WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week in Review: January 23, 2025

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

This week, Lauren Bixler joins the show to discuss the wildfires in California and her perspective on the leadership failures that caused them. Catherine Maxwell shares her experience riding in Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn's cyber truck.

Welcome to The Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Here are your hosts, Moorgleason, Thomas McKinna, and Caroline Kurt. Welcome to Collegian Weekend Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your host, Caroline Kurt. Coleman Rowan. And I'm Thomas McKenna. And today we'll be talking with Lauren Bixler, our circulation manager, about the wildfires in California and what she sees as a leadership failure. Then we'll talk with Catherine Maxwell,

our news editor about her ride and Dr. Arne's new Tesla cyber truck. And finally, we'll talk with Avi Maljanian about his experience in California amid the wildfires. But first, we're starting with some top headlines. Caroline, tell us about what you saw on opinions today. Yeah, we had some great stuff this week, very timely. Michaela S. Truth wrote about a case that the Supreme Court will be hearing by the end of June to decide, whether age restrictions on pornography websites, violi free speech rights,

and she had a great take on that. Lauren, as you mentioned, we will be interviewing later in this show. And Jonah Aple, a grad student here, talked about our attitude towards Trump's inauguration and rightly celebrating that. So really great page this week. Thomas, do you want to run us through some news?

Sure. Well, we'll be talking about our top story of Dr. Arne buying a cyber truck in a moment. But over on City News and here on A1, we talk about how the city is going to hold a new special election for the mayor's seat. The mayor in November resigned. That was Mayor Adam Stockford. He graduated from Hillsdale College in 2015. And he's been replaced temporarily by an acting mayor, Joshua Palladino, who just graduated from Hillsdale with a doctorate in politics. And so his seat will be up for election in August. And what will happen after that could be a general election where they go to a runoff if they need to narrow it down to two candidates. That could happen in November. And then just a year after that, they'll hold a regular election, which will be for a bunch of city council seats and the mayor's seat. So what's at stake here is really which direction the town is going to go in when it comes

to trying to repair the roads, when it comes to where town. tax money should go. And those are all issues that are important to both students and people who live in town. Coleman, can you tell us about anything that's over on the culture page? In the culture section, the main story we have going on is a student, Lauren Smith, is publishing her fourth novel in May called WarSafe. You're listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We'll be back in a moment. Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Weekend Review continues. Welcome back to Collegian Week in Review.

We're talking with Lauren Bixler. She's a sophomore studying politics and the circulation manager at the Collegion. She wrote a piece this week on the L.A. wildfires and how poor leadership costs lives there in California. Lauren, you're a Northern California native. Tell us about what you wrote in this piece. So, as you just said, I am from Northern California. We're in the Sacramento area. So inland of California, it's a lot.

more mountainous and hilly, even though I'm in a more suburb area. I'm accustomed to being around fires. When I first heard about the LA fires and the palisades and Eaton fires, especially, I was looking at the acreage of in the 20s and tens of thousands of acres. It seemed small, which generally you think of that as a lot of acres, but last summer a couple months ago, the park fire burned in northern California, about half a million acres, which was quite significant. And that was caused by arson, interestingly. But that didn't get national headlines the same way the L.A. fires have. And I'm glad we're getting headlines, first of all, because even though they may be smaller

in comparison to what we've seen, it also has ripped through an urban area, which is not as common with the wildfires we see in northern California. And we don't know what would have happened without the potential leadership issues. But we do know a lot of lives have been lost and that is potentially preventable. Yeah, Lauren, go into that more. In your piece you talked about at length, how these recent fires could have been preventable in a way that this, the park, arson caused fires, fire was not. And a lot of that was due to poor leadership.

So tell us what you found in your research. Yes, there's a lot of components and many I didn't even get into in my article, but a few conditions around the fire. Firstly, was the lack of water. California often touts that we're in a drought, which is partially true, but there's also a lot of water resources that aren't utilized when we do get rain. And in Northern California, I see quite a bit of rain in the winter. And many years of not building dams and letting reservoirs not fill up has had some effects. And we saw that with these fires, the San Inez Reservoir, which is the main water supplier to the Palisades, was completely empty.

and it's been empty for almost a year. I believe it said since February of last year, it was closed down for supposed repairs. But a free press reporter had gone out to kind of inspect this and there were no construction materials in sight. So a 117 million gallon reservoir was left empty for over a year, which just seems like, it seems so shocking when we know how much money's in the state

and how much money has been redirected to certain things like DEI policies and on the topic of money. Between the 2022 to 3 and 2024 to 25 fiscal year, the LA Fire Department budget was cut by $17.6 million, which some people are looking towards the L.A. Mayor Karen Bass about to wonder how that happened, especially when just a month ago, the LA Fire Department chief, Kristen Crowley, she sent a memo to the mayor saying we need more resources and we are short on my empower. We're short on resources. Now, tell us about what California could do differently going forward. Is there anything in particular that you, as a Northern California native, would like to see

done differently, a tangible step? I would say at least with a lot of the relief money coming in, I'm nowhere near a finance expert. So I don't know exactly how that money is allocated. But seeing a more efficient use of money in the state would be helpful. I think that has been an issue in major things. I mean, as we see now after Trump's inauguration, he's cutting a lot of DEI out of the federal government. And that would be useful, especially in California as well, because I'm, I didn't talk about this in my piece, but there has been some news around Kristen Crowley, the LA Fire Department chief, who started prioritizing DEI initiatives in the fire department. So perhaps if money wasn't spent there and instead on better infrastructure for these fires, you know, who knows what could happen. But of course, I don't know that much about what I'm talking about. That's something I'm not well researched in. but having just better efficient allocation of our money. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much, Lauren, for your research and your writing. You put a lot into this piece, and we're really grateful to have you on. Thank you for having me. You were listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. We will be back with our next guest in a minute. This is the Collegian Week in Review. Welcome back to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. This is Collegian Weekend Review.

And we're talking with Catherine Maxwell. She's our news editor. She wrote an article about Dr. Arne's new cyber truck. She got to ride in the cyber truck. And that's the most important thing about this story. Catherine, tell us about what it's like to take a ride in Dr. Arns' cyber truck. I think the best description of the cyber truck that I've seen is actually will. Dunham's quote from the piece. He's a Hillsdale alum, currently the senior vice president

at the American Investment Council, and he also rode with Dr. Arne to pick up the cyber truck. And he described it as a Zen garden on the inside and an urban warfare tank on the outside. And I think that's a really great description, because once you're in it, it's so quiet. It's honestly unbelievable. I was just coasting along. and you just see everything zooming past, and you're hearing nothing except Dr. Arne talking about how excited he is about the cyber truck. And then you look at it, and it's just,

it looks kind of like a rocket ship, honestly, on the inside, too. It's very minimalist. It's got these cool little accent lights and a giant iPad, and that's basically it. So you really feel like you could blast off to Mars at any minute, and it wouldn't surprise me if Musk programmed some sort of Mars homing system into the cyber truck. Now, Dr. Arn is somebody who we all know venerates tradition. And so I think it's a little ironic that he has the newest most futuristic looking vehicle on campus right now.

I'm going to forego the Arne impression here, but he says that he was charmed by it. Can you tell us more about what his feelings were toward it and why he said he bought it? Yeah, he honestly just really liked it. he was motivated in part by the electric aspect of it. He said he's done some research into it, and he thinks the electric motors are way more efficient than gas-powered vehicles, and he really sees them as the future of driving. And he said he's interested in the college experimenting with electric vehicles, Tesla vehicles specifically, for their own cars. So that was definitely a piece of it, the cost-effectiveness. But he also just said,

thinks it's really cool. He thinks Musk is a pretty cool guy. Obviously, he doesn't agree with everything Musk says, but he just likes the way it looks. He thinks it's a really awesome piece of technology. And he said he's only ever been excited about a car twice in his life. The first was the car his dad gave him when he graduated high school. He said it was an old used Dodge Dart and the second was the cyber truck. Can you tell us the story of Arne meeting Musk? That is not something I was aware of had happened. It doesn't surprise me, but go into that a little bit.

Yeah, so Arn said he met Elon Musk at the White House in the first couple weeks of the first Trump administration. He was there to meet Mike Pence, the vice president at the time, but he ended up running into some former Hillsdale students who were working at the White House. and he said he was talking to them and noticed Musk kind of sitting off to himself. And he said, you're Elon Musk. And Musk's response was something like, no, I'm not. And Arne replied, you are actually. And Musk got up and walked over to the group and started talking to them. And he asked Arn, who all the people were.

And Arn said, these are my kids. And Musk goes, they don't look like kids to me. and Arne says, do you, sir, they are authorities. To me, they are kids. And apparently Musk really liked that. And they kept talking, and the conversation ended with an invitation

for Arne to visit Tesla, which he did with his wife, Penny. And they got to tour the facility, and Musk showed them around. And Arn said it was really cool. So the question then for me is, why a cyber truck? You know, he could have got a Tesla

that doesn't look like it was drawn, by a three-year-old. So did he have any comment on this, on this unique design on the outside? He didn't say anything about the design specifically. I think he just liked how futuristic it looked compared to other Teslas. Other Teslas, you can tell their Teslas,

but they still look like a car, a normal car, I should say. And this one is very striking. and I think it's sort of the Volkswagen punch buggy of our generation. It drives down the street and you know exactly what it is as soon as you see it. And I think Arne likes that part of it. Catherine, I really appreciated the new incentive that Arn has given all of us as Hillstall College students. He said the very last quote of the piece,

students who do exceptional deeds and thoughts are going to be given rides in the cyber truck. what do you think would deserve another ride for you in the cyber truck? Oh gosh. I honestly don't know. He didn't unpack deeds or thoughts, and I think he left it purposefully open-ended so he can interpret it however he wants. I think doing something funny

or maybe a little snarky that he enjoys would get someone a ride. I bet becoming president would get you a ride in the cyber truck, but that's a long way off for everyone. You're listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Freehillsda 101.7 FM. You're listening to the Collegian Weekend Review. This is Collegian Weekend Review,

and we are interviewing sophomore Avi Maljanian. He lives in the area that the L.A. fires have ravaged, and he brought us an incredible firsthand account of fleeing from the fires and then returning to fight them. Avi, why don't you give us just a brief rundown of your story these few days that you're evacuating and then returning? Yeah, absolutely.

So I live in the neighborhood of Altadena, which was pretty much 80%, I'm estimating, but 80% destroyed by the Eaton fires. I evacuated with my family on the night of Tuesday, January 7th. I originally went with my grandfather to a friend's house that same night, but they also were forced to evacuate like a few hours after we got there. And so we had to relocate again

to another location. But on Wednesday, the 8th, I went back to help my parents fight the fires. And I ended up staying all the way from Wednesday to Friday. Just fighting fires, deterring looters, including a suspected one

that my neighbors and I caught. And just making sure that our neighborhood was safe. Yeah, and so you reached out to me and what you first sent me was not like an article draft, but your journal of these events. Tell me why you decided to start keeping this journal amid all the chaos and what prompted you to transform this into a piece for us. Yeah, so I started the journal the night of, let's see, that would be Thursday the 9th. unless I'm mistaken. I started the journal because I was trying to stay awake.

I was staying up the whole night to deter looters. I was by myself at the house. And I was very worried that if I fell asleep or just drowsed off, dozed off for a moment, something would happen outside. And as it turns out, a lot of things did happen. I mean, we caught a looter, suspected looter outside my house. A couple fires sprung up on the side of my property. So I started it to stay awake and because people were already kind of flooding me with with calls and texts asking what was going on.

And I knew they were going to ask what was happening afterward. And I didn't want to have to repeat myself to a bunch of people. So really I was I was lazy. And so I started writing just little anecdotes in a journal to stay awake and to have something to show people afterward. And then what prompted you to turn this into an article? Well, my father actually asked me if I'd be willing to put it into an article form and submit it to the Collegian. I wasn't really planning on it originally, but he asked me to just to kind of spread awareness about what happened in our neighborhood. And he thought correctly that there might be a story in what I had written down.

And yeah, people seem to have been a lot more intrigued than I originally thought they would be. You mentioned that, you know, you returned to your house to keep it safe. Your house is still standing while many others in your neighborhood are not. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what it took to keep it that way? Absolutely. We were very blessed. We have good neighbors. So once we left the house, our neighbors, a couple of them across the street,

had come and doused part of our fence line with a fire extinguisher before leaving themselves. and that that saved our house we had put in some measures beforehand to just for other reasons like like mesh in our attic grates that helped save our house but once we returned it became pretty clear that our house still wasn't safe and it kind of devolved from just kind of looking at the damage around the property to defending the perimeter of our house as well as the one that was standing next door because I mean they were the our neighbors next door are very old they're in their like 80s and 90s and we wanted them to have a place to live to and also is just about making sure that that if something happened

there we can stop it from spreading to our house or other houses in the neighborhood so we kind of set up our perimeter um that we were kind of patrolling to make sure that no fires kind of um started impinging on us and then eventually once we learned that there were actually looters and even an arsonist or two running around in um In Altadena, we started looking out for that too. So I started walking around, just my property, but I was walking around armed for a while. So, I mean, that's pretty crazy to have this massive fire burning, and you're there trying to prevent your house from burning down, your neighbor's house too, and anything else you can do. I mean, what does it like to face a fire and you have, I mean, some a stump pump hooked up thing, some sort of jerry-rigged stuff to,

stop a fire. How do you do that? I mean, as for the experience, it's crazy. It's like nothing else I've ever experienced before. Being in my neighborhood, sitting there at night,

with gas explosions going off every once in a while with a gun in my hand, walking around my house in the dark. It felt kind of like my hometown had turned into a war zone a little bit. which wasn't fun, but I'm just very grateful that I had been trained in like emergency preparedness

in a couple different scouting organizations. And that's what really kind of kept me together and just able to function. And it was really difficult for, for really anyone to function at that point. So I'm really grateful that I was able to kind of maintain composure and, and just use my training. Yeah, well, Avi, thank you so much for sharing this story. We're really grateful, and you are listening to Collegian Weekend Review on 101.7 Radio Free Hillstill. You've been listening to The Collegian Weekend Review on 101.7 FM. I'm Coleman Rowan. And I'm Caroline Kurt. You can find the Collegian Weekend Review online at cWIR.com. You can find more news at Hillstale Collegian.com.

Follow us on Instagram at Hillstale Collegian. See you next week. Thank you.