HillsdaleGo’s replacement app is now available for download on both Apple and Android devices.
The new app, called Hillsdale Experience, provides students with a single location for academic resources including class information, the student events calendar, and the campus dining menu. The college released the app to the Google Play store in mid-September and the Apple store in early October.
Although the Google Play store accepted the app immediately, the Apple store required additional information, which delayed the release, according to Senior Director of Applications and Software Kevin Maurer.
The new app is produced by the same Virginia-based company, Ellucian, and contains many of the same features as HillsdaleGo.
“We did not want to upset the world too much with something different,” Maurer said. “We just wanted to get the experience back for students who were used to HillsdaleGo.”
Maurer said students should not have trouble getting used to the new app.
“Hillsdale Experience is designed to be a close replica of HillsdaleGo,” Maurer said. “It will prove to be an easy adjustment for students.”
Sophomore Josh Underwood said he likes the new app.
“I think it is more simple than HillsdaleGo,” Underwood said. “It is very navigable. I’m glad that it has all the things I still need.”
The app home page features portals that direct students to pages such as Canvas and Self Service. Canvas is a site that contains information regarding classes and assignments, while Self Service gives access to registration, course planning, and student employee information.
“The calendar with all the Hillsdale events is a great boon to me as a student,” Underwood said.
Junior Isaac Myhal said he was disappointed with the new app.
“The app only uses links,” Myhal said. “It doesn’t provide anything that I can’t get through a web browser. For the features that we really cared about like registration, there’s no incentive to get the app because I can bookmark all the webpages that it sends me to.”
Myhal said he plans on monitoring the app to see if it receives any updates.
“I would frequently register with the old Hillsdale app,” Myhal said. “At this point, that is not available on the new one.”
According to Maurer, the college tested the app with 90 students before releasing it to the rest of the school, applying their feedback to the final product.
Although the course roster feature is not yet a part of the Hillsdale Experience app, Maurer said students can use Canvas to access course rosters.
“The biggest problem is that Canvas is not required for all classes,” Maurer said. “We are evaluating options for the best course roster delivery method for students.”
Wide receiver Ruddy
By Francesca Cella Collegian Reporter
Nobody in NCAA Division II has carried the football for more yards this season than Hillsdale’s Shea Ruddy. The sophomore currently leads the way with 1,378 all-purpose yards, which is a combination of yardage in rushing, receiving, and returning.
“I’d like to keep it up and hopefully end the season there,” Ruddy said. “I want the team to succeed, and I’m trying to do everything I can to get us there.”
Four weeks into the season, Ruddy led all of college football in all-purpose yards, including NCAA Division I and III.
“You never would guess it by the way he acts or talks, because he’s humble,” sophomore wide receiver Collin Davis said.
Head coach Nate Shreffler said Ruddy’s statistics result from both his physical talent and his strategic instincts.
“He’s a great athlete, first off, and so he has skills to do a lot of different things,” Shreffler said. “He has just a real natural feel for the game of football and puts himself in the right places at the right times.”
Ruddy started to play football in third grade and was quarterback at Whiteford High School in Ottawa Lake, Michigan, where he broke
Meter is the first metaphor, visiting writer says
By Ally Hall
Design Editor
For poet James Matthew Wilson, the nature of his craft can be summarized by an alliterative list: making, metaphor, memory, and meter.
“If I could ask what poetry is, I’d have to be able to answer the question first of what it’s for,” Wilson said.
Wilson presented his lecture “On the Nature and Ends of Po-
etry: a Theory of Poetic Form and Function” to a packed Hoynak Room Oct. 10.
Following the spring release of his most recent published collection of poetry, “Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds,” Wilson met with students and faculty on campus for lectures, readings, and dinners. Coordinated by Associate Professor of English Dutton Kearney and Associate Professor of Classics and Chairman
of Hillsdale’s Collegiate Scholars Program Eric Hutchinson, Wilson joined the legacy of the Visiting Writers Program.
“Student involvement in this visit was off the charts,” Kearney said. “I love bragging about our students and then seeing visitors’ surprise that, for as much as I’ve talked our students up, they are even better in person.”
Wilson used the classical tradition to map his exploration of the poetry, beginning with a section from Diotima in Plato’s “The Symposium.” Wilson’s chosen section states that the Muses give people melody and rhythm which then characterize poetry.
“We know that every artist performs the act of making for himself,” Wilson said. “But what she’s proposing here is that the art of the poet involves not only a master of the craft or discipline or the ability or virtue to making, but one that involves a certain kind of receptivity.”
The classic component that stuck out most to sophomore Olivia Gonzalez was Socrates.
“I enjoyed when Wilson talked about Socrates’ appreciation for poets and how poets bring the soul into a worldly heaven through metaphors, bringing that from above to
earth and what is hidden into the world,” Gonzalez said.
Wilson presented poetry as twofold: an act of the maker himself combined with a gift from the Muses. The components of poetry do not exist separately, according to Wilson. They each fold into one another.
“Poetic meter, at the microcosmic level of the line of verse, orders our language according to a numerical principle that is reflective of and expressive of the macrocosm, the world as a whole,” Wilson said. “Meter is the source, the means, and the manifestation of memory, making things permanent and memorable. It is also the first metaphor. The metaphor that says ‘this word right here can be expressed in a finite form down here: in the work of poetry.’”
Wilson is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston. He’s the poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute as well as the scholar-in-residence at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids. Outside of the lecture hall, Wilson is the editor of Colosseum Books, and the poetry editor of Modern Age magazine.
several school records.
After Ruddy attended football camps at Hillsdale College, however, the coaches decided he would play wide receiver and return kicks and punts, where he has excelled, according to Shreffler.
“He’s had two touchdown returns this year, which is in and of itself pretty unique,” Shreffler said. “In my 26 years, I’ve seen four of them here. He’s gotten two of them.”
If Ruddy continues through the final four games of the season at his current pace, he’ll finish the year with 2,165 all-purpose yards. This would break Hillsdale College’s current record of 2,093 all-purpose yards gained in
2002 by Kevin Clive. Ruddy’s younger brother, freshman Ryin Ruddy, is also on the football team. He said some of his brother’s motivation on the field comes from being the second of five boys.
“I think having four brothers growing up was kind of a built-in way to push yourself,” Ryin Ruddy said. “We live on a property with our cousins, too. So at one point, there were all five of us and probably 10 other boys on the property. When we were younger, I remember every single weekend we would go out and play football.”
By Sydney Green Collegian Reporter
Students can now pick up their packages from lockers in the basement hallway between Lane and Kendall halls.
“We have been talking about doing this for years now to make it easier for students to have 24/7 access to packages,” Print and Mail Center Manager Deb Johnson said. “It’s hard for students when we are not open on Saturday, and this will help clean things up and make package pick up more efficient.”
Once a package arrives, students receive a QR code and four-digit SMS code on their device to scan at the kiosk by the lockers.
Director of Print and Mail John Quint said the location of the lockers will encourage students to pick up their packages faster.
“We have had trouble in the past getting students to pick up their packages quickly,” Quint said. “With this now being more centrally located and not so much on the outskirts, we think this will help with the package pickup process.”
Quint said he expects the 24-hour student pickup rate to rise from its current 50% to around 80%. Over the past month, Quint said 680 packages have been loaded and 580 have been picked up so far.
The kiosk has a security system that takes a picture of the student’s face once they scan their code. Quint said he hopes this will eliminate further confusion with package pickup.
“From a security standpoint, we have the honor code which definitely sets us apart from other colleges,” Quint said. “But we wanted to further prevent any potential or accidental problems that might occur, and this will help us be able to provide answers if there is any confusion.”
Print and Mail Operations
Aide Kim Lashaway said she has gotten positive feedback on the new addition.
“I think students are liking that the lockers are right on campus where their classes are,” Lashaway said. “Plus it is also an easy and efficient process for students to figure out.”
Michigan’s oldest college newspaper Chi Omega: Chi Omega Rho Gamma celebrates centennial
Shea Ruddy is a sophomore wide receiver for the Chargers. Courtesy | Steve Southerington
Poet James Matthew Wilson lectured on his theory of poetic form as a speaker for the Visiting Writers Program.
Ally Hall | Collegian
Q&A: Lizzie Penola and Lincoln Teti talk homecoming court
By Elizabeth Crawford Senior Reporter
How were you selected for homecoming court?
I’m a Chi Omega, and the tradition for us is that the seniors anonymously vote for our homecoming queen nomination.
Were you surprised when you won?
I was. The odds are obviously that I wouldn’t, so, of course, it was a great surprise when I did. How did you react?
When they called my name, I
felt really grateful. Seeing all my friends run toward me was so awesome. At the end of the day, they’re the reason I won — they nominated me after all — so to be celebrated and cheered on by them was special and something I always want to remember.
Do you have any words of wisdom for those who might want to make it onto homecoming court?
Being nominated is strange because you really don’t have any control over it, and yet you’re “running” against other people, and that feels kind of wrong, especially when the whole court is full of kind and awesome people, like this year. So if you find yourself on homecoming court, just be excited
Football team to honor slain deputy at annual military appreciation day
By Ameera Wilson Collegian Reporter
The football team will honor slain Hillsdale County Deputy Sheriff William Butler
Jr. in its Military Appreciation Day halftime ceremony Nov. 2. Military Appreciation Day has been an annual event at Hillsdale College since 2017 and includes a Friday night dinner and a special halftime ceremony on Saturday.
Festivities begin Friday night with a meal for veterans from the community and the players.
“It’s a great opportunity for our guys to get to know a very select group who are serving or have served their country,” assistant football coach Robert Rardin said. “It’s a great benefit to them and then it’s also a great benefit to the vets.”
Vets and those currently in active duty can attend the football game for free, and there will be a ceremony 15 minutes before kickoff honoring their service.
“We have exclusive or custom military appreciation cards that are honoring each branch of the military,” Athletics Marketing Manager Tiffany Treppa said. “We will also have the Reading High School band performing the national anthem and doing a military salute at halftime in honor of all those in active duty or veterans.”
Servicemen are not the only ones with an opportunity for a free football game.
Toys for Tots, a national charity run by United States
Marine Corps reserves, will be collecting toys for kids at the game.
“If you bring a toy, it’s free access to the game,” Treppa said.
According to Rardin, it’s an opportunity for students to bring unwrapped toys and give to a community in need.
“There’s a great need in Hillsdale County. Over the last two years they’ve been having trouble meeting all the requests for toys,” Rardin said.
The halftime ceremony will also give tribute to Butler, who was shot and killed after helping another officer in traffic on June 27. He was also a veteran who served in the Iraq War.
“He was a huge part of our community, and we want to appreciate his duty as a serviceman,” Treppa said. “We want to spread awareness and keep his memory alive as well as show the community that we are here for them as well.”
Butler’s family will attend the ceremony.
“It’s not supposed to be sad,” Treppa said. “It’s supposed to be a celebration and appreciation of Bill’s service and thanking servicemen and military for risking their lives for us.”
Military Appreciation Day is meant for veterans, students, and the community to attend.
“My goal is for the veterans to see there is hope and also to give people an opportunity to show appreciation for people who took time out of their lives to serve their country,” Rardin said.
you get to represent your part of campus — it’s such an honor. And enjoy your last homecoming week.
How did you go about choosing your dress?
I wanted to wear a long dress, and green goes well with Chi O red, which all my friends were wearing, so it was an easy choice. It’s also just one of my favorite dresses I own.
Has this affected or changed your Hillsdale experience?
Homecoming was a special day I think I’ll remember for a long time. I love Hillsdale, and I’m sad my time here is coming to an end. It’s nice to feel celebrated and recognized by a school I love so much. I think that’s the
best part. It definitely added to an already great start to senior year.
Lincoln Teti was named 2024 homecoming king.
How did you get selected for homecoming court?
I did not really campaign, but there were definitely friends doing their part to pull strings for me in the background. A crucial detail here is that there’s been a GroupMe called “The Lincoln Fan Club” since my freshman year, and many shenanigans were pulled in that chat to get me nominated, I’m sure. I was banned from the chat on the day it was created, so I can’t really tell you the details of those shenanigans.
Were you surprised?
I don’t know that I really came in with expectations. You really don’t know how things like this are going to shake out, and the other guys on the court are great and would’ve made excellent kings. I wasn’t shocked to hear my name announced, since one of us seven was going to win, but, in a larger sense, I was — if you had asked me as a freshman to predict what I would do in my college career, this is probably the last thing I would’ve predicted.
When they called your name, how did you feel? What was your reaction?
I think my reaction was pretty much “Wow, this is crazy” and “We did it: Harbor threepeat.”
Do you have any words of wisdom for those who might want to make it onto homecoming court?
Recent history would suggest that living at the Harbor has perhaps the strongest correlation with becoming homecoming king. Make some friends, especially if they’re the types that would make a cult of personality about you as a joke, then they can barnstorm for you, and you can stay above the fray. In all seriousness, I don’t really think getting on the court, and certainly winning, is really something under your control very much. The best you can do is try to act like a genuinely good and fun human being with a good sense of humor. That’s no surefire method, but you should try to
do those things anyway, and if you end up on the court, cool. If you don’t, you’re still cool.
How does it feel to follow in the footsteps of Truman Kjos?
I’m afraid I must correct you: This is Harbor’s third straight homecoming king, after Paul Trainor in 2022. I’d say that’s a pretty impressive streak. I stand on the shoulders of giants—we had the senior class president and vice president last year; we’ve had multiple concertmasters in the orchestra. It’s hard to think of a more outstanding group of people to be a part of than Harbor men. I will say with regard to Truman in particular that we were probably pretty similar candidates— fairly similar personalities and interests, both secretary of the Applied Math Club at the time of our elections, and we even lived in the same room last year. Truman’s the best, and I can’t think of a better king to succeed.
How has this affected or changed your Hillsdale experience?
It’s pretty crazy to be homecoming king — you get the warm fuzzy feeling that people want to talk to you, and you get to feel like you’re the big cheese on campus. In all seriousness, though, I think it underscores for me how I’ve been affected by the friendliness and wisdom of everyone at Hillsdale over the last three-plus years. I wouldn’t be the person I am now without everyone. I’ll spare everyone the slogan, but it’s not wrong.
Mock trial teams open preseason in Pennsylvania
By Zachary Chen Assistant Editor
They’re so back — Hillsdale College Mock Trial just roared into the pre-seasons at their first invitational tournament of the year.
Two Hillsdale teams competed last weekend at Pennsylvania State University. Platypus Deniability, a returning team of veterans from last year snagged a second-place finish after two rounds of tiebreaks with a final ballot score of 7-1. Koalafied ImNEWnity, the new member team, finished 2-6.
Platypus Deniability swept Pennsylvania State University’s A Team 2-0, before splitting ballots 1-1 with Maryland University in the second round. The team closed the weekend by defeating Georgetown University and Juniata College, sweeping two ballots in both rounds, according to freshman Joseph Diprima.
“I think what we were really looking for in this first tournament was: ‘Do our cases sound good when they’re actually performed inround?’” said sophomore and Platypus Deniability co-captain Ty Tomasoski. “We had scrimmage before, but we didn’t know how it stacked up, and I was really happy with all four rounds. Everyone was clearly prepped. We knew our material and it all cohered to sound great. That’s exactly what we were looking for from the first tournament.”
Diprima said he thought the first round was the most successful of the tournament for Platypus Deniability.
“Something that was very clear the whole tournament
was that, because we’ve put in so much work this far, we were very, very prepared to handle things like objections,” Diprima said. “And so I think that was just a testament to how well our captains, Ty Tomasoski and Njomeza Pema prepared us and also our coaches — they were really, really helpful in making sure that we were confident and ready to go.”
Seniors Abigail Wagner and Abby Davis both won individual awards at the tournament. Wagner was awarded Best Witness, while Davis, a co-captain of Koalafied ImNEWnity, received an attorney award.
Davis said she was very pleased with the freshman team at their first tournament of the year and the team got to compete against some very good schools.
“They all had really good moments in trial: like every single one of them, there was something they did throughout the weekend, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s terrif -
ic,’” Davis said. “It’s huge that, from the first tournament, the freshmen are getting to compete against talented and polished other teams the rest of the season.”
Koalafied ImNEWnity split ballots 1-1 against Juniata College and Wellesley College in its first two rounds before losing the third and fourth rounds against Princeton University and Tufts University on Sunday.
Freshman Aali Dobson got her first taste of collegiate mock trial at the tournament as a member of Koalafied ImNEWnity.
“It was amazing,” Dobson said. “It was very difficult, though. I do think that our coaches did a great deal of getting us prepared for it.”
Dobson said she was nervous for her first college tournament but that the Hillsdale team was very supportive.
“The community definitely made it better, being surrounded with people who are as nervous as you,” Dobson said. “You know, you radi -
ate energy off of each other, and you’re just very uplifting. Even if you didn’t get an objection sustained, you know, they’re still congratulating us.”
Diprima said Platypus Deniability will be traveling to Emory University next week for the Peach Bowl Invitational. Next week will also be the first invitational tournament for Kangaroo Court, another Hillsdale returner team, who will be competing at the Tufts Mumbo Jumbo Invitational, according to an email from junior and mock trial media liaison Chloe Noller.
“Of course, we still have growth, you know, we still have a lot to look forward to,” Diprima said. “But it makes us feel so great going into another round immediately knowing all of the work that we have to do, but having done well, in my opinion. It makes me feel really excited to buckle down and get to work, because I know just how good we can make it so that way we can stay on top.”
Lizzie Penola was named 2024 homecoming queen.
Returning team Platypus Deniability poses for a photo at Pennsylvania State University.
Courtesy | Chloe Noller
Seniors Lizzie Penola and Lincoln Teti pose for a photo as homecoming king and queen.
Courtesy | Lizzie Penola
Hillsdale Honky Tonk becomes an official club
By Malia Thibado Collegian Reporter
The Student Federation approved the creation of one new student organization, the Hillsdale Honky Tonk Club, and granted five funding requests from existing clubs in its meeting Oct. 10.
The Honky Tonk Club, informally known as the line dancing club, is under the presidency of sophomore Amelia King.
“The goal of our club is to ultimately cultivate relationships between students of all different backgrounds by bringing them together, dancing, and having fun,” King said during her club recognition request.
King said the difference between the Hillsdale Honky Tonk Club and existing social dance clubs is that it is not focused on partner acquisition and knowledge of dance choreographies.
“It’s overall just a really fun way to take a break from school work, do something fun, and to meet new people,” King said.
The club held its first event, the Hillsdale Honky Tonk Hoedown, Oct. 5 and nearly 50 people attended throughout the evening, according to King.
The federation also approved five funding requests from existing clubs, one of which was for the college’s pro-life club, Hillsdale College for Life. Almost half of the $3,000 requested will go toward repaying the club’s debt to the Students Activity Board, according to junior Grace Marks.
When planning for last year’s annual March for Life trip to Washington, D.C., Marks said the club attempted to make the trip cheaper for students by only having transportation via carpool. However, the club was informed by the deans that mass carpooling would be a legal liability to the college, Marks said.
With limited time, the prolife organization rented two buses with assistance from the Students Activity Board, which contributed $1,200.
“We would like, as a club, to not be in debt,” Marks said.
The $1,800 left over would contribute to a 10% down payment for two buses for the 2025 March for Life trip, Marks said.
The Women’s Holistic Health, started this semester, requested $650 to cover three events for the semester and general advertising costs.
“Our mission statement is to generate knowledge, cultivate community, and inspire action pertaining to wom -
By Adriana Azarian Collegian Reporter
Platforms like YouTube and podcasts outrank left-leaning TV news and expose users to conservative views, said Larry O’Connor, conservative radio host and Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism.
A host on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., O’Connor spoke on “The Media and the 2024 Election” Tuesday night in Plaster Auditorium.
“This is the greatest time to be living if you crave news and information because we all have a supercomputer in our pockets,” O’Connor said. “We’re on the precipice right now of streaming video content where you can get whatever television shows you want on your phone, tablet, computer, and now smart television without the gatekeepers you used to have.”
O’Connor said access to information online on platforms
Civil-War-era Hillsdale
By Stephanie Surmacz Collegian Freelancer
en’s health on campus,” said senior Carly Callahan, the club’s treasurer.
The club wants to host one event per remaining month of the semester, Callahan said. Currently, the events consist of a speaker event, a collaboration with the Women’s L.I.F.T. Club, and another event to be determined.
Beta Beta Beta, the biology honorary, requested $500 to restart its recycling project.
“We’ve had a deficit in our budget this past year,” senior Max Aylor said. “We’ve been focusing on doing other events with tri-Beta, I think this is the first year we’ve appealed to Student Fed for any money.”
The honorary has focused on speaker events and educational experiences, but the school administration requested that they resume recycling, which they have done for around five years already, according to Aylor.
Alpha Rho Tau, the art honorary, requested $300 to replace three French easels in the art building for the honorary’s usage.
“The ones that are currently in the art building are pretty old,” Marks, who also spoke on behalf of ART, said. “They’re also terribly difficult to use.”
According to Marks, French easels are necessary for plein air painting, also known as outdoor painting.
The final funding request came from the new Billiards Club, which requested $150 to buy six new pool cues.
Four of the new pool cues would be higher quality options for everyday use, according to freshman Tommy Flud, secretary for the Billiards Club. Two of the new cues would be used specifically for prospective tournaments.
“Our intent is to have a tournament or two every semester,” Flud said. “We thought it would be smart to get two higher quality pool cues solely for tournament use because we know people in the tournament would use them correctly.”
Junior and president of the Student Federation Jacob Beckwith said he is enthusiastic about the increase in campus clubs.
“It’s an exciting thing that we have more clubs presenting in front of Student Fed and that student fees are being disbursed more fully,” Beckwith said. “More students are getting to benefit from their student fees because more clubs are asking for funds and, by extension, putting more events on for campus.”
Students can immerse themselves in Civil War history on the 1844 Society’s inaugural Hillsdale History Tours event Oct. 26.
According to Young Alumni Programs Coordinator Kaeleigh Di Cello, attendees can expect a walking tour that will teach them the history of Hillsdale College in the Civil War.
“The event was inspired by the 1844 Society’s desire to help students cultivate a deeper love and appreciation
will come alive at Hayden Park
for Hillsdale College and its mission,” Di Cello said.
Attendees can expect to hear the words of students who attended the college at the time of the Civil War, according to junior Joseph “Hinson” Peed. Peed said student actors will portray the historical students along the tour.
“I am most looking forward to our attendees having the opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of Hillsdale College students who lived during the Civil War,” Di Cello said. Di Cello said the tour be-
gins at 5:30 p.m. at Hayden Park and will be followed by refreshments and a bonfire.
Associate Director of Alumni Relations Braden VanDyke said he spent time over the summer researching what other colleges do to promote affinity, spirit, and philanthropy on their campuses. He said he found many do an event like the history walk.
“Given our college’s unique history, especially surrounding the Civil War Era, we thought it would be a cool opportunity to promote some of those lesser-known stories
and build students’ pride in their historic and storied college and fellow alumni,” VanDyke said.
According to VanDyke, the history tour will provide a way for current students to connect to their history and appreciate the college’s past.
“Whether or not students actively realize it, they inherit such a rich history and legacy from alumni who have gone before them,” VanDyke said. “Those unique stories reemphasize Hillsdale’s timelessness and reinforce the idea that there’s no place like Hillsdale.”
Mary Randall rededicates playhouse after 25 years
By Elizabeth Putlock Collegian Freelancer
After 25 years of playtime, Mary Proctor Randall Preschool rededicated “Miss D’s Playhouse” on Oct. 11.
“It would have brought Miss D such great happiness to know that 25 years later, children are still joyfully playing and learning under this roof that bears her name,” director of Mary Randall Preschool Micha Moore ’94 said at the event.
“Miss D” was the late Elizabeth Dickinson, who taught at the preschool for more than 50 years.
A crowd of parents, children, and Hillsdale College Women Commissioners gathered in the backyard of the preschool to celebrate her legacy.
“Many of the Women Commissioners were students of hers, and they too had been greatly influenced by her, which is why they recognized the profound impact she had on them, the preschool, and the education program at the college,” former preschool director Kathleen Connor said. “They were determined to honor her legacy.”
Women Commissioners Mitzi Dimmers and Ruth Parker spearheaded the original idea for the playhouse after Miss D died in 1996.
“They thought it would be a fitting tribute to honor her memory, and would name it ‘Miss D’s Playhouse,’” Connor said. “Miss D’s legacy lives on inspiring us to cherish the joy and importance of early childhood.”
Various updates and improvements to the playhouse played a part in the rededication ceremony, according to Moore.
“The plans for rededication began about two years ago when we realized that the playhouse was nearing its quarter-century mark,” Moore said. “Luckily for us, the Women Commissioners saw this as an opportunity to evaluate the playhouse and make updates to the building and decor to ensure that for the next quarter of a century, this beautiful gift continues to shine, and hundreds more children celebrate it through play.”
The playhouse received a new sign honoring the Women Commissioners and Arvid Erholtz, a major contributor to the design and construction of “Miss D’s Playhouse,” according to Moore.
Erholtz, his wife Connie, and Dimmers pioneered the original plans for the playhouse, Moore said.
New additions and improvements to the playhouse
also included repainted shutters, brand new play kitchen furniture, updated window coverings, a new mailbox and flower boxes, and new watercolor artwork.
The preschool commissioned junior Claire Lashaway to design and paint three watercolor paintings based on Mother Goose rhymes to decorate the interior of the playhouse. Lashaway said she has been volunteering with the preschool since her freshman year.
“I guess the inspiration in making these paintings was, ‘how best can I make these appeal to the little ones?’” Lashaway said. “I actually had my siblings come in and look at my drafts and I asked them, ‘Hey, what are these missing?’”
Lashaway said her siblings reminded her of small details from the rhymes that she then included in her paintings.
“You’ll see little instances of the black cat that appear in all three paintings, or the little mouse in ‘Humpty Dumpty,’” Lashaway said. “Kids see those things, just the small details that might not be something that’s clearly obviously composition.”
“Miss D’s Playhouse” is a favorite among the preschool students, according to Moore.
“Did you know that in the spring or in the fall, the win-
offers an alternative to biased media coverage, Pulliam
like YouTube and social media replaces the need for once trusted news sources such as CBS, ABC, and The Washington Post.
“We have consumers seeking out news and information — they’re finding YouTube, this medium of video streaming direct to your device, you’re watching maybe what you used to watch, but suddenly you’re getting introduced to other content, and before you know it, Megyn Kelly is beating NBC and CBS news combined on YouTube,” he said.
O’Connor showed multiple video clips from left-leaning news sources, including what he called the media’s coverup of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, media’s biased coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign, and “60 Minutes” recent edited interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is about ‘We the People,’ this is why we need
a free and uninhibited, unabridged, independent press, because we are about to vote, and we deserve to know, and ‘60 Minutes’ and CBS News are deliberately keeping you from knowing,” O’Connor said. “Now I don’t know what kind of business that is, but I don’t think that’s the news business.”
O’Connor presented trends of Democrat, Republican, and Independent trust in mass media from a Gallup graph of 1972-2024. The graph indicated an overall decline in all three groups since 2018, with only 12% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats saying they trust the media in 2024.
Freshman Karis Lim said she thinks it’s sad the mainstream media has become untrustworthy.
“I think television and newspapers was a really cool era and now that it’s up to individuals — it’s sad that change had to happen, but I
think it’s good we have that responsibility,” Lim said.
O’Connor displayed the top five podcasts with the most listeners, the first two being true crime, “The Joe Rogan Experience” third, followed by The New York Times’ news podcast “The Daily,” and the fifth being “The Tucker Carlson Show.”
According to O’Connor, two of the three most popular news and opinions podcasts being right-of-center is “a sea change, and those shows wouldn’t exist if corporate media had their way.” He said content creators like Rogan and Carlson can “bypass those gatekeepers” to deliver information outside of the mainstream media’s constraints.
O’Connor said he has grown his show in Washington, D.C., despite the area’s left-leaning political atmosphere.
“A lot of people think that we’re all siloed now, and that
we’re just listening to an echo chamber and people in the media telling us what we want to hear. I don’t think that’s the case, I really don’t,” O’Connor said. “On my show, we lead with news and facts, then we deliver our analysis, and then we do something you’ll never see Anderson Cooper do: I give out my phone number, and if you disagree with me, call in and let’s talk about it. That’s the power of talk radio.”
General Manager at WRFH 101.7 FM Scot Bertram said the timing and topic of O’Connor’s speech was on point.
“Larry was the perfect guy to talk about those types of themes, considering his history coming from outside the media industry without any formal training whatsoever and entering through the dawn of the blogosphere and seeing how some of the power transferred from legacy media to citizen journalists,” Ber-
dows open, and it becomes a special restaurant where they can go and order all their food?” Moore said after which the crowd broke into laughter. “The delight that the children experience when they’re rocking their babies in front of the fireplace or sitting on their porch helps them recreate the love and the experiences that they had when they were on the laps of their own mothers and fathers.”
A fourth-year parent at Mary Randall, Melissa Thorne, said her son loves the playhouse.
“Going to the playhouse was the first thing he wanted to do when we came to the ceremony tonight,” Thorne said. “He wanted to go over and visit the playhouse, and he’s in there right now, writing on the chalkboard and playing with baby dolls like he never left.”
The students of the preschool prepared and performed three of Miss D’s favorite songs as part of the ceremony. Laughter filled the crowd as they sang. “I mean, the cuteness is off the charts,” an attendee remarked.
College Chaplain Rev. Adam Rick concluded the ceremony with a blessing.
“We thank you for Mary Randall Preschool, for the gift of this safe and nurturing environment, and to grow to learn to play in love and safety of the dedicated teachers and staff of the school who worked so hard to make it so,” Rick said in his prayer.
Former preschool director Stacy Vondra said she is hopeful for the future of the preschool.
“Moving forward, may Miss D’s Playhouse continue to be a source of joy, learning and imagination for many generations to come,” Vondra said in her closing remarks. “Together, we build a foundation for a future with possibility, where children can grow, learn and thrive in the legacy of Miss D.”
Fellow says
tram said. “His points about the shift in video providers and distribution and the power of podcasting and its shift in this 2024 election cycle is accurate and something we hear at the radio station and the journalism program at Hillsdale.”
Lecture attendee Rick McCloy said he thinks older people, more than younger generations, are still accustomed to watching the news on TV.
“It’s easy to sit down in front of their TV and watch the news, it’s just what they do and what they’ve always done,” McCloy said. O’Connor said media consumers have the power to choose where they get their news.
“If you want the news, if you want the information, you can seek it out,” O’Connor said. “You can get it, and the way the trends are going, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
“Miss D’s Playhouse” commemorates Miss Elizabeth Dickinson, who taught at the preschool for more than half a century. Elizabeth Putlock | Collegian
Opinions
The Collegian Weekly
The opinion of the Collegian editorial staff
Did you know Collegian editors enjoy nothing more than reading complaints about our paper?
No, seriously — in a field that is all about facts, the only thing worse than getting something wrong is not correcting it. Help us out, and tell us when we mess up.
We strive for accuracy, but alas, we’re human — worse than that, we’re students on a
Collegian doesn’t quash creativity
By Caroline Kurt Opinions Editor
Think you, an aspiring novelist, are too creative to write for The Collegian? Think again.
I entered Hillsdale proud of my writing abilities. I could crank out an easy A on a high school essay and had whole journals full of original stories. Imagine my surprise when the first few Collegian articles I submitted got torn to shreds.
Was The Collegian the right place for someone like me, a creative writer? I seriously questioned it. I liked big words, long phrases, lots of commas. Perhaps journalism, with its seemingly arbitrary attribution rules, strict article structure, and fondness for concision, was not the place for me.
But The Collegian was the best thing to ever happen to my writing — and it can be for you, too. Learning the rules gave me the freedom to become a great writer.
If you’ve ever had an article edited, it’s rough. Opening up the Google Doc you slaved away at to see whole paragraphs crossed out is enough to make anyone’s stomach sink. Comments from editors can seem callous, even threatening — how dare they tell you how to write? It’s a constant exercise in humility and receptivity.
Not all editors are created equal, but the staff at The Collegian — and other reputable publications — want to help writers grow into all that they can be. All writers have blind spots. The best editors are able to nurture and channel writers’ creativity so their original phrasing or unorthodox approach doesn’t come at the expense of a high-quality piece. This is a messy process: your grammar may need some serious help, or maybe you’re like me and lack innate concision. Both editor and writer constantly must struggle for clarity, accuracy, and — yes — beauty. But this struggle will strengthen your writing.
Learning the rules means you will be able to break them artfully — not ineptly. Consistently writing pieces on a deadline is the best way to grow as a writer. Interviewing sources for pieces gives you the opportunity to speak with fascinating people you’d otherwise never meet. Who knows — they may provide inspiration for the main character of your next screenplay.
Journalism forces you to get to the point, fast. That’s especially helpful in drafting short fiction. As any journalist knows, the reader is always looking for reasons to stop reading. That rule applies equally to compelling prose or poetry.
And if you believe creativity is synonymous with the absence of constraints, you need a new definition of creativity. The greatest sonnet composers operated within a strict system of rhythm, meter, and line, and their works are paragons of creativity. Fortunately, Collegian articles don’t have to be in iambic pentameter.
Learning to write in a journalistic “voice” doesn’t mean forfeiting your fiction. Many prominent journalists write in a variety of styles for different purposes.
Don’t take it from me. On the walls of the Collegian office hang a dozen posters of different novelists and poets who started off in journalism: Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, John Milton, George Orwell, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain, to name a few.
Journalism challenges a novelist’s favorite excuse: writer’s block. Try telling a Collegian editor you lack inspiration and won’t be able to deliver your piece. It won’t go well. Very quickly, you learn to put words on a page, even when you don’t “feel” inspired. John J. Miller says the Muse comes in the act of writing. He is correct. This isn’t to say that The Collegian offers the only path to success as a creative writer. But it’s a damn good one.
Complain More
deadline. Mistakes happen, and they’re often not happy little accidents. We want to fix them. As journalist Peggy Noonan wrote, when you fail in journalism, you will fail publicly. Sometimes it gets picked up by the Hillsdale meme accounts Thursday afternoon, but sometimes we only hear about an error months or years later when a classmate or professor airs a private grievance.
Better than allowing the error to fester, do us a service and present us with the opportunity to correct our mistakes. The Collegian is an educational effort as much as it is an effort
to deliver information. We are happy to correct errors and explain edits.
There is no use in holding a grudge against the News editor for dropping part of your title, misquoting you, or spelling your name “Kaleigh” instead of “Kaylee.” It doesn’t help anyone to keep it to yourself, and we may not know about the mistake until you point it out. Though articles go through many rounds of edits, things can slip through the cracks — editors are no more omniscient than readers.
When something doesn’t look right, shoot us an email. If you disagree with a take in the Opinions section, write a letter to the editor for publication. If you took a photo and didn’t
get credit, we want to pay credit where credit is due.
Offering feedback or corrections to errors in The Collegian provides a service to campus and to us as journalism students. We can only make our publication better when readers keep us accountable.
Computer science is the future. Why isn’t it offered as a major?
By Malia Thibado Collegian Reporter
Students need computer science knowledge to thrive in this modern age. It’s unavoidable. To facilitate its students’ success, Hillsdale should expand its existing computer science program to offer a major.
Presently, the computer science minor is under the supervision of Thomas Treloar, who is also chairman of the mathematics department.
According to Treloar, the computer science program currently acts as a supplementary study for science, math, and economics majors.
“I’d love to see a computer science major come to campus,” Treloar said.
Computer science expertise will soon be a must-have as mainstream industries expand to include complex artificial intelligence and predictive programs. It’s already embedded in business, security, politics, and many other industries.
The market for specialized computer science jobs expanded by 26% in the 2022-23 fiscal year, according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics.
“I think the industry is booming,” said Oliver Serang, the new assistant professor of computer science. “It is fundamentally one of those areas that if you’re good at it, we live in a time that it’s a gold rush.”
The computer science industry is already saturated with competition, but barriers to entry will only become higher if Hillsdale students aren’t able to take advantage of the learning curve now or in the near future.
Computer-based programs can give valuable outputs, but these outputs are contingent upon the factors deemed “relevant” by those who are inputting the data, the programmers.
Many of the latest innovative technologies have been made by left-leaning organizations. ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Snapchat’s My AI have all had well-documented political biases programmed into them by those who built them.
New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — all overwhelmingly liberal cities — have the highest concen -
tration of computer science degrees awarded, according to Data USA.
These programmers, marketers, and software engineers can suppress or promote political and social agendas using their superior knowledge of computer science. As a conservative school, Hillsdale College could train knowledgeable and classically educated computer science majors who enter the technology industry and rebalance the system. At present, students can only comment on the pervasive issues without the technical ability to affect change against the prevailing ideology.
Creating a comprehensive major, however, requires a lot of logistical planning, according to Treloar. One of the main obstacles is the shortage of faculty.
“Any program we start in our department, we want it to be excellent,” Treloar said. “We don’t want to overextend ourselves to where we can’t support what we’re trying to set up.”
This semester, Serang and associate professor of computer science John Seiffert are
Letter to the Editor
By Caleb Lambrecht, Isaac Wilhelm, and Justin Peterson Guest Writers
As Hillsdale alumni who returned for this year’s homecoming festivities, we are the people who “homecoming is about,” according to the Oct. 10 Collegian Weekly from the editorial staff. We believe that the editorial piece mistakes the true purpose of homecoming.
While no one would argue that it is criminal to congratulate other groups, the adversarial nature of the homecoming competition actually improves Hillsdale’s campus culture. T.S. Eliot once wrote, “It is important that a man should feel himself to be, not merely a citizen of a particular nation, but a citizen of a particular part of his country, with local loyalties.” Human beings’
affection for their closest communities is the first link in the series by which they proceed towards a love of mankind. Students’ love for their own little platoon on campus, whether that be a dormitory or a Greek house, is exactly what strengthens their affection towards the larger community of the college. This love is most animated during homecoming because of the competition, not despite it. If we want students to grow in harmony with their peers and friends, we should encourage the competitive spirit of homecoming, not admonish it.
Additionally, part of the point of the homecoming contest is the “extreme” that The Collegian cautions against. Resolving to expend a ridiculous amount of effort for something seemingly meaningless exhibits
a rare, exceptional virtue: a childlike earnestness to commit to something bigger than yourself and to know the great enthusiasms and great devotions of life. Additionally, some of the most exciting aspects that today’s students enjoy, such as the thrilling Banner Drop night and electric Mock Rock routines, would not exist if not for homecoming having consumed the lives of past students to this “extreme.” We suspect that no one would argue that campus would somehow be better off without these things. Perhaps the most objectionable claim about homecoming made by the Collegian staff in the Weekly is that “in a week, the results won’t matter.” Homecoming week enlivens campus with an enthusiasm that often lasts beyond homecoming
each teaching three courses with about 10 students in each class, Treloar said.
Serang compared his vision of Hillsdale’s computer science program to a Michelin star restaurant.
“Even if someone works in a really tiny restaurant, you can still get a Michelin star if you immerse yourself in whatever cuisine you’re making,” Serang said. “What we should do most is to do a great job to get our Michelin star.”
Aside from all the societal applications of Hillsdale students majoring in computer science, the subject itself is worth an in-depth exploration. Computer science has both abstract and utilitarian applications. It is a separate field of study, rich with potential to advance knowledge and edify the mind.
The future is computer science. Students should have the option to equip themselves with a major that will prepare them for it.
Thibado is a junior studying International Business and Foreign Language.
week, strengthens community within the student body, builds new friendships, further cultivates pre-existing ones, leaves lasting memories that bind alumni and current students through shared experiences, and is integral to campus culture. In a week, in a year, and in a decade, the results will matter. As Captain Jack Sparrow once observed, “not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.” He may be right, but the pursuit of that gold homecoming trophy does plenty to cultivate the friendships we treasure.
Caleb Lambrecht ’21, Issac Wilhelm ’23, and Justin Peterson ’24 are graduates of Hillsdale College.
Caroline Kurt is a junior studying English.
Malia
Kamala panders on ‘Call Her Daddy’
By Kamden Mulder Features Editor
Vice President Kamala Harris recently chose to spend time with a Founding Father — not one on Mount Rushmore, but Alex Cooper, self-proclaimed “Founding Father” and host of the podcast “Call Her Daddy.”
The interview, released Oct. 6, came after an astonishing 77 consecutive days without a formal press conference from Harris, a streak that continues to grow at the present day.
Harris’s decision to go on “Call Her Daddy” is not just concerning; it’s downright insulting. It reduces female voters to one-dimensional caricatures only interested in provocative sex and dating advice, and obscures the critical obligation of presidential candidates to engage seriously with the press.
“Call Her Daddy” is touted as the most-listened-to podcast among women, primarily addressing sexual identity, gender issues, and dating advice, often filled with crude humor and explicit references. The podcast does not reflect the broader concerns many women have as the election approaches.
While Harris continues to shun reporters, she granted Cooper a full 40 minutes of uninterrupted airtime.
“No topic was off limits. I prepared seven different versions of this interview,” Cooper shared with her “Daddy Gang,” a pet name for the podcast’s fanbase. “Do I talk about the economy, border control, or fracking? But then I realized, you can care about all of those issues on whichever news site you prefer, and let’s be real, I’m probably not the one to be having the fracking conversation.”
The Harris campaign knew exactly what it was doing — providing an extended platform to ask any question while choosing an interviewer unlikely to pose the questions voters genuinely wonder. Harris is able to combat the criticism of ignoring the press with no fear of any nuclear bombs to the campaign strategy.
Even though Cooper is known for spicy anecdotes and jaw-dropping commentary, Harris somehow managed to make “Call Her Daddy” appearance boring.
“The conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women’s bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country,” Cooper said.
Thus, Cooper spent 40 minutes asking Harris about her childhood, abortion, her racial background, and her feelings about not having biological children — a far cry from pressing policy issues.
To call this interview a puff piece is an insult to puff pieces. In comparison, Bret Baier of Fox News, the mostwatched cable news network, was given just 27 minutes with the vice president, much of which was spent watching Harris search for a “viral moment,” as Baier described.
Harris was indignant throughout her conversation with Baier, questioning his probes and spewing her non-answers at him with a condescending tone. The conversation with Cooper, however, Harris filled with smiles and a pleasant tone, and spoke slowly and clearly.
One of the many ignorant moments from the “Call Her Daddy” interview was when Cooper jokingly asked Harris, “Can we try and think of any law that gives the government the power to make a de-
cision about a man’s body?”
To which Harris responded “no” without hesitation. Has the vice president heard of the draft?
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll of female voters revealed that inflation is their top concern, with 36% citing it as their main issue. Threats to democracy follow at 24%, with immigration and border security tied with abortion at 13% each — not to mention that a portion of women polled are inevitably pro-life, creating an even smaller margin that subscribes to Harris’s view.
With over half of women concerned about topics beyond abortion, Harris’s focus on this issue appears to be a classic case of identity politics — a focus that allows Harris to ignore her administration’s shortcomings.
Harris could be this country’s first female president. For her to have such tunnel vision on abortion, promising to restore federal abortion laws, when so many other issues plague American women everyday, feels misguided and inherently anti-feminist.
If Harris were open to talking with different publications and podcast hosts, this might be a different conversation. Her dodging of more traditional and serious media outlets, however, implies that she’s pandering to simple, one-track mind voters — in this case, a small subcategory of women.
Women are intelligent and competent enough to get their news from reputable outlets, not “Call Her Daddy.”
“This is how I think about media interviews. I think you do what I do with alcohol. You have one drink, and then you have some water, you have one drink, and then you have some water,” said Fox News anchor Dana Perino on Harris’s podcast appearance. “If you’re only drinking, you’re only hurting yourself, and if you’re only drinking water, you might not be having any fun.”
Harris can talk about women’s issues anywhere, but instead chose a podcast that platforms grotesque and inappropriate topics. Would it still be condemnable if she were also participating in more professional interviews, yes, but it would be better if she were to employ Perino’s balance.
Beyond the lack of awareness on what American women truly care about, Harris was criticized for her participation on the show in the midst of two massive hurricanes that slammed the southeastern states.
Many critics have questioned why Cooper was even qualified to conduct the interview, something the podcast host herself acknowledged. She conceded that politicians are not her usual guests.
Cooper’s typical interviewees are celebrities and social media stars like Cardi B, Lindsay Lohan, and Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender activist known for the Bud Light ad scandal. Now, Vice President Kamala Harris can be added to that eclectic list of guests.
If Harris prefers viral moments to vital issues, what can Americans expect if she makes it to the Oval Office?
Let’s hope voters aren’t left waiting until after they cast their votes to finally get the answers they deserve.
Kamden Mulder is a senior studying American studies.
Coastal elites can learn politics from this Midwestern prin cess
By Sarah Katherine Sisk Senior Reporter
The tribalism of the presidential election forces celebrities to swear fealty to a faction or face the music.
One A-lister who won’t fold is pop star Chappel Roan, outraging many fans who falsely equate her unwillingness to endorse a candidate with support for former president Donald J. Trump.
Amidst the wave of recent left-wing celebrity endorsements, Roan’s resistance to play into identity politics is standalone.
Roan’s refusal to officially endorse a presidential ticket comes at a time when endorsements from major celebrities are rampant. Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, John Legend, Cardi B, and Charli XCX are just a few of the celebrities publicly backing Harris.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this,” Grande captioned her Instagram story repost of President Joe Biden’s endorsement post for Harris.
During this contested election, such endorsements leave a bitter taste in many fans’ mouths. Corralling members of the entertainment industry onto one side or the other leaves no room for nuance and makes their art inseparable from politics.
Roan’s meteoric rise to fame followed the release of
her debut album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.” The album draws influence from her humble Midwestern roots, sprinkling in elements of ’80s synth-pop and rock that pair well with her theatrical performance style.
Hailing from a small town in Missouri, Roan was raised in a conservative household before moving to California to pursue her musical dreams, according to Rolling Stone.
“I have family that are very Republican, and they love me, and I love them,” she told Rolling Stone in a new cover story. “It’s so hard for kids who grew up on the coast to understand why maybe I can understand [them].”
Roan, who is lesbian, declined to perform at the White House’s pride celebration this year, leading fans to believe the singer supports Trump.
“It is not so black and white that you hate one and you like the other,” she told Rolling Stone. “I’m not going to go to the White House because I am not going to be a monkey for Pride.”
Roan said she is excited that more gay artists are being taken seriously outside of their “queerness.”
“You don’t necessarily have to be out-loud out,” Roan told Rolling Stone. “You can kind of silently celebrate if you would like. It’s like, look, I love being gay. I just don’t want to talk about it every second of every day.”
Critics took to X to attack Roan.
“Chappell Roan is an embarrassment to lesbians,” one user wrote. “You can’t borrow from drag aesthetics and embrace your sexuality and then pretend the party that would criminalize our happiness is the same as the one who protects it.”
Roan has been vocal about her discomfort with her new fame, particularly that some fans feel entitled to interact with her when she is with her friends or family, or clearly upset. Parasocial relationships, one-sided connections between individuals and media figures who are unaware of their existence, have become more prevalent thanks to social media, making it easy for people to demonize celebrities for their beliefs and exacerbate the partisan divide.
Roan said she is more concerned with causes than candidates, and urged fans to think for themselves.
“I have so many issues with our government in every way,” she told The Guardian. “There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone. There are problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote — vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.”
After heavy public criticism, Roan released a video on TikTok stating that she’s unenthusiastically voting for Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris, although she made it clear that she feels disenfranchised
from both parties and still refuses to endorse Harris.
“I don’t have a side because I hate both sides, and I’m so embarrassed about everything going on right now,” she told Rolling Stone of her political stance.
When celebrities like Swift endorse candidates, it makes waves. Swift’s endorsement of Harris drove more than 400,000 users to visit vote.gov in one day, compared to the roughly 30,000 daily visitors garnered the week before. Similarly, Swift gained 1.85 million Spotify followers after posting her endorsement. When the super-rich endorses the super-powerful, the American people pay. It’s not that artists need to be apolitical or neutral, rather it’s about cultivating a nation of free thinkers and an environment that celebrates nuance of opinion.
Americans look to their favorite artists to escape the burdens of existence. Presidents come and go, but art lasts. Good art, especially, transcends lifetimes.
Music has a unique ability to heal and connect people. Good musicians cultivate a level of harmony and unity that politicians can only dream of. These elites should take a page from Roan’s book. If they focus on art instead of mutually beneficial political deals, they may be one of the best hopes yet to restore a unified American identity.
Sarah Katherine Sisk is a senior studying economics.
Dante would agree: Italian should count for the BA
By Zack Chen Assitant Editor
Imagine a Hillsdale that taught the “Aeneid” without training students in Latin, or read the “Iliad” but didn’t encourage the study of Greek, or assigned short stories from Jorge Louis Borges but never led students to delve deeper into the study of Spanish.
Now remember that Hillsdale students will often study the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli solely in translation. The college doesn’t yet count proficiency in Italian towards fulfilling the core curriculum’s BA language requirements, let alone offer an Italian minor or major.
It’s simply got to change. Proficiency in Italian ought to fulfill the language standards for Hillsdale’s BA requirements.
Currently, students who want to learn Italian must take the courses as electives, which forces any BA student who wishes to study Italian to do so in addition to a different language, in addition to juggling the rest of the core curriculum and any majors and minors he or she may have. That’s a lot of work.
The college currently offers Beginning 1 and 2, Intermediate, and occasionally Advanced Italian. As there is no Italian department, the courses are listed as IDS classes. Students learn modern Italian, which is foundational for reading Dante.
This has its advantages: the only students who sign up for Italian currently are those who love the language and
want to devote themselves to understanding it. On the other hand, it also forces students who would otherwise take Italian to fulfill their core curriculum requirements with French or Spanish instead.
This is an incredible missed opportunity for Hillsdale. After all, Italian is the native tongue of several of the greatest authors ever to write. Everyone’s heard of Dante — hopefully — but if you haven’t heard of Bocaccio or Petrarch as well, you’re missing out. Though Dante’s not the only great Italian writer, learning Italian would be worth it just for him. His epic trilogy, the “Commedia Divina,” is a monument of literature which well merits its place beside the other foundations of the Western tradition, the “Iliad,” “Odyssey,” and “Aeneid.”
Dorothy Sayers, T. S. Eliot, and Charles Williams were all Dante scholars — maybe they were on to something. English translations can be helpful, but they’re simply not enough: until you’ve read a poem in the original language, you have never truly read it and you will not be able to fully appreciate it.
Add to that the fact that Italian is critically important for the many singers at the college because of the quality and quantity of Italian art songs and opera. Then consider that the language itself may be the most beautiful of the modern languages and that it’s quite easy to pick up. Like German, French, and Spanish, Italian has produced its fair share of authors, poets, writers, composers, artists, novelists, politicians, thinkers, and scientists. Italian culture is fascinating as well: think it’s just pizza and pasta? Think again. By not crediting proficiency in Italian toward the graduation requirements, Hillsdale directs students away from studying Italian. This unnecessary — and entirely changeable — state of affairs means that it becomes much harder for Hillsdale students to attain and enjoy an understanding of the many gifts that Italy has bestowed upon the world in general and Western culture in particular. It’s a self-imposed but easily remedied problem. It’s excellent that the college is already offering courses in Italian and even better that some students are taking advantage of them. Along these lines, if you have a little extra time in your schedule and are looking for an immensely fulfilling and enjoyable course of studies, you should strongly consider signing up for IDS393 Beginning Italian 1 next semester — it just might change your life.
But studying Italian should not be left up to the whims of selecting electives. The college’s mission and work will be made richer when more students than just those who have the extra credit room and inclination to study Italian are able to talk about their day with friends in passato prossimo or master those devilish pronomi doppi. Make Italian count for the language requirements and you will begin to sow the seeds of a deeper understanding of some of the greatest poetry, art, music, and culture ever to exist. Reward the effort that students put into Italian — it’ll be more than worth it for them and for Hillsdale as a whole.
Looking to strengthen the liberal arts at Hillsdale? Give amore di Italiano a chance.
Zack Chen is a sophomore studying Greek and Latin.
llustrated by Maggie O’Connor, a sophomore studying art.
City News
New airport terminal expected summer 2025
By Eleanor Whitaker Assistant Editor
Construction on the Hillsdale Municipal Airport’s new terminal is underway after more than a three-month delay, with plans for it to be completed early in the summer of 2025.
“Construction has started, and it’s up and going great,” Airport Administrator Ginger Moore said.
According to Moore, construction began on the terminal on June 24, months after consultants from the Michigan Department of Transportation set an expected start time of March 1.
Hillsdale City Manager David Mackie said steel for the framing of the terminal was unavailable during the expected start time.
“Steel was in short supply nationally,” Mackie said. “The contractor ordered the steel but had an extended delivery time. The steel beams are a critical component in the framing of the structure.”
Aaron Jenkins, a communication representative for MDOT, said the construction delay is not out of the ordinary.
“It is common for anticipated start dates to adjust
throughout the lifespan of a project,” Jenkins said. “Ultimately, MDOT’s role is administering the grant in accordance with Federal and State requirements and this project, and the airport continues to meet these requirements.”
The airport received a $2.5 million grant for the project, the only airport in Michigan to receive money for a new terminal, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that President Joe Biden signed in November 2021.
Mackie said the full project will cost $3.5 million, with the airport expecting to pay about $500,000 out of pocket.
Mackie said the project is critical for improving transportation infrastructure in Hillsdale.
“The current facilities at the airport are in poor shape and in need of substantial repairs,” Mackie said. “The new terminal is generating excitement around the airport and prompting private individuals to explore investment opportunities.”
Council rejects bid to extend city manager’s contract to 2032
By Thomas McKenna City News Editor
The Hillsdale City Council voted 7-2 against extending the city manager’s contract until 2032 after a contentious, hourlong public comment period Monday night.
Most council members — including Mayor Adam Stockford — said they were satisfied by the performance of City Manager David Mackie, whose contract is set to expire in 2028. But Stockford, whose term expires in 2026, voted against extending Mackie’s contract for another four years, saying it would would unfairly bind future councils.
“When there’s three years left on the contract, it just seems goofy to tweak everybody’s noses and extend it past that point when there’s an election in just a couple of weeks,” Stockford said before the vote. “It’s too tough a sell for me to extend this to six years past when my time on the council is going to be over with.”
If the changes had been adopted, Mackie’s tenure would have been extended past 2028 to 2032, adding four years to his current contract as both city manager and director of the Board of Public Utilities. It would have also increased his severance package to 18 months’ pay this year and 24
months’ pay in 2025 as well as given him a 2% increase every year based on job performance.
The council’s Operations and Governance Committee — consisting of councilmen Will Morrissey (Ward 2), Greg Stuchell (Ward 1), and Bruce Sharp (Ward 3) — unanimously recommended the contract amendments to the council earlier this month. But Stuchell voted against the measure on Monday night while praising Mackie as a “bridge” in the city’s transition period.
Before the public comment period, Mackie read a statement “with the purpose of correcting misleading and false statements” on social media.
“For this anonymous group to make up facts to get others riled up to oppose something is unethical and lacks the common decency that they claim to be in pursuit of,” Mackie said. “The city council should not reward these actions or behavior.”
In the days leading up to the meeting, social media posts and an unsigned email from activist group Families for Hillsdale urged citizens to speak against the motion in public comment. More than 24 people gave public comments, with speakers on both sides of the motion.
“Every council election for the next eight years will be a sham, an exercise in futility,” the email read. “Future coun-
cils will be neutered, unable to exercise their strongest leverage over the city manager — their power to fire and replace him.”
George Allen, the college’s public services librarian and a member of Families for Hillsdale, said during public comment he had “no criticisms” of Mackie’s performance. But he told the council to reject the proposal because it would deprive future councils the opportunity to judge Mackie’s performance when his contract expires in 2028.
“The city manager makes innumerable day-to-day decisions that directly affect the governance of the town, many of these decisions not escalating to the council for approval or oversight, but that’s what he’s hired for,” Allen said.
After the city council rejected the contract extension, Ward 1 Councilman Tony Vear moved to give Mackie a 2% salary increase based on performance starting Nov. 1. The council approved it 5-4, with Morrissey, Stuchell, Sharp, Vear, and Councilman Gary Wolfram (Ward 3) — director of economics and professor of political economy at the college — voting in favor.
“You did earn it, Dave,” Stockford said after the vote.
Councilman Robert Socha (Ward 4) told The Collegian he voted against the 2% raise
because it would have come on top of a cost of living adjustment to Mackie’s salary.
“I think he’s done his job well,” Socha said. “But I have a hard time giving him an approximately $10,000 raise when we are requiring citizens to pay up to $5,000 to fix the roads in addition to property taxes.”
Socha said the proposed severance package was too large.
“I’ve called other city managers and they say severance packages are commonplace in the industry,” Socha said. “But two years is unreasonable to me.”
Before the measure failed, Mackie said he had sought the contract changes for job security and had not been offered another job.
Vear said he understood Mackie was seeking security for his family.
“I understand where he’s coming from too as far as having some continuity,” Vear said. “He has kids going to school and he wants to put down some roots. He’s been here for nine years.”
But Vear also said he did not like that the motion was a bundle — an extension, a severance increase, and a pay raise.
“I think there is a lot of credibility to say that other, future councils should have a say in our city manager,” Vear said.
Local bartenders fear minimum wage hikes
By Elizabeth Crawford Senior Reporter
Bartenders in Hillsdale say they are worried their earnings will drop following a ruling by the state Supreme Court that forces the tipped minimum wage to rise gradually until 2030.
Izabell Gilbert, a waitress and bartender at Rosalie’s in Jonesville said many of her coworkers rely entirely on their tips to provide for their households.
“I understand the fear,” Gilbert said. “If our minimum wage goes up and our tips go down, I know many waitresses, servers, everyone — many of my colleagues who have kids — they can’t really take the loss.”
Michigan’s current minimum wage for employees
ing about six hours over one shift,” Gilbert said. Jill Bambacht, a bartender at Here’s to You Pub ‘N Grub, said that if the minimum wage interfered with her tips, she would no longer bartend.
“Waitressing is like a really fun game,” Bambacht said. “It’s like you’re going to win, but it’s still a gamble, and I like the gamble.”
Mackenzie Ward, who has been a bartender for seven years, said raising the minimum wage could also lower standards of service.
“As a server, or as a waitress, it’s a job that’s done based on tips,” Ward said. “If you’re not really good at your job, or if you don’t really tend to your tables that often, then your customer bases your tip toward you based on the job you do.”
“They can’t really take the loss.”
who receive tips is $3.93.
But unless lawmakers make a deal before February, that floor will move up to 48% of the scheduled $12.48 minimum wage, or about six dollars.
However, as the standard minimum wage increases, so will the tipped minimum wage. In February 2028, the tipped minimum wage will be $11.97, according to the Michigan Restaurant & Lodging Association. In 2030, the tipped minimum wage and the standard minimum wage will become the same, though the rates will be adjusted for inflation.
Bartenders from Rosalie’s, Underdogs, and Here’s to You Pub & Grub who spoke with The Collegian said they were concerned the potential increase in the minimum wage for tipped workers could hurt their take-home pay.
Gilbert said she relies entirely on tips for her wage.
“A good night for me looks to be anywhere between $200-$300, and that’s work-
Ward, who makes about a dollar more than the state’s tipped minimum wage at Underdogs in Hillsdale, said she is fine with her current hourly wage and depends on her tips to make a living.
“A good night here with only tips is $180 a night,” Ward said. “With minimum wage, probably around $230 working a double shift.”
Ward also said that people would tip less if the minimum wage was raised.
“More people would view it like a Biggby, where you’re getting paid to do your job and your job is serving,” Ward said.
Bambacht said she would rather endure the stress of being a server working for tips than stocking shelves for a minimum wage.
“As busy as you are as a server, that’s as much as you make,” Bambracht said. “It makes me a better server. How good are bartenders going to be if there’s no initiative?”
A rendering of the Hillsdale Municipal Airport’s new terminal.
Courtesy | Ginger Moore
Construction progress on the new terminal on Oct. 9. Catherine Maxwell | Collegian
Two dozen people spoke during the public comment
period of Monday night’s city council meeting. Thomas McKenna | Collegian
Multi-million dollar ‘Renaissance’ moves ahead
The project has acquired 11 new buildings and started seven new projects in one year
By Kamden Mulder Features Editor
Luke Robson is playing Mo nopoly in the City of Hillsdale as his company, Hillsdale Re naissance LLC, acquired 11 new buildings in the past year and started seven new projects.
A 2017 Hillsdale College graduate and the president of Hillsdale Renaissance, Robson founded the company in 2022. According to a Collegian report from November 2023, Robson owned 16 buildings, but his portfolio has increased to 27 buildings over the past year, with most of them concentrated downtown.
“There’s something about the people that this place at tracts that just really lends to a great quality of life,” Robson said. “There’s a great humane emphasis here that is lacking in a lot of places.”
Adam Stockford, mayor of the City of Hillsdale, said he supports Hillsdale Renaissance’s projects.
“Is there any other way to be but excited and optimistic about a multi-million dollar injection of real money and development into our downtown?” Stockford said in an email.
Currently, Robson has five projects under active construc tion, with two more in early de velopment.
St. Joe’s Café, one of the seven projects, is set to open this week.
The European-style pizza café is located at 92 N. Broad St.
Other projects include renovations at 16 S. Howell St. into the buildings Luke has acquired are currently in poor condition and need significant investment, and we are hopeful that he can achieve his goal of making them
ready for a variety of new commercial or residential uses.”
up to 25,000 people a year to Hillsdale. That’ll be a really great
ure out, ‘OK, what’s this going to look like?’”
runs the Indiana Railroad Ex perience, which brings several thousand people annually to Hillsdale for rail trips,” Robson said. “They’re hoping to bring
Artists to host show Saturday
By Sydney Green Collegian Reporter
The North Country Artist Alliance will host its fall art show Oct. 26 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hillsdale County Fairgrounds in the 4H building.
“We think that this is a great opportunity to get to know our local artists,” President Rhonda Foster said. “It will be a fun event and you will get to see what the artist creates and learn about their whole process.”
The North Country Artist Alliance is a group of local painters and sculptors who meet monthly to share their art and have it critiqued. The group also shares their art with the community.
“Our mission is to stimulate the appreciation and practice of visual arts and all media,” Social Media Manager Kim Farnham said. “We also try to promote educational and entrepreneurial opportunities for artists in Hillsdale and surrounding communities.”
The event is free of charge and open to the public. The group will also hold a raffle and the winners will receive a free coffee cup.
“We are always interested in having new people join,” Foster said. “We are pretty much open to anyone and we hope this event will encourage any interested artist to join our group.”
Tea
Broad Street Liquor, Bootleg gers Bar, and 55 Below. The businesses are currently closed during the transition, according to Robson, but will reopen this week.
Shull will be the general manager and part owner of Dante’s, while Biscaro will serve as wine director.
“In the case of Dante’s, the opportunity to purchase the liquor store and bars came up, and I was interested in that, but I wasn’t going to bite on it if I couldn’t find the time,” Robson said. “I was friends with Joel and talked to him about the project, and he was very interested in managing. This whole summer has been me, Joel, and John at least once a week trying to fig-
and yoga studio to open Jan. 1
By Alessia Sandala Assistant Editor
A new tea and yoga studio, Abundant Rock, will open Jan. 1 on Waldron Street in downtown Hillsdale, according to co-owner Jesse Garza.
The studio will hold yoga and meditation classes from beginner to advanced levels.
“We’ll be offering a range of yoga classes including hot yoga,” Garza said. “We’re going to have a wood burning stove inside the yoga room so it will be firewood heat.”
Abundant Rock will also offer an extensive tea bar with teas from around the world, according to Garza. Co-owner Megan Laser said Abundant Rock will sell tea when yoga classes are not in session.
“We plan on sourcing our teas with fair trade businesses, and I like tea from India, so I’ll probably lean more toward that type of tea, which is very spicy, similar to chai,” Garza said. “But we will also have green tea.”
Sophomore Mikayla Manna said she hopes Abundant Rock will become a study spot for students.
“I love tea so I will definitely go for that,” Manna said. “I’m excited to try new types of tea. I drink tea almost every day so I’m excited to try new, exotic kinds.”
Laser said she didn’t enjoy yoga when she first began taking classes but she grew to love it and said it is something everyone should try at least once.
“I took a couple of yoga classes in college and I didn’t really like it. I liked the idea of it but it made me feel kind of
frustrated,” Laser said. “I started taking yoga classes around Chicago and that’s when I really started to fall in love with it.”
Garza said Abundant Rock is the product of his and Laser’s travels.
“Megan and I went to yoga school in Peru a couple of years ago so we were always dreaming about a yoga studio,” Garza said. “She started teaching yoga out of her apart ment in Jonesville and we just saw the need for a studio.”
Garza said his time in Peru taught him many yoga techniques, as well as mindfulness.
next week they tore off the stone and I was able to take it.”
Manna said she was curious about Abundant Rock since she noticed the renovations of the building.
“My sister and her husband live right next door so I have been seeing them make progress since school started,” Manna said. “They’ve really fixed it up a lot, and I love the white paint and lights on the outside.”
“We did a two week intensive yoga teacher training in Moyobamba with silent breakfasts, eight hours a day or more of yoga, intense meditation training, fire gazing, and more,” Garza said. “It was an awesome experience.”
The studio has been under construction for almost a year and pieces of the interior are from the Keefer House, according to Garza.
“I work at the Keefer House, too, and some of the wood is the wood from the Keefer House,” Garza said. “I was lucky enough that my bosses allowed me to take what was going to get thrown out. My girlfriend and I went to the stone place and we got a quote of about $1,200 for the stone we needed. Then the
Garza said starting a business is more difficult than he expected it to be.
“It’s been a very challenging experience,” Garza said.
“It’s all rainbows and sunshines when you’re dreaming of it, and then you get to work and you realize it took four days to paint the front of the building, when you thought it would be done in two hours.”
As Abundant Rock nears completion, Garza said he hopes the community will react well to the yoga studio.
“People of other religions might feel that yoga might be something they have to put a wall up against but we’re not pushing any sort of religion on anyone here,” Garza said. “The universe is our country, humanity is our tribe. We are completely open to anyone and everything.”
mercial things we’d like to do. We’d like to be able to source the wine for Metz, for the college, or some other events like the Parents Weekend wine tasting,” Shull said. He noted parents often ask the college where to purchase the wines featured at the tasting, and Dante’s will be able to stock and sell those options. Shull and Robson said they hope to open the establishment as soon as possible.
“By the time the students come back for second semester, we should be open,” Shull said. “We’re kind of staggering as we renovate, because everything will be renovated, but the store will always be open. What is currently Bootleggers, will be closed until it’s done, and then once that can reopen, the downstairs will close. The cigar lodge part will be the last thing completed.”
Another project for Hillsdale Renaissance is the renovation of Stock’s Mill, a flour mill dating back to the mid-1800s.
they get their stuff shipped from California or Ann Arbor,” Biscaro said. “Let’s make it local, and let’s make it more personable.”
Dante’s hopes to partner with the college, whether by providing wine for events or educating students on alcohol etiquette.
“A friend of mine who was graduating was talking about the seniors’ dinner, and Penny Arnn will always ask you what you want to drink, and then ask you more questions than anybody knows how to answer. ‘Oh, what do you like? New World, or London dry style gin?’” Shull said.
Dante’s hopes for partnership with the college extend beyond education, Shull said.
“There are a bunch of com-
“I own two thirds of that facility,” Robson said. “I’m working with a team to try and bring in a fine trade school, modeled after the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston, South Carolina. We’re working on a curriculum now to do interior and exterior woodworking, timber framing, blacksmithing, stone carving, stained glass, and put that in there.”
The Stock’s Mill project is large, but Robson said he sees substantial benefits in revitalizing the space.
“Stock’s Mill looms over a lot of town, and actually being able to bring that back to life would be fantastic,” Robson said.
In light of Hillsdale Renaissance’s work, Robson encourages students to appreciate the community Hillsdale has to offer.
“If a student likes it here, if you’ve got good friends, a good church, and a good community, you can figure it out,” Robson said. “It takes a little bit of struggling, but there’s plenty of good work to be done here.”
Dawn Theater will host Masquerade Ball Saturday
By Jillian Parks Editor-In-Chief
The Dawn Theater will host a Masquerade Ball Saturday, Oct. 26, with the Paul Keller Orchestra, dancing, hors d’oeuvres, and a cash bar. Tickets, including discounted student tickets, can be purchased online or by phone at 810-844-1396.
Individual tickets are $75, couples can attend for $125, and a table of 10 is available for $625. Ballroom attire and masks are encouraged, but it is not a costume party, according to Mary Wolfram, chair of The Friends of the Dawn Theater.
“We hope to have a big turn out for the Masquerade Ball,” Wolfram said.
“The Paul Keller Orchestra is a fabulous big band, and we will be raising money to equip the Dawn Theater for programs in the future.” The event is a fundraiser for The Friends of the Dawn Theater to restore the original 1925 Wurlitzer organ. Wolfram said in the future, the group hopes to buy a film projector and screen, so movies can be shown in the Dawn Theater again.
“We are looking forward to having the Masquerade Ball be an annual event where our community can get dressed up and appreciate the arts in our town,” said Dawn Theater General Manager Gianna Green, ’17.
A rendering of a future commercial and residential project at 58 and 60 N. West St. Courtesy | Hillsdale Renaissance
The freight house project, by Hillsdale Street and the train tracks, aims to promote rail tourism. Courtesy | Hillsdale Renaissance
Jesse Garza is a co-owner.
Courtesy | Jesse Garza
Cross Country Club Soccer Women take first at invitational
Charger men's and women’s cross country teams placed fifth for the men and first for the women overall at the Jayhawk Collegiate Invitational, hosted by Muskegon Community College on Oct.12.
The men’s team finished fifth overall, despite seniors Richie Johnston, Ross Kuhn, and others resting for this meet. Freshman Zach Self led the Chargers and finished 23rd, with fellow freshman Thomas Holm behind him in 25th.
Freshman Will Windsor, Junior Emil Schleuter, and Senior Caleb Bigler rounded out the top five runners, bringing the men’s team to fifth overall. Sophomore Rhys Woodard ran his first eight-kilometer race of the season with a personal best time of 27:05, a three-minute improvement from his eight-kilometer time last season.
Games
Difficulty:
The product of the entries in each bolded region is noted in its top-left corner. However, digits in a dashed region are first added together, and that sum is multiplied by the remaining entries. Each row and column contains one each of 1–6.
Minidoku
Difficulty:
Each row, column, and bolded 3×2 region contains one each of 1–6.
“This year feels different from last year with how driven and competitive everybody on the team is,” Woodard said. “I think we have been training a lot harder and have definitely done things more as a collective team this year, not just as individual guys trying to get better.”
The women’s team finished first in the five-kilometer race, with freshman Evyn Humphrey coming in first with a personal best of 17:23 marking her second win of the season. Freshman Allison Kuzma followed in second place with her personal best of 17:30, and sophomore Savannah Fraley in third with 18:03. Sophomores Eleanor Clark and Anna Stirton ran personal bests, and both broke 19 minutes for the first time, rounding out the top five finishers and scorers for the women.
“We’ve built up a lot of fitness and endurance these past few months, with a lot of our girls pushing 50 miles weekly,”
Stirton said. “I think we got to experience the effects of that in a tangible way this past weekend, which is certainly a confidence boost going into conference championships.”
Sophomore Whitney Wilkinson finished 52nd overall with a time of 19:52, improving from her previous best time of 21:04 in the five-kilometer. Wilkinson said the course was one of her favorites she has raced on and that the conditions were perfect.
“I think all the girls approached this meet in a really good head space,” Wilkinson said. “I think every member of the girl's team is in the strongest shape we have been in, which should lead to a pretty exciting championship season.”
Both men’s and women’s cross country will compete for the conference title on Oct. 26 at the Great Midwest Athletic Conference Championship, hosted at Hayden Park at 11:30 a.m.
Teams finish with mixed results
Cassandra Devries Collegian Reporter
Hillsdale’s men's and women’s club soccer teams completed their seasons with doubleheaders Oct. 11-12. The men’s team ended with a season record of 3-6-1 and the women’s team ended their season with a record of 2-7-1.
Hillsdale College Women’s Club Soccer ended its season with back-to-back games in Chicago, playing Northwestern University on Friday and the University of Chicago on Saturday.
The Chargers lost 1-0 against Northwestern, but the team had one shot at the end that the referee did not count, according to junior Sophie Schlegel.
“I was right there and saw it go in,” Schlegel said. “Ellie [Ritchey] kicked it from the 18-yard line. The goalie hit it down and fell back into the goal when Miriam rushed her.”
Schlegel said the team started celebrating after this shot.
“The main ref and the sideline judge did not call it at all, which is crazy, especially considering the sideline judge wasn't even in line with the end line,” Schlegel said. “It was really frustrating for us because we pushed hard, especially in the end for that goal.”
Junior MaryEllen Petersen agreed.
“I tell everyone we tied,” Petersen said.
Schlegel said Petersen played an amazing game as goalkeeper against Northwestern. “I love having Mell back
there. It definitely helps,” Schlegel said. “You know she will get to the ball if there’s a shot, and there were a ton of shots on goal all game.”
The Chargers also lost to University of Chicago 1-0 the following day.
“We set our expectations for winning this season lower since we would be playing more competitive teams,” Petersen said. “We played really well, especially having moved up a league.”
Hillsdale College Men’s Club Soccer finished its season the same weekend, losing to Western Michigan University on Friday 5-0 and beating University of Michigan Flint on Saturday 4-1.
“Our last game was awesome because we had been on a three-game losing streak at that point, so it was great that we had the determination and motivation to turn that around and to end the season for the win,” junior Jude Barton said.
Barton ended the season with a hat trick against Flint.
“We had some really good individual performances from Jude with finding the back of the net three times. So it was awesome,” Junior Dylan Hughes said.
Barton said his first goal was a header off a corner kick, and his second and third goals were to the right-hand side corner after faking out the defense.
“I don't think we played as well this season as we think we could have, so we're a little bit disappointed,” Barton said. “But we are looking forward to next year, and we're hoping
that we can build off of some of the good stuff that we had this year and then just shore up some of the mistakes.”
Barton said he will miss the team culture.
“I think the team culture this year was really good, and we all formed really good bonds,” Barton said. “It's great, great hanging out with the guys, so I’m really gonna miss that now that the season's over.”
Hughes agreed and said that they took turns talking about their favorite soccer memories at the end of the season.
“We will definitely keep in touch as a team,” Hughes said. “We have some fun social events coming up and play futsal during the winter to keep getting touches.”
“We are losing two seniors. It'll be tough losing them, but it's better than losing six or seven,
So the main structure of the team will be there for next year, which is awesome,” Barton said.
“We played some really tough teams like Michigan and Michigan State but also some easier teams like Saginaw Valley, so it's a great balance,” Barton said. “We can try some new things out and try some players in different positions against the easier teams, and then we get to really test ourselves against some of the bigger schools. And so it's a great league, in my opinion.”
Both the men’s and women’s teams will continue to play futsal during the offseason together to keep up their soccer skills, according to Petersen.
Sports Opinion Take the Tigers seriously
By Christian Papillon Collegian Reporter
Although the Detroit Tigers’ season ended with a disappointing loss in Game 5 of the National League Division Series to the Cleveland Guardians on Oct. 12, the team made some crucial steps forward in building a winning team for the future.
In August, the idea that the Tigers would even make the playoffs seemed unlikely. On Aug. 11, the Tigers held a 55-63 record, with an 8-13 record coming out of the AllStar break, were 10 games behind the Kansas City Royals for a playoff spot, and had to chase down a strong Minnesota Twins team.
En route to their first winning season since 2014, the Tigers finished the season with a 31-13 record, which was the best in Major League Baseball for that time frame this season. The Twins, on the other hand, finished 1729, which was good for the third-worst record in that time frame.
The Tigers were led by strong pitchers, such as starters Tarik Skubal and Jack Flaherty, along with Jason Foley and Tyler Holton in the bullpen. The Tigers’ pitching got even better down the stretch. Their team Earned Run Average was an MLB-best 2.72 from Aug. 11 to the end of the season. Only the Atlanta Braves also had an ERA under three for that time
span, pitching to a mark of 2.86. On the other side, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who finished with an MLB-best 98-64 record, pitched to a 19th-ranked 4.21 ERA down the stretch.
Tigers manager A.J. Hinch sets his pitchers up for success by providing matchups that keep the opposing hitters off balance. He accomplishes this by regularly shuffling pitcher slots. Of the six regular starters, only Skubal pitched more than 115 innings. Hinch also employed some of his strong relievers, such as Holton, as openers, ensuring favorable platoon matchups against opposing teams.
Among hitters, outfielder Riley Greene was first among qualified Tigers batters with 24 home runs and an adjusted on-base plus slugging rate of 133. Outfielder Kerry Carpenter returned from a spine injury Aug. 13 and had a .286 batting average, .348 on-base percentage, and a .605 slugging percentage to close out the season, with 10 home runs and an OPS+ of 165.
The Tigers are built for the future with young players such as Greene, outfielders Wenceel Perez and Parker Meadows, and first baseman Spencer Torkelson. Except for Kenta Maeda, everyone on the starting pitching staff is under 30, and out of the 15 hitters with at least two hundred plate appearances, only four are over the age
33.
With such a young team, the Tigers are poised to be competitive for years to come. The Tigers should look at the 2024 season as the first step towards winning another championship. If there is any team in recent history that the Tigers can look to for inspiration, it’s the 2015 Chicago Cubs. The 2015 Cubs were a young team led by talented hitters and great pitching. Starter Jake Arrieta was the star of that team, going 22-6 with a 1.77 ERA and 236 strikeouts, en route to a Cy Young Award.
The team emerged from a half-decade of obscurity to win a wildcard spot and advance all the way to the National League Championship Series before being swept by the New York Mets.
The next year, the Cubs returned with largely the same team and won their first World Series in 108 years.
The Tigers should look to add one or two veteran bats this offseason and continue to develop their young starting pitching. If they do, the Tigers are in the position to be a force in the American League for some time. The Tigers will be back next season and should be taken seriously.
of 30, with utility man Mark Canha being the only player over
Elaine Kutas Collegian Reporter
Women's cross country poses for a picure after winning the 5K race. COURTESY | ELAINE KUTAS
COURTESY | KEN KOOPMANS
COURTESY | GABRIEL BECKWITH
Sports Opinion
Evil Empire will win MLB's oldest rivalry
By Lewis Thune Collegian Reporter
This Friday, Oct. 25, the nation will witness the twelfth edition of a tale as old as Major League Baseball, as the Los Angeles Dodgers versus the New York Yankees in the World Series. On its face, it would appear that this tale is getting old. The Dodgers have a record 25 Na tional League pennants, the Yankees have a record 41 American League pennants, and the two teams have met in 11 previous World Series. In addition, the organiza tions have not changed at all since their last meeting in 1981, they’re both still inordinately rich, they have the best players, and they already have quite the collection of Commissioner’s Trophies.
Padres, the Blue Crew pitched 24 consecutive scoreless innings to advance to the Championship Series, where their abundant star power at the plate took over. Mookie Betts, Kiké Hernández, Teoscar Hernández, and Freddie Freeman stepped up beside Ohtani and ended the New York Mets’ playoff run.
But this series is special, and it will not disappoint. Shortly before the season began, the Dodgers claimed the Yankee’s classic “Evil Empire” moniker. So what better way to find out who the real empire is than to resurrect a rivalry that has been dormant for 43 years? What better game for the big stage than a contest that began in 1913 between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Highlanders?
tle-tested Dodgers aim to win their sec ond title under the manage ment of for mer Dodger outfielder Dave Roberts. In the lead-up to the season, they signed twoway sensation Shohei Ohtani to a record 10-year, $700 mil lion contract. Recovery from elbow surgery prevented him from pitching, which the Dodgers sorely needed, but he was electrifying nonetheless. He became the only player in 149 years of Major League Baseball to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season. In the National League playoffs, down five of their top pitchers, the Dodgers nonetheless rallied behind their bullpen. On the brink of elimination in the Divisional Series against their rival San Diego
The dominant Yankees can win their first title under the management of former Yankee infielder Aaron Boone. Having made seven playoffs in nine years without a pennant to show for it, New York went for broke and added superstar Juan Soto to their heavy-hitting outfield of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. With the eleventh-hour acquisition of young standout Jazz Chisholm Jr., the Pinstripes coasted to a 94-68 record, with an impressive 3.74 earned run average as a team and an MLB-best 237 home runs.
The Yankees remained steady in the American League playoffs, dispatching the resurgent Kansas City Royals in the Divisional Series and silencing the upshot Cleveland Guardians in the Championship Series. Collected in the clutch, their bullpen completed five saves in their seven wins, and Juan Soto’s three-run blast in extra innings sealed their trip to the
It’s star power against star power, baseball’s version of Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do; the ancient rivalry between sees a new installment decades in the making. This year’s World Series is the game’s biggest stars under the brightest lights, just as it should be. This matchup is anything but boring.
If you’re planning on watching, and even if you’re not, here’s one final piece of baseball wisdom: no matter what their fans tell you, you’re never wrong for rooting against the Yankees. But if it comes down to them or the Dodgers, you’re excused. The real Evil Empire owns this series. It’s Yankees in 6.
Volleyball
Chargers go 2-1 at crossover tournament
By Ellie Fromm Assistant Editor
Charger volleyball went 2-1 in the Midwest Regional Crossover tournament Oct. 18-19. These games were not part of the Great Midwest Athletic Conference competitive season.
The Chargers’ overall season record is 13-1, with a conference record of 6-1 and a conference win percentage of 0.857. The Chargers still hold the top spot in the G-MAC North standings.
On Friday, the Chargers beat the Parkside University Rangers 3-1 and then fell to the Rockhurst University Hawks 2-3. OThen, on Saturday, they swept the Maryville University Saints 3-0.
“Although we wanted to go 3-0, 2-1 really helped us
with team growth,” head coach Chris Gravel said. “Hopefully we can apply that the rest of the season.”
The Midwest Regional Crossover featured 38 teams from the Great Lakes Valley Conference, G-MAC, and the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The tournament was hosted in Hammond, Indiana, and is the largest NCAA volleyball tournament in the nation, according to a Great Lakes Intercollegiate Conference press release.
Chargers’ seniors Lauren Passaglia and Amanda Hilliker were named to the Midwest Regional All-Crossover team, with Passaglia named G-MAC North Division Volleyball Athlete of the Week, according to Chargers’ Director of Athletic Communi -
Sports Feature
cations James Gensterblum. Gravel said he thinks last weekend taught the Chargers the necessity of staying focused on the next step throughout their matches.
“We learned to make sure that we’re playing for the next point and not for past mistakes,” Gravel said. “We have to live in the present and not in the past.”
Redshirt sophomore Chloe Pierce said she thinks that, in itstheir two wins, the team did a good job of keeping control of the game.
“Our side of the net was filled with confidence,” Pierce said. “Even when the scores were close, we kept focusing on what needed to be done to win the game.”
Gravel said the game against the Rangers allowed the Chargers to show their
full depth of skill and test it.
“In oOur first win, we had a lot of contribution from our bench and a lot of changing around with people,” Gravel said. “They all came in and did a great job.”
This weekend, the Chargers travel to Midland, Michigan, to play the Northwood University Timberwolves at 1 p.m. The Timberwolves are ranked third in the G-MAC North standings with a conference record of 5-2.
Earlier in the season, on Sept. 28, the Chargers beat the Timberwolves at home 3-0.
“They play better at their place,” Gravel said. “They have one of the best players in the region on their team looking for a little revenge on us. We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Tharp inducted into WBCA Hall of Fame
By Ellie Fromm Assistant Editor
Director of Athletics John Tharp was inducted into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame Sept. 29.
“I have a sense of gratitude for that day,” Tharp said. “For sharing that with everybody, and the idea that all these people are a part of my life.”
Tharp, a Wisconsin native, played basketball for Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1991 and a master’s degree in education in 1992. He then coached as an assistant at Lawrence University until he was offered a position as men’s basketball head coach at Lawrence at 24 years old.
Tharp worked as head coach for men’s basketball at Lawrence for 13 years. Lawrence is an NCAA Division III private liberal arts college located in Appleton, Wisconsin.
While at Lawrence, Tharp led his team to three conference titles, four NCAA Division III tournament appearances, two NCAA DIII Sweet 16 appearances, one NCAA DIII tournament Elite Eight appearance, and set a school record for 25 straight wins, according to Charger Director of Athletic Communications James Gensterblum.
Tharp was inducted into the Beloit College Hall of Honor in 2002 and the Lawrence University Hall of Fame in 2014.
Tharp coached the Char-
ger men’s basketball team for 16 years and became the most-winning coach in Charger history with a 66.2% win percentage until stepping down to become director of athletics in 2023, according to Gensterblum.
Tharp said he believes the most important aspect to a team is a sense of family with-
things than winning and losing. It’s about the process.”
Keven Bradley, current Charger head basketball coach, played for Tharp for two years at Lawrence, coached under him as an assistant for a year at Lawrence, and was an assistant coach for him at Hillsdale for three years before taking over the
in the team, which he always sought to instill.
“The program wasn’t a basketball program, it was a family,” Tharp said. “When you’re around the right type of people, and you create a culture that’s the right type of people and that you’re about more
position of head coach after Tharp became director of athletics.
Bradley said he appreciates Tharp’s team mentality and how he builds meaningful relationships with his players and staff members.
“He always makes you feel
like you’re the most important person when he’s having a conversation with you,” Bradley said. “I valued so much of that in our relationship, and now what he’s done for the program and the department.”
Bradley said he believes Tharp’s success on and off the court comes from his ability to build strong relationships with people and make them feel seen.
“By far, his greatest impact is that he genuinely cares about people, and that is his greatest strength,” Bradley said.
Tharp said he intentionally allowed his players to see the many aspects of his life as a way of setting an example for them and their futures beyond the court.
“All the players over the 29 years I coached saw me as a father also,” Tharp said. “They saw me as a husband. They saw me as a coach. They saw me mad, they saw me happy as well, but they knew I was a person, not just a coach. And I think they have to be the same.”
Tharp said he is grateful for the WBCA’s honor and the opportunity to reflect on everyone who has helped him get to where he is today, especially his family.
“My mom was there,” Tharp said. “So it’s the foundation of who you are, and the things I did as a coach really started with my mom and dad. That’s not anything different than what they did in teaching me the important things about your word and your faith.”
Hudson Jones, Football Charger chatter
What's your go-to snack?
I don't really eat snacks. I only eat steak and eggs.
Who will win the Super Bowl?
The Pittsburgh Steelers. They are top of the AFC North with the best defense in football. It is also the fiftieth anniversary of their first Super Bowl victory in 1974.
Compiled by Elizabeth Crawford
Courtesy | Hillsdale College Athletic Department
Who's your favorite NFL player? TJ Watt. He doesn't get the credit he deserves for his production.
What's your favorite pre-game ritual and why?
Our team prayer at the Civil War memorial in the center of campus. It reminds me of the great tradition that I must uphold.
From left to right: Logan Tharp, McKayla Tharp, John Tharp, Jennifer Tharp, and Lukas Tharp. COURTESY | McKayla Tharp
Charger Sports
Chargers build momentum with win over Lake Erie
By Alex Deimel Senior Reporter
After suffering an overtime loss on Homecoming to the Walsh University Cavaliers, the football team rebounded on the road, earning its second win of the year by defeating the Lake Erie College Storm last Saturday 28-10.
Despite trailing 10-7 at halftime, the Chargers responded with arguably their best half of football yet, scoring 21 points and not allowing a single Lake Erie score, while also forcing three turnovers. The Chargers now hold a season record of 2-5.
“Lake Erie has an explosive offense, and shutting them out after the first two drives shows our resilience as a defense,” senior defensive back Matt Soderdahl
said. “After a few missed assignments to start the game, we were able to make adjustments that put us in the right spots to make the plays we needed. Our defense has been depending on a lot of young guys because of injury, and they have stepped up into their roles tremendously.”
Soderdahl had a career day, hauling in two of the Chargers’ three interceptions, the second of which sealed the win for Hillsdale in the fourth quarter. Soderdahl now has three interceptions in his career as a Charger.
“This was my first game in my career getting two interceptions, so I was very excited to be able to make those plays,” Soderdahl said. “This offseason we made it a focus of ours to create more turn -
Sports Feature
overs, and it’s very rewarding to have that pay off.”
Following the trend of firsts for the Hillsdale de -
spectively. Francescone also had his first career forced fumble.
Offensively, the Char-
“We know our potential as a team, and this game gave us a lot of confidence in our abilities.”
fense was senior linebacker Jake Maloney, who led Hillsdale in tackles for the first time this season, contributing a total of six in his first game this year. Also contributing to the Charger defensive effort were senior defensive backs Will Whims and Vince Francescone, who had five and six tackles, re -
gers continued to improve throughout the game. Sophomore quarterback Colin McKernan finished with 96 total passing yards and completed 50 percent of his passes, including a 24-yard throw to sophomore wide receiver Shea Ruddy. This brought Ruddy’s total to six touchdowns on the season, which
puts him second in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference through their seven total games to date.
“It was a slow start for sure against Lake Erie,” McKernan said. “But a win's a win. We’re confident that what we pieced together in the second half will translate into next week and the rest of the season.”
Hillsdale found the majority of its offense through the run game. Redshirt freshman running back Zach Tetler carried the run game with 84 total rushing yards and three touchdowns, which gave him a new career high in both statistics.
“It felt great to get a solid team win after the loss on homecoming,” Tetler said. “It’s definitely nice to get another win and gain some momentum. We just need to
establish the run game early. We ran for over 150 yards in the second half, which is great, but we need to get that going in the first half too.”
Senior wide receiver Logan VanEnkevort was another heavy contributor to the Chargers’ running game, finishing with 68 yards on 19 attempts, which gave him 1,040 career rushing yards in a Hillsdale uniform.
This Saturday, Hillsdale will face the Kentucky Wesleyan Panthers in Owensboro, Kentucky at 1p.m, before coming home to face the Thomas More Saints the following Saturday.
“We know our potential as a team, and this game gave us a lot of confidence in our abilities,” Soderdahl said. “Going forward we are looking to build on this momentum.”
Perfect season relived as 2006 volleyball team joins hall of fame
By Micah Hart Senior Reporter
The 2006 Hillsdale College volleyball team joined the ranks of Hillsdale’s best athletes Oct. 11 in its induction to the college’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
This team, along with other former college athletes, became the college’s 25th class inducted into the hall of fame.
To receive this honor, a team must win an NCAA or NAIA national, regional, or district championship or conference title, according to Director of Athletic Communications James Gensterblum.
The 2006 team is the only volleyball team in Charger history to have a perfect regular season, recording a 27-0 record according to a Hillsdale Chargers press release. The team won the GLIAC regular season championship and earned a NCAA tournament victory.
This team, according to Gensterblum, helped create a roadmap for future teams, as
it hosted NCAA tournament events, won a conference title, and won an NCAA tournament match.
“That model was this team who had done all these things for the first time that had never been done before,” Gensterblum said.
Chris Gravel, head volleyball coach and assistant athletic director, coached the 2006 team and said his entire 2006 squad showed up for the event.
“There were people on that team that I had not seen since they left campus,” Gravel said.
“That was definitely a highlight for me that they all cared enough to come back to be in person for that.”
The induction ceremony, hosted in the Searle Center, was the most attended hall of fame ceremony, according to Genseterblum.
“I want to say it was close to 400 people, which was nearly 100 more than we've had since we moved it to the Searle Center,” Gensterblum said.
This was assistant volleyball coach Megan Molenkamp’s first hall of fame
banquet. As a member of the 2006 team, she said that now the hall of fame team has something very special.
“A lot of us had been playing together for a long time at that point, and we always knew we had a special season, but it was really thrilling and humbling to be inducted and invited to be a part of the Hillsdale College Hall of Fame,” Molenkamp said. “The banquet was uplifting and encouraging, and it was an honor to be able to stand on the stage with my teammates and coaches.”
Ruddy from A1
Ryin Ruddy said he’s glad to see his brother at the top of the rankings.
“It’s amazing, but it also brings a little bit of competition because I want to show that I can do the same thing,” Ryin Ruddy said.
Shea Ruddy not only excels on the gridiron, he also pushes himself in school, and plans to pursue medical school after college, according to Ryin Ruddy.
“He’s obviously a phenomenal football player, and probably could be somewhere else if he wanted, but he wants to be here,” Ryin Ruddy said. “He knows he’ll
Inductees gave remarks throughout the night, and among those speaking on behalf of the women’s volleyball team were teammates Taryn (Rudland) Monroe and Stephanie Booms.
“They did a phenomenal job sharing old stories, sharing highlights as a whole team of things we trained for, and the way coach gave us some challenging tasks that were very unique,” Molenkamp said. “We had to put our pride to the side and march through campus doing a military march, but it was
get a great education.”
Davis said Ruddy’s statistics not only show his skill but also the effort of the team.
“We’ve really worked hard in practice,” Davis said. “It takes all 11 guys to open up the field for him. And he wouldn’t be afraid to admit that either.”
Ruddy said he did not realize how much he was running. He said he was just doing his job as a wide receiver when he found out how high his ranking was.
“I had no idea until one of my teammates sent me the link to the stats,” Ruddy said. “I obviously knew I was running a lot, but not that much.”
Shreffler said he hopes to continue to give Ruddy many
the volleyball team, and so some people may have been embarrassed by that, but we got over ourselves quickly to get that task accomplished.”
Gravel commended the team’s commitment and willingness to sacrifice.
“The reason why they are in there is their resilience and how committed they were to the program and to winning,” Gravel said. “They were willing to do whatever it took and they sacrificed a lot to put themselves in that situation where they could win all those matches in a row.”
Gravel said hearing from his team and working with them made him proud and grateful.
“To see such gratitude from the team itself about their time at Hillsdale College, the education they received, and the time that they got to spend with the team and the accomplishments we made, and failures, together are just all a reflection back on exactly what I was feeling as a coach,” Gravel said.
opportunities on the field.
“We’ve got to get the ball in his hands,” Shreffler said.
“We're going to try to do that as many ways as we can.”
From left to right: senior Logan VanEnkevort, sophomore Jonathan Metzger, senior Will Whims, sophomore Gavin Chenevey, redshirt freshman Zach Tetler. COURTESY | ANTONIO LLAMAS
2006 volleyball team celebrates Gravel's 200th win. COURTESY | HILLSDALE COLLEGE ATHLETIC
C U L T U R E
Art Professor Anthony Frudakis exhibits his life’s work
By Anna Broussard Assistant Editor
After 40 years of creating, Anthony Frudakis showcased his life’s work in the Daughtrey Gallery on Friday, Oct. 11 at 5 p.m, which will remain open until Nov. 20.
Frudakis, associate professor of art at Hillsdale, displayed around 40 pieces for the exhibit, including sculptures, drawings, and a few paintings, according to Frudakis.
“This took 40 years to prepare; a year for each piece,” Frudakis said.
Although the exhibit did not have a dedicated theme, Frudakis said he could see themes running through his work.
“When the work came together there were a couple themes running through it,” Frudakis said. “It is all about being from life.”
Among many lively sculptures and drawings in the exhibit, Frudakis modeled two of his pieces after Amelia Earhart, who in 1932 became the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932.
“I competed for the Amelia Earhart statue in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C.,” Frudakis said. “The tall figure represents my tentative stature and the portrait was to show that I could capture her likeness.”
Although Frudakis did not win the commission, he was a finalist in the competition. According to Frudakis, he was also a finalist for sculpting a statue of Rosa Parks.
Frudakis said each art piece selected for the gallery has a story behind it, and some are more simple than others, particularly one pastel piece displayed in the gallery.
“I used to live in Saline and would commute,” Frudakis said. “I was struck one day by this one very pretty stretch of the road and the landscape up from it, so I used that as my inspiration.”
Frudakis said the exhibit had been two years in the works after assistant professor
of art Roxanne Kaufman approached him about it.
“The department reached out to me and they were kind enough to be very supportive to get it all together, it took about six months,” Frudakis said.
According to Frudakis a significant part of his work is the use of live models, particularly the use of those in his classes.
“It is important to wrestle with the challenges of working with light,” Frudakis said. “It is about making sure to capture the values.”
For the past 33 years Frudakis has taught drawing, sculpt-
ing, plaster casting, and artistic anatomy at the college.
“One important value that I teach my students is variety and unity,” Frudakis said. “Especially understanding the definition of beauty.”
For Frudakis, his own artistic philosophy motivates him to teach art students.
“I try to teach them that whether you are doing a portrait, doing a figure, or you are sculpting or drawing you want all the parts to be a part of the organic, cohesive whole,” Frudakis said. “I want them to see what is the underlying design
in nature that embodies or manifests.”
It is a part of the process of learning how to do art, Frudakis explained, especially when students are inspired by other artists.
“There is the profound relationship between the particular and the whole, which is something we can easily just assign to our daily lives as we deal with one another,” he said. “Although we are individual and discrete we are in fact united in our spiritual life and at the level of form and being.”
Although Frudakis’s gallery took 40 years of work to come together, he said it was a collaborative effort of all those around him.
“It all bears my name but it is a collaborative process and that makes it more meaningful to the artist as a person,” Frudakis said. “Yes, the art is important, but the life of the artist transcends the work, especially in sculpting.”
Sophomore Madeline Gardner attended the opening day of the gallery and said liveliness was a common theme between the pieces.
“I really liked the sculptures with the very expressive hair,” Gardner said. “They had a lot of movement, there was a lot of caring the way he looked at people, I felt like he was really
seeing through people and seeing how they were thinking or feeling.”
Freshman Gabrielle Wood, who intends to major in art, attended the opening day of the exhibit.
“I thought all the pieces showed a little facet of humanity,” Wood said. “Each of them either showed a moment of joy, contentment, or despair. I was also very impressed with all of the life drawings.”
For Frudakis, the collaborative efforts of the exhibit made the gallery possible.
“And a shout out to professor Kaufman’s and her crew for the beautiful job they did hanging up and setting up the gallery.”
State remembers Hillsdale poet Will Carleton
By Colman Rowan Culture Editor
The state of Michigan celebrated its “unofficial poet laureate” and 1869 grad of the college, Will Carleton.
In 1919, the state pronounced Oct. 21 as a day dedicated to Will Carleton, establishing both a commemorative school holiday and a requirement for schools to teach at least one of his poems. This act was in effect until 1995 when the school code was changed and students were no longer given the day off. Local references to Carleton abound, from Carleton Road, which runs through Hillsdale, to Will Carleton City Park in Hudson, where Carleton’s birthplace just east of the city is marked by a large rock.
One of Hillsdale’s schools, Will Carleton Academy, a char-
ter school founded in 1998, was named after the poet. It still celebrates him by reciting one of his poems during opening ceremonies. Colleen Vogt, director of the academy, said they usually recite “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse.”
“Though it’s a more sad poem,” she said, “students get the chance to really understand the strong values like family and charity that Will Carleton believed in.”
His poem “Over the Hill to the Poor-house” first appeared in Harper’s magazine in 1871. It is told from the perspective of an old, poor woman, searching her mind for what caused her poverty as she walks to the poorhouse.
The Hillsdale poorhouse, now run by the Hillsdale County Historical Society, still stands at N. Wolcott Street just outside of Hillsdale. When it operated
for its intended purpose, it was a last bastion of work and shelter for the homeless. Carleton used to visit it.
“Over there to the west, in Hillsdale, there stood in the old days a county poorhouse,” the Library of Michigan reported Carleton said after publishing the poem. “Sometimes, I used to visit the inmates there and hear their troubles. And sometimes I used to see old people … who had out their property in the hands of their children, passing up the road on their way to the poorhouse on the other side of the hill.”
The poem opens, “Over the hill to the poor-house I’m trudgin’ my weary way — / I, a woman of seventy and only a trifle gray —.”
The speaker, an old woman, contrasts her age with her condition. If she is old but only a trifle gray, then she hints that
she has not been overworked — suggesting a life of comfort, not poverty. If her life has been comfortable then she has all the more reason to wonder why she must go to the poorhouse.
“What is the use of heapin’ on me a pauper’s shame? / Am I lazy or crazy? Am I blind or lame?”
She notes here it is not her physical condition that has caused her poverty, leaving her to go on and examine her life as she is not sure she deserves this fate.
As the poem goes on it becomes clear what has happened to this woman. She searches for answers by engaging her memory and recalling her youth. She remembers bearing and raising six children with her husband John — even if she does not do the best job, she loves them all the same.
John and her grow older and
she says “Strange how much we think of OUR blessed little ones! — / I’d have died for my daughters, and I’d have died for my sons. / And God He made that rule of love; but when we’re old and gray / I’ve noticed it sometimes, somehow, fails to work the other way.”
The poem, now halfway through, turns. Everything that she loved and made her happy in her youth now disappears or turns away from her. First, as the above line suggests, her children become distant. Then her husband dies, and she is left alone with the youngest son in the house. That son gets married, and has children and they kick her out. She goes to her other children and eventually they all kick her out or do not welcome her, and she is left to the streets.
In the last stanza, she then returns to that first line “over
the hill to the poorhouse…” but now has filled out her thoughts more: “God’ll judge between us; but I will al’ays pray / That you shall never suffer the half that I do to-day!”
She responds with charity, hoping that her children do not suffer the same fate she does. She recognizes “God will judge between us,” meaning though she feels wronged, she recognizes that maybe she has wronged her children. All she has left to do, as a woman with lots of love, is appeal to God, asking that he may prevent her children from suffering as she does by their own children.
Carleton presents both a complex human self-reflecting and the importance of family with this poem. This week, Hillsdalians should reflect on and celebrate our greatest local poet by reading one of his poems.
Associate Professor of Art Anthony Frudakis’s redition of the Madonna and Child. Colmam Rowan | Collegian
Frudakis sits in his office on a poster. Colman Rowan | Collegian
“Ameila” by Frudakis. Anna Broussard | Collegian
“Andromeda” by Frudakis. Colman Rowan | Collegian
C U L T U R E
‘All About Love’
By Jillian Parks Editor-in-Chief
While she called herself a Buddhist Christian, a radical feminist, and “queer-pas-gay,” American author bell hooks’ work “All About Love: New Visions” offers a thoughtful reading of the core Christian virtue that ought to inspire and challenge those who may be initially put off by her labels.
hooks, who died in 2021 and spelled her name in all lower case letters to draw attention away from herself, affirms the transcendent quality of love, and an (at least subconscious) understanding of it as originating outside the realm of human work and life. Published on Dec. 22, 1999, this year marks a quarter of a century of hooks’ efforts to unravel the widely held cultural perception of love as being, by nature a, mystery.
While much of her emphasis on the ungendered language of love could be read as a feminist statement, it can also be read as an understanding of love in the ungendered, unsegregated, platonic-form sense.
“When we see love as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of
By Maggie O’Connor Collegian Freelancer
When was the last good Coldplay album? Throughout its 10 album discography, Coldplay has taken fans on a rollercoaster of sounds and styles, culminating recently in “Moon Music,” released Oct. 4, an upbeat but ultimately underwhelming album with more forgettable
demystifies the transcendent for 25 years
all love in our life is the same,” hooks writes.
While hooks does not make the leap herself, this understanding lends itself to a refreshing perspective on love as something defined, something with discernible boundaries and rules, something concrete. The main example she uses to illustrate this point is the fact that abuse is not love and cannot be mislabeled as such.
The values hooks points to as key components of love all transcend gender: trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility. She also goes on to discuss honesty, justice, vulnerability, self esteem, discipline, and generosity as additional considerations. These are all virtues that men and women alike ought to pursue unencumbered by differences in sex.
She illuminates subjects and tensions that are often deemed taboo in conservative Christian circles but are essential for deepening our understanding of love in families, relationships, and society at large.
In the chapter titled “Honesty: Be Truth To Love,” she talks about the suffocating effects of masculinity on a man who values it as his paramount quality. She quotes John Stoltenberg in his book “The End of Manhood: A Book for Men of Conscience.”
tracks than not.
Since the 2014 hit “Sky Full of Stars,” the penultimate song of “Ghost Stories,” Coldplay has leaned into a watered-down pop style that — at worst — sounds like a sophisticated version of the band Imagine Dragons. The sweet melancholy of “Parachutes” (2000), the dark and beautiful “Rush of Blood to the Head” (2002), the immaculate “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” (2008), and even the kinetic poetry of “Mylo Xyloto” (2011) have been long gone from Coldplay’s music, and “Moon Music” follows suit. While its best tracks are truly beautiful, these are the exceptions on the album, and most of the songs blend into a bland collection of generic pop sounds. The album begins with the song “MOON MUSiC,” one of the album’s highlights. “MOON
“Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgment on your manhood,” he wrote.
Men often consider the quality of “caregiving” to be essentially female, and thereby use it as an excuse to be emotionally absent, negligent fathers. hooks explored care as a quality of love that a child needs from both parents.
She warns against idolatry of “the relationship” that causes people to abandon friendships and stay in unhealthy situations that could have been left behind in the dating stages. She doesn’t advocate for leaving at the first sign of conflict but understands the dire effects of creating a family where the love shared is unhealthy, unbalanced, or selfish. She addresses the free will of the human person, and outline’s
MUSiC” sets a celestial tone using a collection of orchestral, electronic and acoustic sounds, a combination employed in the best moments of the album. Unfortunately, the bulk of the rest of the album is made up of enjoyable but somewhat forgettable pop songs very different from the first track. These songs are just OK, but throughout there are some standout disappointments.
The song “WE PRAY” is the most egregious form of an Imagine Dragons knockoff on the album. It is boring and cliché, with a melody too reminiscent of Rixton’s 2014 hit “Me and My Broken Heart” and an overly repetitive chorus, but it at least has nice Trans-Siberian Orchestra-esque motifs. Another song,“GOOD FEELiNGS” is also a disappointing, boring track that feels like an attempt to
a woman’s choice to serve in the house as the sacrificial work that it is — not an expectation or necessary fulfillment. She would likely land in a camp far, far away from one of conservative and possibly even biblical perceptions of womanhood. Nevertheless, her reminders about the virtue required for a woman to fulfill what Hillsdale students so often paint as the natural next step elevates the work and choices of women as a whole.
Given her particular worldview and political slant, the reading experience is not one of total acceptance without exception. Under the larger umbrella of cynicism, she breaks down the deeper societal influences that have contributed to what she calls “our culture of lovelessness” and the lack of the virtues described above. Even the contradictions her work gives rise to point to truth.
get onto the Billboard Top 100. Coldplay is not known for its elaborate lyrics, and this album features the band being the least lyrically imaginative yet.
In “ALLMYLOVE,” the chorus’ lyrics “you’ve got all my love/ Whether it rains or pours/ I’m all yours” are cliché and don’t progress into anything much more interesting throughout the verses. Not all the album’s lyrics are so boring; the chorus of “AETERNA” “This must be bliss/ Must be for this I exist” flows nicely and is later rhymed with “this extraordinariness,” showcasing the album’s most impressive and satisfying lyricism.
Track six is simply titled with a rainbow emoji and is a personal favorite. If the song “GOOD FEELiNGS” is one of the album’s most generic tracks, then the song titled with the
hooks talks a good deal about the basic rights of children and the necessity of them having functional families, but is overall very in favor of the sexual revolution and the welfare state. hooks explains that what she didn’t receive from her “quiet, hardworking, and emotionally withholding” father, she sought in romantic relationships. While she would attribute this pattern to the “relatively new,” “privatized, patriarchal nuclear family,” it’s not hard to see the desire for healthy love modeled at home is innate. Where we may disagree on structure, we agree on principle: a culture of healthy love requires a culture of healthy families.
hooks largely denigrates conservatives as something in service to a particular “status quo,” but she praises the love found in small, rural communities and towns. According to a Pew Research Center survey from April of this year, 60% of rural voters are Republican. If politics is downstream from culture and the culture of these places is bathed in society’s devoid virtue, the role politics plays in those communities becomes rather confusing.
Readers do not have to agree with her means to appreciate her project: pointing to a transcendent virtue to heal tempo-
rainbow emoji is its least. The song showcases the album’s strongest (and rarest) elements: cinematic orchestration, ethereal electronic sounds, and simple but beautiful acoustic moments. It also features a nice audio sample of American writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou on Oprah’s “Super Soul Sunday” singing an African American song with the lines “When it looked like the sun wasn’t gonna shine anymore/ God put a rainbow in the clouds.”
The album ends on a good note in the tenth and final track, “ONE WORLD.” This song is worth pulling out your high-quality headphones for, especially to hear the introductory bass line. Chris Martin’s vocals bring the album to a nice close with the lines “In the end, it’s just love” sung repeatedly over a dramatic symphony of strings,
ral brokenness. hooks outlines how the cultivation of virtue will lead to a culture of love. And if Christians believe God is love, it makes sense the culmination of a perfected complex of virtue would soothe societal ills. The book is worth the read to expose society’s missing piece and to aid the individual’s dialectic journey to understand how it can be rediscovered. The reader is required to be discriminant, to argue with the text, and to parse out the kind of divine consciousness that allows broken logic to result in beautiful conclusions. The reader is also encouraged to think about love in a concrete way with specific components and goals, something everyone can and should contemplate. In 25 years, it’s unclear if people have gotten any better at loving one another, but the book’s relevance is staked in things transcendent regardless.
“To return to love, to know perfect love, we surrender the will to power,” hooks says. “It is this revelation that makes the scriptures on perfect love so prophetic and revolutionary for our times. We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness torments.”
guitars, and drums. The highlights of “Moon Music” are “MOON MUSiC,” rainbow emoji, “AETERNA,” and “ONE WORLD”; the remaining songs are decent party music, but not worth much undivided attention. The overall best collection of Coldplay is its 2008 album “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.” Coldplay’s 2011 “Mylo Xyloto” has a similar feel to the upbeat, poppy “Moon Music,” but with more sophisticated musicality and lyricism. In an interview with the New Musical Express from earlier this month, Martin said that the spirit of Coldplay is about “trying to find the joy.” For all its faults, there is a palpable sense of joy in “Moon Music.” This earnestness can make the album refreshing on its surface, even if it falls flat when examined much further.
By Olivia Pero Outreach Director
Voice faculty and students are bringing a bite-sized opera experience to campus with the annual opera workshop.
The workshop will be at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 25 and 26 in McNamara Rehearsal Hall at Howard Music Hall, with no tickets required.
Student vocalists will perform scenes from various operas and musicals in the original languages, said Instructor of Voice Kristi Matson. Student and faculty pianists will provide piano accompaniment for the singers.
“We are presenting these scenes with no sets and minimal costumes, props, and lighting,” Matson said. “Instead of a full orchestra, we have a piano for accompaniment.”
Entitled “Highlights in Harmony,” the workshop’s theme this year explores musical theater, operetta, and opera, said Emily Douglass, voice coordinator, opera director, and artist-teacher of music.
“The scenes selected highlight how music brings stories
to life,” Douglass said. From freshmen to graduate students, there are 25 students singing in the workshop, with two students accompanying on the piano, Matson said.
“The students have been rehearsing their scenes weekly with their scene partners and pianist since early September,” Matson said. “Each singer has also worked extensively with their respective voice instructor in individual lessons.”
Senior Eva Lindsay said this is her second year performing in the opera workshop. This year, Lindsay said she will be playing the role of Susanna in a duet from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.”
“I love doing the opera workshop because most often classical vocal music is performed solo at Hillsdale,” Lindsay said. “With the opera workshop, I get to share something I love not only with an audience, but also with other singers.”
Lindsay said she enjoys acting while singing. She said she especially enjoys performing Mozart, who basically composed sitcoms.
Matson and Douglass co-direct the scenes program each year for the opera workshop.
People often have misconceptions or preconceived notions about opera, Matson said. The scenes program makes opera approachable because it’s short.
“We have many comedic scenes and many scenes in English,” Matson said. “The emotions the characters experience in these scenes are relatable.”
Matson said attendees should find the opera workshop will make for a lively and fun evening of music, and it won’t take much time.
“This is not a four-hour Wagner opera with supertitles,” Matson said. “In addition, you will most likely recognize some of the performers as fellow students and you will definitely recognize some familiar melodies.”
Douglass said opera workshops are educational programs giving students the opportunity to gain experience performing opera after learning vocal technique, character development, and the dramatic and musical aspects of opera.
by Ty Ruddy
“Moon Music” COURTESY | Instagram
COURTESY | Amazon
F E A T U R E S
Touching, seeing, smelling history: Take a peek inside the archives of Mossey Library
By Eleanor Whitaker ASSISTANT EDITOR
Wretched scribbler, king of lies, vessel of Satan – these are just a few of the savage insults Martin Luther throws at King Henry VIII in his written defense of his theology entitled “Against Henry, King of England,” a book that soared in popularity during the rapid spread of Luther’s Protestantism in the 1500s.
But the book is signi cant to more than just lovers of Luther’s lethal language. At the Mossey Library, Luther’s spicy pamphlet is the oldest published book in the college archives, dating back more than half a millennium. Although originally published in Latin, the version the college owns is a first edition German translation entitled, “Antwortt deutsch Mart. Luthers au König Henrichs von Engelland Buch,” published in 1522.
Luther’s work is one of many that students not only have the opportunity to read, but to see, feel, and smell through the Mossey Library Archives and Special Collections.
“ is book is just the coolest,” said Lori Curtis, Hillsdale’s archivist and special collections librarian.
With 18,482 books, periodicals, manuscripts, photographs, and artifacts, the Archives and Special Collections consist of many rare, inuential, and beautiful pieces of history mostly donated by friends of the college. Accord-
lege donors help make this project possible.
“ e generosity of donors to Hillsdale just amazes me,” Curtis said. “Every time you turn around a donor wants to give you a beautiful, historical document.”
In display cases of the Heritage Room, history lovers will nd a krater, an ancient Greek vessel made for diluting wine with water, authentic letters from U.S. presidents such as eodore Roosevelt and Benjamin Harrison, Byzantine coins – some of the oldest artifacts the college owns.
say, ‘Ah, we have this book by King Henry VIII,’ and they all just go, ‘Meh,’ and I have to say, ‘No! is is King Henry VIII! is is cool!’” Curtis said.
Curtis said one of the oldest written items, and possibly the one of the most famous, the college owns is two leaves, or four pages, of a handwritten, hand-illuminated liturgical book called the Beauvais Missile, written in the late 13th to early 14th century. e book is famous for being split up into individual leaves in the 20th century in order to
minister of France, Jacques Necker, published the record of France’s nances entitled “Compte rendu” against the wishes of King Louis XVI. An instant bestseller, the book was the rst public record of government nances, the rst time the common people of France could read for themselves that the king was not handling his money well.
Curtis said the book helped to spark the 1789 French Revolution, and an original version sits in the Dow Room, the green room in the back of the library.
“We have these original
an original “Compte rendu,” which she o en talks about in her French 301 class.
“I was amazed when Lori brought the book,” Navrotskaya said. “I was like, ‘Really? Necker? You have got to be kidding me!’ It is an absolutely fascinating publication. We have a fascinating collection of books from the 18th century, you just need to go and talk to the librarian.”
Navrotskaya said it is unusual for a college like Hillsdale to own this type of book.
“It’s fairly rare, I think,” Navrotskaya said. “Very big
“Whenever I talk to new faculty, or I get a freshmen orientation group, and I’ll say, ‘Ah, we have this book by King Henry VIII,’ and they all just go, ‘Meh,’ and I have to say, ‘No! is is King Henry VIII! is is cool!’”
“ e Byzantine coins are my favorite because I think they are so pretty,” Curtis said.
Other artifacts not on display include 18th century British military rearms that were likely used during the American Revolution, as well as a spoon made by Paul Revere.
Curtis said students and faculty o en do not appreciate the vast array of historical documents, books, and artifacts owned by the college.
“Whenever I talk to new faculty, or I get a freshmen
be sold at a higher pro t, but Hillsdale is working with other institutions to reconstruct the document digitally.
“Somebody broke it up, selling individual leaves,” Curtis said. “Sadly, most institutions don’t want to give up their pages, which, frankly, I feel they should, but they’re going to combine them digitally, so everybody’s contributing.”
But a book that helped to spark the French Revolution is likely the most in uential book the college owns, ac-
documents from 1781 in France that were instrumental in causing a revolution, and to nd those sitting on the shelf in the Dow Room in a little college is amazing,” Curtis said.
Curtis said for a while, she did not know where the book came from because it was absent from college records, but by tracing a bookplate signature, she found it was given to the college in the 1900s.
Anna Navrotskaya, associate professor of French, said
libraries and big universities probably have a copy, but the fact that the small college in the middle of Michigan has a version is quite surprising. And we don’t have a copy, we have the actual thing.”
Navrotskaya brings her classes into the library to see “Compte rendu” so that her French students have an opportunity to feel, touch, and smell what they talk about in class.
“For my students, it is very good reading practice because
the library, and the special collections librarian can talk to us about book printing at the time. We talk about Necker, and then they can actually work with the real book.”
Navrotskaya said more people should be interested in reading and holding original historical documents.
“Somehow, there is this personal link between me and Necker right now attached to the book he wrote. It’s important to hold original documents, especially when we study the culture of a country of which we don’t have an immediate personal attachment to,” she said.
Senior Andrew Klare, who works in the archive department of the library, said physical historical documents are just as much a part of the Western tradition as the words they contain.
“It is our turn to preserve the physical remnants of these timeless works for those who will come after us,” Klare said. “Without an emphasis on preserving these original books, manuscripts, and scrolls that make up our intellectual heritage, we will cease to appreciate the good, the true, and the beautiful. Is the preservation of this beautiful human experience not the ultimate goal of a liberal arts education?” Curtis said she loves to see students interested in the archive collections.
“ at’s what I really like to see: these riches being shared and cared for,” Curtis said.
has an original
a
Books line the shelves of Heritage Room. ELEANOR WHITAKER | COLLEGIAN
“Antwortt Deusch,” published in 1522, is the oldest published book in Mossey Library.
ELEANOR WHITAKER | COLLEGIAN
Lori Curtis, Hillsdale’s archivist and special collections librarian, reading King Henry VIII’s defense of the seven Catholic sacraments. ELEANOR WHITAKER | COLLEGIAN
This original copy of “Antwortt Deusch” has a very simple cover. ELEANOR WHITAKER | COLLEGIAN
Mossey Library
copy of
map of France from “Compte rendu.”
ELEANOR WHITAKER | COLLEGIAN
F E A T U R E S
100 years of sisterhood : Chi Omega Rho Gamma celebrates centennial anniversary
By Jillian Parks EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Laurie
Lazzaro Knowlton ’77 and Carol Morley Beck ’77 lived together in the Chi
toured the house, exchanged stories, and tailgated together before the homecoming football game.
“I loved hearing about everyone’s own path in their
“It adds a little bit of stress, because it’s a personal event, it means so much for people to have a good time and really feel like part of the sisterhood in the community and feel the celebration,” Tomasic said. “It’s not just an everyday event. It means a lot to so many people. ere’s a little bit more pressure for everybody to come together and think of all the generations that you want to make sure it’s special for.”
cause they’re far away, so it’s wonderful to see that everything that was important 50 years ago is still important.”
Omega house almost 50 years ago. On Oct. 12, they reunited for the rst time in that same house to celebrate the Rho Gamma chapter of Chi Omega’s centennial celebration, commemorating a century of cardinal and straw sisterhood on Hillsdale’s campus.
“I think we think of alumni and older women in the 50s and 60s who were in Chi O as a concept, and it was di erent seeing them in person. It made it more real, and it made the centennial more meaningful,” said Anna Tenzca, Rho Gamma’s alumni relations director. “It was really beautiful to see people come back to an organization to celebrate how it has touched everyone’s lives, and it made the concept of alumni more concrete.”
Knowlton and Beck represent one of many reunions –175 active alumna members attended the centennial celebration. e event included a luncheon featuring speaker Missy Ganaway Pask from the Chi Omega national governing council. Alumnae also
lives, like the woman I was sitting next to who publishes children’s books,” Tenzca said. “She was so fun, and she was open, and she wanted to reminisce about her crazy college stories, and she wanted to hear mine. We totally would have been friends in college.”
At the luncheon, Centennial Board President Ronda Deer was surprised with a lifetime achievement award from Rho Gamma in recognition of her exceptional contribution and commitment.
“I was very surprised and very honored to receive this award,” Deer said. “My love for Chi Omega, especially Rho Gamma, runs deep, and I have loved giving back to what Greek life has given to me.”
e chapter has been saving money for this celebration since the 75th anniversary celebration. Co-chairs Deer and Kristen Tomasic spearheaded the event planning committee from the decorations to the menu to the invitations and the grassroots social media reminders.
Despite the labor, Tomasic said it was worth the work.
“It’s a once in a lifetime; none of us will see 200,” Tomasic said. The centennial planning committee included 14 members. The tailgate was organized by the
Liz Eberline Redpath ’74, Mary Daman Wesche ’75, and Sheila Main ’75 remembered their years as active Chi Omegas. Wesche was the President of Chi Omega during the 50th anniversary celebration.
“I started out as house manager, so I had that lovely job of reminding all the girls of the stupid things they were doing in the house without them getting mad,” Wesche said. “ en somehow I became president too.”
the induction of her husband Ian Redpath ‘72 into the Hillsdale Athletic Hall of Fame and to see old friends, but Facebook only goes so far.
President of the Chi Omega House Corps Lee Tonnies.
“Chi O is a family,” Tonnies said. “Those of us who live close get a chance to know all the members, which is important. But they don’t be-
Wesche reminisced on the use of her presidential power to prank her sisters before she graduated. She and one other senior who graduated in December convinced everybody with a fake postcard that Winnie Bowker, the President of Chi Omega nationals at the time, was coming to Hillsdale for a visit. ey sent girls to the airport dressed in Chi Omega gear with signs, before receiving a call a couple hours later that Bowker was never scheduled to come.
“It was a wonderful group of girls that were like a family group, and I made lasting friends,” Redpath said. “It just means a lot, and now with Facebook, we can reconnect. Unfortunately, there’s a lot who can’t because they’re not there. And then if they’re on Facebook, they don’t put their maiden name.”
Several alumnae remembered a time when women had to wear dresses to the dining hall on Sunday.
house, so on top of seeing old roommates, she was excited to see the girls she oversaw throughout her time.
“I’m friends with a lot of them on Facebook from when they got married, to when they had kids, to when they’re now working,” Beck said. “And so I might not recognize them but they will know me.”
Recently graduated alumnae also returned to see the women they once saw almost every day. Mary Ann Powers ’24, who now works as the executive assistant to Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, described the experience as perfectly normal and also surreal.
“I love seeing all the different generations that have gone through this house and hearing their stories,” Powers said. “and getting to share this common experience and treasure that we all hold dear.”
The women of Chi Omega found a loophole.
“We all got maxi coats and put them on over our pajamas because we refused to get in a dress on Sunday morning to go have breakfast,” Karen Newman Labadie ’73 said.
“It was talked about for a long, long time,” Wesche said.
Redpath traveled for
“Now, you could just wear pajama pants anywhere.” Beck was an adviser for the
Tenzca shared similar sentiments from the event.
“It was just really touching to see everyone, regardless of age, getting along and being genuinely happy to talk to each other,” Tenzca said.
Chi Omega alumnae pose after the luncheon. COURTESY | DAVID SPROTT
Photos of the sorority spread across a table as decoration. COURTESY | DAVID SPROTT
Chi Omega’s colors are cardinal and straw. COURTESY | DAVID SPROTT
Active members and alumnae pose together in the Searle Center. COURTESY | DAVID SPROTT
All of the women share a meal together. COURTESY | DAVID SPROTT
Chi Omega walks in the homecoming parade. COURTESY | DAVID SPROTT
