WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week in Review: February 20, 2025

Episode Date: February 23, 2025

Alessia Sandala joins the show to discuss ongoing city news, and Nathan Stanish offers critique's on Elon Musk and DOGE. Tayte Christensen joins to offer insight into the virus circulating campus.

Welcome to the Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Here are your host, Caroline Kurt, Thomas McKenna, and Coleman Rowan. Welcome to Collegian Weekend Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your hosts, Caroline Kurt, Coleman Rowan, and Thomas McKenna. And today we'll be talking to Alessia Sandala about news in the city with road repairs. and four chargers who are on Team USA's shotgun team. Then we'll talk with Nathan Stanish about his skepticism of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. And finally, we'll speak with Tate Christensen, an assistant news editor who helped put together reporting on the campus plague going viral at Hillsdale College.

But first, we're starting with some headlines. Looking at A1, we've got a story on the new Catholic ministry woodbank, which is for firewood. We've had a lot of Catholic students go out and chop wood and then put in a firewood bank for families in need around the county to use. Also on A1, we'll be covering Team USA additions from Hillsdale students to the shotgun team. We'll talk to Alessia about that. On top of that, Collegian reporter Elaine Kudis gives us the scoop on the dean's granting off campus to seniors and anyone with enough credits to get off campus. And finally, on the front page, there are two English majors, Greg Whale. and Anna Baldwin, who gave honors lectures on Flannery O'Connor and Drard Manley Hopkins.

Besides that on the front page, Coleman, tell us about what you have for over on culture. Yeah, over in culture, we got some previews telling us about the upcoming performances this weekend from Greg Whalen and the Hillsdale College Orchestra. Additionally, we have a single coming out from the local band Lost Mary, who has been doing very well on Spotify. And then we have a review on the new student film called Shall We on Interdenominational Dating. And a review of some winter weather fashion tips from our assistant editor, Anna Broussard. I'll add from over in the city news section, Michigan Republicans are preparing to pick their next chairman at the convention this weekend. And one of the candidates is Hillsdale grad Joseph Sella, who is a former ambassador under the Trump administration and a co-founder of Catholic vote. he has two he has a daughter who goes here and has another daughter coming here next year and so he's a hillsdale

affiliated guy he's received dr arns endorsement and so the city news team put together a profile of him over on the city news page for this week and we'll be watching what happens at the convention this weekend as michigan republicans pick who will lead them into the 2026 election cycle thank you thomas we will be back in just a moment to talk to alessia sandala this is collegian week on 11.7 ff Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Weekend Review continues. Welcome back to Collegian Weekend Review. We're here with Assistant Editor Alessia Sundella, and we're going to talk to her about her shotgun story on the front page and her city council recap in the city news section. Thanks for coming on, Alessia.

Yeah, thanks for having me. So four members of the Hillsdale shotgun team are going to Team USA. Tell us about that story. Yeah. So freshman Taylor Day. made the junior team along with junior Davis Hayes and sophomore Ava Downs and junior Jordan Sapp made the actual open Team USA. Now what does that mean? What does it mean to be on Team USA for shotgun shooting?

So being on Team USA means that you get to go to several different matches basically around the world and compete in ISSF, which is like international shooting sport, federation, and you get to travel, compete, and then possibly even make it to the Olympics, which is crazy. Wow. So four Hillsdale students representing America at these worldwide competitions. What did it take to get on the team? So they competed in two selection matches. The second one, they just came back from on February 2nd, and that was in Palm Beach, Florida. So there was a total of 500 targets, and it was split 250 between the two matches and the top six shooters from each category made the team. How does Hillsdale get this kind of shooting talent? I mean, when you talk to these shotgun

shooters, what do they say about why they chose Hillsdale or what being on the Hillsdale shooting team is like? So they love their coach. That's a big thing. And also Hillsdale has an amazing facility. It has capability to do international, American, and skeet, all the different disciplines, which is a huge factor. I think even Olympians practice at Hillsdale, so it's pretty impressive. That's definitely a huge factor, and I think there's a lot of scholarship money as well. And then some of these are, I know some of them are skeet and there's some of them trap. Can you talk about the difference between that or like what specifically the kinds of target shooting they do?

Yeah, so ski and trap are very different. In ski, you have two targets, and they're kind of, of going across. I don't know if that's a really good definition, but they're going like that, like an X kind of. And you don't know when they're going to come out, where they're going out of. And then in trap, there's five stations, kind of like skeet, but you know that they're coming out of one house. There's one target compared to the two. And then there's a difference in trap. There's American trap and international trap. International trap is a lot faster than American trap, and that makes it more difficult.

Well, that was an addition of fun firearm facts with Alessia Sandala. Now let's move to her city news coverage of the city council meeting from this past week. There was a lot of discussion of road repairs. The city of Hillsdale has a very particular program for how they do road repairs here. They call it special assessment districts. Basically, if your dilapidated road, your neighborhood street, is designated as needing repairs. They'll put it as a special assessment. and the way that they fund repairs for a special assessment road is to tax all of the houses or businesses on that street.

And the fee can be as much as $5,000. Now, the council made some changes to that policy. Alessia, you wrote about this in the Collegian. Can you tell us a bit about those changes? Yeah, definitely. So basically, they've created three different categories for how much they're going to charge, essentially. So the residential properties will be charged as up to. $5,000. It's based on how much of their property actually touches the road. But then there's

commercial properties that can be charged up to $10,000 and then industrial properties, which can be charged up to $15,000. And then they've also changed the interest. So it's actually going to be based on a 10-year treasury loan now with an additional 1%, but it's going to be capped at 6%. So it's never going to be more than it is right now. And then churches and schools are also going to be included in the commercial category, which usually they hadn't had to pay. So it's going to be based off of their what they would have had to pay for taxes, essentially. So previously, churches and schools weren't included as a category for special assessment districts, and now they will have to contribute to a special assessment fund if they're designated for it?

That's what it sounded like at the meeting. They had never mentioned churches or schools before as having to pay, and then now they made a clear distinction that they will have to pay. Understood. So they've made these changes in something that acting mayor Joshua Palladino, he's an alum of the college, said at the meeting, was that he's hoping that these changes can bring down costs on residential properties on homes to somewhere. near $2,000 or $3,000 per parcel. Can you tell us a bit more about what Palladino thinks of special assessments and what he might be aiming at here?

Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, he wants to eventually eliminate them, the special assessment districts. He thinks that homes and residences should have to pay very little, especially now, because they're just trying to get by and, like, it's their house. I mean, they shouldn't have to pay an additional $5,000 that ends up being a lot more with interest that they just have to come up with as soon as they're told. It's not like they have time. They know that it's coming and can prepare. They just get slapped with this extra huge fee.

And when a street gets designated for a special assessment, it has an opportunity to put together letters and send them over to the city council. And that's what Barry Street residents tried to do a few months ago. but the council ruled that their petition was ineffective. It wasn't, you know, passing muster because they needed a bunch of letters from the residents and not just a petition. Is that, is that right? Yeah. So they had originally filled out a petition and sent it to city council. But then on Monday, it was apparently found out from the charter that they actually have to send individual letters to the city council by the date of the public.

hearing or they have to show up at the meeting if they actually want to oppose the special assessment district. And on Monday night, the council set a public hearing for that street and another special assessment for March 3rd. And so if they wanted to respond, Barry Street residents would have to put together letters for this upcoming public hearing. Right. Well, Alessia, thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. You're listening to Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We'll be back in minute. This is the Collegian Weekend Review. You're listening to Collegian Weekend Review. We are here with ad manager Nathan Stanish, who wrote an opinion this week on why it's hypocritical to worship Elon Musk.

Nathan, break down your opinion for us. Yeah, so it's pretty straightforward. I just think that the Republican attitude towards Elon Musk is a betrayal of a lot of the values the Republicans claim to hold. it really breaks down on multiple levels. So for one thing, Republicans have historically been skeptical towards billionaires or wealthy people who use their money to influence elections or to heavily invest in elections, George Soros being a common scapegoat for that type of action. But Elon Musk has absolutely blown him out of the water in terms of like the sheer money he dumped in the last election. But it comes down to other areas too. Even little things like our attitude towards like electrical vehicles. We've seen multiple

cyber trucks on campus now. I don't know if we ever would have seen that a few years ago before Elon Musk specifically was just kind of embraced by the Republican Party or really the other way around. It just seems strange to me that a lot of conservatives have turned their back on the opinions that they used to have solely because a figure like Elon Musk has sort of joins the bandwagon. So Nathan, one could object to your opinion here and look at what you're saying about what Elon Musk has done in the government as a billionaire and say that the problem, wouldn't be that he's a billionaire, even if he is one, because he's doing what Republicans want him to do. What would you say to that, that even though this guy might be very powerful,

very rich, hugely influential, Republicans can be okay with him being in government because he's trying to cut government waste? Yeah. So it's really two things, right? One is the nature of how he gains his power. So obviously, like, we elected a billionaire. So it's not just about having a billionaire in power, but it's more so how they gain that sort of power, right? So there's some inherent power to wealth, but it becomes problematic if we have a billionaire who heavily invests in election and then receives a position with significant power over the government without any form of election or congressional approval. That's not only unprecedented, especially within our system. And also something most conservatives would typically rail against

as an example of sort of this amorphous, like fourth branch of government through the administrative state, but it's also questionable in terms of accountability. This is a question that we're still seeing challenged through various lawsuits and questions of unconstitutionality of how a person can hold that much power but not be elected or have government approval. But it also comes down to what they're actually doing within the role. So the claim is, of course, that this is trying to accomplish the Republican values through this role, right, through this Department of Government Efficiency. But as I pointed in the article, it's manifesting at some really strange in sloppy ways. So for example, he's gone after USAID, which has some examples of corruption,

certainly. It's telling that most of the examples that were presented as proof of corruption were one super tiny in the grand scope of USAID. So it came down to about 1% of total expenditures, but also that most of them either were not USAID were actually done through the State Department it or just were not true, which begs serious questions about why he went after in the first place. Because I think most people could probably name other departments that they think of as more inefficient. We've had different issues. I mean, a lot of people would probably bring up even just the Department of Defense that's gotten a lot of criticism, even from Republicans on how we're going about that. So you have to wonder, is it really about just accomplishing our Republican

goals through his position? Or is it just about going wild? Now, if one looks at the U.S. aid cuts, you know, obviously it's very broad. They're basically using machete and they're walking through the field and they're chopping it all down. But something that, you know, a lot of professors here at the college would say who look at the administrative state and they say, look, here are all of these unelected bureaucrats. You know, it isn't the worst thing to have a guy come in and just try to slash unelected bureaucracy down and maybe, you know, bring some of the better part of it back. But first you've got to take the machete and you've got to cut it all down. And if the guy, you're guy who does that is unelected, then he's just doing to the administrative state what the administrative state has done with taxpayer money for a while. What would you say to somebody who would probably take that kind of Hillsdale College perspective? I would say two basic principles, two wrongs don't make it right and you don't fire with fire. What it really comes down to, right, is that if we want to really systematically dismantle the administrative state, we also have to be careful to think about what role it's playing. So,

we have this sort of assumption, I think, sometimes the administrative state is just like this cancer on the government that's just growing and nobody wants to do anything about it. But part of it is like it's a mixed bag, right? It does have a lot of services that it performs. And the really tricky part about trying to dismantle is trying to separate the just like corruption and unnecessary aspects from the good that it is doing. So especially something like USAID is also pretty instrumental in doing a lot of research into diseases and into treatments for like various diseases, especially around the world. It's one of the primary ways that we are kind of demonstrating ourselves as that city on the hill, which is a phrase a lot of Republicans would love to espouse, that we as a country,

as the premier superpower in the world, one of the ways we like to do that is also being kind to the rest of the world and showing that we don't just care about showing our military might, that we also have incredible medical technology and whatnot that we can display to people. So when we go through and like he did, cut us down from 10,000 employees to 300 employees, we also, in danger a lot of the most critical activities that it's doing. So while I can understand the temptation, just be like, let's just burn the whole house down and then rebuild from the foundation, I don't think that's the correct response, especially if we are going to lose lives along the way. So, I mean, I understand that obviously the Department of Government Efficiency created to

hack down the administrative state that's like obviously hypocritical. Like, that doesn't make a lot of sense. So if Republicans want to take down the administrative state and Doge is not the way to do it. What is the way to do it, do you think? Yeah. So I think it's a really challenging issue. And I do understand like the thinking that, okay, the only way to take down the administrators to go outside the administrative state, I think a lot of it actually comes down to, you have to pair these sorts of things, right? So that the, we kind of swung all the way to the opposite side of the spectrum. Sometimes we've had the attitude of we have to take people from within the administrative, put them on a committee of some kind and then just have them tear it down.

but then you have the issue of vested interest, right? You can also swing the other way, where you just go like, let's just take a total outsider who doesn't know anything about these departments and therefore won't have any vested interest in it, and let's put him in charge. I would suggest the best thing you could actually do is try and compose some sort of congressional approved committee with a mix of those. So Trump almost started to do this when his idea was actually to have at least two people looking over this, Vibok Gramoswami and Elon Musk. Viva Gramuswami ended up leaving the project. It's not exactly clear if that because of his political aspirations or something else.

But I would say a better way to approach it is at least to balance the perspectives that you have, to have both familiarity with the departments, which comes with the risk of vested interest, but then also to have the outside interest that comes with inexperienced, but at least doesn't have that same vested interest. And I definitely wouldn't put it down to one person who's just kind of picking and choosing random people to help them out. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Nathan. It's been a pleasure. And you're listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio.

Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. You're listening to the Collegian Week in Review. You're listening to Collegian Week in Review with Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. And we are here with Tate Christensen, who helped Catherine Maxwell write a story about the virus that has been plaguing campus. Can you tell us a little bit about that, Tate? Yeah, well, a lot of students are coming down with stomach flu or norovirus and some forms of the flu. so people in the health center, Brockwlett's, namely, are telling students to just be careful, wash their hands, and stay away from people, don't go to class if they're sick.

A lot of professors have canceled classes due to number of students getting sick, but the college said that they won't officially cancel classes if numbers continue to rise. Tate it's hard to overstate just how many students that this virus is taking out. I mean, walking around to classes, hearing about friends that aren't in class, or you just know are sick. You and Catherine spoke with Junior Olivia Overman, who's the head R.A. of olds. And she said that there are six women there who've had neurovirus symptoms and at least 10 others have missed class with flu-like symptoms.

Can you tell us about the campus response and what the mood is like? Yeah, it definitely seems like people are always checking in on each other, making sure they aren't sick. Although some professors have said that students have still been asking to come to class, even if they've been diagnosed with the flu, which of course, The answer is no. But students are still waiting to go to class, which is great. But, yeah, students are just kind of getting ill and having to check in with each other. So. Health Services Director Brocklets thought this warranted a campus-wide email in which he gave students lots of advice on what to do. And one of the main pieces was wash your hands, but there were other things like take probiotics, try to stay hydrated. Was there anything else you heard from anyone you talked to? Yeah, well, another thing that Brock mentioned was not preparing food if you're sick or if others are sick because this virus has been known to spread through food, which is we don't know for sure where this virus came from. It could have come from food. We don't know. So that was something that Brock encouraged students to not do if they're sick or if they feel like they're sick. And then the Associate Dean of Men, Jeff Rogers or Chief, told us that students should just really use common sense and just know if they're not feeling well to not go anywhere. So that was kind of the main message from administration.

And you're in Catherine's research for this article, did you get a sense of whether some dorms were hit harder than others, whether off-campus was faring better or worse? Yeah, it definitely seemed like underclassmen dorms and dorms with community bathrooms were hitting it the hardest. I haven't really heard of a lot of off-campus people getting it. I'm sure that a number of people have, but especially community bathrooms and in freshman dorms where their immune systems are a little bit weaker. Yeah, as an off-campus resident, I'd just like to say, it has been my experience that there

have been plenty of cases off-campus. And as a on-campus dorm community bathroom resident, I would also send that. Makes it sound like you live in the bathroom. I'm sorry, we're all five. We're all five. I'm going to not. Stay safe out there, everyone. No, for real. You're listening to Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.1.7, You've been listening to The Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

I'm Coleman Rowan. I'm Thomas McKenna. And I'm Caroline Kurt. You can find the Collegian Weekend Review online at cwir.t. Transistor.fm. You can find more news at hillstill cleegion.com. And follow us on Instagram at Hillsdale Collegian. See you next week.