WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week in Review: April 3, 2025

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Catherine Maxwell joins to discuss President Trump's appointment of a Hillsdale Alumnus, and her recent trip to the local christian rodeo. Jillian Parks discusses her opinion piece on her post-grad plans, and Tayte Christensen enlightens everyone on Hillsdale's recent blackout.

Welcome to the Collegion Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Here are your host, Caroline Kurt, Thomas McKenna, and Coleman Rowner. Welcome to The Collegion Weekend Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your host, Caroline Kurt. And Thomas McKenna. And today we'll be talking with news editor, Catherine Maxwell, about a Trump appointment of a Hillsdale grad to a top. Justice position and her trip to the Christian rodeo in Hillsdale County. Then we'll be speaking with Gillian Parks, this paper's editor-in-chief, about her two stories in city news and an opinion

about going home after graduation. And finally, we'll speak with Tate Christensen, one of the assistant news editors, about a blackout on campus Sunday night. But first, we're starting with some of our top stories on the front page. Now, two of these stories we're going to get to in a minute, one of those being the power outage and the other being the story in the New York Times about Hillsdale 2012 grad Elliot Geiser, going to this top Justice Department position.

But another piece of news is that the college has hired a new marketing professor. A man named Neil Watson is going to be an instructor of marketing next semester in the economics, business, and accounting department.

We also have a story about Dr. Arne, the college is president, going on TV and Twitter, to talk about the college and especially the dismantling of the Department of Education. And then,

we have a little story at the bottom of the page about this semester's polium fellow, Tunku Verida Rajan, and his speech on India. He also taught a polium class, which I took this past week. He's a contributor to the Wall Street Journal. He used to manage their op-ed pages, and now he just writes, and he was a delightful man to have on campus. We'll be talking with Catherine Maxwell in just a moment, our news editor, more about the Trump appointment, and we'll be hearing more about the power outage later on from Tay Christensen. You're listening to Collegian Week and Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

We'll be back in a moment. Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Week in Review continues. Welcome back to Collegian Week in Review. We're here with news editor Catherine Maxwell, who wrote a bunch of stories for the Collegian this week. And one of them was on the front page about a Hillsdale alum who was just named by Trump, or is going to be named, to a position as head of the Office of Legal Counsel. counsel in the Department of Justice. Now, this position, according to the New York Times, made a lot of the final calls on legal controversies in the executive branch in past administrations. Catherine, tell us about this grad and what he might do for this administration.

Yeah, so the alumnus is Elliott Geyser. He graduated from Hillsdale in 2012. He's currently the Solicitor General for the State of Ohio. And he was actually in the Collegian a couple weeks ago because he was in front of the Supreme Court defending Ohio in a discrimination case. Now the New York Times, as you said, has announced that Trump is going to name him to the Office of Legal Counsel. So he'll be the assistant attorney general in charge of that department. He'll be working closely with the attorney general and other parts of the Justice Department. Dr. Arne said in the previous Collegian article about Geyser's Supreme Court appearance, that he's diligent, honest, intelligent, and successful in everything that he tries.

The Collegian did reach out to Geyser for a comment, but he declined to say anything about the New York Times piece. Understandably. Now, when you talk to professors in the politics department, for example, what did they have to say? So I talked to Associate Professor of Politics, Joseph Postel, who wasn't with Hillsdale when Geyser was a student. But he told me a little bit about the Office of Legal Counsel, and he said that its job is essentially to advise the president on legal questions and controversies. They'll issue opinions similar to Supreme Court opinions, basically telling the president if he can do something, if what he wants to do is unconstitutional or if it's legal or how he could legally justify something that he wants to do, whether by executive action or some kind of statement. And essentially they give either the thumbs up or the thumbs down. Now, Catherine, you wrote another piece this week in the feature section, a wonderful full page spread if you're looking at the printed CLEGN on the local Christian rodeo. Now, Thomas and I really enjoyed this piece.

We've both been to the rodeo as well. But for those who are unfamiliar or who haven't read your piece yet, can you give us just a window into this world? Yeah. So this rodeo is held at the Pro Edge Arena in Osseo, Michigan. It's about 20 minutes away from campus, so really easy if you're looking for a quick weekend get away. Their season is every Saturday from October to April. They'll be closing their season in just a couple weeks. Essentially, you show up and a group of 30-something young guys will get on the back of a bowl and try to stay on for eight seconds. And whether or not they do, the crowd will

cheer. Everyone loves them. They're really amazing for getting on the backs of these bulls. And equally amazing, at least for me, were the two bullfighters in the ring. These are two guys whose job is to chase away the bull and keep the writer safe when they're thrown off. Now, Catherine, what makes this a Christian rodeo? So they play Christian music throughout the whole thing. Probably a lot of kind of Christian rock songs you heard in middle school. And that's just the general ambiance. So the cowboys walk out to a fun Christian song. They play clips throughout the night. But they also play a Christian music video to kick off the night. So that night it was John Reddick's No Fear, which I hadn't heard and I wondered why.

And then I realized it came out this year. So that explained it. Not a middle school song. But then the announcer for the night came out and he spent five to seven. minutes just sharing the gospel. That night, he said that the Christian life is like riding a horse and that kids do it super easily. They trust the horse to take them wherever, but then adults overthink it and get confused. And then they played another Christian music video by Zach Williams. And then from there it was all rodeo. Now the preacher slash announcer here at the rodeo says, tonight the lives of these men will be in the hands of the guardian angels around this arena and these two men, the bullfighters you were talking about. And there was one particularly

close call that I want to ask you about involving Cowboys Zach Hartman. What happened in that moment when Hartman went up on the bull? So Hartman came out of the gate and he was only on the bull for 1.87 seconds. And then he slipped off and did not have the clean dismount I was talking about earlier. He fell basically right under the bull and the bull kind of chased him down. He tried to get away, but it went after him, knocked him over, stomped on him a couple times before the bull right, the bull fighters were able to distract it, shove it out of the way, chase it out of the arena. And then it was really tense just in the building for a few moments because Hartman kind of staggered away and then just sort of collapsed on the ground. And everyone was wondering, is he,

okay, are we going to watch him get carried out of this arena? The medic was coming out, and then Hartman threw up his thumbs up to say that he was alive, he was okay, and then they got him out, and I'm sure he got medical care afterwards. One of the crazy parts of this story is the bull's name. It was sponsored by LifeSong Church, and the sponsors get to name these bulls, whatever they want. So LifeSong decided to name this bull, Luke 23. 43. And one of the students there that night looked up the verse after Hartman got out of the arena. And it's the verse where Jesus is on the cross and he says, truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. So that tells you the kind of bull that Hartman was dealing with that night.

That is awesome. And one of my favorite parts of this experience, it comes after the bull writing when they have the, the mutton busting. Catherine, what is mutton busting? Mutton busting is bull riding for little kids, only instead of bulls, it's sheep. So they take,

the youngest kid was three. They take three to eight or nine year olds, stick them on a sheep and then let them out of the shoot. And the sheep don't know what's going on. They just charge, and these little kids are gripping to the back of these sheep for their lives.

There was one kid who made it three laps around the arena, which was very impressive. He won. He was so proud of himself. It was really cute. The three-year-old, in case anyone's concerned, did not ride by himself. He was held by his dad, who walked him around the arena. He also had a great time. It was a lot of fun to watch. Catherine, thank you so much for coming to share both of those pieces. You are listening to The Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7. FM. We'll be back in a moment.

This is the Collegian Week in Review. Welcome back to Collegian Week in Review. We're here with our editor-in-chief, Jillian Parks, where she's talking about her coverage in City News and a couple of opinion bits in the opinion section. Jillian, big story in City News this week. A car crashes into the Hillsdale Brewing Company. What happened? Well, it's actually not funny. I shouldn't laugh at all. It's very sad. Littfield resident whose name they haven't released was they think driving himself to the Hillsdale Hospital because he was having a heart attack and he I mean the story goes that he was driving normally

and then he turned and then ran right into the steps of the brewing company which is basically pure rubble now and it's been kind of taped off for the entire week so far and there's no information on his current condition at least the cops didn't have any information and there's also the brewing company declined to comment on what the process will look like getting them getting those steps repaired so yeah so the steps of the brewing company are rubble right now and people can see it in the collegian if they pick up a copy it's true it's pretty awesome photo by john j miller that's right the the faculty advisor for the journalism he's out here taking photos for us so big news there you can read about it in the collegian yes let's turn to your other story here in city news the airport manager ginger

more who's worked at the airport for the past 20 years yes she was resigned last month? She did, yes. What did you find when you talked to her? So I actually interviewed her a couple weeks ago about the T-Hangers project that they were going to do. And I found her very charming, but she was, she was clearly, there was clearly a good bit of community backlash about the idea of the airport. She felt that it was really important to preface a lot of what she said with all of the good that the airport does, because the city tends to focus on the fact that it's a resource that not everybody in the city can use. Not everybody flies a plane.

Not everybody wants to take flying lessons. And so they seem like the city tends to engage with it as kind of a waste of money if they're not going to use it right away. So that sort of negativity is something I saw from the beginning when I first interviewed her. And then we heard word that she was resigning from the airport. And when I talked to her, it did seem to be that that sort of conversation that circulates around the airport is a contributing factor to her wanting to resign. And the term she used was the drama of the negative. Yes. people love the drama of the negative is what she said. She loves she let me know that people

sometimes will find her in public, not even meet people that aren't well meaning, but people just kind of invested in the drama of everything that people are saying in the airport, even people that she says like her and are her friends. Like that is part of the conversation as always. Have you seen what people are saying about the airport? And she said it gets old. She wants she has grandchildren. She wants to kind of live her life. She's still going to be working with the airport in unofficial capacity. But in terms of being the manager, she's, she's over it now. She has a long history with the airport. I mean, she's been there for a while. Since it opened. Her dad was part of the grand opening in 1963. You said she read comic books in her current office. Yes, there's like a building, like a building that was supposed to be destroyed, but wasn't destroyed because she got a grant to do a taxiway around the building. So the building's been, what's the word I'm looking for, preserved in that way. But yeah, she used to sit in the corner and read comic books while her dad was either flying or giving lessons or meeting with pilots. And she never considered herself to be somebody who would grow up to be a pilot.

and then she did. Well, thanks for writing this piece. Yeah, totally. Yeah, turning into the opinion section, Jillian, you had two pieces. One, return home after graduation. Right. And won your contribution to our senior symposium on what senior staff thought the most influential class they took was.

So actually, start with the symposium. What was the most influential class you took and why? I chose to highlight advanced writing. I've taken a lot of influential classes that I felt like while I was sitting in the seats really impacted me and changed the way that I think about things. But I think advanced writing is the one that has the most out of class influence on me and affecting the way that I write even now. There is kind of, I think there's kind of a wall in a lot of people's brains when they write that allows them to say only a little bit because we as people, we want people to infer what we're

going to say. But Mr. Miller does a really good job of telling us not to do that, not to expect people to carry us to the point of our argument, but to actually make us make it ourselves. And that, you have to go a little further than you think you have to go when writing opinion pieces for that reason. He also is really good about teaching us not to hold the, the reader's hand and be like, and this is what I think, and then this is what I think. There is still room for making assumptions and filling in the gaps in that kind of enthamee sort of rhetorical structure. But he does a really good job of making, of saying, did you mean to say this? And if you didn't mean to say this, say what you mean. Make it very clear, make it very concise. And those rules for writing have just

been really influential in the way that I write everything, not even just opinion pieces. Yeah. And then tell me about your other piece. What is the case for returning home after graduation? I mean, the case that I make is kind of a silly case, at least in the lead. There's kind of this, this funky lost feeling that I think infiltrates a lot of people's experience with senior year. There's this tension that happens when you're like, I want to enjoy the last of my experience at Hillsdale. But I also need. to be thinking about what's next. And I personally found that to be a little bit too overwhelming, the idea of having to enjoy my last year of something I've worked really hard to build, and then also having to think about, okay, what's next, what's next, what's next? What's next?

What's next? So I wrote this piece about returning home after graduation as a case for the kind of people who feel a little bit lost and reminding them about the good things that they are going home to if they have those good things. For me, specifically, it's my siblings. I have four younger siblings. I am the oldest of five. And I left home when my sister was eight and she's now 12. My brother was 12 and he's now 16. So it's been four years and it's been a lot of really crucial development for them in good ways and bad ways, unfortunately, that I have missed. And the idea of missing it even more just to go and kickstart my experience out in the world is not really one that draws me to it. I think I'd be more interested in just going home and kind of seeing what

they're up to, reintroducing myself to them in a way after four years of college education and being like, hey, this is what you missed. And I want to know what I miss with you. And kind of showing them that I really still do care because I think a lot of younger siblings that I'm friends with talk about their older siblings. And I have a 30-year-old brother, but we don't talk because he's 30. And it's like, oh, gosh, I don't want that to be my experience because these guys, I've known them since they were born and they are the most important people in the whole world to me. So I am going home to be with them and I don't think a point that I make in the piece is that I don't think it's lazy. I don't think it's bad to be like, I need a break and I need a break to be with these people,

especially if the impetus is that you love people. I think that if you are acting in pursuit of love your whole life, I don't think you can make a ton of bad choices, especially if that love is cultivated and habituated by virtue and familial values. So yeah, I think it's something that a lot Hillsdale people do need to hear. It's something I often write the things that I think I need to hear. I think a lot of people do that. So, that's my piece. Thank you so much, Jillian. We've loved having you on.

You are listening to Collegian Week and Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. You're listening to the Collegian Week and Review. Welcome back to Collegian Week and Review. We are here with Assistant Editor Tate Christensen to talk about a couple of her pieces this week, but first and foremost, her news piece about the power outage that happened over the weekend. So Tate, give us the picture. When was this blackout? How long did it last?

Yeah, so Sunday night, we got a tornado warning and everyone had to kind of take shelter. And the storm had kind of passed at that rate, but then all the power went out on campus and around town too. So everyone was kind of scrambling. A lot of people hadn't eaten dinner yet in the cafeteria and other restaurants around town were closing. so people were scrambling trying to go to the store to get dinner, trying to go to restaurants to get food. But no one had power. So that was super awesome. And Dairy Queen ended up with this massive line. And Meyer was popping off while Walmart was so dead. It was awesome. And I love that you brought out a couple of these more remarkable student stories. The one I particularly loved was at the end, an engagement and an engagement celebration during all of the storm.

Tell us about that. Yeah. So Ruthie, Chinnery, she's a senior. She got engaged just as the storm was happening. And then she and her, well, now, fiancee went out to dinner. And they came back to a surprise party in their friend's apartment in downtown Hillsdale. But the friend had also lost power in her apartment. So they had to kind of scramble and find candles and different stuff to kind of make,

they have light in the apartment. So they found like a disco ball and had some candles and stuff. And yeah, just had a fun little party. And students thought that classes might be. canceled for Monday, but the power came on right before they were about to make the call. What was the student reaction on that? Everyone was pretty disappointed, myself included. I'm not going to lie. We all went to bed pretty much with the hope that power was going to stay off for the night, which it pretty

much did. And they said, okay, we'll make a call at 7 a.m. And at 6.51, we got an email from the provost saying, you're going to class. So everyone was, yeah, not thrilled, but we got through it. It's okay. Now, according to what I was hearing from my housemates, the city had expected originally to get power back around 2 p.m. Monday, which gave many students yourself, myself included hope of no classes, but that was not the case. Thomas, do you, as a city news editor, do you know when the city actually did receive power again? Well, the news from the city is that we got power back basically the same time that the school did, right? So what happened was a high voltage transmission line went down outside of the city so that the city itself still had a bit of power coming in from other sources. And that's why throughout the night you might have had your lights come back on at weird times, but only for a minute, right?

You only had your power on for five minutes and then it was off again. And the reason for that was because there were still power flowing into the city, but not enough to keep the lights on everywhere. And so it didn't take till 2 p.m. to get enough power to keep the college powered. It just took till Monday morning. And that's why classes were still able to happen, even though consumers energy, which is the public utilities company that covers this part of Michigan, said it was going to take till 2 p.m. So there are some pockets of Hillsdale County that right now still don't have power. Now, Tate, speaking of lights out, the church. Charger Women's Tennis team went undefeated over the weekend against Ursuline and Walsh. Tell us about

those matches. Yeah, so they went 7 and 0 against Ursulin at home on Saturday and won all singles, all doubles in that, which was super awesome. And then on Sunday, they beat Walsh, 4 to 1. And, yeah, they just played really well. And the girls seemed really excited and really hopeful for this upcoming weekend. They're going on the road in Ohio playing a couple different universities. And, yeah, they're both our conference games. They're hoping to do well in those too. All righty, thanks so much, Tate, for bringing us the news about the power outage and the women's tennis team. You're listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7. We'll be back in a moment. You've been listening to The Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM. I'm Caroline Kurt.

And I'm Thomas McKenna. You can find the Collegian Weekend Review online at cwir.org.com. You can find more news at Hillsdale Collegian.com. And you can find us on Instagram at Hillsdale, Collegiate. We'll see you next week.