A thunderstorm ripped through Hillsdale on Monday afternoon, damaging trees in the area. Jack Cote | Collegian
Michigan’s oldest college newspaper
Alumnae revive SAI chapter
Vol. 146 Issue 2 - September 1, 2022
www.hillsdalecollegian.com
Petersen wrote "Fostered," which was published on Wednesday. Courtesy | Tori Petersen
By Josh Newhook Digital Editor
By Maddy Welsh Assistant Editor Sigma Alpha Iota is back from the brink of death. The women’s music fraternity has had a home at Hillsdale since 1925. Last semester, members of SAI told the Collegian the chapter planned to disband due to low membership and difficulty recruiting. SAI alumnae found the Collegian story and were shocked by the chapter’s imminent shutdown. Alumnae started writing letters to administrators at the college and to the fraternity’s national chapter. They raised funds and started mentoring current members. Senior Mikela St. John, the president of SAI, said there are currently four active members of the chapter, including herself. “We didn’t have the manpower to make it work,” she said. “Then, the very last week or two of the semester, we had a whole bunch of alumnae show up to our chapter meeting with a signed letter.” St. John said she and the other members had not been aware there was a network of active alumnae who would be willing to help, and multiple alumnae said they were unaware the chapter was struggling. “We had to evaluate and ask, ‘Even with their support, can we make it work?’” St. John said. “We decided it was worth trying.” Maggen Dixon ’05 was a member of SAI her junior and senior years of college. She and other alumnae have been working to create an SAI alumnae database to connect with current members for information on leadership, recruitment, and fundraising.
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College adds dorm weight rooms, new gym
See B2 for a review of "Fostered"
Tori Petersen '18 shares experiences in foster care in her new memoir 'Fostered' By Michael Bachmann Assistant Editor Despite growing up in the volatile world of foster care, Tori Hope Peterson ‘18 beat the odds — she explains how she did it in her new book, “Fostered: One Woman’s Powerful Story of Finding Faith and Family through Foster Care.” “It’s my story,” said Petersen, whose memoir was published Aug. 30. “It's that story of coming from a really hard place of trauma and fear to an unlikely success, an unlikely joy and happiness, and finding the Lord. All these things were unlikely, but because of the church and because of people, it was made possible. I hope that when people read the book they are encouraged to be professional lovers of people above all else.” Petersen said she first considered becoming a writer after receiving positive feed-
back on a travel blog she kept while on a mission trip in Ethiopia in 2015. After years of sharing her testimony on social media, Petersen decided to write a memoir. “Social media can be gone tomorrow,” Petersen said. “I wanted something that solidified in a tangible way the message that I was trying to communicate.” Petersen began writing “Fostered” and sending proposals to literary agents three years ago. She was rejected more than 50 times, including by Wolgemuth & Associates, a Colorado-based agency, which currently represents her. “It can be hard to sell a project from a first-time author and someone who is not well known,” said Austin Wilson, Petersen’s agent at Wolgemuth & Associates. “Tori didn’t have much of a platform initially. She only had a small Instagram follow-
ing at the time.” Petersen, however, was determined to get her memoir published with or without an agent. On Nov. 17, 2020, B&H Publishing, a branch of LifeWay Christian Resources, reached out to her with a book deal. Wolgemuth & Associates took her on as a client a few weeks later. “She is a go-getter. She is going to do whatever it takes to make things happen,” Wilson said. “She has done an excellent job hitting deadlines and pulling together a great manuscript. Her virtual platform has grown significantly since she initially pitched to us.” Petersen first entered the foster care system when she was 3 due to her mother’s mental illness. She was reunited with her mother before reentering the system as a 12 year old. Petersen lived in 12 different homes during
her time in foster care. “The overarching feeling was that I didn’t belong,” Petersen said. “Most foster homes were typical homes that were taking in kids. I do think they were trying to take care of us, but it was still hard to live through. You always know that you are not fully a part of the family.” It wasn’t until Petersen found Christ that she felt a sense of belonging. “I have always felt very lost in my identity,” Petersen said. “And then I was welcomed into the church and my church's slogan is ‘A family for the broken’— and that's just how I felt. I wanted a family so bad, but also felt like I was so broken and no one wanted me. For them to have this message made me realize this is where I belong.” For a long time, however, Petersen said she was an atheist.
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The college spent $100,000 on fitness equipment for four of its dorms this summer in addition to opening a new facility called the Founders Gym. “We were doing F3: faith, friendship, and fellowship,” Associate Dean of Men Jeffery Rogers said. “We just added one more F: fitness.” During the previous school year, some students noted the lack of facility space in the George Roche Sports Complex when sports teams were using it, Rogers said “Our kids wanted to work out, but the gyms were jammed up,” Dean of Men Aaron Petersen said. “But now the barriers have been removed.” Some other obstacles to fitness included time limitations, lack of knowledge, and lack of confidence, Petersen said. This led the deans to consider adding gyms in the dorms. "We talked with our RAs about ways to encourage fitness that are fun but engaging,” he said. “If you go lifting, you get accountability and intensity. It works on a lot of different levels.” The deans also formed a committee of students to help with the project, including sophomore Matthew Karten, Galloway Residence’s fitness leader. Karten said Rogers mentioned the opportunity to him over the summer. He and other student leaders received training on operating the fitness equipment and brainstormed about how to market the new facilities. “My job is to inspire a community around fitness,” Karten said.
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Q&A: Former SCOTUS clerks Elliot Gaiser '12 and Garrett West '15 By Olivia Pero Assistant Editor Elliot Gaiser ’12 and Garrett West ’15 completed oneyear clerkships for Associate Justice Samuel Alito in July. They returned to campus to speak to the Hillsdale College Federalist Society last week. Gaiser graduated from Hillsdale with a double major in political economy and speech studies. During his time at Hillsdale, Gaiser was the Opinions editor of the Collegian. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2016. Gaiser has clerked for Judge Edith H. Jones on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Judge Neomi Rao on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Alito during the October 2021 term. West majored in philosophy at Hillsdale and graduated from Yale Law School in
2018. He has clerked for Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Judge Thomas Griffith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and Alito during the October 2021 term. Did your major at Hillsdale serve you well? Gaiser: Every component of my Hillsdale education has been helpful to me both in law school, in the practice of law, and in serving as a law clerk. With a political economy major, you take classes in history, economics, and politics — all of those disciplines are relevant to the practice of law. With rhetoric and public address, Aristotle describes rhetoric as the art of discovering every available means of persuasion in a given situation, and a good lawyer will do that. West: Absolutely. I don't often use what I learned in
philosophy directly, but the point of philosophy is not to use what you learned. I do think that the training in philosophy is helpful in law because you have to read hard texts, try to understand them, make rigorously logical arguments from them, and then write clearly about those arguments. That's very good training for the practice of law. What was it like to get a job offer from Alito? Gaiser: I'll never forget the phone call I got one morning as I was enjoying some coffee and reading the Bible with my wife. The Supreme Court was on the caller ID. I answered, and it was Justice Alito’s judicial assistant. She starts up, “Justice Alito wanted to apologize that he couldn't call you personally right now, but he would like you to clerk for him this coming year. Would you be willing to serve as his
law clerk?” There were several seconds where I was trying to say yes as quickly as possible. I said, “Yes, absolutely.” And she said, “You don't want to think about it?” I said, “No, I want to clerk for Justice Alito.” She was joking, of course, because she knew that this was maybe one of the best phone calls that I would ever receive. West: When I had my interview with him, I was obviously nervous. The justices work very closely with their clerks, so they really need to make sure that a clerk is going to fit in with the other clerks and with the justice. I wondered, “Is he going to like me? I don't know.” Going in, I psyched myself up by thinking, “The worst that can happen is a great man, Justice Alito, is going to spend 30 to 45 minutes of his time talking to me, and I'm going to soak that up while I get the chance.” And he offered the
job to me at the end of the interview. Was Justice Alito a good boss? Gaiser: I’m sad that I won't see Justice Alito as often as I did when I was his law clerk because he’s a wonderful person to talk to. I don't think I ever quite got over how cool it was to step into his office and say, “Hello justice, how are you?” and then talk about the case that was going to be argued the next day. He's a learned and scholarly man. As stressful as it sometimes is to be a law clerk, he did everything in his power to make the experience of the law clerks as good as possible. Going back and forth with him about a case, about a piece of writing, about how he was thinking through a given legal issue, is an experience that I will remember and cherish for the rest of my life. West: Justice Alito is a fan-
tastic boss, a very kind man, and a brilliant jurist. He's humane; he's kind; he's generous with his clerks and his staff. A lot of people don't know this, but he’s really funny. It was an honor to work for him. Did you always know that you wanted to clerk on the Supreme Court one day? Gaiser: Getting to clerk at the Supreme Court, in some respects, is like getting struck by lightning. There are many people who are qualified for the job who never get a shot at getting to clerk. I had hoped that I would get to clerk for the Supreme Court when I started law school but that feels like hoping you get to win the gold medal in your Olympic sport when you start track and field in high school. So it's immensely humbling.
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