WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week in Review: January 15th, 2026

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

This week on the Collegian Week in Review, hosts Catherine Maxwell, Alessia Sandala, and Tayte Christensen first talk with Christina Lewis about a city solar panel farm standoff, then Christian Papillon breaks down fall sports results. Finally, they talk with Adriana Azarian about a Michigan state supreme court case and her recent pilgrimage to Israel.

You are listening to the Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Here are your hosts, Catherine Maxwell, Alessia Sandella, and Tate Christensen. Welcome to Collegian Week in Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your hosts, Catherine Maxwell, Alessia Sandella, and Tate Christensen. You may have heard a new name. Tate Christensen will be our new host for this semester. Glad to be back. Today we'll be talking with Christina Lewis about a city solar farm issue.

Christian Papillon with a fall sports recap and Adriana Azarian with a major state court case and her pilgrimage to Israel. First from City News, we're going to do a brief update on the Kiefer House Hotel. Catherine, you wrote a story about it. How long until it's done? Well, how long is really anyone's guess? but the Hillsdale City Council voted 6.3 at its December 15th meeting to grant the development company until June 30th to finish the project. This is the sixth extension for the Kiefer House Hotel. Is construction getting any closer? The development company certainly thinks so. They led some city council members on a tour of the progress, the day of the day of the meeting and they said they've got flooring coming in. They had to pause some work on the exterior, but they're figuring out a plan to continue painting and working on it in the cold.

And a representative from the company spoke at the meeting and said that they've committed to working overtime on weekends, spending some late nights there, and the plan is to get it done before that date of June 30th. council members voted against it and why? Mayor Scott Sessions voted against the resolution along with Ward 1 Councilman Jacob Bruns and Ward 2 Councilman Matt Bentley. The Collegian had previously spoken to Bruns who said he's committed to voting against the project. Mayor Sessions said he voted against it because he didn't see any progress on his walkthrough and he questions if it'll actually be completed by June 30th.

So what would happen if the council did not choose to extend the contract? So the vote extends a tax incentive under the Obsolete Property Rehabilitation Act. And essentially what this tax incentive does is waive property taxes while the building is under construction. So once the hotel is operating, they'll be making money off of it. and they can use that to pay the property tax on the property. But while it's under construction, obviously they're not making any money from it. So to keep from losing more money on the project while it's being built,

there's this tax incentive that makes it a little easier for them to finish the project. And the obsolete property rehabilitation act specifically is for buildings that are functionally obsolete or in disrepair, they can't be used and they need someone to come in and make them usable again. Great. Thanks, Catherine. Of course. You're listening to the Collegian Week in Review.

I'm Alessia, and today for City News, we're having on Christina Lewis, who is an assistant news editor. She wrote a story about a proposed solar farm in Fayette Township. Hi, Christina. Hi, Alessia. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah.

Thanks for covering this. So what exactly is the situation with the solar farm? Yes. So I attended the January 12th meeting. It was the Fayette Township Board meeting. And residents of the Fayette Township got to come in voice their concerns regarding this project. So in 2022, the Fayette Township decided to go forward with a project called the Heartwood Solar

Farm. and it basically constructed solar panels on 700 acres of land. And now the Fayette Township is considering a second part of that project, which would construct an additional 1,300 acres. And what were some of the concerns that the residents voiced? So residents were mostly concerned that the solar panels would change the way of life in Hillsdale. Residents don't want to look at solar panels outside their windows. They don't want to see them as they're driving around town.

Residents also were concerned that solar panels would have a negative effect on the environment. The panels would displace deer, so there'll be more deer on the street. One resident in particular, she just moved from California. So she got up to the mic and she said, you know, I moved from California, and now I have this problem. So it's very unfortunate because she decided to come to Hillsdale to retire, and now she has a green energy problem to deal with in Michigan. And there were some notable people at the meeting, correct? Yes, so state representative Jennifer Warts came along with some candidates for governor. And what did they say about the solar farm?

So the candidates for governor, both of them were very much against the solar farm. Representative Warts in her talk, public talk, she had a more balanced perspective and she encouraged residents to speak up for themselves and to really voice their concerns if they believed that the Fayette Township shouldn't go forward with this project. So you talked to the leader of the opposition. What did he have to say? and he brought up some concerns about the Fayette Township Board, correct? Yes, so the leader, Steve, he actually developed this website called No Solar Fayette, and it has a lot of information on this project. So Steve was concerned that people on the planning commission had interests in the project itself.

So a lot of the people either had family members who owned land, that would then get money from these big solar companies or they themselves had land. How many people attended the meeting? Around 300 people attended the meeting. And then around 30 people went up to the mic to speak. And there was a time limit of three minutes per person. You also talked to Ward 1 councilman of the city of Hillsdale, Jacob Runns. Residents of the city of Hillsdale are also worried?

Yes, residents of the city are worried. And actually at the meeting, he said that he has never seen people in Hillsdale so united against something. So it took a solar farm to bring the people of Hillsdale together, I guess. But yeah, people are not happy. They don't want to deal with some of the environmental effects. A realtor at the meeting on Monday, she brought up the point that a lot of her clients don't want to buy homes that are near these solar farms because they don't like the humming that the solar panels generate. It's just like sound. They don't like the temperature fluctuations and they just don't want to look out the window and

see solar panels when they could be seeing land. Did anyone at the meeting voice support for the solar farm? So no one voiced support for the solar farm, but a man got up to the mic and he asked the audience if anyone actually supports this project and only one man raised his hand. I went up to him at the end of the meeting and he said he talked to me next week. So thanks, Christina. Thanks, Lassia. Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Week in Review continues. Today we're talking to Christian Papillon, assistant sports editor for the Collegian, and he wrote about the football team and just an overview of fall sports.

So welcome, Christian. Thank you. You wrote about the football team. team and their season. What was the recap you found on that? Yeah, so the football team, they finished with the winning record again this season. I think it's the third year in a row they've done that. And they also qualified for a bowl game for the first time. And I think since 2021, the first time since 2021 that they've made the bowl game, which was a nice surprise for the team. And the season didn't exactly go the way the coaches

and players wanted, but they still got some really good performances from their players. And they had one player named an All-American, right? Yes. Shea Ruddy, he had a really good year this year. He was an All-American. He had 960 kick-return yards, three kick-return touchdowns. He had more than 700 receiving yards. And so I think he led the GMAC in all-purpose yards, too,

which takes into account receiving, rushing, kick returns, everything. So, yeah, he had a really great year. And you talked about individual performances with football, but it sounded like the volleyball team also had some standout performances. Yes, they did. I think Adi Seism was a two-time GMAC player of the week this season. Volleyball had a good year this year. They made the playoffs again, but I think they got eliminated like in the quarterfinal or something.

So not great for the team in terms of what they were hoping for, but still really good performances from the seniors with Adi Seism leading them. And the golf team. They had a good season this fall as well. Yes, they won their first tournament of the year this last season, and Robert Thompson, he's been really great. He was great in the fall. He won two tournaments. He won a third one, but then there was a playoff that he unfortunately lost, but technically three wins out of five tournaments from him. And then Oliver Marshall, he's back from an injury, and he played pretty well last season. So really encouraging signs as they try to warm up for the spring season in March. It also sounded like the men's and women's cross-country team had a good season as well with an All-American on their teams as well. Yes. Ali Kuzma, she was on the women's cross-country team.

She had a really good year. She finished 13th in the D2 Nationals in November. And I think she placed very well in the G-MAC tournament, too. The women's team finished fourth overall. And the men's team, I mean, they won last year the whole G-MAC tournament. They finished fifth this year, but still really good solid runs from the runners. Awesome. And then our shotgun team, which has historically had some pretty outstanding individuals on it,

sounds like they're sending more individuals to nationals later this year. Yes, the shotgun team had three shooters qualify for both the Open and Junior National Women's teams. Taylor Dale, Ava Downs, they both qualified for international trap. and then Madeline Corbin qualified for international skeet. So once again, really good individual performances from almost all the sports teams in the fall. And then sports that had a fall season but are now looping into the spring, including men's and women's tennis.

How is their season looking? It's pretty good. The season, I think they're going to start again with tennis at the end of this month at home. So that's going to be good to watch. The women's team had an A Downhouser. She set team history in the fall. She had four straight wins in the top bracket at the Midwest Regional last October. So if she continues that in the spring, I think the women's team will have a very successful spring season.

And last but certainly not least is the swim team. They had their last meets of the fall season in November, but they have one another meet later this month. Yes. and in the fall they were top three in all of their meets. They won a few of them and finished second a few times. Just really solid, consistent performances from the swimmers. And once again, good signs for the upcoming spring season. Yeah, well, that's awesome.

Thanks so much for joining us today, Christian. Thank you for having me on. You're listening to the Collegian Week in Review. I'm Catherine, and today I'm here with Adriana Azarian, a assistant city news editor who wrote a big piece about an important court case decision that was just handed down in December. Adriana, what was this case and why is it such a big deal? Well, first of all, Catherine, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here. Yes, to answer your question, this is the Catholic Charities v. Whitmer case.

The Sixth Circuit Appellate Court just handed down this decision last month. Basically, what happened is in February 2024, Michigan passed a law that redefined, or I guess, defined compassionate counseling as a form of conversion therapy. So we have to define a few terms here. Compassionate counseling is a method of psychological counseling, wherein a psychologist will talk to people who have some kind of gender confusion, gender dysphoria. And what they do is instead of encouraging them to undergo medical procedures, what they do is they try to help their clients feel more comfortable. in their God-given biological sex. And in February 2024, a Michigan law defined this as conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is what we often associate with basically abusive kind of torture techniques

that certain groups have used to try to make people who have same-sex attraction or feel that they're born in the wrong body to align themselves a certain way. This is not what compassionate counseling is. Basically, it's making it out to be abuse and made it illegal. So that counselors, like Christian counselors or Catholic counselors, could lose their licenses. So what happened is that the Beckett Fund helped defend or represent some counselors in the Diocese of Lansing, the Catholic Diocese of Lansing. And they just won in December. So now counselors are pretty much protected against this law and they can practice compassionate counseling again.

You talked to a Catholic therapist who filed the lawsuit along with Catholic charities. What did she have to say? So I talked to Emily McJones. She founded Little Flower Counseling in 2020. And she basically said, you know, that she is a counselor. Compassionate counseling isn't her main focus, but she does see patients or clients who have these kinds of gender confusion and just kind of discomfort with their sexuality or with their. biological sex. And what she's done is she's helped them live in accordance with Catholic Church teaching, which is that, you know, you are given this assigned sex and we can't, it would

be immoral to change that. So what she does is she helps to alleviate the psychological discomfort around this in people. And she's seen the benefits of this. And she was telling me about, you know, people will say that transitioning is the beneficial path to go on. But really, if you look at some studies that are coming out, we see that people. young people who are undergoing these transgender procedures are committing suicide. They're having all kinds of irreversible infertility and cancer and health issues that come from this. So basically what she said is that this is a victory for Catholic counselors and a big win for the culture wars. You also spoke to an attorney for the Diocese of Lansing.

What did he say about the arguments that won them the case? Well, what he told me is that this is pretty obviously viewpoint discrimination, right? So a counselor can have a child come into their office and they can say, oh, you're uncomfortable with your body. Well, you can just switch and that's perfectly fine. But a counselor who wants to make a child feel comfortable is basically committing a crime. And this is not his words. This is me explain the situation from what he was telling me.

But, like, yes, it was viewpoint discrimination. It's very obviously targeted towards Christians and conservative ideology. So anyhow, the way that this case worked out is that it was actually a free speech case, not a religious thing. So that's what played out and what will hopefully play out in the Childs v. Salazar case, which is going to – the Supreme Court is going to be deciding on the next few months. So what he said is that hopefully they'll be using the same argument, Supreme Court leads the same arguments that the Sixth Circuit Court used in their decision. Is this case over or is there still time for the state to appeal?

The time for the court to ask for a rehearing has since passed. However, they have 90 days since the decision to appeal to the Supreme Court. So they still have about two months left for that. Audriana, thank you so much for your reporting. I'm Tate and I'm going to talk with Adriana here about her trip to Israel over Christmas break. Talk us through some of your first stops on the trip, you talk about being at the Sea of Galilee and in Nazareth. What was that like and what were some things that you saw? Okay. So yes, we started the trip on the Sea of Galilee, which was incredible. We stopped at the Mount of Beatitudes, which is where Jesus told us, you know, blessed are the poor and spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn. And that's actually

a Franciscan monastery. So there were some nuns walking around, very, very cute. We got to do a cruise on the Sea of Galilee. So we got to see what it was like, you know, being in the boat with Jesus and the apostles and just riding and having the whole view of just that beautiful, beautiful country. I mean, Israel is so green and so lovely and compared to Michigan, so warm. So that was really cool to see that. And just kind of follow Jesus' path around. We stopped in Magdala where St. Mary Magdalene is from and just kind of have a bit of a taste of what life was like 2,000 years ago in the Holy Land.

You write in your piece that as you were walking around Nazareth, you were asking yourself what good can come from Nazareth. So what good did you find in Nazareth? Well, the obvious good that came from Nazareth is that our Lord and Savior became incarnate in the flesh of the Virgin Mary, which is crazy. But if I were God, I would not become man in Nazareth just because it's kind of janky.

If I can say that, it's just kind of, it's a bit run down, it's a bit sketchy. But there are some good restaurants. We had some Schwerma there. We did some shopping. I bought a scarf. But the rest of the town is kind of run. down. And this was the case

2,000 years ago as well. But it's also beautiful because it's where the Basilica of the Annunciation is. Full disclosure, there's also an Orthodox site that claims that that's where the Angel Gabriel visited Mary, but the Catholics also have their site, which is where the angel Gabriel visited Mary. So do we actually know where it is?

No. But hanging out in the Catholic Basilica was absolutely breathtaking and just being even in the vicinity of where God became man and lived his daily life is just mind-boggling. So that is the good that came from Nazareth. In Jerusalem, it also sounds like you guys saw some fantastic sites. So what did you see in Jerusalem? I saw a lot of things in Jerusalem. Well, okay, we walked through

King Hezekiah's tunnel. King Hezekiah was a king who built this tunnel to keep out an Assyrian siege. So it's still here thousands of years later and you can walk through it, believe it or not. And there's a lot of water and it goes up to your knees. And if you're my head, it goes up to your hips. So that's always pleasant. But you walk through like 20 for 20 minutes to this dark, wet cave. And it's a great experience. But I also got to go three times to the Holy Sepulcher, which is the traditional site of where Jesus was crucified and buried. There's also a lot of debate about where it actually happened. But 1600 years, Christians have been saying, this is the spot. So this is the spot. We got to have mass in the tomb. Went to mass twice there. Upstairs is an Orthodox chapel. That's the site

where Jesus was crucified. So that was incredibly moving. And then also just being able to touch the stone, which Jesus' body was anointed on. That was a deeply moving experience. I guess on a more serious and somber note, you guys also saw some of the conflict that's happening there now and that has taken place in years past. So you describe visiting the Nova Music Festival site and just the disaster that that was. Can you kind of talk us through that and just what were some things that you saw there that were especially touching?

Sure. I didn't get too much into this in the article, but we went to, we walked around the grounds of where the NOAA music festival site was, like you mentioned. And there is a dumpster in which people were hiding from Hamas. And they showed kind of their last text messages to their families that they sent from that dumpster and just like, is in looks of absolute horror and terror. And I mean, everyone in there died. And just to stand in there where people spent their last moments in fear is an incredibly sombering. I mean, you can still feel like a very real heaviness and darkness in that place. And so for me, coming into this experience, I was looking very much forward to the pilgrimage side of things,

not thinking so much about the political and the conflict side of things. And that really does change your perspective when you see. see all this proof of human suffering and you hear from people who know people or who have family who died that day, who are deeply affected by the conflict over there. And even just hearing the artillery fire, now there's a ceasefire now, but the IDF still has artillery fire on the border. And when you feel the ground shake beneath you, it makes everything so much more real and it makes the suffering so much more real. So I really really, appreciated being there, even if it was incredibly heavy. Somehow the people of Israel, and I write this

in the article, have so much joy, even though there is so much heaviness and there is so much, you can tell that they've been through so much. But they love their country and they love their history and they love their people and they're very proud to be Israeli. And it's beautiful to see people dancing in the marketplace and just being such, I mean, I've never seen so much hospitality and kindness. So I'm already planning my next trip to go back. It was awesome. You talked about practicing a Shabbat with a family in Israel. What was that like? Oh my gosh. So much food. There was an Orthodox Jewish family. They're both from America, but they live in Jerusalem now. That's the case for a lot of people who live in Jerusalem.

They're Americans who feel a deep connection, biblical connection to the land of Israel. so they go back and host in this particular film we hosted us Americans and they had so much food lots of chicken lots of fish lots of vegetables lots of dessert um lots of grape juice too they didn't serve us wine but it was it was lovely they were talking about um you know what it means to be an orthodox jew in Jerusalem what it means um what the whole conflict meant to them so uh it was it was lovely being welcomed into someone's home and getting to experience a Shabbat dinner for the first time. I actually think that Christians should adopt a Shabbat adjacent practice, spending time with family and passing on tradition and praying together as families and friends as an incredibly

powerful means of preserving and passing on the faith. So I think that was really cool to see that. Yeah. Well, that's so awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and talking with us and sharing your experiences. Well, thank you so much again for having me. Good to be here. You've been listening to the Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Alessia Sandela. And I'm Tate Christensen. And I'm Catherine Maxwell. You can find the Collegian Weekend Review online at cwir.transistor.fm.

You can find more news at Hillsdale Collegian.com or on our Instagram at Hillsdale Collegian. Thanks for listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.