WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week In Review: March 6, 2025

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Ellie Fromm joins the show to share updates on the Hillsdale College Men's basketball team.

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 the Collegiate Weekend Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. Where are your hosts Coleman Rowan and Caroline Kurt. And today we'll be talking to assistant editor Ellie Fromm on the men's basketball team. graduate student Austin Gergens on Hillsdale County's pothole problem. Our big story this week is that the library construction will close the colonnade after spring break, limiting the amount of walkways students have available on campus.

There will still be entrances into the library available, just not the main one. The total project will cost $43.7 million, but the college already has 10 million of that in pledges already donated. Chief Administrative Officer Rich Payway said that students will continue to have access to all the areas in the library besides the circulation area, including the Heritage Room. So even though this will be a messy renovation and limit walkways, students, will still be able to use the library almost as normal and the college is talking about the you know the the beauty of that this renovation will bring it will be a two-year project that is looking to reflect both the liberal arts tradition and the college's history in the redesign. Also on the front page, CCA4. The last CCA of this school year is all about history on

film. And 2018, Hillsville College graduate Torrey Hope Peterson, who published her first book fostered in 2022, is back with another book, Breaking the Patterns that Break You, which came out February 4th, a story about our identity in Christ. Flipping to the opinions page, we have sophomore Jaden Jelso, who is the author of dystopian novel Talon, talking about why we need to keep smot out of teen literature. We have freshman Elijah Groyvira talking about why humans need to be the ones making the final decisions in the hiring process, looking at the rise of AI in all kinds of, in all kinds of places. in the hiring process.

Luke Miller on why Doge has faltered for fiscal conservatives. And our very own Alley Hall, our design editor of the Glegeon, on how voice memos have helped her build and sustain a friendship. On City News, we have the Hillsdale City Council postponing the Berry Street repair decision, a state legislator pushing to name February 14th Valentine's Day, but also Frederick Douglass Day. her mission to do that. And the airport will be using state funds to buy a tractor and repaint the runway.

Coleman, tell us about the sports section and culture. Yeah, so in sports, we have two seniors who qualified for the Division II Championship in Indianapolis for swimming. That's Megan Clifford and Elise Mason. There are six alumni that will be inducted into the 2025 Hall of Fame class. or, well, there's six alumni in the 2025 Hillsdale Hall of Fame class. Those have been announced. So there's a good article in that by Isaac Greener Managing Editor. Baseball has won three straight games now, whereas tennis, unfortunately, women's tennis,

lost this weekend to Wayne State. And then the women's track and field team placed third in the GMAC conference this weekend at Ashland. And then other than that, the GMAC tournament for men's basketball is being hosted. at Hillsdale this weekend, which came a sort of surprise. We'll talk to Ellie more about that. And then the women's team will be playing in Ashland. Wonderful. And Coleman, we will be talking to Austin in just a few minutes about his pothole piece. But tell us about what's going on on the culture page. Yeah. So in culture, this week, or over the weekend, sorry. Yeah, in culture,

over the weekend, SAB took students to the Detroit Institute of Arts, which Grace Brennan, our reporter went to and covered. She saw, you know, all the great works of art there and saw, well, the museum held an event that let people, you know, sit on horses, which are sort of like this easel thing you sit on and paint these, you know, great works that they have there, which is pretty cool. And then Ethan Graham, who is a senior here, shared his story with one of our reporters Jim of Flores about his composition they did as a senior, which is called Hazali at the Dawn. It's inspired in large part by film scores that he has enjoyed,

and I believe it may have been used in a student film. I don't have confirmation on that, unfortunately, though. And I heard a lot about Greg Whalen, student Greg Loylan's performance of his music at the Dawn Theater this weekend. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so Greg Whalen performed, I believe it was 18, original songs at the dawn with a local band called Ramblers. His performance drew a crowd of over 250 people, apparently, which is pretty crazy. He said that he really enjoyed doing it

at home. Like, he's performed in other places. I know he performed as opening for five for fighting at one point, and I think that was upstate New York. But he said he was happy to do it in his own town. And Greg, I mean, he's still a student here at the college. I have a class with him even. So it's pretty cool that he gets to do that, share his experience in, through the musical format of, you know, leaving Afghanistan in the military. And you yourself wrote a feature on The Saints. What was your take? Yeah, so Martin Scorsese, who is, you know, a pretty famous director, directed movies such as Goodfellas and The Departed and, taxi driver, which was his breakout film. He made this show called The Saints, which covers the lives of four saints.

It will be eight when they come out with the second half of the show. And I said that I didn't think it was very good. Great. Well, you were listening to Cleetian Week in Review, and we will be back in just a few minutes to talk to Ellie Fromm and Austin Griggins. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Weekend Review continues. Welcome back to Collegian Weekend Review. We're here with Austin Gergens, who wrote about the pothole problem in Hillsdale County.

Austin, can you tell us a little bit about what you found in your research? Yes. Thank you for having me. Learned that the potholes were not only really prevalent near Hillsdale, but also just around the county as well. I had a chance to talk with the city director, Jason Blake, and he talked about how there's been a lot of efforts to make them better, but there's still a lot of improvement to come. So in this article, one of the things I found really interesting is you talk about sort of how they form and the differences and the problems of like the sizes and then how the city deals with that. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah.

So what I didn't mention, but what Blake told me was that as the wall. water creeps into the holes and they freeze, they kind of splinter out. I think they called it crocodile tears. And so eventually what they have to do is wait until it gets to a certain size and then scoop out the hole completely of debris before filling it again with asphalt or a mixture of oil and asphalt in the wintertime. And why that oil and asphalt in the wintertime? So the asphalt production plants shut down for a significant part of the year, mostly during the winter time or exclusively during the winter time and so they have to resort to this temporary patch a cold patch it doesn't it's cheaper but it also is not as effective do you know why the

asphalt plants stop running during the winter i do not seems odd to me it could just be like i don't know maybe it's too cold it could yeah yeah could be because i guess you can't save asphalt then i don't understand yeah because you probably have to keep it at a certain temperature moving or something. Anyway, Austin, is there anything that makes Michigan

particularly prone to potholes? It's a really good question and I wish I had to ask because that's something that I've been on the quest to understand. I have a lot of friends

from the Midwest and no one ever talks about potholes as much as people from Michigan talk about potholes except those that come to Michigan and experience

the Michigan Potholes. And you mentioned you live in a house off campus. Tell us about the pothole situation on your street. That's right. It's pretty horrendous. It's sort of an exponential increase in pothole depth and number as you go from left to right on the street. So I only come in on one side of my street and leave on the same side of the street to avoid like the really

bad potholes. So it's become part of my daily kind of habit actually. How does one, and you got into this in the article, how does one navigate a hot, a pothole to you? you know, go straight over it. Do you navigate around it? Yeah. What are the tips? The best practice is to slow down and not swerve. It's my understanding.

I had a friend that learned that the hard way. Yeah, it's just good to have your eyes always on the road in Michigan because you just never know what you might encounter a pothole. Something I've learned from my time in Michigan is that the roads are better actually in the winter because what happens is the potholes fill with water and then they freeze and then it's ice. and so you actually get a level road, which I can kind of appreciate. That said, I noticed here you mentioned

the winter version and the not winter version. It seems like the winter version costs twice as much as the not winter version if I'm reading that right. Of pothole repair? Yeah. Yeah, it says the cold patch in the winter months is way more expensive product

because the oil runs about $130 a ton. You are correct. That's confusing to me as, to, if it's mostly fine in the winter, why even patch them in the winter? You know, like, why bother? Just wait until the summer. Yeah, well, I think if residents complain enough or if they just get too deep or too wide, then they have to resort to that.

But I do think they prefer to use the asphalt version of the pier. So, Austin, can you tell me, how does the city deal with this? What have they done to deal with these problems? Yeah, I think they take a lot of input in from residents, people that call it. when I talked with Director of Public Services, Jason Blake, he told me that they've really tried to allocate more funding towards this in the last several years. And he told me that over the last seven years,

they've done more for road maintenance and repairs than they have in the last 20. So I think they're definitely making a concerted effort to fix the pothole plague. Did Blake say that there was a certain point at which, like, a road becomes, it becomes more worthwhile to just, you know, dig up a road and completely do it over than like continually patch. Is there like a price point at which that makes more sense? He didn't say it mentioned a price point, but he mentioned that I think if they get larger than four or six feet in width,

then they'll do like a special procedure called a cut square and they'll just replace that entire chunk of road. Well, Austin, good luck navigating those on your street and elsewhere. And you wrote another article for news this week on a speech. Why don't you get into that? Yes. So Dr. Gurki of the history department, who's also the director of the Center of Military History, gave a very cogent presentation about several hundred years of church history and how it's united, divided by agreement. Divided, okay. That's really interesting because usually you would think about focusing on the disagreements that have characterized, you know, Christian history. What was Gerke getting at when he was saying that we are divided by agreement?

Yeah, so he traced a lot of it back to the Council of Nicaa and also just the incarnation of Christ and how these traditionally Catholic and kind of broad sense denominations, they believe in that and they oppose the Gnostics and other heretics throughout church history. And that's something that maybe we should focus more on is that we agree on these really fundamental things. So was, did Dr. Gerke give this talk alone or did other people do it? Because I saw you talk to Dr. Gaetano also. Maybe you have some remarks on what he said to. Yeah. So only Dr. Gerke spoke during this is actually lecture two of three is my understanding. And it's sort of just been descriptive in the first two talks. He hasn't offered any, you know, this is how,

what you should believe necessarily. This is just kind of detailing what's been happening. Uh, That being said, there were a number of history professors there. Gaetano was among them. I believe Dr. Maddox was also there. Kaltov, Strucker, and a few others. But Gaetano was one of the few that asked a question to Dr. Gurkie. Did they seem to agree with his analysis? I think so, yeah.

In fact, I was sort of using Dr. Katano as a litmus test because my understanding is he's Catholic, and he nodded through almost the... entire lecture and you know he didn't do like the baseball you know flick your fingers move but he is you know incessant nodding I thought okay well they are you know maybe divided by their agreement and but you know he agrees in the last yeah he's uh he teaches a reformation class I know so I'm sure that he is very knowledgeable and similar subjects yeah among the student body do you see people of different denominations focusing

more on their differences or on like points of agreement in your experience. Good question. As a underclassman, I noticed the emphasis between undergrads was definitely like, how are we different and why are you wrong? That seemed to be kind of the general character, which I think he kind of was getting at perhaps, or at least he was suggesting we don't have a lot of good church vocabulary to kind of have discourse. As a graduate student, I don't hear a lot of religious discussions.

anymore to be honest but I hope that people are more charitable now than they were. Depends. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Well, Austin, thank you so much for coming on. We have appreciate it. And you were listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. We will be back in a moment. This is the Collegian Week in Review. Welcome back to Collegian Weeker Review. We are here with sophomore Ellie Fromm, an assistant editor on the sports section, to talk about her piece, Hillsdale to host basketball finals. Ellie, we were talking as you got in here about how well both the men's and women's teams are doing. Why don't you give us first, actually, a quick rundown on, you know, where both teams are at?

So both teams are headed to the semifinals and we'll compete on tomorrow on Friday. and the men will compete here at Hillsdale at our home stadium and this was kind of an upset for them. We came into the GMAX number three seed and it's always the top seed that will host the tournament and number one and two seed were beat out early in the stage so unexpectedly Hillsdale is hosting the GMAQ tournament and they will play tomorrow

and the women also play tomorrow at Ashland University they made it to the semifinals which was unexpected. They haven't made it this far since 2009. So they all are very excited about that. And when was the last time the men's team made it to the semifinals? I don't know. Okay.

They make it more frequently, though. The men's team is stronger. Coach Tharp coached there. And I think this is his second year as 80. So when he was coached, they'd make it very frequently. So I understand you were at the men's basketball game, that's right? Yes. So what was the environment like there?

Was it more exciting than usual? Are the fans really coming out for the tournament here? Yeah, it was really great. There were a lot of other athletes there to support the team. A ton of faculty, like athletic faculty came out. And just a ton of the community members were there. So it was so great to see all the little kids running around and the environment was great. Simpson got some chance.

which they always do, but they really got the crowd going. And it was amazing to see. It was so just exciting the energy there. Yeah. What did, you know, you talked to some of the players. What did they have to say about the team's progress, how they're feeling going into this? As you said, it was kind of an upset. How did they react?

So Hill still came into their quarterfinal game as the top seed in that game. but all the players seem very focused and they have their eye on the championship. They're going into the semifinals playing a team. They just played a week previously that they beat kind of unexpectedly. So everyone I talked to has just been very focused and realized, yes, we beat this team a week ago. But that doesn't mean we're coming into this expecting to beat them again. So it's funny, both the men and the women's teams are playing Malone at the same time, if I'm reading this correctly.

Do you have any, do you have any, did they tell you anything about what they're thinking about going forward? Is there, this seems like just a funny coincidence to me, at least. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't supposed to happen, especially on the men's side, on the men's bracket. It definitely was not supposed to happen. And I think it's just an odd coincidence.

And Ellie, in talking or in interviewing for this piece, what did the team have to say about things they, are hoping to, you know, improve, whether that's like passing, you know, cutting defense, going into the semifinals. One thing that really stood out to me was just how much emphasis they really placed on their defense. And they were definitely times where they said, you know, maybe our offense wasn't the greatest. And I did see that partly in the quarterfinal game on Tuesday night. They came out from halftime, not strong on offense at all. They were just missing and missing and missing.

And halfway through the second half, they just picked it up and started scoring three pointers like no one's business. It was crazy. But even though they weren't scoring as much during that first part of the second half, their defense was still super strong. And so something I heard from a lot of the players was, yeah, maybe our offense isn't the greatest at times, but our defense is very cohesive. So if Hillsdale wins the GMAC, then we go to the, the, the,

the NCAA D2 tournament. Yes. Do we have, are we going to make it if we don't make the, if we don't win the tournament, if we don't win the GMAC, would we make it to the tournament? Or is there a shot? So the champion of GMX gets an automatic bid to NCAA tournament. There's still a chance that they go to NCAA tournament if they don't win. I know that's happened with volleyball before where I believe in the fall,

they did not win GMAX, which was the first time in years, but they still made it to the NCAA tournament. So it's still a shot. And at the quarterfinals, were there any standout players that you had at a fun time watching? I mean, Joe Ruder, as always, dunking, he did an amazing job. I believe sophomore, Michael McCollum, he scored a lot of points, especially three-pointers. All right, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ellie.

It's been great having you on. You were listening to Collegian Winkin Review on Radio Free Hill Still at 101.7 FM. You've been listening to the Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsill 101.7 FM. I'm Caroline Kurt. And I'm Coleman Rowan. You can find the Collegian Week in Review online at cwir.transistor.fm. You can also find more news at Hillsdale Collegian.com. Or follow us on Instagram at Hillsdale Collegian.

See you next week.