WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week In Review: September 26th, 2024

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

This week on the Collegian Week in Review, hosts Moira Gleason, Thomas McKenna, and Caroline Kurt first discuss this issue's top headlines. Then, they talk to Tayte Christensen about the equestrian team. Finally, they talk to Sarah Katherine Sisk about her article, "Pro-life does not mean anti-Trump".

Welcome to The Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Here are your host, Moor Gleason, Thomas McKenna, and Caroline Curt. Welcome to Collegian Weekend Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your host, Thomas McKenna, Caroline Kurt. And Maura Gleeson. And today we'll be talking to Assistant News editor Tate Christensen about the equestrian club on campus and the halftime competition between Galloway and Simpson, at the latest football game.

And then we'll talk to Sarah Catherine Sisk about voting pro-life and a new martial arts studio in town. But first, we're starting with some headlines. So, Thomas, tell us about the city news section this week. Yeah, one particular story from the city news section that I liked was Coleman Rowan's story on the preservation of the mail pouch tobacco sign that used to be on M99 just over here out to the west side of town. You know, these were very popular.

They peaked in the 1960s. These were ads that mail pouched tobacco painted on the sides of barns throughout America. And, you know, this one out here in Hillsdale that used to be up in Hillsdale was one of the few ones that was left. And since Meyer was built, that barn had to be destroyed along with the sign that was painted onto it. And so what the Hillsdale County Historical Society has done is it's preserved the sign by taking the wood that the paint. was on, disassembling it, and then they're going to reassemble it in this other barn where it can be on for display for people to see. This is another slice of Americana that's being eaten up by more development in rural areas, and it's great that Coleman was able to cover its preservation

by the local historical society. This semester, we have radio host Larry O'Connor coming to Hillsdale College. He's been a talk show host on WMAL, which is the the local Washington, D.C. radio station where I'm from. And so I grew up, you know, hearing him on the radio every once in a while. And so he's coming here to teach a course on broadcasting and podcasting. So that's coming up next month. And he'll be giving a talk in Plaster on October 22nd called the media and the 2024 election. Caroline, you had a lot of great pieces in the opinion section this week. Tell us about a few of your favorites. Yeah. Um, Two in particular, I want to shout out.

We'll get to Sarah Catherine Sisk's piece on pro-life voting later in the episode. But I had Haley Strach, who is a Hillstall graduate. She was the opinions editor a couple years before me, write a letter to the editor, responding to another Hillstale alum's piece that we ran earlier this month, September 5th. And Victor Jacks, who is a Hillstill grad, wrote a piece on Hillstall doesn't produce many statesmen. Let's change that. Laying out some very practical ways that Hillstill students who aspire to elected office can implement these things to increase their chances. And it was really good.

I enjoyed writing it. I enjoyed editing it. and Haley wrote in to say like, you know, that's great and it's wonderful if Hilsill alumni go on to become incredible statesmen, but we also don't need to be concerned with the fact that relatively few Hilsdale alumni take that path. It's a boon to the school's mission, and she had this great line where she said statesmen are rare politicians are not and kind of talking about many hillstall men and women choose not to go that path just knowing how it often leads them to compromise their integrity and so that was a very thoughtful

and wonderful response and I'm always happy to have the conversation on the page and then I wrote a column. I have a biweekly column called After Eden where I talk about issues of family and work and gender with nuance and hope. And so my piece this week was on the professional double standard. We often really cheer on men who are really ambitious and driven. And that is wonderful. But women who kind of exhibit those same qualities, we kind of act often like threatened by or just don't give them the same credit. And so I was just saying, you know, we need to be consistent here and celebrate these like virtues if they're well ordered in your life. And then also really encourage both men and women to lead professional lives that are, you know, prioritizing their

families and I was talking about how my dad did that. And so yeah, it's been really fun to write this column and I'm really happy with how this piece turned out. And Maura, tell us about what you wrote this week. Yeah, in the city news section this week, I covered the recent effort to repeal the blue law in Hillsdale County. So Hillsdale County has what's called a blue law. It prohibits the sale of alcohol in restaurants from 7 a.m. on Sunday to 2 a.m. on Monday. So, All day, Sunday, you are not allowed to sell hard drinks in restaurants in Hillsdale County. In April, one of our city councilmen, Robert Socha, introduced a petition to repeal the Blue Law. This has been introduced a few times in the past, most recently, in 2019.

This time, he fell short by a few hundred signatures, but they're hoping to bring it back in 2026, which is the soonest that the issue can go on the ballot again. So I spoke with some of the restaurant owners, some of the people who were involved with the petition, and it sounded like they had a lot of support from people in the county. It sounded like a lot of people didn't know that the blue law exists in the first place, and so they had a hard time getting a really big turnout when people didn't even know that the law was in place.

But it's something that the restaurant owners really struggle with and really want to get repealed because it's affecting their sales and their competition with other counties. Something that stood out to me from your reporting was when you talked to the El Cerrito owner, and he told you that his Hillsdale location, which is a Mexican restaurant that's frequented by many Hillsdale students and parents when they come to visit, loses between $500 to $1,000 every week because of the Blue Law, because they can't serve liquor on Sundays. Can you tell me more about what you live? learned talking to business owners for this story? That's right. So talking to the owner of Elserrido's was actually really interesting because he has those other locations and other counties, so he's able to

see the difference. He has a location in Coldwater, and he said that comparatively the Hillsdale location makes like $500 to $1,000 less on Sunday because they're not able to sell like margaritas. And he was in favor of repealing the ban. He was actually collecting signatures, but was not aware of the deadline. So he said he had five or six sheets that were of support signatures for this petition that just never got turned in. So it sounds like there was some support there that never made it to the final count. And so when they come back in 2026, from your interviews, it seemed like they'll need to, the organizers of this effort are going to need to streamline their efforts and be.

more efficient in gathering those signatures if they want to put the measure on the ballot two years from now? Yes, that's what a lot of the people involved with the petition. The owner at El Cerrito was saying that it would be more beneficial if everyone was able to work together and organize ahead of time. And that's what they're hoping to do next time around. Well, those are our headlines for this week. We'll be back in a moment talking to Tate Christensen about her stories for the Collegion this week.

Stay with us. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.1.1.7. Radio Free Hillsdale's The Collegian Weekend Review continues. Welcome back to the Collegian Week in Review. We're here with Tate Christensen, an assistant editor for the Collegian. And Tate wrote a few things for the Collegian this week, but one of the biggest stories was her story on the club equestrian team in the sports page. So Tate, could you tell us about this story?

What is the equestrian team? Yeah, for sure. So this year it's made up of four girls. There's three sophomores and a freshman. And they practice at a facility out in Jackson or nearby. And they have about 20 horses out at that place. And they practice once a week. Three of the girls practice altogether. But one girl practices on her own. And their trainer just kind of walks them through the things that they need to be doing in competition. And yeah. Nice. So what are these? competitions look like for the competitors? Yeah, so what they told me is they get there and they go to their little coaches meeting and then they watch the horses all warm up and then afterwards they go and they pick a horse's name out of a hat essentially. And that's the horse that they'll be competing with. So it just kind of, they walk into the competition not knowing what horse they're going be with. And so they have to kind of cater their practices to these competitions and practice with

different horses every time, so they get used to being with different temperamented horses and all that. Wow, that's crazy. I mean, riding a horse that you've never ridden before in competition. Yeah. What style of writing are they jumping? What does that look like? So it depends on their level in competition. They have to be proficient enough in the flat class, as they call it, before they can move up to the jumping class. So right now, the three girls that I talk to are all in the flat class, but they're hoping to move up to the next level this year by competing more and scoring well. And are they competing with students from different colleges around the state nationally?

Do you have any sense of how kind of wide-reaching these competitions are? Yeah, so they are part of the intercollegiate horse show association. So they primarily travel mostly around Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, pretty regionally. But they do have bigger competitions in the spring that if they place well enough, they'll move on to. Neat. So do any of the horses, or sorry, do any of the competitors own their own horse, or are they just out at this barn and they get to ride all of these different horses? None of them have their own horses at school. A lot of them, at least two of them mentioned that they had owned a horse in years past.

And all of them have started riding from a pretty young age. Two of them said they started riding around age nine and had done horse stuff throughout high school. So, yeah, no one has their own horse at school. They all use the trainer's horses. But they're just thankful that they have that facility. So you mentioned something that I was not aware of. Students at Hillsdale who want to take these horseback riding lessons don't have to actually be on the team. Is that correct?

Could you tell us about that? Right. So students who aren't on the equestering team can also sign up for writing lessons, and these lessons are offered through the equestering team's trainer. So students can sign up for lessons as soon as the spring semester. So the team's next show is mid-October at Kalamazoo College. Can you tell us more about what their future looks like as the season continues? So this fall, the team will have three competitions, including the one at Kalamazoo, and they'll have one in the spring with the potential for more, depending on how well the writers do in those competitions.

Now, Tate, you also wrote another story for the sports section on the Simpson-Galloway showdown during halftime at Saturday's football game. You went to that showdown. Can you tell us what happened? Yeah. So this weekend, the theme was superheroes. So there were a bunch of guys from Simpson all dressed up as superheroes. And at halftime, Simpson and Galloway went face-to-face in a competition where they did

tug-of-war, longest football pass. and who can get the most field goals. Simpson ended up winning two to one. They won the tug of war and the longest pass, but they lost the kickoff. But the thing is that wasn't in the article is the Galloway almost didn't have a team because right up until about 30 seconds before halftime,

they weren't even sure that the Galloway men were even going to show up, but then they did. And so luckily it was able to be a Galloway versus Simpson and not Simpson versus Simpson. So Galloway's participation problems aside, What did this competition look like? I mean, was there any suspense or was it a done deal before the competition started? I'd say that the most contentious part of this competition was the longest pass.

Simpson had Dominic Toronto and Patrick Hamilton up as their representatives, and they got up to a 55-yard pass, which was really shocking and kind of scary every time they went to go throw the ball. and I wasn't really sure if they were going to make the catch. But luckily, on the last throw, Toronto made the catch for Simpson because Galloway had just dropped the ball on that one. And so Patrick Hamilton made a really good throw, and Dominic made a good catch. Dropped the ball. Ha ha ha.

Well, thank you, Tate. It's been great to have you on, and we appreciate all the work you put in this week. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is the Collegian Week in Review. Welcome back to Collegian Weekend Review. We have with us Sarah Catherine Sisk, Sr. To talk about two pieces. First of all, her opinion piece, she wrote for my page on pro-life does not mean anti-Trump.

So, S-K, give us a little background. I think a lot of voters are pretty familiar with the kind of pro-life advances Trump made in his 2016-2020 term. but may or may not have are may may not be as familiar with the kind of recent events around that so give us kind of the lay of the land right so recently a lot of pro-life voters myself included have been kind of grappling

with some of Trump's recent swaying on his positions in terms of life issues including he's you know he said he'd that he would never enforce a national ban on abortion pills, as well as recently he announced that he would make IVF free to whoever wants or needs it. And so a lot of pro-life voters understandably are grappling with their own, you know, values and then also like how they can enact that when they go to to vote this November. And sort of my take on it was that, yes, I understand that Trump's not exactly a pro-life candidate in the way that

maybe we would want to see one eventually. But ultimately, the possibility of having Kamala Harris elected is a lot worse, especially in swing states like Michigan, where we are. And so I think the risk of having her, you know, she's on her campaign website, has said that she would never enforce a national ban, as well as she would support, you know, bills passed by Congress that go to restoring access nationwide to abortion. Yeah. And it kind of seems like, you know, you were talking about your piece like, you know, neither option is great, but I think we should go with the less like bad option lifewise. Have you been having conversations with peers or family members kind of about this issue? Yeah, I mean, me and my roommate actually, we talk about it quite a bit.

And I think it for me, it was just more of, it's sort of common sense to me that it's like based on Donald Trump's first term. You know, our economy was a lot better. The cost of living was a lot lower. The cost of raising children was a lot lower. And the most common reason that most women's cite for getting an abortion is financial strain and not being able to afford having that kid. And so I think if we even think about it just in terms of, you know, maybe not what policy they would push to pass, but just sort of the natural consequences of what America under their presidency would look like. If we have a better economy, people, you know, can keep more of their income than maybe they're not forced into that position where they feel like that's something that they have to

do. Yeah, I thought that was an especially strong point when you found this study from BMC women's health. Yeah, thank you for your piece. It was great. Yeah, of course. Thank you. So SKU also wrote in the CD News section for me about the rebranding of this martial arts studio in Jonesville to Dragons Den. Tell us more about Dragons Den. Yeah, so I got to speak with the two owners, Paul Shimwell and Sylvester Wesson and they are really, they seem like really great individuals, great coaches and they're rebranded. They're now called Dragonsden and they're offering new classes. So now they have judo and a mom fit class in addition to all the classes they've previously offered, including I think Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is one of the popular ones as well as

like stand-up fighting and MMA and a couple other ones. They have some plans in the upcoming future they hope to partner up with some of the local schools here to maybe work out some anti-bullying programs which sounds pretty exciting to me as well as I know Sylvester he's talked about you know wanting to reach out to local law enforcement and first responders and offer maybe some training for them because he feels like that would be really helpful for their line of work and I think he also reached out to I guess our boys detention juvenile detention home here in Hillsdale because, you know, he's got a really cool story. He definitely seems like he's had some, gone through some trials and tribulations in his life. And he said that martial arts has been a

really big part of like what saved him and gave him a new outlook on life. And so when you talk to him, you can definitely get a sense for that. And he's really passionate about helping the community and kids in the community. So that new co-owner, Sylvester Wesson, yes. He was brought on in March with with the new rebranding. And he has a pretty amazing story. Tell us more about that guy. Yeah. So I think he's from Kalamazoo. When he was 15, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.

And I think they said he had something like six months to live. Wow. Yeah, I can imagine that would be, that would definitely change your outlook on life forever. And obviously, he's still here. I think he's, you know, on 36 or something. So whatever, 20 years later, which is amazing. And he's talked a lot about how just like wanting to take that second chance at life that God gave him and do as much for other people that he can with that. And, you know, he said that he himself used to get into a lot of fights growing up.

And I think that was sort of how he stumbled into martial arts and found that as an avenue for how to, you know, deal with emotions in a more healthy way and learn discipline and things like that. Did you get to visit the studio? I have not yet, although I actually am planning on going to their adults class. I think next week I'm going to try it out. That's great. Yeah. And our very own assistant professor of biology, a new hire by the college, Kirillin Brackle. Yes, yeah. So she trains there. And it seems like she's pretty good. I think she's won a couple different gold trophies and a belt from one of their recent tournaments. She's been doing martial arts. a long time as well. I think she got into it in high school after doing ballet and, yeah, she seems to really love it as well. They definitely, after talking to the three of them, it made me definitely want to go try it out because it's like you can just tell how much all of them love it. And yeah. Well, thanks for coming on SK and thank you for your work with the Collegian this week.

Yeah, thanks for having me. You've been listening to the Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Mauregleason. I'm Thomas McKenna. And I'm Caroline Currie. you can find the Collegian Weekend Review online at CWIR. dot transistor.fm. You can find more news at Hillsdale Collegian.com.

Our Instagram is at Hillsdale-Clegeon. Peace at Party, people.