WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week In Review: January 18th, 2024

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

This week on the first episode of 2024, hosts Maddy Welsh and Lauren Scott discuss top headlines and then Maddy talks to Logan Washburn about Mayor Stockford's recent announcement that he will be running for a state representative position. 

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 Weekend 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 the mayor of Hillsdale, Adam Stockford, and his new run for state representative in Michigan. But first, Lauren and I are going to discuss some of the top stories and interesting stories from the Collegian this week.

So this week was our first newspaper of the new semester. It is a half issue. So there are half as many stories as usual, but there are still plenty to talk about. The top story on the front page this week is about the sexual assault lawsuit. and its potential to threaten Hillsdale's Title IX exemption. Yeah, so from my understanding, according to the lawsuit, even though Hillsdale doesn't accept any federal funding, the lawsuit is claiming that since Hillsdale is a Christian institution,

we don't have to pay taxes. And so they view that as federal aid. and so this lawsuit threatens Hillsdale's exemption from Title IX because they view Hillsdale not paying taxes as some sort of federal aid. Yeah, here's what Elizabeth Troutman, the editor-in-chief wrote.

She said, A sexual assault lawsuit filed last year could threaten Hillsdale College's religious freedom by placing its policies under the authority of the federal government, legal experts say. Two women, a current junior, and a former member of the class of

24 who has since transferred claimed that students at Hillsdale face an unusually high risk of sexual assault because the college does not comply with Title IX, which seeks to prohibit discrimination based on sex. So it's a pretty complicated lawsuit. Interesting

for the college. Also interesting for other institutions though, who are Christian institutions who do not pay taxes if you're going to view that as a form of federal aid. It would be interesting to see, you know, depending on where the lawsuit goes, what happens, what this could mean for other places besides Hillsdale. Right. Elizabeth wrote that too. She said, a ruling that places Hillsdale under Title IX's jurisdiction could reach far beyond rural Michigan.

Other religious institutions from higher education to secondary and elementary schools would risk losing their religious freedom. So certainly an interesting thing to read up about and stay on top of. and sort of just follow this lawsuit and what's happening with it. Another story we have is the announcement of the Pulliam Fellow for this semester. The Pulliam Fellow is a visitor of the journalism department selected by the Dow Journalism Program as well as people in external affairs. And the guest this semester is going to be Carol Markowitz. I think that's how you say her name.

I'm not totally sure. But she is from the New York Post, and she'll be here for two weeks in March. to teach a one-credit class on persuasive writing. So very exciting to get such a distinguished guest to Hillsdale. It is always interesting to see the type of guests that we can recruit to be our Pollyam fellows. Yeah, so she is both a writer and involved in podcasting. So Mr. Miller said in the article that in that way, she sort of combines the two parts of the journalism department, which are the print part, which is the Collegian, and then the radio.

part, which is radio-free hillsdale. So it'll be very interesting to have her here. It's a great opportunity to have these professional journalists come and visit and share their wisdom with not only journalism students, but anyone else who's interested in taking the class and then going to the public seminar as well. I remember whenever I enrolled a couple years ago, the fellow was Christopher Rufo, so he had very interesting lectures. And then I know we also also just had Miranda Devine, who broke the story about Hunter Biden's laptop. And so it's always a great time. You know, you get to talk to people that you probably wouldn't talk to if you hadn't

enrolled otherwise. Yeah, it's a great opportunity. Another interesting story that we have in the news section is about the chapel choir. Apparently, they did some recordings over winter break. So the Hillsville College Chapel Chappell Choir remained on campus until December 12th filming and recording selections of songs that performed earlier in the year

for the marketing department's media team. That is the first sentence of the story written by Isaac Green, the news editor. So kind of cool that there are recordings now sung by a Hillstale College choir. I'm definitely not surprised. The choir is beautiful. I always love my personal favorite

is the alma mater when they sing that. Always gives me chills. Moving on from the news section, we've gotten the opinions section, a story saying that Michigan is more than its harsh winters. I thought this was a great take. I am from Florida, but I think I agree with the author. Claire Goday, she's the opinions editor. There's so much more to Michigan than the winters.

People complain about it, but, you know, Michigan's a beautiful state, has a lot to offer. And even that's super cold right now. There's more to life than that. I completely agree. As a Texan girlie myself, I come from a state where there are maybe two seasons. And so it is nice to come to Michigan and actually get to experience the four seasons. You know, a lot of Hillsdale students complain that right when Hillsdale gets beautiful, they have to go home.

And so it's really nice if you get the opportunity to stay here for summer. I had the opportunity to do that about two years ago. I stayed in Hillsdale for a summer for an internship, and I totally got to appreciate Michigan in a completely different way because I was actually here for what I think is probably the second most beautiful time of the year. I think the number one most beautiful time is the fall. And so I definitely think that the fall and the summer can be overlooked because the winters are so harsh and really brutal, and it's really hard to get up and go to class whenever it's cold. But let's not forget that the other eight months is beautiful in Michigan.

Well, and even when it's really cold, it's the snow is very beautiful. I completely agree. It just kind of hurts to be outside. Moving on to the city news section, the top story is one that we will talk to the reporter Logan Washer in about shortly. But the other story that we have here was written by you, Lauren, and it's about the opening, the upcoming opening of the new Meyer and Hillstale. Tell me about it. So it's pretty exciting. I personally have never been to a Meyer, but I have many friends who have. And they're all pretty much saying the same thing, which is all positive feedback. They say that, and I actually quoted a senior, one of my dear friends, Shannon Golden in the article,

who said that she's very excited for Meyer to come because they have a wonderful variety of things from food to beauty products. And another thing that she said that I did not include in the article is that a lot of times Meyer will offer things that other stores like Walmart does not offer. I was corresponding with the City of Hillsdale Zoning administrator Alan Beaker. And he said that the gas station is expected to open in April and then the store is expected to open in May. He also mentioned that, you know, since this is a pretty big construction project, things are fluid, things are always changing. And so it is possible that those dates could be pushed back. But right now, they are expecting to have their opening dates in those months. And I also spoke to a public relations manager who works for Meyer.

And she said that the opening dates will be announced six weeks' price. So people can be on the lookout for that, I guess, starting in March. Yeah, it's exciting to have the addition of a new business like this in Hillsdale. I think it'll be very beneficial for everyone around. And I seen the article here. It says that they're planning to hire more than 300 people. So that creates a lot of jobs in the area too, which is always a great thing. Exactly.

Another person I spoke to was Hillsdale Mayor Adam Stockford. And he said that these 300 plus jobs will range anywhere from part-time salary to full-time management salaries. So definitely a wide variety. And again, the spokesperson for Myers said that they are looking to hire residents but also students. So this could be a great opportunity for the college as well. In the sports section, we have some interesting news. we have for one an article written by me about the first swim meet of the new year. The swim team has about a month left in their season.

The championship meet is going to happen in the middle of February. So they had this meet. They have one more meet this weekend and then a few weeks off before the championship. So at this meet, they did not win in terms of points, but they did have some really good individual performances, in particular, senior Caroline Holmes, juniors Megan Clifford and Emma Dacute did really well, got great personal times, won some events,

and scored some points for the team. So it'll be really exciting to see how the team does as they get closer to the championships. The championships are always very exciting. He'll still does very well. They won for three years in a row in 2022, 21 and 20. In 2023, they came second.

So it's always a very exciting time for the swim team, and they will be doing great things. Also in sports, we have a story by assistant sports editor, Sarah Catherine Sisk, about the football team getting a lot of academic awards. So that's great to see. She wrote, The Hill Cell Chargers football team placed the maximum number of players on the college sports communicators, academic all-district team this season.

This season, eight players qualified for the all-district team, including seniors Garrett Eisen, Trevor DeGroote, Drew Ransom, and Sam Zemis, along with juniors Ben Affalter, Bart Bixler, Ty Williams, and Riley Tulsa. The CSC All-American program recognizes athletes with outstanding athletic and academic abilities. So, congrats to them. Always great to see that Hillstill Steel Athletes. are performing in their sports and also in the classroom. That's all from us.

Next, we'll be hearing from Logan Washburn about Mayor Adam Stockford's new political campaign. You're listening to the Collegian Week in Review. This is Maddie, and I'm here with Logan Washburn, the associate editor of the Collegian. And this week, he wrote a story about Adam Stockford, the mayor of Hillsdale. and his recent political endeavor. Logan, tell me a little bit more about what Mayor Adam Stockford is up to. Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me on the show, Maddie.

So Adam Stockford is running for state representative in the 35th district, which includes Hillsdale again. He ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary in 2020, but now he's throwing his head in the ring again, and he hopes to fill that seat and represent us. the state house. Who is he running against? So Adam Stockford is running against Branch County Commissioner Tom Matthew. Tom Matthew has a pretty inspirational story. His family came to America when he was young, I believe. But we wrote a piece in the Collegian in the past about that, and we really

delved into his past. So yeah, he has a really cool story and background in that way. But But he is on the board of the branch Hillsdale St. Joseph, Board of Health, like the medical authority. So, yeah, he said he was excited to see Stockford announce his candidacy because he welcomes more competition. And they're both running in the Republican primary? Yes. No Democrat has yet registered for the race, according to the Secretary of State. And when are the dates of the elections? So the primary will take place on August 6th, and the general election will take place on November 5th.

When Stockford ran in 2020, who was he running against? So he was running against the current state representative Andrew Fink, and there were a few other candidates on that ballot. He lost that election by a margin of 31.6% to 21.8%. So he almost got the same percentage of votes as Fink. He got a considerable amount of votes. And Fink has been in this position since then, correct? Yes, since even before then. But he's been the longtime state representative of the district.

And he's not running so far. He hasn't filed because he's running for the state Supreme Court. He announced that, I believe, in November. So what is Stockford running on? So Stockford is running on reducing the size of government, a pretty broad policy in that way, but he has a few key points that he's trying to hit. He's trying to increase the power and autonomy of local townships and cities. And he's trying to rein in some of the green energy policies that are coming from the state capital. But yeah, overall, he's against what he calls Nanny State policies and essentially in favor of increasing freedom for residents of the area.

What did Stockford tell you about his campaign? So Stockford said that this campaign is going to be much different from the one in 2020 because this time they're much more organized than they have a lot of backers. and he even said they have some friends in Lansing. He said that if he were running, he would not want to run against himself. What have been some of the highlights of Stockford's term as mayor of Hillsdale? So Adam Stockford has been the mayor for a good few years here. He's seen the city through a lot of controversies and division.

There was a big controversy that drew a lot of criticism from even outside of the city over the decision to try and relocate certain books with adult themes from the children's section of the library. And Adam Stockford really tried to navigate that well. And I think that he tried his best to do that. And there was also the division in the County Republican Party. a member of that party. And so it was interesting to watch him navigate that. But yeah, as mayor, he's seen

the city through quite a few times of division. And he said that he's actually going to try and use that experience as state representative. He said he thinks it'll give him a leg up on the competition. Yeah, sort of related to that, but

what did he say his experience as mayor of Hillsdale will bring to the table. Yeah, he said that he has experience managing a somewhat autonomous local government. He cited his experience working with the BPU because the city of Hillsdale has its own water and electricity utility company. And so he cited that to try and say that the city is pretty independent, and he kind of wants to restore that model to cities across the state. He's a lot. He's He says it's going to give him a lot more experience when it comes to managing people.

And yeah, he said that overall it would just be a benefit to him. Is there anything else people should know about Mayor Adam Stockford's race for the position of state representative? Yeah. He said that he has a very simple litmus test. And that's asking whether legislation gives people more freedom. He said that if it does not and if it makes the government bigger, then it's likely a law that's going to reduce individual freedom and waste state resources doing so. His opponent, Tom Matthew, also said that he welcomed the freedom of disagreement that's going to come in these months of the campaign.

Thanks for coming on the show, Logan. Thanks for having me on the show, Maddie. You have been listening to the Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We're your host, Lauren Scott and Maddie Welsh. You can find the Collegian online at Hillsdale Collegian.com. You can also find us on Instagram at Hillsdale Collegian. You can also find previous episodes of the Collegian Weekend Review online at cwir.transistor.fm. Once again, you've been listening to the Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7

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