WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week In Review: February 22nd, 2023

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

This week on the Collegian Week in Review, hosts Maddy Welsh and Lauren Scott first discuss this issue's top headlines. Then, they talk to Logan Washburn about a strange illness affecting children in Quincy. Finally, they talk to Eleanor Whitaker about a recent talk on campus.

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to the Collegian Weekend Review. Here are your hosts, Maddie Welsh and Lauren Scott. Welcome back to the Collegian Week in Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your host, Maddie Welsh. And Lauren Scott. And today we'll be talking to Logan Washburn about a strange illness affecting children in Quincy. And then we'll be talking to Eleanor Whitaker about a talk that have been recently on campus from Mark Hemingway. He spoke about Taylor Swift and the decline of American culture. But first, Lauren and I are going to discuss some of the top headlines and stories in the Collegion

this week. Our top story this week is about some promotions that happened within the college. Olivia Perro, the culture editor, wrote, Bill Gray is the new vice president of institutional advancement, assuming the title long held by John Serveni, who has become the executive vice president for institutional advancement. The institutional advancement department has grown to a point where Sourvini, Hillsdale's longest serving employee, requires more help managing it, according to Arn. Gray, the former vice president for marketing, will help Servini and the institutional advancement team. Gray will continue to act as the interim vice president for marketing while replacement is found. Both of these men are graduates of Hillsdale, and as Olivia wrote, John Servini is the longest serving

employee of the college. So it's great to see that they are both continuing to work for the college in these new ways. Another story we have up on the top of the front page is about the Ronald Reagan statue being moved to storage after 12 years on the quad. The editor-in-chief Elizabeth Troutman wrote maintenance workers removed the Ronald Reagan statue from its position between the Dow Hotel and Christchapel last week. It is now in storage, awaiting a new location as the college prepares to build the Diana-David Spencer Graduate School of Education, according to Executive Director of Facilities and Capital Projects, Dave Billington. This was a good story. I'm glad we covered it because I walked past where the statue used to be the other day, and I was really thrown off that Reagan was no longer there. I'm quite upset just on a personal level because I'm a senior this year. And my very first semester, my very first day on campus, I took a picture with my freshman roommate standing next to the Ronald Reagan statue.

And we've talked for years about how we're going to recreate that picture as seniors in our cap and gown. And now we will never be able to do that. That's actually extremely sad. It's really sad. Completely irrelevant to the news. But, you know, just a personal note. I feel like a lot of people take pictures by the Reagan statue. I know whenever I was a prospective student, I took a picture there when my dad came and visited me at Hillsdale last year. He wanted a picture by the statue.

It's a pretty popular place. It's quite popular. And it's a little sad that we don't know when or where he's going to be back. But exciting that we have this construction going on. It's huge that we have, you know, this classical ed grad school getting its own building. That's super cool. Another thing that's unfortunate about this story is that when I was editing it in the document, the first sentence was originally going to be The Gipper is gone, which I think was hilarious. But unfortunately, that did not seem to make it. into print. Had to be edited out. But indeed, the Gipper is gone. The opinions page is very interesting this week. We have a great story about why George Orwell

deserves a spot on Liberty Walk worth a read. And we've got another great story from assistant editor Michaela Estruth who wrote about why the NuraLink, Elon Musk's NuraLink, is not ethically acceptable. What's going on in

City News, Lauren. Well, we had a lot of interesting stories in City this week. You'll hear about probably our most interesting one from Logan later in this episode about kids and Quincy who are experiencing somewhat of a mysterious illness. But we also had a story about Meyer and how the company is very successful in finding workers right now. The company is expected to open in the spring and is also expecting to hire more than 350 new workers. And so we wrote about how they're having a lot of success in finding workers, but also we talked about how there are other local businesses that are really struggling to find people to hire. we talked to, actually we only spoke to, or I believe we talked to mostly restaurants, like local eatery, checker records, finish line. And just kind of the general consensus is that the restaurant industry is really difficult. It's hard to find people that are, well, at least for checker records, it's hard to train people, how to make coffee. It's very big of a time commitment.

At local eatery, at least they did have something a little bit positive when they said that their workers leave. They say most of the time it's because they're leaving to a higher paying job. So it's not necessarily that they're just tired of the work or something like that. They just need to make more money. And so, you know, despite these restaurants having a bit of a struggle in finding workers, it is good that Meyer is being successful in that. Another story that we had in CINY News was about Joseph Bruno, a man who was the talk of the town last semester when he was arrested in October and then he also got trespassed from Hillsdale College campus. But he is now out of jail on bond.

And so we just did a little short write-up just to kind of inform people that even though he is trespassed from campus, he is free to roam the city. And then we had another story about a baby shower that is hosted for the community that will be held in May. It was written by Elizabeth Putlock, a collegian freelancer. And the story reads, a community baby shower will be held for expectations. Hillsdale County parents on May 18th at Hillsdale High School from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. This event is hosted by the Hillsdale County Great Start Collaborative and an organization that provides resources to families to help them with their children and whatnot. And so this is a baby shower that I believe it happens every other year.

and the reporter interviewed a couple of parents who have attended in years past, and they had nothing but great things to say about the shower and how it's a great blessing and just a really great help to them. I know we're not big sports people here, but I did write a sports story. It was about the swim team. Last week, they had their GMAC championship meet, and they got second at that meet, second only to. Finley University, who also won it last year and who has a much bigger team than Hillsdale.

But it was a great meet. The freshman on the team performed very well. A lot of people got personal records. There was a broken school record. So in 2012, the team set the school record for the 800 freestyle relay. So that means four athletes swim 200 yards each. They set that record in 2012, and head coach Kurt Kerner said they've been trying to break it ever since because they always have swimmers who are good at that middle distance 200-yard race. But this year, they finally broke it by 28-100ths of a second.

So that was awesome. That was a great race. They all said that it was a super fun one to watch. and there was a senior on that relay and so it was awesome for her to be able to do that in her last meet. So, yeah, what's next for the swim team is the NCAA Division II Championship meet, which will be taking place in March. We will learn next week whether some of the Hillsdale athletes will be going.

There are three athletes that made times that could qualify them for the meet. So we'll learn next week whether they did qualify. We also have the baseball team. I think they had their first couple games recently, and they won. So Cassandra DeVries, the social media manager, wrote, the Hillsdale Baseball Team won its series final

against Wayne State University 8 to 6 with a walk-off home run on February 18th in a four-game series at Ting Stadium in Holly Springs, North Carolina to open their 2024 season. So great to see they open the season on a win here. Well, that's all from us. Now let's hear from Logan.

Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Weekend Review continues. This is Lauren, and I'm here with Logan Washburn, the associate editor of the Collegian. This week, he wrote a story about some kids in Quincy who are getting really sick. and we're not sure what the cause of the illness is, and officials are starting to investigate this. So, Logan, tell me a little bit more about the students who are experiencing illness. Yeah, so this is a developing situation.

They're still not sure what's causing the illness. But the students are having seizures and tremors, and parents brought this up to the school district within the last week or so. Last week, last two weeks. but they've already had a school district meeting about it where parents have expressed concerns and they brought in the branch Hillsdale St. Joseph Health Authority to try and trace the cause of this disease. But so far they're really not sure what it is. I've spoken with several parents

who are getting their kids treated for it. They wouldn't comment, of course. It's a very difficult issue for them, though. They're trying to maintain privacy while finding the line of trying to get the word out about this. I think for some of them, this has been going on for months, and for others, it's only really started in the last few weeks. So it's really a mystery at this point, but the families are very concerned, and everyone's trying to get to the bottom of it. What will the investigation? What will the look like? So the investigation is basically going to, you know, take what we currently know, figure out what the disease is.

I think that's one of the main things. They're not sure if it's a disease, actually. It could be a psychological issue that's causing these symptoms. In the past, there's been an instance like this in a town in New York where it was diagnosed as something psychological. So that's a possibility too. But they're going to try and diagnose the illness and then figure out what they can do to fix it. There's not a lot they can do at this point, though, when they don't even know what the cause is.

But the school is going to be testing the water and air, even though they've passed a lot of recent tests and have taken a lot of recent measures to improve the water and air quality. it's also worth noting that these symptoms are definitely really hurting these kids a lot of the parents are reporting things like seizures, tremors, neurological issues, ticks, you know, like weird

repetitive actions and I think even some swelling and joint pain, things like that. So it's really you know, it's not just in their heads, it's really affecting these kids physically, whether the root cause is mental or if it's a physical issue, like a potential contaminant in the water. Something else the superintendent made sure to mention, too, was that this may not be an issue just at the school. It could be an issue

in the student's homes or some other commonality that they share. But yeah, they're just trying to trace all the possible causes of this right now. All right, Logan, well, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me on the show. You're listening to the Collegian Week in Review. This is Maddie, and I'm here with Eleanor Whitaker, a Collegian Reporter, and this week she wrote a story covering a speech given by Mark Hemingway about Taylor Swift and American culture.

Tell me about this speech. Yeah, so when I read the posters, going into it. I wasn't quite sure what angle the Hemingway was going to take on it. Is he saying, oh, our culture is relativist or there's a moral problem or is there something wrong with Taylor Swift herself? But I appreciated how his angle was from a music critic perspective. He's really into music himself. So he thinks a lot about like what makes good music and his overall point in the talk was she does not make as good music as people say she does. And so going into it, he talked about how he believed her lyrics weren't.

As poetic as often people think they are, he acknowledged that, yes, some of her lyrics are good, but then she also has lyrics that talk about narcissism and congressmen in the same line, like referencing anti-hero, which is fair. Oh, Midnight's was a really strange album. It has lots of weird lyrics. Then the lyrics he did say were good are to often talk about breakups, which are most all of his songs,

which was also fair. He went into how he compared her to some of the older artists, like Tom Petty and the Beatles and how they were able to combine elements of both appealing to culture, making music that sounds good and interesting, also combining lyrical technicality and combining good themes and values. He touched a little bit on her values,

like it's probably not great things for people to look up to. but emphasized a lot of the musical side of things. What was sort of his point about what her popularity says about American culture? Yeah, his point was more American music tastes aren't that great. Like, we really should be aiming towards listening to things that have higher musical value to them. He did say, it's okay to listen to things that just feel good sometimes. He was very clear at the beginning to say he acknowledges that, Taylor Swift is good at what she does.

And he defined what she does as making good corporate products that make billions of dollars and appeal to her audience, which are young teenage girls. She's really good at touching into their teenage girl emotions and making them feel like they're heard. But he argued that we also need values that uplift people. And that, yeah. Who did you talk to for this story and what did they have to say? I loved the conversation I had afterwards. I was scanning the room for the, I really wanted to hear from the Taylor Swift fans specifically about what they had to hear.

And I found the two biggest Taylor Swift fan girls in the room. And so afterwards, I was standing outside the door and I attacked them. And I was like, you guys look like you are Taylor Swift girls. And they asked some very good questions. Like, I have to talk to you. Like, what evaluate his argument? What do you think? And we talked about how we agreed with him that there, she has lots of moral problems.

and having music that's relatable isn't enough. But we kind of disagreed with him a little bit on his analysis of the songwriting songs. There are some exceptions, a lot of exceptions to what he said. She has songs that aren't about breakups. She has songs that have genuinely deep lyrics. Those are songs that we can appreciate and enjoy. And she's also not nearly as bad as so many other pop artists. However, the songs that are actually good are also not as popular.

So if you're looking at her just by popularity, the popular songs are the ones about breakups and the ones with lyrics that can be repetitive and that have the same chord structure over again. One thing that didn't go into the article that was cut was Hemingway's point about the importance of music education. It kind of went into the question period, which we all really appreciated. He said, if we should promote music education so people know more about what they're listening to and can be more. aware of that. It's not only important to be aware of what lyrics are, but how is the music structured? Is it the same song over and over again? Because those same songs really shouldn't be appreciated as much. We should really put our time to appreciating the artists that take the effort to add different chord structures and add different tones and mix up the lyrics.

I was looking at the audience, like, who attended. This is kind of a rough estimate, but there were probably about maybe like 40-ish people who went, definitely lots of younger women who went, and a significant portion of middle-aged men. Interesting. I think there was a good mix of people who really liked Taylor Swift and wanted to defend her honor, and people who were very excited to hear from someone else

who did not like Taylor Swift and appreciate it. That's funny. Was it like professors? Yeah, quite a few professors. Like Dr. Gurkie was there, Dr. Hart was there, Dr. Mummy was there. That's awesome. Yeah, and Hemingway was also like, I am a Gen X man who most people will think that my opinion does not matter, and I don't care.

Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. You have been listening to the Collegio Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Lauren Scott and I'm Maddie Welsh. You can find the Collegian online at Hillsdale Collegian.com. You can also find previous episodes of the Collegium Week interview online at cwir.transistor.fm. Once again, you've been listening to the Collegium Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.