York Times, in their frontpage story on Jan. 21, revealed how they were feeling about retaking power: “Biden Inaugurated, ‘Nightmare is Over.’”

And they’re terrified they will lose control again. The enigma of Trump remains.

Victoria Marshall is a senior George Washington Fellow studying politics. She is the Science & Tech Editor for the Collegian.

Sorority-style spring rush is more effective than the fraternity system By | Allison Schuster Hillsdale has some wellknown rivals — protestant versus Catholic, conservative versus libertarian, Simpson Residence versus everyone else — but one lesser-known competition is found within the Greek system of recruiting.

Sororities have a more effective system than fraternities, proven by the highest number of members, highest retention rates, and most Hillsdale-centric policies.

Spring rush offers the best system given the college’s distinct position. The freshman class size is typically about 350 students.

With such a small pool of freshmen, Greek women and potential new members alike are uniquely situated to get to know each other through natural interactions during the first semester. The dayto-day behavior of a sorority member is what should

inspire an observer to join that member’s Greek house.

It is more truthful than a few recruitment parties over the span of a couple weeks.

Especially since many freshman picture Greek life as it’s portrayed at state schools, their first semester on campus shows them the genuine opportunities available specifically in the Hillsdale Greek system.

Members of Hillsdale’s sororities and fraternities are consistently the highest-achieving students on campus. Each semester the Greek average GPA is greater than that of the all-school average. The college itself highlights the Greek system as a positive force on campus, since it furthers Hillsdale’s mission through philanthropy, fellowship, and strong academic achievement.

“Our four fraternities and three sororities stress the importance of academics, character, leadership, and service to the community

— all of which complement the mission of the College,” according to the school’s website. “Hillsdale College has been named one of the fifty best colleges in the nation for Greek life, according to Best College Reviews, which noted that our sororities and fraternities are ‘dedicated to making Hillsdale a better place.’ Over 30 percent of our students are members of Greek organizations. And as a group, they’re among our highest achievers.”

Jason Cimponer, the recruitment chair for the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, said a lot of men on campus are more interested in rushing in the spring after taking the time first semester to understand more about Hillsdale Greek life. Although he said that it’s most beneficial to have both semesters as options to rush, Cimponer admitted the pledge class in the spring is typically larger than that of the fall.

“When guys come to

campus some are hesitant, but then they see the character of ATO and how we hold ourselves to high standards on campus,” he said. “So that’s why I think you get guys who have taken it all in by the spring.”

The rushing system for women at Hillsdale is not without flaws. According to Anna Katherine Daley, the former Chi Omega sorority recruitment chair, each rushing season poses its own set of challenges. For example, a delayed recruitment process also opens the possibility for misconduct from sorority members in the form of ‘dirty rushing.’ Also, girls who could have gained a lot from a sorority and been a valuable addition to the organization, on the other hand, might miss out because of seeing a few misrepresentative women acting in bad taste.

However, Daley said she likely wouldn’t be in Chi Omega had the rushing process been first semester.

“I personally think that being delayed, especially for women, is better,” she said.

“I think that it gives them an entire semester to take time to think about things and to mull it over.”

While both systems pose various advantages and disadvantages, the sorority recruitment system yields better results. Even the sorority with the lowest number of members, 80, far exceeds that of the fraternity with the highest number of members, 60, and more than twice the second highest number of members in a fraternity: 38.

The average size of sororities are around double the size of fraternities.

For women, the actual formal recruitment process itself is only three days.

After 45 minutes in some of the houses each day, the system gives a small taste of what the houses have to offer. At Hillsdale, however, one’s actions speak louder than words. Daley chose to

join Chi Omega because of the values she saw members of the sorority display on a daily basis. Similarly, I knew I wanted to rush Kappa Kappa Gamma within weeks of my first semester because of the older girls I admired from class and cheerleading.

Witnessing first-hand their diligence toward their work and kindness toward peers encouraged me to model my behavior after theirs.

Although men get to rush in the fall, as is normal for most fraternity and sorority rushing across the country, Hillsdale is different and should be treated as such. For our school, this process aligns with the college’s type of student and garners the best results for the Greek system — and, therefore, students overall.

Allison Schuster is a senior studying politics. She is an Associate Editor for the Collegian.

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

City News A6 February 25, 2021

‘An Exceptional Man’ Family, friends, and colleagues remember former Hillsdale Hospital CEO Chuck Bianchi By | Ben Wilson City News Editor

Chuck Bianchi had a saying: “I don’t know the right way to do things, I just know what works.”

His unconventional yet visionary leadership allowed him to see the best in people and inspire them to achieve more than they thought possible.

Bianchi died peacefully at his home on Feb. 15 from complications of prostate cancer and kidney failure at the age of 78. He is survived by his wife Michelle and four children, including junior Elizabeth Bianchi.

Whether it was during his 16 years as CEO of Hillsdale Community Health Center (now Hillsdale Hospital) or his years of service throughout the community, Bianchi is remembered for his service-oriented heart, natural leadership abilities, and his honest, matterof-fact character. He is also the only local recipient of an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Hillsdale College.

Moving to Hillsdale in 1991 to run the hospital, Bianchi transformed the facility overnight. He entered the role with only a few days of cash on hand and impending closure on the horizon, according to family members. Through his vision and ability to inspire and push the people around him, Bianchi retired from the job 16 years later with $14 million in the hospital’s bank account. It took him 30 days to turn the facility from failing to cash-positive.

Not only did he turn the medical facility around, but he made a lasting impact on Hillsdale through a scholarship program he created that put more than 90 local students through college and into successful medical careers.

Bianchi was born in Norwich, New York, on May 27, 1942. He graduated from high school as a mediocre student and worked as an orderly at a local hospital where he cleaned dishes. Soon, he made friends with a fresh-out-ofschool radiologist technician who convinced him to go to school to become a radiologist himself.

Quickly falling in love with the material, Bianchi led his class. After school, he moved between different hospitals in New York and Massachusetts, quickly climbing his way up the ladder.

The work that came to define Bianchi’s career earned him commendations from the governors of Massachusetts and Michigan, along with one from the United States House of Representatives, according to family members.

One of Bianchi’s traits stands clear to those who knew him: his ability to see talent in people before they saw it themselves. He had high expectations and was hard on those he loved, but opened doors for people they would have never tried to open.

Jason Walters said he knows this all too well.

During his high school years in Hillsdale, Walters worked full time as an EMT. After Walter’s graduation, Bianchi interviewed him for a role “that I was not qualified for,” he said.

But Bianchi saw something in him and he was hired.

Walters, however, said he hung around the wrong crowd and got involved with drugs. A year into his job, Walters butted heads with his supervisor and was going to be fired, so he quit.

Two weeks later, he was in jail for an attempted robbery.

Walters served 10 years in prison for the crime, but kept in touch with Bianchi throughout. According to Walters, Bianchi partly blamed himself for the situation, as he didn’t

help him sooner. But there was hope: the hospital CEO promised Walters a job if he behaved in prison.

A decade later, the promise was fulfilled. Walters worked in various departments at the hospital, working his way up to patient care coordinator in the emergency department.

“My story is a good example of the type of person that he was,” Walters said. “The energy that kept him interested in me through all those years was that he was mad at himself. He didn’t catch and stop me, and I was one of his people — he would do anything for his crew.”

The two developed a close relationship. Father figure, mentor, and best friend are all terms Walters uses to describe it. Bianchi even insisted that he bring his girlfriend to his office to be vetted.

Walters is now married and runs four businesses, including the Local Eatery downtown.

He gave one of the eulogies at Bianchi’s funeral on Feb. 20 at St. Anthony Catholic Church.

“He was good at getting people to do more than what they thought they were even capable,” Walters said. “He found the individual that had a good work ethic and moral compass that just needed some better direction. He was good at identifying those individuals and putting them on the right path, it was an art that he had that acquired.”

Walters has a quote from Ronald Reagan on a whiteboard in his restaurant that he believes sums up Bianchi: “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”

These leadership abilities may have come naturally, but Bianchi had a long career of practice before ending up in Hillsdale.

His first job post-radiology school was at a community hospital in Syracuse, New York, where he worked as the special procedure tech. One day in 1965, an out-of-town radiologist visited the small hospital and observed Bianchi’s work, quickly asking him to become the chief x-ray tech at his hospital in Plattsburgh, New York.

Bianchi agreed to move, largely because of the ideal hunting and fishing in the Adirondack Mountains. This love for the outdoors would occupy his free time and retirement in the years ahead. He moved his family up north, a few dozen

miles from the Canadian border, and bought a house.

He later moved out of New York and became a radiology administrator at one of the largest hospitals in Massachusetts, St. Vincent Hospital. He led a team of 70-80 employees, and they took more than 80,000 X-rays a year.

He started a school of radiology at St. Vincent, teaching students the ins and outs of the profession. The school moved to the local community college and Bianchi kept teaching. He went on to earn teacher of the year.

But a problem arose. Bianchi did not have the proper education for this role, and for that, the college wanted to fire him.

The students, however, unanimously threatened to withhold tuition if Bianchi was fired.

The administration relented.

Like his students, people looked up to Bianchi throughout his life and sought his instruction. His wife, Michelle, said it was because they trusted him and loved him deeply.

“He had people around him always; they would seek him out,” Bianchi, who serves as the Hillsdale probate court judge, said. “Even in his later years, he would say ‘Why are these people calling me? I’m almost an 80-year old man!’”

During his time at St. Vincent, Bianchi was flown to countries like Denmark, Germany, and Sweden to look at designs of radiology floors.

Back in America, Bianchi worked with architects and builders to redesign his floors with more progressive designs. His innovations helped transform the way hospitals in America lay out their radiology departments to this day.

For years, Bianchi moved up in his roles, eventually becoming assistant director of the hospital in the early 1980s. He was responsible for all inpatient and outpatient care. He even won the prestigious Oliver Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Radiology in Massachusetts.

In 1981, he was asked by the Plattsburgh, New York, hospital, where he had left 10 years prior, to come back, but this time as a vice president.

He returned to upstate New York and eventually became chief operating officer at the hospital, which is now called the Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital.

In 1987, Bianchi was asked to become CEO at a failing local hospital in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, called

Chuck Bianchi on a fishing trip with Jason Walters. Courtesy | Jason Walters

Chuck Bianchi receives his honorary degree from Hillsdale College in 2007. His daughter Elizabeth Bianchi rests on his lap. Courtesy | Doug Coon

Fairview Hospital.

“He would save dying local hospitals. He really focused on local communities,” his daughter, Hillsdale College junior Elizabeth Bianchi, said.

“He got out of the state hospital game because he wanted to focus on smaller, local places.”

Fairview hadn’t turned a profit in more than 10 years and in Bianchi’s first year as leader, it paid off its debts and turned a profit of $1,800.

“He was really happy about that,” Elizabeth Bianchi said with a laugh.

He left the once-sinking Massachusetts hospital with $1 million raised and the title of “best hospital in the system.”

A call came in December 1991 about another failing hospital in a small town called Hillsdale. Seeing the opportunity to buy land on which to fish, hunt, and raise beagles, he applied for the job.

Bianchi’s lack of proper education bothered him throughout his life, but when interviewing for the Hillsdale job, he beat out a Harvard graduate for the role.

“I don’t have the education.

I don’t have the degree. I just know what’s right,” Michelle Bianchi said her husband would retort.

Once he got the job and moved to Michigan, Bianchi soon bought “his second love”: a cottage on a channel that connects to Lake Erie.

“He loved, loved being on the big water,” Michelle Bianchi said. “He was an avid walleye fisherman.”

Elizabeth Bianchi said she fondly remembers the trips to the lakehouse when she and her father would blare music

by Elvis Presley and Abba.

Those who worked under Bianchi didn’t always have it easy, but the tough-love was for the betterment of the guest experience.

“Hillsdale Hospital would not exist in its current form were it not for Chuck Bianchi’s vision and leadership,” said Janet Marsh, associate vice president of human resources for Hillsdale College. “Chuck resisted multiple offers to merge with other systems so that our fiercely independent, local hospital would be there to serve the community for generations to come.”

Marsh reported to Bianchi when she served as director of human resources at the Hillsdale Community Health Center. She called those years “some of the best of my career.”

In his first year at Hillsdale, Bianchi hired 25 new doctors and turned the operation profitable in just one year.

Just as important to Bianchi as bottom lines was the culture of the hospital for the employees.

For instance, he turned the standard cafeteria in the building into a restaurant where families and members of the community would come every day for lunch.

Bianchi paid for the hospital cook, Stephen Hickman, to attend culinary school and become a chef. In time, the

cafe started producing highquality meals and developed the feeling of a restaurant.

Each day, the line for lunch would wrap through the halls and the environment was warm. Families of doctors and employees would come eat during their loved one’s shifts, fostering a family-oriented environment. Bianchi himself would dine there each day and converse with the community members.

“You can’t understand the value of people from the community eating alongside the doctors that work on them,” Walters said. “And the value of employees eating with their families in the middle of their shifts.”

The food was better than surrounding restaurants and the prices were lower, according to Walters. Bianchi displayed a sign that said their meals were 50 cents cheaper than McDonald’s value meals.

“He did so many unconventional things,” Walters said, referring to the decision to invest in a cook to transform the cafeteria. “How many hospital CEOs can share a story like that?”

Perfecting the environment that his workers and guests experienced was vital. He made a point to personally read every comment card that came through the hospital.

“He created a culture there,” Elizabeth Bianchi said. “It was very familial and he made everybody know they were cared about.”

Those who knew Bianchi often recall how he treated everyone the same, regardless of status or position. “He was very, very just and caring to everyone,” Elizabeth Bianchi said.

His wife said he could identify “with both the CEO and the common man.”

“And he appreciated both of them equally,” she said.

When the hospital was undergoing renovations, he moved his office into a trailer in the parking lot and refused to move back until everyone else moved into their offices first.

Bianchi’s heart was evident in his creation of a scholarship program through the hospital called Technically Advanced Personnel, which over time supported 90 local students at college.

The high school students interested in scholarships would take classes where they became certified EMTs and certified medical assistants.

The program was purposefully tough in order to weed out candidates. Upon completing the classes, those who succeeded would receive jobs at the hospital and eventually receive scholarships to go college.

“The purpose of the program was to mold and grow his own people,” Walters said.

“Chuck was really good at getting the most out of people.”

Hillsdale College Dean of Men Aaron Petersen saw Bianchi’s compassion through scholarships when his then 3-year-old son Aidan suffered

a traumatic incident in 2004.

Petersen’s young son was standing on bleachers at a football game when he fell backward and plummeted 20 feet toward the pavement.

A local high schooler named Sean was walking underneath the bleachers when Aidan fell.

Sean reached out and broke the child’s fall, undoubtedly saving him from life-altering injury and possibly death.

“When Chuck heard about that, he called my wife and I,” Petersen said. “He said he was moved by what the young man did to save my son and that he was going to reward him with a scholarship.”

This is a perfect example of Bianchi’s community-mindedness and “strong sense of taking care of his own,” Petersen said.

Michelle Bianchi said people would come up to them frequently to thank Bianchi for giving them a chance.

“People came up to us all the time and said, “You gave us our start. I wouldn’t have done this without you. I would have never gotten my degree,’” she recalled.

The dynamic that Bianchi built created a strong bond among the staff. A statement from current Hillsdale Hospital CEO J.J. Hodshire credits Bianchi’s leadership for a “true turnaround” of the facilities.

“He led the organization out of some of its toughest financial circumstances, starting his role as CEO when the hospital had just a few days cash-onhand,” Hodshire said. “In an era where the number of rural hospital closures increased so sharply that the federal government intervened with new legislation, Hillsdale Hospital stood strong under Bianchi’s leadership.”

After retiring from the hospital, Bianchi could not sit still.

He advised several local businesses and served as a member of the Hillsdale Kiwanis Club, Hillsdale Preparatory School Board, and Hillsdale Salvation Army Advisory Board.

“He was like a 24/7 administrator and he had to keep doing stuff,” Elizabeth Bianchi said, laughing. “He also just loved to serve and wanted to help people all the time.”

Bianchi struggled with health problems dating back to 2008 when he overcame a grim diagnosis of prostate cancer. Since that remarkable recovery, he dealt with various health issues, like diabetes and kidney problems. But he always did what he loved, like shooting, fishing, and spending time with loved ones.

Bianchi will be remembered for his leadership and inspiring others to achieve great things.

“He really just naturally saw the good in people and believed in them,” Elizabeth Bianchi said. “Those people who he thought could do something, he was hard on them and he held them to high expectations. But that was the way he knew how to get results, and it worked.”

City News

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

February 25, 2021 A7

Hillsdale police seek to hire new full-time officer, broaden crime prevention By | Elizabeth Bachmann Features Editor The Hillsdale Police Department may hire a new full-time officer in coming months, pending budget approval from the city council, according to Chief of Police Scott Hephner.

If the council fulfills the request, the department will total —- staff members. With the extra hands, Hephner said the force will be able to focus on actually preventing crime rather than just responding to calls.

The police department decreased in staff, and has remained understaffed for close to eight years. Hephner has requested backup several years in a row now, with no result.

“I have made more of a push this time, but I didn’t just say I want the officer,” Hephner said.

“I went through and did a full financial review of the budget and looked through things that could be moved or pushed. There’s room.”

This year, the city council and Mayor Adam Stock-

ford have made fitting the additional officer into the budget a priority, according to Stockford.

The Public Safety Committee has also supported the request. Now the decision rests in the hands of the city manager, who, by charter, dictates personnel decisions.

Both Hephner and Stockford agree that the council has responded affirmatively this time, in part because of the increase in violent crime in Hillsdale County.

“The police are the biggest

A volunteer hands food to a community member.

Courtesy | City of Jackson

part of the budget and they are a great force, but we have seen an increase in violent crime in the last year and people are concerned,” Stockford said.

Violent crime has increased in the county in lockstep with methamphetamine usage. Hephner said that they are obviously related, and pose a problem for the department.

As it is staffed now, the officers are constantly on call. Each officer works a 12hour shift, but often officers need to step-up and fill an

over-time gap. They end up working 18 hours straight, then taking only 6 hours off before returning to duty for another 12-hour shift.

Working understaffed means that the department only has time to answer calls. Hephner hopes that with another full time officer, they can begin data driven enforcement. They will have extra officers to patrol high crime areas and begin preventing crime rather than only responding to crimes that have already taken place.

WCSR hires general manager By | Josh Newhook Assistant Editor

Jackson runs meal distribution program By | Sean Callaghan Collegian Freelancer Jackson, Michigan, instituted its own meal distribution program this month.

The project started on Feb. 1, seeking to support the members of the community and the local restaurants through the purchase of meals.

Inspired by a Vermont-based program called Everyone Eats, Jackson community affairs manager, Mindy Bradish-Orta, sought to create a similar program for the people of Jackson.

“We saw this program where a non-profit organization was hiring restaurants to provide meals that were then given away to the needy,” she said. “We looked at it and decided, you know this is something we can do here.”

The nonprofit organization, along with Consumers Energy and generous contributions from donors in the community, donated $500,000 in support of the program. 1,250 meals are provided every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday af-

ternoon for a total of 40,000 meals over the course of two months.

The meals are provided on a first come, first served basis. The program is based on a sense of trust rather than on a set of qualifications. Every family or person that shows up will be given a meal.

6-10 restaurants participate in providing the packaged food each week. $10 is spent on each meal, helping restaurants remain open and bring back former employees.

Jackson’s Public Information officer, Aaron Dimick, loves how well the program is able to benefit both families and the local businesses.

The restaurants are grateful for the opportunity to participate in the program and be another part in contributing to the community during the pandemic.

Outside of the practical benefits, the program has also helped in forming a stronger community. “I’m proud that the city, and the entire community is responding to do this because some communities don’t work well together or there’s

not that cohesiveness with the government and the businesses,” Dimick said, “I’m really proud to see everyone coming together.”

Both the organization and efficiency in distributing the meals has enabled the city to reach as many residents as possible. Dimick said he hopes Jackson’s initiative will lead the way and inspire other cities to provide similar programs for their communities.“This is the first program of its kind in the state of Michigan and it’s really great to see.”

For volunteer Maribeth Leonard, the program has also been an opportunity for personal encounters that touch the heart.

“It was rewarding to see the smiles on people’s faces and the gratitude that they expressed for what we are doing,” she said.

On one occasion, Leonard said she was shocked at the number of cars still waiting after the day’s supply of food had run low. The need for support was very present, she realized.

The program will continue until April 9.

The Jackson meal distribution program provides 1,250 meals every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.

Courtesy | City of Jackson

Wage from A1

affect those states who have a lower cost of living than in blue states such as New York and California.

“If you look at the $15 minimum wage in New York City, which is a blue locale, it’s one of the most expensive places to live in the U.S. For basic entries, the wages are high, though in real terms it isn’t very high,” he said.

“Putting a $15 minimum wage on the states that tend to have lower cost of living may disproportionately affect them.”

Olmstead said business owners will have to make decisions in response to a higher minimum wage that might affect workers and customers negatively.

“Something has to happen,” she said. “One, you’re either going to end up having to reduce your overhead if you’re not going

Thursday

Mostly sunny, with a high near 35. West wind 5 to 15 mph.

to increase your prices. Or the people who are working 40 hours full-time, you make them work 32, so you don’t have to pay them the minimum wage.”

However, income inequality has become an increasingly apparent and difficult issue that even Hillsdale County has to deal with, according to Fogarty.

“It’s something that we struggle with a lot here,” he said. “There used to be a lot of higher paying union jobs when we had factories here. I moved to Hillsdale in 2003, and we still had a couple of big factories. The grain mill was still operating. Since then, they’ve all disappeared.”

Many factory and union workers either went on government assistance or took minimum wage jobs, Fogarty said.

However, Professor of Economics Ivan Pongracic

Friday

Mostly sunny, with a high near 39. South wind 5 to 10 mph.

said that for sole earners with a family, the minimum wage is not particularly effective.

“Only 15% of minimum wage earners are the sole earner for a family with children,” Pongracic said.

“If that’s who we are trying to help, that is such a tiny subset of people who actually earn the minimum wage. There are massively more impactful and better ways to help people in those situations than raising the minimum wage. People in those circumstances may actually lose their jobs.”

The minimum wage may also aggravate the trend toward automatization and small businesses shuttering their windows.

“There’s no question that some subset of workers will end up with higher wages,” Pongracic said. “But I think what we also find is that over time some restaurants will

Saturday

Partly sunny, with a high near 46.

“The more people you have working, the more data driven enforcement can take place,” Hephner said.

The department has already interviewed potential officer candidates, so pending budget approval, a new officer could begin working as early as next month. However, if the city council decides to wait until the natural end of the Police Department’s fiscal calendar, Hephner and his team may have to continue without backup until July.

Dennis Worden, a former Hillsdale College employee, began working for Hillsdale’s WCSR as general manager of McKibbin Media Group on Feb. 17.

McKibbin Media Group, founded by Jamie McKibbin in December 2019, started with four former Jackson Radio Works stations and added Hillsdale’s WCSR 99.5 and 92.1 FM in early 2020.

“It’s kind of like coming back home,” Worden said.

“And the snow is definitely proof of it.”

McKibbin previously worked for Bruce and Sue Goldsen for 23 years by running the Jackson Radio Works stations, which Goldsen sold to him in December 2019. The Goldsen family owned the stations 1997 to 2019, who moved back to their home state of Connecticut after living in Michigan for about 30 years.

McKibbin died in a tragic drowning accident in November 2020. His widow, owner Katina McKibbin, who is a schoolteacher in Jackson County, decided to hire a full-time general manager, Goldsen said.

The Goldsens, who had stayed on as consultants for the media group after selling their stations, have been helping to run the stations since McKibbin’s death and are assisting with the transition to new management.

They will remain helping the company in a consulting role after the hire, Goldsen said.

Goldsen, who knew Worden when he worked for Michigan International Speedway, said Worden’s familiarity with the local area made him a good candidate for the job.

“We had a fair amount of interest for the position, but the thing that attracted us to Dennis was that he was from this area,” Goldsen said. “Even though he does not have direct radio experience, he has worked with the media for basically all his career, so he understands radio. He understands people.”

Worden said he knew the

Dennis Worden is the new GM at McKibbin. | Twitter

switch to machines, automatization, kiosks, something along those lines. Some will not be able to substitute automation for the labor and they will certainly try to absorb those costs and maybe pass them on to their customers. For some businesses, that’s going to work and customers will continue consuming those goods at higher prices. But there will also be business that will not survive—they will have to close their doors.”

Fogarty, however, said minimum wage has for a long time been simply a “political football” that is neither tied to productivity nor the rising median wage.

By 2025, the $15 minimum wage would begin to be tied to those two factors.

“After $15, they are going to start keying it again into raises in productivity and rising median wage. $15 an hour will not be stagnant. It

McKibbins through business connections at MIS. He learned of the opportunity through his sister, who knows the McKibbins.

“It wasn’t because it was just a random job posted online,” he said. “I had some knowledge and that prior relationship with Jamie, which I think was valuable.”

Worden said he grew up in Concord, in neighboring Jackson County, and graduated from Central Michigan University in 1999.

Formerly, he was the sports information director at Hillsdale College from 2002 to 2005.

“I enjoyed every minute of it,” Worden said. “I love the college. I got a chance to do a lot with the athlete department and the college itself.”

Worden also worked in NASCAR for almost 16 years.

He started out by working as the public relations manager at the Michigan International Speedway from 2005 to 2011. Most recently, Worden served as a senior director of communications at Darlington Speedway in South Carolina from 2011 to 2020.

“I had a lot of great experiences with NASCAR,” he said. “I worked with every driver you could think of and worked with every race team and had a really great career.”

Back in October, however, NASCAR went through some restructuring because of COVID-19 and had to make some tough layoffs, of which Worden was a part.

“It was hard,” he said. “But when one door closes, an-

will be linked to the economy,” he said.

Fogarty also said the minimum wage can have the effect of giving people hope.

“A lot of Hillsdale residents are afraid that if the minimum wage goes up they’ll lose their jobs. I understand their fear. It scares the heck out of people to lose their job,” he said. “But if more money is put into the economy, there will be more jobs and people will have more hope. It gives people a little more power. A feeling that I can control my destiny a little more.”

Steele pointed out that a higher minimum wage often causes a great deal of unemployment, as employers can no longer afford to pay the higher wage to the same number of workers they had before the increase.

“A $15 minimum wage would have a big unemployment effect,” he said. “The

other one opens. This gave me the chance to come back home.”

Although this is a new industry for Worden, he said he worked a lot with radio stations while at NASCAR. While he still needs to learn the “ins and outs” of radio, he knows a lot about the industry, he said.

“Part of my job responsibilities at Darlington and MIS was to work with a bunch of different radio groups,” Worden said. “I built a lot of great personal relationships with radio stations at both places.”

Worden said it will be a challenge to replace Jamie McKibbin because he was a local legend and was wellknown in both the Jackson and Hillsdale communities.

“There is going to be some initial getting to know people, but the staff is in a great place,” he said. “It has been a great transition to this point.”

Worden had his first day on the job on Feb. 17, and his first day in Hillsdale was on Feb. 18. Worden will work between the Jackson and the Hillsdale studios, Goldsen said.

WCSR Radio Station Manager Bob Flynn, who has been working for the station since 1986, said he is happy with the hiring of Worden.

“He has a vast knowledge of various types of communication skills,” Flynn said.

Flynn said that he thinks that his managerial skills will help with the connection between the Jackson and Hillsdale stations.

“I think he is going to be able to figure out where we can help each other,” Flynn said. “He has already talked about the ways he envisions getting both markets to work together to better both stations.”

Flynn said that though there will be a bit of a learning curve, he thinks he will do great.

“We’re very happy that he has joined our team, and we look forward to working with him,” Flynn said. “We look forward to him helping us achieve a bunch of goals that we have set in the near future.”

Congressional Budget Office estimated that 1.3 million people would become unemployed if this goes through.

If you’re one of them, then it wasn’t a benefit to you.”

The study also found that 27 million workers would receive a pay increase and lift 1.3 million out of poverty.

However, this may have a negative effect insofar as more people would be dependent on the government raising wages, according to Steele.

“People have ulterior motives,” he said. “There’s a bunch of people in government who are quite happy with making people dependent. Dependency means you’re more likely to vote democratic, more likely to become a serf. That can be a benefit to the people who administer welfare programs or running for office.”

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Partly sunny, with a high near 48

Mostly sunny, with a high near 37.

Sunny, with a high near 36.

Mostly sunny, with a high near 43.

Information courtesy of the National Weather Service

A8 February 25, 2021

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

Science & Tech

Should you wear masks outdoors?

Studies show that wearing a mask outside decreases infection risk By | Austin Gergens Senior Reporter To mask or not to mask outdoors, that is the question.

A little less than a month ago, the National Parks Service answered in the affirmative.

“Face Masks are now required in all NPS buildings and facilities. Masks are also required on NPS-managed lands when physical distancing cannot be maintained, including narrow or busy trails, overlooks, and historic homes,” said a National Parks News release on Feb. 2.

While there is a caveat regarding certain circumstances, National Park attendees are still required to wear masks outdoors. Does the data truly support such a ruling?

Silas Johnson of the biology department agrees that wearing a mask helps reduce

the spread of the disease.

“The virus that causes COVID-19 is called SARSCoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 is primarily transmitted via respiratory droplets and aerosols dispersed from an infected individual’s mouth and nose,” Johnson said in an email.

According to Johnson, the spread of the virus generally increases during months of colder weather for two primary reasons. The first is that the chances of transmission increase the more time people spend indoors near one another.

“Second, the dryer air allows virus-containing droplets and aerosols to stay in the air for longer periods of time and travel longer distances, thereby also increasing the chances of transmission,” he said.

Johnson recommended that masks be worn in all

outdoor public spaces if there is a chance an individual can come into contact less than six feet with another person.

He cited a recent article by John Brooks and Jay Butler in the JAMA Network published on Feb. 10, which compiled studies about the effects of mask-wearing from places all around the world. In the study, it found using masks, regardless of the population size, greatly decreased the risk of infection—in some cases even by 70% or more.

While the National Parks have adopted a plan for outdoor mask use, the official policy for mandatory masks inside of buildings at Hillsdale—in conjunction with vaccinations for faculty and staff—, has managed to keep infection numbers relatively low.

As of Feb. 22, more than

400 individual students have been tested this semester for COVID-19, and 39 have tested positive, with 36 recovered according to an email from the Student Activities Office.

“The research is pretty clear that Covid spread occurs in packed indoor settings with prolonged exposure,” said senior Jonathan Meckel, “We just haven’t seen a lot of cases resulting from events outdoors.”

“I don’t think masking outside will change the course of the disease to any significant degree.”

Perhaps if COVID-19 cases begin to spike again, there may warrant more stringent mask-wearing measures, but for now, Hillsdale’s current policy seems to be very effective.

PIXABAY

The future is flexible office space By | Rachel Kookogey Opinions Editor

PIXABAY

Are two masks better than one?

The CDC recommends double-masking in its latest study

By | Michael Bachmann Collegian Freelancer On Feb. 10, the Center for Disease Control released new guidelines for masking.

Based on a study conducted in January, the CDC now recommends fitting a cloth mask over a surgical mask to reduce COVID-19 transmission.

According to the CDC, the study used “a pliable elastomeric headform . . . to simulate a person coughing by producing aerosols from a mouthpiece.” A variety of face masks were then placed on the headform to measure their effectiveness.

The data showed that a cloth mask layered over a surgical mask blocked 85.4% of cough particles whereas a single medical mask or cloth mask blocked only 56.1% and 51.4% of particles, respectively. When both the cougher and receiver were double masked, the risk of exposure dropped to 96.4%.

However, not all masks should be layered. According to their website, the CDC does not recommend layering n95 respirators with cloth masks or surgical masks since they already “provide a reliable level of protection against airborne or aerosolized particles.”

Christopher Hamilton, professor of biochemistry, stressed that there are no negative effects of double-masking.

“Certainly, if you are going to have greater filtration, it is going to be harder to breathe,” said Hamilton. “If someone does have asthma or COPD, it could definitely cause fatigue much faster. But in the long term, even for those people, there are no negative health consequences.”

Hamilton also emphasized that if a double mask feels uncomfortable, certain measures can be taken to improve wearability without sacrificing function.

“If masks are tight fighting, they recommend plastic braces under the mask. The problem is that masks can get right up under the nose and mouth and feel claustrophobic, but the brace gives you a gap of space at your nose while keeping the mask sealed.”

Certain types of n95 masks which fit snugly to the face while maintaining space at the nose and mouth also work well to improve comfortability, added Hamilton.

In the January study, the CDC also sought to compare the effectiveness of a single, tightly-fitted mask to layered masks. Data showed that a surgical mask with knotted earloops blocked 77% of cough particles, 7.4% percent less than the combination of a cloth and surgical mask.

Following the CDC study, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill came to a different conclusion. While they stressed that wearing two masks is

certainly an improvement to wearing one, they found that a mask’s fit remains the most important factor in reducing COVID-19 transmission.

“You really need to address fit and make sure whatever you’re wearing is tight to your face,” said Phillip Clapp, an aerosol toxicology expert at the UNC School of Medicine, in a press conference last Friday.

Clapp and his colleagues found that simply wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask increased filtration by 15% while a single, well-fitted mask increased filtration by 20%. Still, Clapp added that the best precaution is wearing a cloth mask over a tightly knotted surgical mask.

Despite the new research, the White House has yet to recommend double-masking to the public. So far, only New York has imposed any sort of double-masking mandate.

By | Will Syrus Collegian Freelancer Note: For most of these tricks to work, your iPhone must be running IOS 14.

advantage of this cool feature.

sure you turn off the “Ask Before Running” option. If you do not do this, the prank will not work. Now whenever your friend plugs in their phone, their volume will turn up to max volume and read off the message you created in Siri’s monotone voice.

been contacted by your visited websites.

The rise of remote work during COVID-19 has been detrimental to the future of office work — except in the line of flexible office space.

Offices across the U.S. are still mostly empty as major employers, such as Salesforce and Twitter, announce permanent remote work options for staffers, Commercial Observer reported on Feb. 12.

According to Vox technology offshoot Recode, in December 2020 “only a small portion of people have returned to the office. In Manhattan, the biggest office market, just 10% of office workers have come back, and some may never do so.”

Despite the decrease in new leases, the amount of leased flexible office space in the top 23 U.S. markets at the end of the third quarter this year has increased 2.5 percent from where it was at the end of 2019.

But what is “flexible office space”?

Flex office providers, such as WeWork and Industrious, lease ready-touse office space to individuals and companies.

WeWork’s model is to lease space or entire buildings from landlords, redesign the space to look new and hip, and then sublease desks, offices, floors, or entire buildings to individuals and companies at a higher price.

Industrious shares the revenue of about 80% of its portfolio with the building owners instead of leasing. This model

minimizes losses since the company pays less when they’re bringing in less revenue. Because of this, Industrious actually added one million square feet of new space in 2020 despite the pandemic lockdowns.

According to a survey from the real estate firm CBRE, about 86% of companies plan to rely on flexible space for their real estate strategies in the future. They’re also “highly likely to favor leasing in buildings that have flexible space offerings,” Recode reported.

Especially with the continuing lack of in-person business and the uncertainty that accompanies it, this type of office space is attractive to companies who are seeking hybrid models of office life or unwilling to commit to multi-year leases. It’s also beneficial to the individual remote employee seeking space to work without the potential distractions or unreliable network of their homes.

Jamie Hodari, CEO of Industrious, said in an interview with Commercial Observer that the demand for flexible office space is increasingly becoming a norm.

“I think behind closed doors, there are no skeptics left in the commercial real estate world in accepting the rising demand in what we do,” Hodari said. “They’ve coalesced around this idea that, in general, COVID-19 is going to accelerate the shift from the legacy way of doing commercial real estate to workplace as a service.”

Things you didn’t know your iPhone could do 1. Double-Tap Back Did you know that the back of your iPhone is a button? That’s right, the Apple logo actually does do something. Don’t believe me? Go into “Settings,” “Accessibility,” “Touch,” “Back Tap,” “Double Tap.” You then will be able to double tap the back of your phone to do an operation of your choosing. I choose to take a screenshot this way since my iPhone no longer has a home button. You may also choose to set an operation for triple tap to even further take

2. Shortcut Prank Here’s a way to prank your friends. If you go into the Shortcuts app on your iPhone, you will find an option to “Create Personal Automation.”

Click this option. Next, scroll down to the “Charger” icon and select it. Make sure the “Is Connected” option is checked.

Then, you will want to add two actions. First, add the “Set Volume” action. When you select this action, make sure you set the volume to 100%. For the second action, add the “Speak Text” action and type in a message of your choosing. Once you add these two actions, click “Next” in the upper righthand corner.

Before clicking done, make

3. Comprehensive Privacy Report Here’s how to access your comprehensive privacy report provided by Apple. Go into your Safari browser, click the “AA” icon in the top left corner, and then select “Privacy Report.” This will give you the details of which websites that you have visited that have exposed you to the most trackers. It will also show the individual trackers who have

4. Bluetooth Name Have you ever connected to a bluetooth device and realized you have way too many in your history that are just random combinations of letters? With IOS 14, you are now able to rename bluetooth devices instead of the factory default name. To do this, you must go into “Settings,” click “Bluetooth,” then connect to the device. Once you are connected to the bluetooth device, click the little “i” icon on the right side of the screen.

From there, you should be able to see the option to rename the device.

PIXABAY

Sports

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

Volleyball

February 25, 2021 A9

No. 1 Chargers remain unbeaten on season By | Hannah Cote Assistant Editor

Moments before Tuesday’s match, one player injured herself, but the Chargers still secured another victory against Tiffin University.

As the team began to set up the nets before the match, senior setter Lindsay Mertz sliced open her hand and had to get seven stitches. She was unable to compete, and sophomore setter Madeline Zenas took her place.

“That was different, but

we have been training for all kinds of situations,” head coach Chris Gravel said. “The lineup that we practiced on Monday was actually with our second center, so we were prepared.”

Although Mertz’s injury was unexpected, the team quickly adjusted and kept their energy strong.

“Anytime you change your setter, you’re changing the tempo of the offense,” Gravel said. “Lindsay, having as much experience as she has, has really started to click with how fast she’s running the offense.

On Tuesday, the hitters’ timing was off a little bit but then each set it got better. By the last set, it looked pretty good.”

After adapting to the new tempo of the offense, the team beat Tiffin in another threeset sweep.

“We have all trained and been trained to be comfortable playing any position,” senior middle hitter Allyssa Van Wienen said. “Our team is so deep that I am confident we could put any number of players out on the court and still obtain the same result, similar to what we did last

night.”

The team has consistently been beating its competition in three-set sweeps all season, and Van Wienen attributes this to their energy and momentum.

“The energy has been pretty incredible this whole year,” Van Wienen said. “Last year we had 19 people on the team, so it didn’t take too much effort to be one of the loudest cheering teams. This year there are a few less of us, but we have brought the energy up and maintained it all season.”

Gravel complimented his players on their energy as well, and said that they are continuing to work in practice on their serves and passing.

“Sometimes the team is tired coming in because of classes and everything, but they quickly are able to find a place within themselves to play at a high level,” Gravel said. “We want to continue to serve tough, and we want to continue to improve our passing and getting the back row more in on the offense.”

This weekend the team will play Ohio Dominican Univer-

sity on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m., and Gannon University, a 2019 Elite Eight non-conference team, on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m.

“ODU has come out of their shell a bit this year and put together what seems to be their strongest lineup out of the four years I’ve been here, so they are definitely a team that is not to be overlooked,” Van Wienen said. “We are also looking forward to playing Gannon on Saturday. Gannon has been a very solid team these past years and I expect nothing less than a battle from them.”

Baseball

Baseball prepares for season with exhibition games By | Calli Townsend Sports Editor With three “unofficial” victories in this weekend’s exhibition games, the Hillsdale College baseball team is off to a solid start.

“We counted them as exhibition games so there weren’t any official scores,” head coach Eric Theisen said. “The weekend went well

though. We won game one in regulation and game two was an extra-inning game that we won in 12 innings. And then Sunday was a come-from-behind, walk-off win.”

Saturday’s two wins came over Milligan University in 30-degree temperatures.

“It was freezing. It was like 30 degrees on Saturday and we were out there for 10 hours,” Theisen said. “But we were really happy with our

pitching. Offensively we did a pretty good job and defensively we were pretty solid, outside of a couple mistakes we made that were mostly a result of not being able to practice those things since the fall.”

The Chargers not only overcame the cold weather, but also a two-run deficit in the ninth inning against Concordia University on Sunday.

Senior infielder Rob Zurawski said it was great to finally be

Shotgun

back on the field competing against another team.

“It was nice to be back out and play another team,” Zurawski said. “We’ve been facing our own pitchers since January. It may have not meant anything statistically but it was a confidence boost and fun for sure. It’s a more enjoyable way to play the game.”

Next on the schedule is a four-game series against

Tennis undefeated on weekend, Hackman receives G-MAC award By | Luke Morey Collegian Reporter

ly harder than many other sporting clays competitions I’ve shot recently,” Stuart said.

“I think that will definitely help us get used to different target presentations going into nationals.”

The Chargers will host the 2021 Hillsdale College Shotgun Invitational at the Halter Shooting Sports Center on March 6, inviting other collegiate teams and high school students to shoot American trap and five-stand events.

They will then compete in the SCTP College National Championship at the Cardinal Center in Marengo, Ohio, from March 18-21, and the ACUI Collegiate Clay Target Nationals at the national Shooting Complex in San Antonio, Texas, March 25-27.

“As far as this past weekend went, we shot well, and I think that’s a good sign,” head coach Jordan Hintz said. “At this point in time, I believe we’ve got a good chance of going down to Ohio and Texas and putting up really good scores.”

The Hillsdale College men’s tennis team finished the weekend undefeated, sweeping Purdue Northwest 7-0 on Saturday and Wayne State University 4-3 on Sunday.

On Saturday, the Chargers took all seven points, winning three doubles matches.

Sophomore Tyler Conrad and freshman Sean Barstow won a close 7-6(4) match at No. 1 doubles, freshman Brennan Cimpeanu and senior Gabe Katz won 6-3, and junior Brian Hackman and freshman Daniel Gilbert won 6-4.

Hackman’s solid performance last weekend earned him his first G-MAC Men’s Tennis Player of the Week award.

In the singles matches, Hillsdale went to three sets in three of the six matches, with two decided by slim margins in the third set. In the end, all six Chargers won.

Conrad won at No. 1 singles 6-0, 2-6, 6-3 while Barstow and Hackman also went to three sets, winning 6-1, 2-6, 7-5, and 7-5, 3-6, 108, respectively.

“Tyler’s being put in a tough situation playing #1 as our top 5 are all fairly equal,” head coach Keith Turner said. “This is a good learning situation for him and it should make him even a better player going forward.”

Cimpeanu, Gilbert and Katz won in straight sets, with Cimpeanu winning 6-3, 6-3.

Gilbert won 6-3, 6-1 and Katz ended the day by winning 6-4, 7-6(7).

the second half.

“I think we have a really prideful group on that end of the floor, we’ve made sacrifices in terms of giving up a few things to take away other things,” Tharp said. “I think the guys have really executed the idea of certain gameplans, and they played great team defense as well.”

With 2:15 remaining, and the Chargers up 106-62, Tharp called a timeout to empty his bench. As play began to resume, Tharp shared a grouphug with Hill and his fellow senior Davis Larson.

“I’m proud of those seniors and what they’ve done, those guys have contributed a ton for us,” Tharp said. “Davis was coming back from ACL surgery, combined with Connor’s tenacity, absolutely that moment was special for me, I hope it was for them as well.”

The Chargers added to their win streak with a late comeback to take down Tiffin on Wednesday night, 85-83.

Hill and Cartier combined to score every point on a 10-4 Hillsdale run with under three minutes remaining.

With only one game remaining in the Chargers’ regular season, Tharp’s goal is to keep the team sharp and focused.

“Our job is to try to get better, and be as sharp as we possibly can, we’ll go about our business this week like it’s any other week,” Tharp said.

“We’ve got to keep playing with an edge, as soon as you lose that edge, as soon as you relax, as soon as you stop doing the things that you’ve done, then I think that momentum can go the other way just as quick as it can go positive.”

Shotgun readies for nationals The Hillsdale College shotgun team traveled to central Ohio last weekend to prepare for the upcoming Collegiate National Championship in March. The team competed at Eagle’s Nest Sporting Grounds in Mount Gilead, Ohio, on Sunday.

The competition allowed many of the members to break new ground in their shooting careers by not only shooting competitive sporting clays, but also Fédération Internationale de Tir aux Armes Sportive de Chasse and American Field Sporting. These two variations on sporting clays provided a different, and often beneficial, way to approach clay target shooting according to the team.

“By shooting these variants, we can gain a better knowledge of the sporting clays game as a whole, which will only help us next month,” junior Anthony LaMacchia

said.

While these two sporting clays variants will not be present at the national level, their similarity and basis in sporting clays makes them difficult enough to be good training events for the team.

“I’ve shot a lot of FITASC outside of my shooting with the team, and I think it is a great way to sharpen your skills, not only with the gun in your hands, but with your eyes and mental processing as well,” LaMacchia said.

Overall, the Chargers performed well in the FITASC event. Freshman Jessica Strasser won the ladies division, junior Thomas Rodgers tied for second place in B class, senior Barrett Moore took first in C class, and LaMacchia took first in AA class.

Freshman Will Stuart, who tied for second in the American Field Sporting event, noted the similarities of the two variants to traditional sporting clays and their benefit to the team’s training.

“The targets were definite-

Men's Basketball

CHAMPS from a1

I think the guys on my team have done an awesome job of giving me easy looks, I’ve just got a pretty easy job of finishing a lot of the times.”

A large part of the Chargers’ win was the huge boost they received from their bench. Goessler had 13 points, including three threes and a dunk, while also grabbing six rebounds.

“It was a really good feeling. Coming off the bench is really easy, playing with the starters, screening, playing defense, moving the ball,” Goessler said. “It’s a good feeling knowing when you come in, you gotta just be confident and you’ll fit right in with everyone else that’s out on the floor.”

Going into the game,

Hillsdale ranked second in the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio. On Saturday, the Chargers dished out 28 team assists, while holding their opponent to just eight.

“We are about ‘team.’ These guys are just playing team basketball, and being there for each other on both ends of the floor,” Tharp said. “When we do that, we win games, but when we don’t, when we don’t screen, or cut, or get to our gaps, it can get bad quick.”

The team’s nationally thirdranked scoring defense also played a significant role in the win. OVU’s Keon Claiborne and Cameron Shaw, who entered the game as the seventh and ninth best scorers in the G-MAC, were held to just 30 combined points. The Chargers held OVU to just one made three-pointer the entire game, with none coming in

in their pitching staff this season, which should make them a tough team to beat.

“I’m looking forward to watching our guys pitch again,” Zurawski said. “It’s been awhile since we’ve had really good pitchers. Last weekend we had six or seven guys pitch really, really well and I’m hoping they continue to produce in games that mean a little bit more.”

Men's Tennis

Senior Barrett Moore practices his shooting last fall.

Courtesy | Gwen Buchhop

By | Austin Gergens Collegian Reporter

Maryville College in St. Louis, Missouri.

“These are all regular-season games from here on out,” Theisen said. “Because the pitcher-hitter matchup is the bulk of what makes up the game, it’s constantly different. It’s hard to get an idea which team is the better team without playing at least three games because the pitching is so different.”

The Chargers are confident

The matches were much closer on Sunday. For the first time this season, the Chargers lost the doubles point, losing all three matches. Conrad and Barstow lost 6-4 in No. 1 doubles, Cimpeanu and Katz were blanked 6-0 in No. 2, and Hackman and Gilbert lost a close match 7-6(5). With the doubles point loss, the Chargers needed to win four of the 6 single matches.

“Their team completely out-energized us and was ready to dominate the net, which is something Gabe and I need to work on,” Cimpeanu said.

Cimpeanu and Katz bounced back from their doubles loss with Cimpeanu winning 7-5, 6-1 at No. 2 singles and Katz winning 7-6(6), 6-2 at No. 6 singles.

“Our loss on Sunday was definitely a humbling experience,” Cimpeanu said. “Being able to compete against such a powerful doubles team taught us how much work we need in our doubles and how to play in the future.”

Cimpeanu said he and Katz talked about their doubles loss and placed an emphasis on making sure they have enough energy for the future matches.

“It is definitely a fun and different experience playing with Katz,” Cimpeanu said.

“Considering he is a senior, he has so much more experience than me in the college competitive environment.”

Turner said Cimpeanu and Katz have been solid at No. 2 doubles so far.

“Gabe is pretty quiet and stoic in nature so he leads more by example,” Turner said. “He’s playing with a

partner who has the most extensive tournament experience of anyone on the team so Brennan is already a leader in his own right as a freshman.”

Cimpeanu said he was forced to adapt on Sunday due to his opponent Leon Kah’s strong start.

“Leon Kah had a strong serve and used that to get 5-2 on me the first set,” Cimpeanu said. “However, I realized that the balls were slowly losing their bounce and used that to my advantage in attacking his serves and his short balls.”

Turner also mentioned the need to adapt playing styles.

“It’s something that we still need to improve on,” Turner said. “Sometimes the guys need to get out of their comfort zone a bit and hit shots they aren’t used to hitting.”

Hackman and Gilbert ended up winning in three sets. Gilbert won with 6-3, 5-7, 7-5 at No. 5 singles, and Hackman came back from a 6-4 loss in the first set to win 6-3, 6-4 in the last two sets at No. 4 singles.

This weekend the Chargers travel to Grand Valley State on Saturday, Feb. 27 for a 1 p.m. showdown. After that, they host Ferris State University on Sunday at 4:30 p.m.

“We’re in the middle of a stretch where we’re playing arguably the best teams we’ll play all year, we just need to continue to play with confidence,” Turner said.

“Every year we continue to close the gap between us and these teams that are on paper supposed to be a little stronger than us. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything this weekend.”

Senior forward Davis Larson shoots over two Ohio Valley opponents on Saturday. Courtesy | Anthony Lupi

Charger

A10 February 25, 2021

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Track and Field

Hillsdale hurdlers prepare for the G-MAC Championship meet at the Hillsdale Tune Up on Saturday. Courtesy | Anthony Lupi

Records broken ahead of championship By | Meghan Schultz Collegian Reporter

Two Hillsdale College runners broke school records on Feb. 20 at the Hillsdale Tune-Up meet.

Freshman Sean Fagan broke the 60-meter hurdles record with a new personal best of 8.14 seconds, receiving a Division II provisional qualifying mark. His time was the 12th fastest in this event for DII this season and the fastest time in this event for the G-MAC this season.

“Right now a conference title is my goal, just 10 points for the team,” Fagan said. “I really think we can win conferences here, which the guys haven’t done in a long time, so I’m excited to do my part there.”

Senior Kajsa Johansson set a new school record for the 60 meter dash three weeks earlier, and broke it again this week at 7.58 seconds, 0.02 sec-

onds faster than her previous time. Her new record is the eighth fastest time of the event this season in DII. “It’s nice to see hard work pay off,” Johansson said.

“That’s always the goal, to beat yourself.”

Johansson said she hopes to score points for the team at this weekend’s championship conference.

“I think we can really blow the other teams out of the water if we can all show up like we’re supposed to,” Johansson said. “Score points where we can and leave with the title.”

The women’s distance medley team performed powerfully and won their race at 12:05.88. Sophomores Kaitlyn Rust and Judith Allison and seniors Calli Townsend and Maryssa Depies earned a provisional qualifying mark and set the new fastest time in the event in the G-MAC this season. Though their team was the only one competing

in the medley, the rest of their teammates lined up around the track to cheer them on.

“We knew it was going to be hard because we were the only team entered, so every runner was running by themselves,” Depies said. “Having competition would have helped because we’re all just a couple of seconds slow.”

Additional wins came from sophomore Dakota Stamm and sophomore Gwynne Riley, who placed first in the 200 meter dash at 25.77 seconds and the 800 meter run at 2:20.11, respectively.

In shot put, junior Nikita Maines took second with a throw of 13.84m, and freshman Katie Sayles set a new personal best in third at 12.93m. In the long jump, sophomore Emily Gerdin finished third at 5.17m.

“Everything, for the most part, that we were trying to make final preparations for, the women’s team did a really

good job with,” head coach Andrew Towne said. “I think we’re in a really good spot for this weekend.”

Hillsdale runners filled five of the top seven spots in the 60-meter dash, with Allison taking second at 9.21 seconds and freshman Grace Gottwalt finishing in third at 9.23 seconds.

Freshman Juliet Bernard also set a personal best in the weight throw when she finished in fourth with a mark of 15.78m. Fifth-year senior Alyssa Viola finished in fourth in the pole vault at 3.06m, matching her previous personal best.

“We’ve done a really good job increasingly throughout the year of focusing on ourselves and making sure that we’re doing everything we need to do to control our response and be successful,” Towne said. “Because of that, we don’t really have to do anything new this weekend. We

just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing.”

The men’s distance medley relay also had a strong performance at the meet. Freshman Micah Vanderkooi, sophomore Benu Meintjes, sophomore Ian Calvert, and senior Mark Miller won the event at 10:17.51.

Freshman Joshua Nichols won the triple jump at 13.32m and then took sixth in the long jump at 6.07m. In the pole vault, junior Ben Raffin won second at 4.94m and received a qualifying mark.

“Especially given this year, we’ve tried to really focus on that we don’t know what is going to come our way,” Towne said. “All we can do is control what we can control.”

Sophomore Charlie Andrews matched his previous personal best in the high jump at 1.89m and took third, and freshman T.J. McGinnis threw 14.29m in shot put, also coming in third.

Freshman Daugr Einarsson came in second in the 60 meter dash, setting a new personal best at 7.09 seconds.

Senior Adam Wade finished third in the 200 meter dash at 22.67 seconds.

“We’re really looking forward to this weekend,” Towne said. “Since I’ve been here, it’s probably the most prepared we’ve been on both sides to be at our best.”

The Chargers will compete in Cedarville, Ohio, this weekend at the G-MAC Championship on Feb. 26 and 27. In the 2020 indoor conference championship, the women’s team took first and the men’s team placed third.

“A year ago, nobody knew that this was going to be our last meet,” Towne said. “I think that they’ve really taken that to heart, and they’re just really grateful for the opportunity and excited to see what we can do.”

Women's Basketball

Chargers defeat OVU with two historic 100-point wins By | Tracy Wilson assistant Editor

The Hillsdale College women’s basketball team secured two victories against Ohio Valley University, 10067 at home on Feb. 20, and 109-62 at OVU on Feb. 23.

Sophomore forward Sydney Mills said the team is enthusiastic about the wins and excited to keep the streak going.

“We had been working all season to get coach Averkamp and ourselves a home win and I think it was nice to finally see our hard work pay off as we have been so close in so many other games,” Mills said.

“Going into this next week of games I know everyone on our team wants to use the momentum of that win and end the year on a win streak.”

Head coach Charlie Averkamp said his players exerted themselves and played with aggression and energy in the first quarter of Saturday’s game.

“I’m obviously very excited,” Averkamp said. “Playing at home, we really want to protect the home court and I’m just really proud of the way the team came out and attacked.”

According to Averkamp, the Chargers had lots to celebrate after their victory on

Saturday, including sophomore forward Arianna Sysum scoring a career high of 24 points.

“Ari just keeps coming a long way and her athleticism really makes her game go and we’re proud of the way she’s coming along,” Averkamp said.

Another star on the court was senior guard Jaycie Burger, who did a triple-double, which Averkamp described as unbelievably rare. Averkamp complimented her well-rounded game and her lack of turnovers in the Saturday game.

“It was very special to be able to get a triple-double on Saturday,” Burger said. “I’m thankful to have great teammates and coaches around me that make things like that possible.”

Though the team fell to Ursuline College on Feb. 18, the team still celebrated Mills achieving her career high of 34 points. Averkamp said she averaged a double-double, which he said was very impressive.

“I honestly surprised myself that I scored 34 points against Ursuline,” Mills said.

“Coach Averkamp always talks about confidence, not thinking twice when shooting and just knowing you are going to make it, and I think he has really helped me grow

in my confidence scoring this season.”

Averkamp said it has been rewarding for him to watch the team’s hard work pay off.

“The biggest thing is seeing the team find that success,” Averkamp said. “Record-wise, it’s not been the year we wanted to have but we’ve come together and seen what we need to do to be successful.

The kids are stepping up to different roles than they were in the past and it’s been really fun to watch.”

Burger said she feels great about the team’s recent successes.

“We were able to put the ball in the basket,” Burger said. “It was fun to be able to get two good wins with teammates.”

In order to qualify for the postseason, the team would have to win the game against Cedarville on Feb. 27, 1 p.m.

Averkamp said the Chargers are excited to compete again, and above all, thankful for the opportunities they’ve had to play this year.

“We enjoy being together as a group and we’re really starting to build that foundation of how we want to do things,” Averkamp said. “I’m really proud of the way the kids are buying in and I want to see them grow and continue to improve.”

Sophomore forward Ariana Sysum shoots a jumper in Satruday's game. Courtesy | Anthony Lupi

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

February 25, 2021

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Seniors Elizabeth Bachmann, Rebecca Joyce, Michaela Peine, Maggie Ryland, Teresa McNeely, and Phoebe Fink on the front porch of their home, Graceland.

Elizabeth Bachmann | Collegian

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Forged by film: Documentary about offcampus house brings friend group closer By | Regan Meyer Senior Reporter

The Graceland girls, all six of them, lounge in their living room on a Wednesday night. All is calm until one yells “Soundoff!” Cries of “one, two, three, four, five, six” echo through the house. From the other room comes the cry “seven!”

“Seven” comes from junior Jane O’Connor, who is studying across the hall.

O’Connor does not live off-campus at the Manning Street house called “Graceland,” but she might as well. She befriended the Graceland girls last semester in a most unusual way: documenting their lives on film for about four months.

It all started in September, when O’Connor enrolled in the rhetoric department’s Documentary and Nonfiction Film course.

For her final class project, O’Connor could either write a long paper or make a documentary film. She chose the latter.

“I’ve always been into filmmaking in secret. I was pretty terrified to do anything creative or expressive.

But, the film, entitled “Graceland,” wasn’t always about Graceland. O’Connor had planned to make a film about a local musician in her home state of Maryland.

It was one joke that changed her mind.

“I was sitting on the

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O’Connor said.

Though O’Connor went back home to start filming for her original plan, she couldn’t stop thinking about the potential of a Graceland documentary.

“The whole time all I could think about was the potential for this documentary about an off-campus house and people I’m friends with,” she said.

What began in jest soon turned into reality and O’Connor began filming mid-September.

“What eventually pushed me over the edge was even if the film is terrible, worst case scenario, they have family footage of their last semester,” O’Connor said.

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Piano instructor Debbi Wyse is retiring.

Courtesy | Debbi Wyse

“It’s intimate. It’s realistic.

That’s exactly what it’s like to live here.”

This class was an opportunity to make filmmaking a part of school,” O’Connor said.

porch with Maggie and Bekah. Maggie jokingly said, ‘You should make a documentary about us,’”

See Film B2

Brianna Lambrecht and John Szczotka in “Light in the Piazza.” Courtesy | Anthony Lupi

‘Light in the Piazza’ musical this weekend By | Megan Williams Collegian Reporter The Tower Players have begun their performance of “Light in the Piazza,” a romantic musical that takes place in Florence, Italy.

Directed by Tory Matsos, adapted as a Tony award-winning musical from a 1960’s novella of the same name, follows the travels and difficulties of Margaret Johnson (Michaela Stiles) and her daughter Clara (Brianna Lambrecht) in Florence, Italy.

The musical begins when the mother and daughter arrive in Florence on a sightseeing trip. Almost immediately, Clara becomes smitten with Fabrizio (John Szczotka), a young Italian man. However, Clara’s mother attempts to steer her daughter away from a relationship with Fabrizio and reveals her very protective nature. To her mother’s chagrin, Clara and Fabrizio continue to see each other, meet each other’s families, and eventually fall in love.

“Light in the Piazza” focuses on different types of love and how those can help or hurt the recipients of that

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affection. Margaret Johnson struggles to find the balance between protecting Clara and allowing her to grow and mature on her own.

“All of Margaret Johnson’s actions are for the purpose of protecting Clara and giving her the best life,” Stiles said. “But she realizes that in order to truly provide for Clara, she has to relinquish control and allow her daughter to fulfill her role.”

On the surface, the musical appears to be a simple, Disney-like love story between two young kids.

Clara and Fabrizio meet, overcome struggle, and fall in love. Yet the story contrasts this innocence with the realities of how people fall in and out of love, struggle to create connection, and fail to see the beauty and blessings that are right in front of them. This is not a simple presentation of young love, but rather a deep-dive into the difficulties and daily-struggles that come with learning to care for oneself and others.

“When I first read through the script, I realized that we had a huge task

in front of us: to sell this romance,” said senior John Szczotka. “Between the book and how it’s written and the music, it’s all there.

It’s a beautiful story, but in terms of how a Hillsdale audience will react to it, it’s going to come down to how cynical people are.”

Not only were the Tower Players tasked with presenting such a nuanced story in two hours, some also had to learn how to speak and sing an incredibly complicated score.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with the music department for the last several years, and I’ve been made very aware of how skilled so many of our students are,” Matsos said. “So when I was asked if I would like to direct the musical this year, I said, ‘Why don’t we do a really difficult one?’ I knew our students could deliver, and they absolutely have.”

Due to the difficulty of the score, music teachers Emily and Mark Douglass assisted the cast with learning their pieces.

“Mark Douglass is conducting our pit orchestra.

He’s a fantastic musician,

he’s brilliant to work with,” Stiles said. “He and his wife Emily are pushing us musicians to be the best we possibly can and we appreciate them so much.”

To help with the difficulty of the music, the pit orchestra has been playing alongside the actors since they began rehearsals.

“The pit is incredible,” Szczotka said. “This is the first show I’ve ever done where we’ve had rehearsals with the pit all the way through the process. Usually, just one day before you go into tech week, you sit down and do all the music with the orchestra, but we’ve been doing that three weeks out.”

Along with the Douglasses, students received help from Lorenzo Bonaiti, who teaches Beginning Italian. Because the show takes place in Florence, Italy, several students’ lines are written mostly in Italian, meaning they had to learn to speak, pronounce, and sing these Italian scripts.

“For some of us, the accent came very naturally.

I was a bit slower, but Mr. Bonaiti recorded a Zoom See Piazza B2

Piano instructor to retire after her ‘mosaic’ career By | Tracy Wilson Assistant Editor

Teacher of piano Debbi Wyse added one of the last tiles to the “mosaic” of her Hillsdale music career last weekend as she played a duo concert-- also entitled “Mosaic”-- with pianist Kristi Gautsche.

The name was fitting, as the story of a musician as talented as Debbi Wyse is best told through a mosaic-- a collection of memories and details that come together to show the whole picture. The first tile of her mosaic goes back to when she was just seven years old, when her parents bought her a new Wurlitzer piano.

“I had a fantastic first teacher,” Wyse said. “She was quite strict, and I think she recognized early on that I could read music really well.”

From then on, her teacher encouraged her to sight read, play at church, and even accompany a soloist by the time

she was a seventh grader. She was playing the organ as early as the fifth grade.

“We had daily Mass and a friend of mine and I alternated days,” Wyse said. “We would get to church and up on the board would be the hymn numbers for the day. We were just supposed to play.”

Wyse went on to earn her B.A. in Music at Bowling Green State University in 1975. Shortly after entering the working world, Wyse and her husband auditioned for the Hillsdale Arts Chorale.

They sang with that organization for 30 years after moving to Hillsdale in February of 1980.

“That first year, the accompanist for that group was Professor von Sydow,” Wyse said. “I got invited to play a duet accompaniment for the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes with him. After the program,

See Wyse B2

In Brief: Chamber Concert Saturday By | Liam Bredberg Sports Editor The Howard Music Department will be taking a new route from its usual orchestra concert held during Parents Weekend, and will host a chamber ensemble student showcase on Saturday in Christ Chapel. Nine small groups will perform works by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and others.

Senior violist Trevor Vogel said that he sees the concert as an opportunity for the ensembles to get more exposure than they are used to.

“I think it’s great that Hillsdale’s chamber ensembles are getting more exposure on a Parents Weekend than they normally do,” Vogel said.

“These groups will have a larger audience than they’re used to, and it’s especially nice for concert goers who might not

have the chance to hear chamber music often.”

Vogel will be playing as a member of ensembles playing “Variation IX from the Enigma Variations,” by Edward Elgar, an English composer; and “Rhapsody on Folk Songs Harmonized by Bela Bartok,” by Tibor Serly, a Hungarian composer.

Last semester’s cancellation of the chamber orchestra’s performance of Handel’s “Messiah” and other precautions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic forced the college to revamp the schedule of the orchestra, freeing up parents weekend for the smaller ensembles.

The chamber ensembles will perform in Christ Chapel on Saturday at 4 p.m. The event will not be ticketed and admission is free for students and parents.

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Ad Astra market vends quality coffee, baked goods on Saturday mornings By | Aubrey Gulick Collegian Reporter

The first smell is the deep, rich smell of coffee, reminiscent of lazy, warm winter mornings.

The second is the sweet smell of cookies, recalling old-world holidays and childhood.

The walls are lined by sporadic bookshelves, holding classics like The Illiad, Romeo and Juliet, and The Scarlet Letter. Little green plants line the windows and sit on top of the bookshelf next to the door.

Welcome to Ad Astra, a once-a-week market at 105 N. Broad Street in Hillsdale, which hosts vendors selling coffee, pastries, spaghetti, fresh bread, and any other odd assortment of goods, run

by Patrick and Kristi Whalen every Saturday from 9 a.m. till noon.

While the two constants at the Market are always cookies and coffee, for the last two weeks, during their Valentine’s Day market, there were as many as six vendors.

Giana Green, who sells cookies and spaghetti at Ad Astra, has always wanted to be a vendor at the farmers market but was never sure what she should sell.

serve the community.

“I just fell in love with Hillsdale and just wanted to serve the people of Hillsdale,” Green said. “Everything about Hillsdale, I truly love.”

After twelve years in the Marine Corp, Kristi and Patrick Whalen came back to Hillsdale, which they said they consider home.

“We’ve spent the last twelve years in fourteen different places, and he got out, and it’s always been our dream to move home,” Kristi said. “When an opportunity came up for him to work at the college, we totally took it.”

When they moved to Hillsdale from Kansas, they brought Ad Astra and their love for coffee with them.

“I developed a taste for a quality of coffee I couldn’t afford to buy,” Patrick Whalen said. “I got into really expensive coffee while I was in the military because I could afford it. And then I got out and went to grad school and wasn’t able to afford it anymore, and was like, ‘Well, this isn’t gonna work.’”

A friend introduced them to the roasting process, which they initially began in a popcorn maker. Now they are producing between 30 and 50 pounds of coffee a week — five pounds of coffee roughly

occurring in the bean.

“My goal is to unlock the flavor potential in the bean then to get out of the way and let the bean do the talking,” Patrick said.

The light roast coffee sold at Ad Astra is different from dark roast coffees typically bought at stores.

“A lot of the coffee that you’re buying in the store is dark roast because they don’t want you to have that, so they just roast the crap out of it and then sell it for cheap,” said Kristi. “They’re also taking coffees from all different regions, throwing them all together and roasting them all.”

While the consumers have developed a taste for the burnt flavor of dark roast coffees frequently found at large supermarkets, there are ethical problems associated with the market.

“Our coffee is probably pricier than what people are used to buying. Part of that is we’re doing specialty coffee — the top 20% of coffee quality in the world,” Kristi Whalen said, “And we’re making sure people are actually getting paid for it.”

Coffee can be an exploitative business and may use child and slave labor, said xx.

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someone came up to me and talked to me and said, ‘You did a really great job. Are you interested in a job at Hillsdale College?’”

Her first official title at Hillsdale College was staff accompanist, which she did for 11 years.

“No phone, no office, no computer, no coat rack,” Wyse said. “I had to carry my stuff up three flights of stairs. It was very different in those days.”

Despite those minor challenges, her best memory from those first years, she said, was of the Chamber Choir putting on Madrigal dinners in the 1980s.

“We dressed up in Elizabethan period costumes and presented a program in Dow A and B where I got to play harpsichord,” Wyse said. “They had a suckling pig and flaming desserts and things like that.”

Other favorite memories of hers, she said, include accompanying the Chamber Choir at a noontime concert for the Pentagon, playing for Margaret Thatcher in Florida, and co-conducting the choir’s performance with Professor Holleman during the chapel dedication.

“I was privileged to conduct the singers as an encore for a packed audience,” Wyse said. “It was definitely one of my biggest thrills.”

Wyse said another important part of her career has been the three decades spent performing duo concerts with pianist Kristi Gautsche.

“We began our duo career in the old Phillips Auditorium where Plaster Auditorium now stands,” Wyse said.

“One of my best memories was performing for a standing-room-only audience in Markel Auditorium. Since then we have always performed two concerts in a weekend.”

On a day-to-day basis, she teaches private lessons during the mornings and afternoons before going to accompany

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the choir. She says one of the best parts of her workday is playing in the chapel.

“It’s a beautiful space,” Wyse said.

Wyse said apart from accompanying choir rehearsals, the most rewarding part of her job is working with students and seeing their progress.

“It’s knowing that these

“Whoever comes in next has some very large shoes to fill.” kids are able to make music in new ways, experience music, have a love for music, and take it into their adult years,” Wyse said, “And really enjoy it as a hobby if they’re not going to do it professionally.”

One of those students, senior Elyse Robidoux, said she started taking lessons with Wyse as a sophomore when a friend recommended Wyse as a piano teacher.

“She’s one of the best teachers I’ve ever had,” Robidoux said. “She’s pretty incredible and has brought me to a point of excellence I couldn’t have reached on my own.”

Another one of Wyse’s students, senior Micah Wiley, said she has enjoyed taking piano lessons with Wyse for all eight semesters of her time at Hillsdale.

Courtesy | Anthony Lupi

Kristi and Patrick Whalen moved to Hillsdale and started their own coffee roaster company, Ad Astra. Collegian | Aubrey Gulick

“I made fresh pasta for my husband and he was like, ‘Wow! I can’t believe people haven’t eaten this before,’ and I was like, ‘I’m bringing pasta to Hillsdale.’”

Green started her company, Mangia Italian Bakery, and began selling spaghetti and cookies at the Farmer’s Market in Hillsdale last summer. When the Farmer’s Market closed for the season, Kristi Whalen invited her to sell her pastries and spaghetti at Ad Astra.

As a 2017 Hillsdale grad, Green always knew she wanted to stay in Hillsdale and

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She began with trying a cinema verite style film, where the filmmaker does not interact with her subject. Her goal was to create an overall story arc about the house with each of the other girls having their own mini storylines.

O’Connor soon realized that this style she was striving for was too difficult to execute.

“Technical issues started to impede. I was making a lot of mistakes. And, I didn’t plan well enough for cinema verite,” she said.

It also took her subjects some time to get used to filming. For the first few weeks, the residents of Graceland were painfully aware of the camera. Senior Phoebe Fink said there were a few times in the beginning that were a little uncomfortable.

“Jane was filming me putting away dishes. I felt like such an idiot walking back and forth between the sink and the cabinet,” Fink said. “It felt so uncomfort-

every twelve minutes.

The quality and taste of coffee depend on the location the bean is from, and on the roast of the coffee.

“It’s a lot like wine, where the grape is from, depending on how much rainfall, the altitude, the soil the plant was actually grown in. Those impart to the bean, to the seed, a unique flavor,” Patrick said. “Which is why a bean from Guatemala tends to taste different than, say, Ethiopia.”

The Whalens’ primarily focus on producing light roast coffee, which tends to bring out the flavors naturally

able at first, but we got used to it.”

O’Connor filmed constantly over the next few months, learning from her mistakes as she went.

As she filmed, she saw the opportunity for a meta film about her shortcomings with the filmmaking process. O’Connor said she was inspired by the documentary “Sherman’s March,” in which the filmmaker travels around the south randomly filming people’s lives.

“I was really inspired by that. He captured ordinary people who aren’t famous or anything, and I made it my goal with the Graceland documentary.”

O’Connor said that she soon realized there wasn’t much of a cohesive story, so she decided to make the documentary about what she learned throughout the filming process. But, the film also explores how O’Connor befriended her subjects, the girls of Graceland.

getting paid enough frequently turn to produce drugs like cocaine on the side, Kristi said.

“What we’re trying to do is part education and part business,” Patrick said. “If what happened to me happens to more people, then more people will discover, wait a minute, there’s so much more to coffee than just McDonalds or Starbucks. I need to find a specialty coffee roaster, especially a local one that engages in ethical sourcing, so we’re not exploiting farmers in the third world. And, here we are.”

“I did form a real relationship with them.

Hanging out at the house was probably the highlight of my semester,” O’Connor said. “By making a documentary about my mistakes, I accidentally stumbled into my original goal.”

The Graceland girls have all watched the documentary — they even hosted a “red carpet premiere” in early February where they invited friends for a special viewing. And they say it’s an accurate depiction of their lives.

“It’s intimate. It’s realistic. That’s exactly what it’s like to live here,” senior Michaela Peine said.

Senior Teresa McNeely said that she enjoyed getting to know O’Connor over the course of filming.

“It’s great to have this footage,” McNeely said.

“But the best thing that came out of it is how Jane became the 7th member of Graceland. She’s such an important part of our lives.”

Piazza from B1

meeting of himself pronouncing every single Italian word that’s in the show,” Szczotka said. “I watched

that a couple of times and was able to get my Italian nailed down.”

The musical originally scheduled performances Wednesday through Sunday of this week, but due to

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“She has made me a better artist,” Wiley said. “She wants me to tell a story with the music and gives me just the right balance of compliments and critiques which is hard to do as a music teacher.”

Wiley said one of her favorite memories with Wyse was when the two accompanied an opera workshop together.

“Debbi was a great leader and I learned how to follow her and her musicality,” Wiley said. “We made a great team.”

Robidoux said her favorite memory of Wyse was when she still was able to give lessons despite being stuck in Peru during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis.

“She had to call me from her son’s iPad and we had to negotiate the time zone differences,” Robidoux said. “She kept such a peppy and upbeat attitude through all of it, even though it was absolutely ridiculous because I was sitting in my living room playing piano and she was in another country because she couldn’t leave.”

Robidoux added with a smile, “Today, she made me a cup of tea.”

Wiley said Wyse is very warm and caring toward her students.

“Always, after my lessons, she asks me how my day is going and how my week was,” Wiley said.

After retiring from working at the college full time, Wyse said she plans to enjoy life on her farm and spend time with her grandchildren.

“I’m worried that I’m going to be bored,” Wyse said, laughing. “But I definitely want more family time.”

Having been an integral part of the music department for so long, Robidoux said, her constant presence on campus will be missed.

“She keeps us going and everyone adores her because they know without her, we wouldn’t be here,” Robidoux said. “Whoever comes in next has some very large shoes to fill.”

COVID-19 restrictions, the Courtesy | Anthony Lupi theater can only operate at 20% capacity. Weekend shows were sold out three weeks before opening night and the rest of the shows quickly followed suit.

Wanting to give everyone an opportunity to experience “Light in the Piazza,” the cast and crew decided to open their final dress rehearsal to the public.

“Every other show I’ve done here, if we had to open it up to dress rehearsals, it would’ve been a nightmare,” Szczotka said. “But with ‘Light in the Piazza,’ we have been so on top of our game that we are ready to go. We can do this and feel comfortable.”

The Graceland girls pose holding Jane O’Connor, their documentarian.

Elizabeth Bachmann | Collegian

Features

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Hillsdale bids ‘Grotto’ family farewell

February 25, 2021 B3 Luke Vayder works as an EMT in Reading.

Courtesy | Luke Vayder

Students kickstart medical career By | Allison Schuster Associate Editor

By | Meghan Schultz Collegian Reporter The first floor of Tim and Peri Rose Force’s home is made for guests. The shelves, lined with spiritual books, are easy to reach and hang above comfy couches. Mugs sit beside a kettle brewing hot water, waiting for company.

Their home, called the Grotto, is a haven for Hillsdale students to spend time in its Eucharistic adoration chapel or enjoy Catholic Society’s community and events. This will be the couple’s last year serving as directors of college ministry and as guardians of the Blessed Sacrament for St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.

“They want to help us in any way they can,” said sophomore Gretchen Birzer, a Catholic Society outreach board member. “They really do put every effort in to make sure that we are growing. They’re loving and provide such a beautiful home for us.”

Tim and Peri Rose have been pillars of Hillsdale’s Catholic community since 2017, when they graduated from Hillsdale and moved down Union Street from the Suites to the Grotto.

“It can be sort of hard to know, ‘What exactly does giving first fruits back to the Lord mean?’” Tim said.

“But how about in the most literal sense? Whatever is first, give to him.”

Tim said he hopes this has made him a more generous person.

“It might become less obvious moving forward what our first fruits are,” Tim said. “But it was so obvious in this case. How about our youth; how about our first

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ho called Meridian, which has seen many Californian transplants.

“It’s weird because I don’t want to complain about Californians. It’s not that they’re all coming in and voting 100% Democrat,” she said.

“It’s OK if you move here, just don’t try and change it. The people in Idaho are a particular way here — they have a sense of being from Idaho and not just anywhere else.”

But the constant development and influx of people might change that sense of identity, Connelly said.

“We’re being ungenerous if we say all the people moving there are just going to vote the same way they did in California,” she said. “How-

Tim and Peri Rose Force opened their home, the Grotto, to Hillsdale students.

Courtesy | Peri Rose Force

year out of college; how about this energy that we have? Why not give that?”

Before attending Hillsdale, Tim and Peri Rose both grew up in Colorado Springs and attended the same school, kindergarten through twelfth grade.

“Most of our favorite teachers were Hillsdale grads, and so that was a really compelling reason to come to Hillsdale,” Peri Rose said.

They began dating their sophomore year of high school and later married after their junior year of college. Their daughter Marina was born in October 2017, and their second child, Bruce, was born in October 2019.

Both studied English, but Peri Rose minored in classical education and Tim in Latin and economics.

Tim dove into involvement with Catholic Society and became president as a junior, splitting the leadership team into an executive and outreach board. He also helped the club begin to emphasize daily prayer opportunities.

“I kind of stopped doing my homework,” Tim said, laughing.

Tim was raised Catholic, while Peri Rose converted to Catholicism in 2017. She struggled with her faith and became “essentially agnostic” her sophomore year of college, until she began attending Mass with Tim and friends toward the end of the year.

“Finally, there was just this moment,” Peri Rose said.

“There were lots of little things along the way, but finally we were at Tim’s aunt’s house for spring break. She’s not Catholic, and he was explaining the communion of saints to her.”

As she listened to him, Peri Rose said, she thought of how amazing and perfect his description was. “Go Tim!” she thought.

“And then I was like, ‘Oh, shoot. I believe that,’” Peri Rose said. “I started looking back and taking inventory of my interior life. And I was like, ‘Oh no … I believe a lot of this stuff.’”

After discerning heavily for months, she told Tim about her plan to convert on the way to one of his club soccer games. Because of Peri Rose’s conversion and their marriage, she said she felt their senior year was radically different than everyone else’s.

Once they graduated and moved into the Grotto, they began to experience a multitude of graces from living with a Eucharistic adoration chapel just downstairs.

“Every time you walk past the chapel door, you’re confronted with your poverty,” Tim said.

Thursdays have always been Tim’s favorite day. He takes time off from his job in construction to grocery shop with his family for Convivium, a weekly event that includes a home-cooked meal, prayer, and a guest speaker.

“I watch people come here who I have so much respect for in the way they live their prayer life,” Tim said.

They’re spiritually nourished by the community of students and love to watch the freshman grow into seniors.

“It’s amazing,” Peri Rose said. “All the good things, all the gold that was in you when you were a freshman is still there but polished now.”

However, their life also lacks privacy, Peri Rose said.

As an introverted, postpartum mother, she considered

leaving after their first year.

“It’s super fun,” Peri Rose said. “But our social life is forced on us, so that’s really hard for me sometimes.”

Balancing being ministers at the Grotto and the parents of young children is both difficult and fulfilling, Tim said. At some point, the two roles begin to conflict with each other, and one needs to be prioritized.

That’s why this year will be their last at the Grotto.

They plan to move back to Colorado Springs, where both of their families live.

By opening their home, the Forces continue to impact students in their generous hospitality.

“As a Catholic, the Grotto has provided such a beautiful community for me,” Birzer said. “It’s so amazing to have the Blessed Sacrament available to us, and they support us in our faith so much by providing everything that they do.”

Junior and outreach board member Brandt Siegfried said the Grotto is a refuge.

“Having access to family on a regular basis is a game changer,” Siegfried said. “Even though to have the most conducive environment for learning we need to be individuals, you cannot replace the role of family.”

Tim said time given to our Lord is always given back to us a much more refined and beautiful thing.

“It’s just amazing to experience the smiles and tears that come in the front door,” Tim said. “There’s a lot of ordinary graces, but they’re all due to our Lord’s presence here. People wouldn’t be crossing our threshold in any other way.”

ever, I don’t see the growth as sustainable because the developments are not quality work. They’re eating up a lot of the light agricultural land.

The bigger the city and the sprawling suburbs get, the more you get the attitude that you don’t know your neighbor.”

Connelly also said the massive growth in red state cities also means that more conservative, but smaller counties end up getting the short end of the stick.

“You have these old established towns that are very small, who are just going to get overridden,” she said. “If the city goes blue and the state goes blue, they aren’t even living near Boise and they have to live with the consequences.”

This is a problem that

many red states have to deal with, especially places like Texas, which many predict will turn blue in the next few years.

In a Newsweek article about this kind of regional movement, two professors analyzed migration to the South and its political consequences. The two found that “A 10% increase in newcomers from the Northeast to a southern county increases the Democratic presidential vote in 2008–2012 by approximately five percentage points. In the 2016 election, 11 states were decided by five points or less.”

Political consequences aside, the economic impact is noticeable to Hillsdale students and their families.

“The current infrastructure can’t support the num-

ber of people coming here.

Roads are super clogged. Our surrounding prairies have been covered with McMansions. Prices have gone up a lot,” Kaitz said.

Junior Michael Fleischer, who wished not to be named, said his family moved from Chicago to Denver to escape the Democratic policies and general corruption there.

However, after just nine years in Denver, things have changed.

“When we first moved to Denver, the downtown was safe. No such thing as rush hour traffic. Crime was low.

Every neighborhood was on the up and up. It was paradise,” he said. “Now, constant traffic. Constant smell of weed. Per capita highest rate of automobile deaths. So many homeless. You could

A typical weekend for junior Luke Vayder includes a 24-hour shift working to potentially save lives.

“If you don’t do well on minimal sleep, don’t do it,” Vayder said.

Vayder warned anyone considering any role in medicine — as he plans to pursue throughout his life — that sleep can’t be a priority. Sometimes he works up to 48 hours in a single shift. While he said he can technically sleep between emergency calls, there’s no guarantee of free time.

Joined by junior Lucas Feddersen, Vayder works as an Emergency Medical Transport for the Reading Emergency Unit, serving the city of Hillsdale.

An EMT responds to any kind of medical transport emergency working through a private ambulance company. Assessing whether the situation is life or death is step one.

From there, the EMT determines if the patient will die without immediate hospital care, or if he can stay and receive help at the scene. Feddersen said he and others in the field refer to it as “stay-and-play” or “load-and-go.”

“If it isn’t that important, I can play stick around and do a little more of assessment, but if it’s load-andgo, if I don’t get them to the hospital as soon as possible, they might die.”

Most people don’t realize how much time an EMT spends waiting or driving around. Feddersen began his work as an EMT this summer back home in California, where he said much of his work was non-urgent medical transport. EMTs work in pairs: one drives the vehicle and one remains with the patient in back.

Feddersen once drove a woman from a hospital to a rehabilitation facility two hours away just to drop her off and drive two hours back. He said he ensures people have the medical supplies and transportation they need.

“Some people make jokes that we’re just a glorified Uber ride,” he said.

Inspired by the career fields, both chose to become EMTs because of their long-term goals. Feddersen’s initial motivation to work as an EMT was to fulfill the basic requirement to become a firefighter. Now, it is a step in the process toward becoming a physician’s assistant, for which most programs require 1000 to 2000 hours of medical work.

According to Feddersen, people are attracted to find needles on the street. It’s turned into Portland.”

Fleischer went on to say that his family witnessed this downturn in several ways.

“The first sign was the time that we had put up a Romney sign. I came out to get the paper in the morning and I saw a muddy track through our yard with tire tracks over the sign. We had people drive over our lawn to run it over,” he said.

The great increase in population has also meant that Denver’s growth as a unique place in America has been stunted, Fleischer said.

“Because Denver is such a new city, it never had the time to grow into itself and get a real character like other American cities,” he said.

“Now you have this influx of people making that growth

serve as EMTs for a mix of reasons. While many use it to go further in the medical field, often to become a paramedic, Feddersen saw some who felt called specifically to take on that position.

“I think it’s mostly a stepping stone into something else,” he said. “But there was a guy who was 40 years old who was a bartender his whole life, and COVID-19 affected him so much that he decided, ‘I’m going to be an EMT.’ So people use it for all sorts of different things.”

Vayder, however, said he has known he wants to go to medical school for as long as he can remember.

In awe of his father’s work as an emergency physician, he began volunteering at his local hospital in Wisconsin at the age of 14.

“I’ve always wanted to do something in this kind of emergency medicine field, and it was my dad who gave me the idea to do it while I was in high school. He just said to me one day, ‘You should go to EMT school.’ I said, ‘Oh, okay. Sounds good.’ So I did. I’m very much following in his footsteps.”

Much of Vayder’s work here, he said, deals with accidents in the nursing home.

“I know on TV you see a lot of car accidents and heart attacks — and those kinds of things happen — but the majority of your day is nursing home calls.

So it’s just old people that get sick in nursing homes.

It’s in a lot of their protocols to just call 911 and have the ambulance respond and take them into the hospital.”

Vayder got trained before coming to college, while Feddersen only recently got involved. After receiving his California and national certifications, Feddersen spent last semester completing Michigan’s certification process.

By learning biology and exercise science throughout the week and employing that knowledge in medical emergencies on the weekends, their studies complement their work.

Both said their work is driven by a need to help.

“This is a quote that my dad tells me frequently about emergency medicine: ‘We are here to help those who either are unable or unwilling to help themselves,”’ Vayder said.

“So, it is gratifying. In that way, it is you’re helping someone who is either unwilling or incapable of helping themselves. But the real gratifying parts are when you actually make a tremendous difference in someone’s life.” difficult. Close to a million people moved to the Denver area every year since we moved there.”

The greater tragedy, though, is that the middle space in between a megapolis and the middle of nowhere is getting smaller.

“You can’t just move to this nice in-between place because in two years it’s going to be built up. We have some friends who have really moved out to the country, but then you have a lot of tradeoffs because then you’re not close to anything,” Fleischer said. “It’s really hurting a lot of American cities. Taking a lot of beautiful small towns and putting them on this pedestal of being a safe haven and it’s going to ruin them, too.”

Features

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

February 25, 2021

B4

Senior Saige Connelly grew up in rural Boise, Idaho. Courtesy | Saige Connelly

Don’t take it out on rural America.

By | Emma Cummins Collegian Reporter From the increase of “Bernie” bumper stickers to the constant smell of marijuana in the streets, some Hillsdale students are finding their home states descending into what Assistant Professor of History Miles Smith calls “neoliberal nothingness.”

A certain demographic shift has become visible as many flee blue states such as California or Oregon for red states with lower taxes and greater economic growth. Author Kristin Tate calls it the “liberal invasion of Red state America.”

Trends show that many blue staters are moving to Arizona, Colorado, and coastal southern states such as North Carolina and Georgia.

“They move because of lower taxes, lower cost of living, and less governmental overreach,” sophomore Ashley Kaitz said. “But they don’t seem to be able to put two and two together.”

Kaitz and her family are originally from San Francisco and were part of the first waves to flee to Idaho. Kaitz said her family adjusted in their small paradise of Coeur d’Alene because they had the same values, but for others it’s a different story.

“We saw a lot of bumper stickers that say ‘Blue girl, Red state,’” she said. “Why

self, but you’re not willing to figure out why the place you moved into is different. They

“The current infrastructure can’t support the number of people coming here. Roads are super clogged. Our surrounding prairies have been covered with McMansions.” are you here then? Why did you move? You want to maintain everything about your-

have the mindset that they need to come in and save us, but also enjoy all our bene-

fits.”

Smith, who coined the term ‘neoliberal nothingness,’ said he is the last generation to have an accent particular to the locale, which in his case in Salisbury, North Carolina. Smith can trace his heritage to the first Jamestown settlers of the late 17th century.

“I was in a restaurant in North Carolina and a woman with a very clear New Jersey accent asked me where I got my accent from. And I said, “Here, where did you get yours from?’”

Mobility, he said, is not something his family values.

“I grew up in the same town my father and grandfa-

ther grew up in. It wouldn’t have occurred to them to move across the country for a job,” he said.

The kinds of people who move to red states tend to lack cultural heritage, noted Smith.

“There’s this sense that they view themselves as American, but a kind of broad, middle American Karenism,” he said. “People move somewhere and they ask why isn’t this like x,y,z.

Well this isn’t just some broad, neoliberal nothingness. It’s a different locale.”

Senior Saige Connelly lives in a rural part of Ida-

Rural B3

In stormy times, McCormick sails away

By | Carmel Kookogey Editor-in-chief Emma McCormick ’19 is “exactly the sort of person” to buy a sailboat, move to Florida, and live in a marina, according to Clara Johsens ’19. And that’s exactly what she did.

McCormick, who majored in economics at Hillsdale and works as a financial analyst for General Motors in Detroit, grew restless working remotely during the pandemic. Having worked from home since March 2020, McCormick, founder of the Outdoor Adventures Club at Hillsdale, began to plan her next adventure.

“She was visiting me in D.C. in October, and it was so funny because the entire time she was super focused on this idea of buying a sailboat and moving to Florida,” Johsens said. “It was definitely one of those things where we all thought it would be cool, but that was it. And then she actually did it. So then of course we all had to go visit her.”

In September, GM told its employees they would work remotely until July 2021. For McCormick, that was the push she needed to pull the trigger.

“I had had plans during the summer, and I had plans in the fall — I was visiting a bunch of different friends.

But I had zero plans for 2021,” McCormick recounted.

After Christmas, she canceled her lease, put the majority of her belongings in storage, and moved down to St. Petersburg, Florida to start her life in a new home — a 25-foot Freedom sailboat with a single main sail. Last weekend, Johsens, along with Lauren Sheard ’19, Catherine Howard ’19, and Kaitlin Makuski ’19, came from all over the country to stay with McCormick in her sailboat for a four-day weekend.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to spend the winter in cold, gray Detroit,’” McCormick said. “‘I want to try something different.’”

“Try something different” is a bit of a motto for McCormick. She ran an Iron

Man after her freshman and sophomore years. Last summer, she ran 100 miles across the Idaho Panhandle.

Johsens recounted how she and McCormick became friends when, one weeknight in the Mossey Library as a sophomore, Johsens found cheap tickets to Paris, and McCormick said “yes” to a European adventure without hesitation.

“All of us were unsurprised when she decided to move to a sailboat, because she’s run out of insane, physical feats to accomplish,” Johsens said with a laugh.

Twenty-five feet isn’t a lot of space for five girls, especially on a sailboat that only sleeps four. Catherine Howard, only 5’1’ tall, said she couldn’t quite stand fully upright in the hold. The girls originally planned to sleep in a hotel, but Howard said since she and Sheard are “pretty tiny,” they ended up sharing a bench-bed so all five of them could all spend the night together.

“Obviously, it’s a pretty simple, minimal lifestyle, but she seems so happy just being there,” Howard said.

McCormick wasn’t in the sailing club at Hillsdale, and she didn’t grow up sailing either. In fact, the first time she sailed was after graduation, when she moved to Detroit and joined a racing crew.

“It’s small for five people to stay on, but it’s a pretty large boat,” Howard said.

“When we went out sailing, she was directing us, guiding us, teaching us how to put up the sail. It was really crazy, but she loved it and was really excited to share all of the sailing knowledge that she’d gained.”

Her move to Florida definitely made waves, McCormick said.

“Most people I talked to back in Michigan thought I was pretty crazy,” McCormick said. “And my parents did too. Here, though, almost everyone knows or knows of at least one person who lives on a boat. It’s a lot more common down here.”

A native of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, McCormick started from square one when she

docked her sailboat alongside about 600 slips in the marina in Tampa Bay. But being the only person she knows for miles around isn’t uncharted territory for her.

“I didn’t know anyone when I moved here,” McCormick said. “But I didn’t know anyone when I moved to Detroit, either, or when I came to Hillsdale.”

McCormick estimated 150 people in the marina live aboard their boats full time, from couples to families with kids to retired folks.

“It’s been fun to get to meet them,” McCormick

said. “We go sailing together, and we’ll help each other with projects on our boats.

And it’s interesting; I really enjoy hearing peoples’ stories of why they’re doing it. What brought them here?

They’re from all over.”

For more than a few of them, what brought them down was the global turn to remote work and school for the foreseeable future.

Johsens recounted conversations she had one night over margaritas, chips, and guacamole, with some of McCormick’s friends at the marina. One family, a South-

“The Badaka” takes a ride off the coast of Florida.

Courtesy | Emma McCormick

west pilot with his wife and kids, has become pretty good friends with McCormick, Johsens said.

“They just started homeschooling, bought a Catamaran, and are living at the marina,” Johsens said. “There were definitely a lot more people living there than I expected.”

When hurricane season comes in August, and it’s dangerous to be on the water, many marina residents will simply dock somewhere else — like one family Johsens talked to, who planned to relocate to the Bahamas.

During business hours McCormick is still working remotely from the slip, though on weekends she’ll take trips out on the bay — whether that’s for a short ride or for a six-hour, 12-mile Odyssey just depends on the day.

“I don’t want to lose my job, of course,” McCormick said. “I have to be back by July, unless they change their mind. So at this point, I’m kind of thinking the end of May is when I’ll head back to Michigan.”

(Top) Cooking aboard the Badaka is compact and battoned down.

(Bottom) McCormick sails near the city. Courtesy | Emma McCormick