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www.hillsdalecollegian.com
Vol. 147 Issue 26 – April 18, 2024
Passages schedules new
Chasing the corona: students, professor study the eclipse
humanitarian trip to Israel
By Eleanor Whitaker Collegian Reporter
By Elyse Apel Digital Editor Passages recently announced Hillsdale students will have a new opportunity to visit Israel this July. Students on the “Advocacy in Action” trip will have the opportunity to provide humanitarian aid to those in need in Israel, visit Biblical sites, and learn about the recent attacks on the nation. “Through this unique Israel experience, you will gain first-hand knowledge on the aftermath of Oct. 7, hear expert briefings on the current situation in Israel, and pair your knowledge with action by volunteering with communities most affected by the Oct. 7 attacks, fostering a deeper understanding and solidarity with the resilient people of the region,” a statement from Passages said. Since the war broke out on Oct. 7, at least 33,000 Palestinians and Israelis have died, according to NPR. There are concerns the conflict will escalate, especially since Iranian forces bombarded Israel April 14, launching more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel, according to the BBC. Despite the attack over the weekend, which it called a “definite anomaly,” Passages is still planning the trip. “We are evaluating the security situation on an ongoing
basis with the input of our contacts in Israel,” the statement said. “If Passages determines that we cannot provide a safe trip for you, we will cancel, and your trip registration fee will be fully refunded.” Don Westblade, assistant professor of religion and organizer of the trip scheduled for July 7-17, said though the college and Passages cannot guarantee safety, he is sure Passages will prioritize student well being. “An armed and trained guard will accompany the bus on which students travel,” Westblade said. “And, as on past trips, Passages is informed and adept at varying the itinerary to avoid any sites that may appear to entail an unacceptable risk.” The trip is sponsored by the Philos Project, the Museum of the Bible Foundation, and individual donors and costs $980. Since 2015, Passages trips have taken hundreds of Hillsdale College students to Israel, visiting sites such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Sea of Galilee. Though the trip has now been rescheduled multiple times, with a trip in May being canceled early this semester due to safety concerns, students hope the July trip will be different. Senior Fernando Bravo is one of those students.
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Olivia Young was starting to cry. Although the fourth-year physics Ph.D. student from Rochester Institute of Technology had collaborated with a Hillsdale professor to study last week’s total solar eclipse for more than two years, nothing could prepare her for the sight of that wispy white halo enveloping the shadow of the moon. “It was like nothing I have ever seen before,” Young said. After the halo disappeared in a flash of emerging sunlight, Young turned her eyes to the website she had open, refreshed the page and watched the eclipse a second time — through the eyes of a radio telescope. Young was not just in the path of totality to admire the eclipse. She was also there to take data on the sun’s corona, a layer of the sun’s atmosphere that is as mysterious as it is beautiful. Over the past two years, Young collaborated with Associate Professor of Physics Timothy Dolch and several Hillsdale College students to build four Christmas-treelike metal structures in Observatory Park, Ohio. The four antennae combine to form the Deployable Lowband Ionosphere and Transient Experiment telescope. It records the natural radio
Seniors Whit Lewis and Evan Anthopoulos, sophomore Liam Swick, and junior Riley Hamilton set up the DLITE telescope in Observatory Park, Ohio, before the eclipse reaches totality.` Courtesy | Timothy Dolch
light emission from the sky at frequencies lower than optical light at 30-45 megahertz. According to Young, researchers know very little about the sun’s atmosphere at these low light frequencies of radio astronomy because the atmosphere is difficult to isolate from the rest of the sun. “You really can’t study the sun’s atmosphere very effectively in radio astronomy, because of the way that the telescopes work,” Young said. “The only time you can do it is when the sun is conveniently blotted out by some-
Documentary filmmaking class premieres ‘Hillsdale to Hilltop’
Lecturer in Journalism Buddy Moorehouse (right) and his students pose after the screening of their documentary “Hillsdale to Hilltop.” John J. Miller | Collegian
By Ellie Fromm Collegian Reporter Students in the documentary filmmaking course premiered “Hillsdale to Hilltop: How the College Produced a Poet, a Politician, a Pro, and a Personality,” which explores the lives of four prominent Hillsdale alumni and how the college prepared them to achieve success. The documentary covers poet Will Carleton of the class of 1869, Illinois Republican Congressman Phil Crane ’52, Green Bay Packers kicker Chester Marcol ’82, and Fox News personality Kat Timpf ’10.
Students in the course, part of the Dow Journalism Program, produced the documentary. This is the third year of the documentary program and its seventh production. The students behind the documentary are freshmen Max Cote and Henry Hammond, sophomore Ameera Wilson, juniors Monroe Beute and Olivia Pero, and seniors Beth Crawford, Chris Dick, Cat Spalding, and Elizabeth Troutman. Lecturer in Journalism Buddy Moorehouse led the class. Moorehouse said he was excited about this film and fascinated by the differences and similarities between all four subjects of the film.
“I learned what a special place this is,” Moorehouse said. “The only thing those four people had in common was that they all went to the same school. They wanted to reach the top, and it was all because they got their start here.” Spalding said she believes filmmaking is an important skill to have and will serve her well after graduation. The production process taught her many lessons, she said. “One lesson I learned is to not procrastinate because the editing process takes much longer than I thought it would,” Spalding said. “Being able to have the skill to edit and put together a film
is irreplaceable.” Troutman said her favorite part of the production was traveling to New York and interviewing Timpf in the Fox News studios. “It was really cool to meet someone who did The Collegian and was in the same sorority as me, and now is super successful on Fox News,” Troutman said. The documentary showed that a Hillsdale education is invaluable and aims to prepare one for life in any occupation, Troutman said. “I learned that no matter what challenges face you, your Hillsdale education will serve you well and carry you on to great things,” Troutman said. “Hillsdale students learn lifelong principles and are able to find a lot of success in life and have wellshaped characters because of the professors here.” Sophomore Arden Carleton attended the premiere. She said she noticed the quality of the film and said the stories of Hillsdale graduates inspired her. “The documentary was incredibly well done,” Carleton said. “It was both informative and inspiring.” Moorehouse said he believes this class has taught them a lot in many different aspects of the production process. “I’m so proud of what the students did on their film,” Moorehouse said. “They worked so hard and put so much work into it.”
thing else, which would be an eclipse.” Young and Dolch met because of their shared interest in radio astronomy. When Young heard Dolch was planning to build a radio telescope in Ohio to take data on the eclipse, she jumped at the opportunity to get involved and took a position as the principal investigator of the project. With the data from the DLITE telescope, Young and Dolch aimed to determine where in the corona low-frequency radio emission comes from and better
understand solar radio bursts — questions that could only be answered during this rare eclipse. “You can see the corona in optical light, but it is even bigger in radio light,” Young said. “There has not been enough research to be able to define how big it is in radio light, so that’s one of the really exciting research questions that we’re hopefully going to be able to shine a little bit of light on.”
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Q&A: Princeton professor encourages free speech, debate on campuses By Moira Gleason Assistant Editor Robert P. George is a professor of jurisprudence and the director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served as chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and on the President’s Council on Bioethics. He holds a juris doctor and masters of theological studies from Harvard University and a doctor of philosophy, bachelor of civil law, doctor of civil law, and doctor of letters from Oxford University. What is your advice for students who may want to go into public life? I think the most important thing for all of us is to discern our vocation, our calling, and not to be deflected from pursuing what we discern to be truly our vocation. For some of us, that will be a life that is not lived in any major way in the public view. I think we all have certain responsibilities as citizens, so we’re all to some extent living in public as citizens. I think we all have obligations to be good citizens and to participate in public deliberation and discussion. So there’s a limited sense in which all of us do live in the public domain. But not all of us are called to be activists or to be primarily concerned vocationally with public discussion, persuasion, advancing worthy causes, and so forth. I’ve discerned my own vocation to be one that puts me very much in public life. But
that doesn’t mean that you have that same vocation. That’s the thing about vocations, they’re different. If you do discern a vocation to a life that gives you a more public role, you should embrace it. It will come with slings and arrows. And if you’re thin skinned, you have to toughen up. You shouldn’t just assume because ‘I don’t like criticism’ or ‘I don’t take criticism well,’ that ‘it must be the case that I don’t have a vocation to public life.’ It might be that you do have a vocation to public life and what you have a need to do is toughen up so that you can bear the slings and arrows that come, so that you can take criticism as well as dish it out. What brought you to Hillsdale? I was invited to come by Professor Schlueter and by the Federalist Society chapter. Professor Schlueter is an old and dear friend. He visited the James Madison Program at Princeton, which I founded and direct, as a visiting fellow about a decade ago. And so we spent a year together and got to know each other. I myself have been involved with the Federalist Society at the national level for most of my professional career, and so I’m always happy to help Federalist chapters. I love coming to Hillsdale not only because I greatly admire the work that the college does and the kind of education and formation that it gives its students but also because of Dr. Arnn, who’s another old and very dear friend.
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