Category: Social Sciences

New book explains the origins of March Madness

Long before it became a national phenomenon linked to a $11 billion television contract, obsessive office wagering, and another meaning to the name ‘Cinderella,’ the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament — more commonly dubbed March Madness — got its humble beginnings in modestly populated Midwestern gymnasiums to little fanfare and hype.

Gradually big-name coaches and big-city venues, plus a big-time point-shaving scandal, enveloped the tournament, directing it toward the more prominent stage it would eventually play upon today. It’s this early roundball history, when college basketball was fresh-faced and growing, that Dr. Chad Carlson recounts in his new book titled Making March Madness: The Early Years of the NCAA, NIT and College Basketball Championships, 1922-1951.

The book, published by The University of Arkansas Press and part of their Sports and Society series, is Carlson’s first.

“No one had written about the origins of March Madness previously, the greatest sporting event in my mind.”

“No one had written about the origins of March Madness previously, the greatest sporting event in my mind,” explains Carlson about the book’s formation. “We have a number of sports historians who have studied football, a lot who study the Olympics or baseball, but there are relatively few that study basketball and fewer still that study college basketball. So, I felt it was an area in need of study that naturally fit for me.”

Dr. Chad Carlson, author of Making March Madness

Carlson — a former Hope basketball player and now men’s junior varsity coach — weaves first a regional tale, then national story, about a game that went from baby steps to giant leaps. College basketball in the early 20th century was not the nation-wide sensation it is today. “There were definitely pockets of colleges in the country playing basketball in the 20s,” says Carlson. “It was a very regional game with no national oversight.”

For a sport that uses little equipment, there was little coordinated governance of the standard size of the ball, net on a rim, or use of a backboard either. “Refereeing and rules were regionally enforced, too,” explains Carlson.

Despite the game’s varied nature, the first attempt at a college basketball national tournament occurred in 1922 (hence the book starts there), and was organized by the Indianapolis Junior Chamber of Commerce. Six teams from across the country were invited and the finals featured two squads familiar to the region: DePauw University vs Kalamazoo College.

From there, the establishment of a national college tournament went about as smoothly as a fast break against a full-court press. Lack of good, fast national transportation stunted its growth, as did college administrations that were not quite ready to go all-in on college sports just yet. Finally in 1937, the NAIA hosted a national tournament that was followed by the NIT in 1938 and then last to the game, the NCAA in 1939. Each tournament started with only six or eight teams selected to vie for the national title.

Carlson’s research led him to other fascinating insights on the growth of March Madness such as the intervention of legendary Kansas coach Fogg Allen to keep the tournament ball bouncing in 1940 after the NCAA lost money the year before; the introduction of Madison Square Garden as the host venue in 1943; the widespread participation of players in a point-shaving scandal in the late 40s; and, the responsive way the sport gave back to a greater cause during World War II years when proceeds from the national tournament went to the American Red Cross.

“Had I not absolutely loved the topic, this book may have never gotten written,” Carlson says, and he’s only somewhat joking. “There was so much to research and write, so many details.”

“Making March Madness will be a history that sport historians, students, reporters, and college basketball fans will want to consult on a regular basis,” reviews Chris Elzey, co-editor of DC Sports: The Nation’s Capital at Play. “It is a comprehensive, authoritative college basketball history … a great book.”

Making March Madness took Carlson four years to complete and involved multiple research trips to the archives at the Basketball Hall of Fame, Ohio State University, University of Kentucky, University of Kansas, and the NCAA. Carlson leaves off in 1953 before the advent of big-network coverage and UCLA and John Wooden’s rise. There’s been enough written about those histories, he says.

“Had I not absolutely loved the topic, this book may have never gotten written,” Carlson says, and he’s only somewhat joking. “There was so much to research and write, so many details. Plus I have a young family (he and his wife, Kathi, have two children, now ages 8 and 6). But it still was a blast to find things that no one had written about that I think are really important events in the history of college basketball.”

Making March Madness is 447 pages (“though about 100 of those pages are footnotes,” Carlson clarifies) and will be available at the Hope-Geneva Bookstore for purchase.

The Mother of All Holidays

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed it a national holiday in 1914, and it didn’t take long thereafter for Hallmark Cards to make it a national celebration. Today, Mother’s Day is the third-leading retail holiday in the country, according to the National Retail Federation. Consumers will spend close to $24 billion on flowers, cards, jewelry and other bric-a-brac to celebrate motherhood this May.

For one Hope College professor though, acknowledgment of the sacrificial nature and special identity of mothers goes far beyond matriarchal tchotchkes and trinkets. Influenced by her own spirited maternal role models, and after becoming a mother herself, Dr. Deb Swanson, professor of sociology, delved into how women define good mothering practices in their roles as either stay-at-home or working moms. What she found was not completely unexpected. Her work has shed more light on the complicated nature of motherhood in 21st century America where 70 percent of mothers with children under 18 participate in the labor force,75 percent of whom are employed full-time outside the home,according to recent U.S. Department of Labor stats.

Swanson’s work also confirms this: Motherhood is not for wimps.

Swanson’s research sheds more light on the complicated nature of motherhood in 21st-century America where 70 percent of mothers with children under 18 participate in the labor force, with over 75 percent employed full-time, according to recent U.S. Department of Labor stats.

Inspired by strong women in her family — one great-grandmother who was the rare female high school graduate in the early 1900s in Iowa, another great-grandma who was the first woman to secure her own bank account in Corning, Iowa, and her own mother who was discriminated against while applying for a nursing job because she was pregnant in the 1960s — Swanson became even more fascinated about the changing identities and roles of working mothers when she became a working mom herself.

Dr. Deb Swanson, professor of sociology

“I approached motherhood like a good academic. At the time I thought, ‘Now my identity has changed, things are weird, I’ve got to figure out what to do,’” remembers Swanson. “So, I went and got some books. But I couldn’t find the book to understand how things had changed in my life due to these kids, so I decided to do research, which is the second thing academics do. If you can’t find the book, you go do the research.”

Along with colleague Dr. Dede Johnston from Hope’s Department of Communication, Swanson interviewed 100 women in the Holland area about their definitions on being a good mom, where they found support, and how children changed their identity. The women who participated in the study were employed full-time outside the home, worked part-time outside the home, or were stay-at-home moms.

After collecting all their qualitative data, this is what Swanson and Johnston found:

  • Stay-at-home moms felt a strong moral imperative to stay at home, were sure about what they did and why they did it, but they were lonely. They missed adult interaction.
  • Full-time working mothers, on the other hand, always questioned what they were doing. They constantly juggled their various identities between work and home. “Yet what they were sure about was that when they were home, they were with their kids,” says Swanson. “Their house could be a mess, supper might not be on the table but they seemed to say, ‘when I’m at work, I’m at work and when I’m home, I’m with my kids.’ And they actually spent at least as much time one-on-one with their kids as the stay-home moms who were busy with their domestic work. But what (the working moms) felt was a lot of guilt.”
  • As for the part-time working moms, you’d think they’d have the best of both worlds — work away AND stay at home. But not so much. “Part-time working moms felt like they were doing the best thing for their kids and for themselves but their marriages suffered because their partners expected them to do all the work at home,” explains Swanson. “Their spouses wanted the benefits of a stay-at-home mom but the finances of a part-time worker.”

“In the end, each situation has pitfalls and each has advantages. So, whatever choice women make, let’s support them so they can do what they feel is right for them and their families. Save your judgment, use your compassion.”

While clear roles and expectations, along with loneliness, existed for mothers in the first two groups, assumptive and nebulous expectations clouded mothers’ identities and joy in the third.

What did these outcomes tell Swanson then? What is the take-away here?

“Too often I heard how women — no matter their choice — felt compared and judged. Too often our culture is set up to pit women against each other when we really should be supporting whatever choice women make,” she concludes. “In the end, each situation has pitfalls and each has advantages. So, whatever choice women make, let’s support them so they can do what they feel is right for them and their families. Save your judgment, use your compassion.”

That may be the best Mother’s Day gift for all.

Seven Things to Keep in Mind About Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

Dr. David Ryden holds his book, The Supreme Court and the Electoral Process

Dr. David Ryden, professor of political science and chair of the department, is an oft-sought-after national expert on the Supreme Court and the presidency. His scholarship on the topic has been cited on CNN, in The Christian Science Monitor, U.S. News and World Report, and The New York Times. He is also the author of The Supreme Court and the Electoral College.

On the heels of President Trump’s announcement of his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, Ryden, a centrist political scientist, offers seven points to consider:

  1. Supreme Court Justices are Neither Republican or Democrat.

“I bridle when people say a judge is a Democrat or a Republican. It’s not that simple. Their differences are rooted in deep, intellectual ways of reading and interpreting the Constitution….Yet, I know we can’t help but think of them as extensions of the two parties. The national perception is that these men and women are partisans in robes. I would ask people to put that thinking aside. Yes, the court is polarized but not in a partisan sense. The court is polarized in an ideological sense — liberally or conservatively. These are serious legal thinkers on both sides. I’m convinced they do not think in partisan (party) terms.”

  1. Politicizing a Supreme Court pick is inevitable.

 “There has always been a politicizing of what the justices do and how they act, ie, they are not partisans but they end up making decision that have political ends. All contemporary justices, liberals and conservatives alike, tend to be activists in pursing their own objectives. Right and left, they are selective in the extent to which they look to the Constitution or ground their decisions in the Constitution. Judges on both sides of the ideological spectrum tend to be extra constitutional in what they do. And since that is the case, politicizing the selection process is understandable. If what the justices do is political then the selection process should be political, too.”

  1. This is not a transformative appointment to the Supreme Court.

“But the next one could be. This appointment will maintain the status quo that was in place before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. If Trump gets another opening during his first term, he will likely be able to establish a solid conservative majority, one that isn’t reliant upon the sentiments and vagaries of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s thinking. Of course I am speculating. It’s dependent upon another opening occurring during Trump’s term, one involving the death or departure of one of the liberal bloc or Kennedy. And here’s where good old-fashioned luck comes in. How many additional choices will Trump get, if any? Will it be the good luck of FDR, Ike or Reagan, or the characteristic bad luck of poor Jimmy Carter, a one termer who got no picks? We don’t know, of course. But if you look at the ages of the current justices, it is clear the odds are in Trump’s favor.”

  1. Remember that the Supreme Court is anti-majoritarian in nature.

“This means they are elitist and anti-democratic, as divorced from public sentiment as anything imaginable. This is good up to a point, allowing them to protect and uphold civil liberties and rights in the face of an unfriendly political climate. But the only point where ‘we the people’ have any input into the make-up of the court is when we elect a president and Senate and even then, the public involvement is indirect at best. The justices are unelected, life-tenured (the average length of a tenure is 26.5 years), and once on the court, there really is no accountability in terms of their decision-making. So Supreme Court justices truly are insulated.”

  1. What might be a Democratic response to the nominee?

“Democrats could try to simply vigorously oppose Trump’s pick on the nominee’s merits. They could try to pick off a few moderate Republicans to vote their way. The problem is that there really aren’t many moderate Republicans left in the Senate. Moreover, it’s hard to see Republicans breaking rank on something this important.

“Or, Democrats could filibuster, but what will be Republican response to that? To eliminate it altogether, which would be a troubling development. Filibusters, when not abused, force the majority to make some concessions to the minority party. Once it is eliminated, then we’re reduced to raw majoritarian politics with no regard for the minority. I would hate to see it eliminated. So I hope the Democrats resist the urge to filibuster. It would politicize the Court even more. A filibuster by the Democrats would trigger the nuclear option by the Republicans; they might simply change Senate rules by majority vote to do away with the filibuster altogether. Then there’s nothing to stop, or even moderate, a Trump nominee the next time.”

  1. The Potential Impact of a Conservative Court in the Time of Trump

“The irony of this pick is that Trump might choose a judge who might add to a conservative majority that is in fact more inclined to rein in Trump in his use of executive power. A Trump court is potentially the greatest protection against a Trump presidency, because historically, judges who are most skeptical of executive authority tend to be more conservative, and are more likely to enforce restraints and limits on the executive power.”

  1. Populist or pedigree? This Supreme Court pick answers the question.

“Will Trump continue to burnish himself as anti-elitist/populist by picking someone for the court who could be viewed the same way? Will he go with a non-Harvard, non-Yale candidate? Then Thomas Hardiman, who drove a cab to put himself through school, would be Trump’s choice to maintain his populist approach. If he goes with Gorsuch, then he’s opting for impeccable credentials . . . Columbia, Harvard law school, Oxford. In short, pedigree over populism. We’ll see. ”

Hope Students with Differing Views Seek Civility in Politics

After the historic events surrounding the inauguration of President Trump in our nation’s capitol, students Alexandra Piper and James Rogers are back at work interning and learning as members of the Hope College Washington Honors Semester. After 48 hours of celebration and contention, after two days of being part of the peaceful transfer of power and the peaceful Women’s March on Washington the next day, Rogers — a Republican — and Piper — a Democrat — recognize they have one and the same job. While that work may not come with a paycheck, it does come with a reality check. Their sentiment is this:

It is time, long overdue, for Americans on both sides to give and show grace. It’s time — after a combative election, after a presidential inauguration, after a momentous march — to be about the work of listening and respecting.

Piper and Rogers know they are both small and opposing cogs in the vast political machine that propels two sides of this democracy, but they’ll do their part to respectfully listen and understand.

It won’t be easy; Piper and Rogers know this. After all, there is over a year and a half — maybe more — of turbulence to navigate. Rogers admits that Trump’s rhetoric played a part in national fear and unease but he’s hoping for a new start. Piper recognizes that the Women’s March, while giving her a strong sense of community and freedom, lacked a certain cohesiveness due to its numerous platforms. And though they are both small and opposing cogs in the vast political machine that propels two sides of our democracy, they’ll do their part to respectfully listen and understand in a city rife with angst and tension. Both students applied to Hope’s off-campus D.C. experience back in the fall of 2015, never foreseeing the national divide and political climate they’d be wading into. Today, the two want nothing more than for our nation to heal.

Senior Alex Piper, a history and political science major, participated in this past weekend’s Women’s March.

“I have great hopes for better communication and understanding,” says Piper, a senior who took part in the Women’s March and is interning at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “People are getting  shut down so quickly on both sides. Shutting down President Trump as president is not the way to move forward. We may heavily disagree but we must respect his job as president. At the same time, I also hope his administration would look at these marches and look at these concerns and sit down with different people and listen. I’d hope for that for any political appointee, no matter their party.”

Junior James Rogers, far right, with Hope friends, Murray and Dawson Sales at the inauguration of President Trump.

“People aren’t giving each other enough grace,” declares Rogers, a junior who attended the inauguration. “Increasingly, people are not separating politics from the actual person. The politics becomes the person. So, my goal is to listen better, to have more positive and productive conversations with people I don’t agree with. That means being willing to put yourself out there. It means being willing to be vulnerable.”

And it means for someone else to be willing to do the same. Rogers sees that happening with his fellow D.C. students on a regular basis, but he also found such an encounter in an Uber ride the day after the inauguration. Traveling back into the city to return the rented tuxedo that he wore for the black-tie, bipartisan Michigan Inaugural Gala, Rogers struck up a cordial conversation with his self-identified liberal/progressive driver. They each calmly spoke of their political differences as well as their shared sadness over the current derision in America.

“And we were able to bond over that mutual feeling of loss — the loss of respect and understanding — yet we came from polar opposite ends of the political spectrum,” remembers Rogers, a management major and political science minor who is interning at the Heritage Foundation. “I experienced a good impression of a young Democrat and I hope she experienced a good impression of a young Republican. And I left the car feeling good about that, and I thought, the more I can do that, the better we’ll all be.”

Part of the Hope contingent at the bi-partisan Michigan Inaugural Gala held at the National Museum of American History. Dr. Virginia Beard is second from the left.

Twenty other Hope students on the Washington Honors semester feel much the same way as Rogers and Piper, reports Dr. Virginia Beard, associate professor of political science and this year’s director of the program, even though the student group is virtually split 50-50 along Republican and Democratic lines. With Beard’s guidance, all are unpacking what they’ve seen and felt since the start of the semester. With tensions high and political banter non-stop, all are working as best they can to be objective and not overly ideological, she says. But it’s not been without some tough talks.

“I’m exhausted from the weekend,” Beard admits, “but I’m very glad I’m here with these students — and they are all wonderful — to help them step back and process and talk about what is going on here. We have conservatives and liberals living under one roof this spring term, yet we are having good, difficult conversations together.”

All are working as best they can to be objective and not overly ideological. But it’s not been without some tough talks.

The conversations won’t end when the semester is over so insisting that students listen as scholars and grace-givers is a priority for Beard. Healthy, thoughtful conclusions tend to result “when more than anything else,” she concludes, “we engage one another as co-image-bearers of Christ.”

Inaugurations become history and marches end, but as Beard and her students in D.C. see it, the love and grace of Jesus must abide.

Curious to learn more about the Washington Honors Semester? Follow our students’ D.C. adventures on Instagram.

Human Vocation Meets Canine Avocation

When Dr. Kirk Brumels looks at his Llewellin setter, Dixie, he not only sees a beloved family member, he also sees an athlete. The kinesiology professor, athletic trainer and avid upland bird hunter can’t help but recognize both bonds with his dog. And because he does, Brumels’ vocation met his avocation when he recently authored an article about knee ligament tears in hunting dogs for Retriever Journal, a periodical dedicated to the hunting relationship between sporting dogs and their human partners.

Dixie on the run, her CCL working just fine (Photos by Hunter Brumels ’16)

In his story, “Cruciate Injuries,” Brumels apprises readers about the reasons why hunting dogs tear their cranial cruciate ligaments (CCL) — the human equivalent is the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) — and how those injuries can be prevented. Not surprisingly, dogs tear their CCLs, and get the tear corrected, the same way humans do: Cruciate tears come from strenuous and abrupt changes in direction of motion and surgery is the only way to repair them.

Brumels’ interest in the subject was born from hearing other hunters’ concerns about their dogs’ potential or real injuries and from watching his lithe and sinewy Dixie take off through the woods with great speed and physicality, sometimes with unfettered abandon. Having once been an athletic trainer for the New England Patriots as well as the former head athletic trainer for Hope sports, Brumels knows that when he sees an athlete in action, the prevention of injury is really the best treatment of injury. This is true of an athletic dog as any athletic human.

Dr. Kirk Brumels and Dixie on the hunt

“Once I started getting into upland bird hunting (for grouse and woodcock) and in my understanding that these dogs and other sporting dogs are basically like high-profile athletes, I wanted to research and share more about helping other owners avoid CCL tears with their dogs,” says Brumels, professor of kinesiology and chairperson of the department. “You get a dog and you spend a ton of time and money training her and the nightmare is she gets an CCL tear. Then she can’t do what she’s loves to do, was bred to do — which is run in the woods and hunt. And of course, then you can’t do what you love to do, too — which is hunt with your dog.”

If a dog were to stand on its hind legs, its knees are the large, rounded joints slightly angled toward the ground. It is at this joint where the canine CCL is located.

To help understand where a dog’s CCL actually is, consider that the front legs of a dog are like human arms — with its shoulders, elbows, and wrists — and its hind legs are like human legs — with its hips, knees and ankles. “Dog bones are like our bones and their bone names are similar to ours, too, except all four of a dog’s limbs are oriented toward the ground,” informs Brumels, who primarily teaches human anatomy at Hope.

So, if a dog were to stand on its hind legs, its knees are the large, rounded joints slightly angled toward the ground. It is at this joint where the canine CCL is located.

With his expertise in human anatomy and sports medicine, Brumels transferred his knowledge of both astutely to the dog world, with help from other experts who spoke to canine kinetics and nutrition in his article. Veterinarians and dog trainers informed Brumels’ own knowledge and writing, and the end product was a story that hunting dog owners should be keen to heed.

But there are issues with a warm-up protocol: You can’t really tell a dog to go take a few easy laps through the woods before starting to seriously hunt and often the excited dog just want to get going.

Though one can never completely prevent CCL tears in dogs — and ACL tears in humans for that matter — Brumels advocates certain steps to intervene in the probability of them. Carefully monitoring protein intake is one way. Another is to actually warm up and cool down a dog before it goes out and comes back from a hunt, just as any human athlete would before and after vigorous physical exercise.

But there are issues with that protocol: You can’t really tell a dog to go take a few easy laps through the woods before starting to seriously hunt and often the excited dog just wants to get going. So Brumels starts off with Dixie doing short time and distance increments.

Who’s a happy, healthy hunting dog? Dixie is!

“We start with a number of breaks right at the beginning,” Brumels says. “We’ll go out for a couple minutes then I call her back and have her stay for a bit, give her some water. I’m getting her warmed up in short exercise bursts.

“But I have to be honest that we don’t always warm-up, and I know better,” he confesses.

Yet, Brumels vows he’ll get better at it after writing his article because avoiding a CCL injury with Dixie means avoiding the adage, “a hunting dog becomes a house dog,” after a catastrophic injury. After all, the joy of the hunt is in them both.

Hope 2017: A Watch List

New year. New semester. New classes. New start.

The bisected rhythm of an academic year is something special. It affords faculty, staff and students two yearly markers for two new beginnings that most other entities and professions do not. In academia, new starts come at the end of summer (and the official start of a new school year) and at the end of 365 previous days (and the official start of a new calendar year). And each gives new opportunities to look at what’s to come on our educational horizon.

It is once a year or in a lifetime events that brighten our mission statement with even more living color, those things that make a Hope education as fresh as a new year or semester.

At Hope, we’ve done our fair share of looking ahead. We’re not wishing our days away, mind you, but we cannot help but be excited about what 2017 has in store on campus. Of course, we’re always mindful of the everyday privilege “to educate students for lives of leadership and service in a global society through academic and co-curricular programs of recognized excellence in the liberal arts and in the context of the historic Christian faith.”  Yet, it is once-a-year, or in a lifetime, events that brighten our mission statement with even more living color, those things that make a Hope education as fresh as a new year or semester.

Here is a list of the top five Hope happenings to watch for in this New Year, from new buildings to new institutes to new classes.

  1. Student Space Expands

One has been a little over a year-and-a-half  in the making, the other about eight months. Each will give students new space for living and learning in 2017.

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Construction on the $22.5 million Bultman Center nears completion.

The Bultman Student Center, a 42,000-square-foot facility devoted to student activities in the heart of campus, will reach its completion in the spring of 2017. It is hoped that students will get their first look inside their new communal home this April. Ground broke for its $22.5 million construction in the fall of 2015 and since then, this campus epicenter has been taking shape to the excitement of student life offices and groups longing to use it. Named for former presidential duo, Jim and Marti Bultman, the center will be dedicated in the fall of 2017.

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The Cook Village will have two new apartment buildings which will house 16 students by fall 2017.

Cook Village, the student apartment complex that stands in the “U” along Lincoln Avenue and 11th and 12th Streets, is being expanded, adding two more townhouse-style buildings to the four that already exist. At about 3,800 square feet in each, the new brick apartments will house 16 more students. The $1.8 million addition to the village, named for its major donor, the Peter C. and Emajean Cook Foundation, will be completed by the fall of 2017 to welcome new inhabitants for the 2017-18 school year.

2. Toward a Better Understanding of Our Global Society

A series of lectures on wide-ranging international topics will be hosted at Hope in conjunction with the World Affair Council of West Michigan in the spring of 2017. Bringing renowned experts to campus, which include a retired brigadier general and former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan on Mondays, starting February 7 and ending April 3, the “Great Decision Global Discussion Series” will address hot topics such Latin American health care, clashes in the South China Sea, and the future of the European Union, to name a few. It is a perfect example of Hope’s prioritization to provide the campus community with opportunities for global understanding.

“By bringing foreign policy experts to campus, we live into our liberal arts mission to prepare our students to faithfully engage an increasingly complex and interconnected global society,” says Dr. Dede Johnston, professor of communication and Hope’s liaison with the World Affairs Council of West Michigan. Hope is an educational partner of the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan, which informs and engages people of all ages on matters of national and international importance, and explores how national policy and global events affect the community in West Michigan.

3. New Institute to Prepare Students for Vocational Future

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George ’61 and Sibilla Boerigter

The Boerigter Institute, a new, college-wide initiative, will help ensure that every Hope student is robustly prepared for career success and professional growth. The goal of the Boerigter Institute is to transform the college’s approach to career preparation with an innovative and comprehensive framework that guides students from their first semester onward by identifying their strengths and interests, and engaging them in career planning and experiential learning. It will more closely link multiple departments and programs at the college.

This significant effort is made possible by a major gift from SoundOff Signal in honor of Founder and Chairman George Boerigter, who is a 1961 Hope graduate, and his wife, Sibilla. A task force of Hope faculty and staff is currently working to develop this new, cross-functional integrated program, bearing the Boerigters’ name, which is scheduled to begin implementation by fall 2017.

4. Happy Anniversary, Reformation!

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Reformer Martin Luther, 1483-1546

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther changed the course of Christian history for 95 reasons. It was on that day that the once anonymous monk and scholar delivered his “Ninety-Five Theses” to a Roman Catholic Church in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking the Protestant Reformation and altering the progression and understanding of Christianity as the world once knew it.

As a school affiliated with the Reformed Church in America since its inception in 1866, Hope has long appreciated the significance of this event. And as a school that also appreciates ecumenism, Hope will commemorate this momentous 500th anniversary by looking at the Reformation with more than one event, and throughout the year, from various faith-based, historical and social viewpoints via lectures, discussions and even a musical performance. A Presidential Colloquium commences this spring with keynote speakers to complement the Danforth Lecture that will all address the Reformation’s impact. Hope faculty will engage in panel discussions this fall, offering other perspectives on the topic. As for the musical element, a participatory hymn sing is being planned as well.  Additional information will be released throughout the year about each event.

5. Up to the Grand Challenge

Relevant, complex topics will get new, curricular looks this fall, all thanks to $800,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  The Mellon Grand Challenges Initiative (MGCI) is providing Hope faculty and students with opportunities to come together in true liberal arts fashion to explore “grand challenges” by crossing and connecting disciplines for Hope’s general education program as well as for collaborative summer research. Over three years, MGCI will aspire to support the development of about six projects per semester, involving two or more faculty members and developing a potential total of about 50 new linked courses.

Currently, the MGCI committee has awarded about $130,000 in internal funding to six cross-divisional projects involving a total of 15 faculty members. Entitled Disability in Contemporary Societies, Healing in Post-Conflict Societies, Immigration Stories, National Identities, Peace Movements, Storytelling and Cross-Cultural Empathy, these new classes involve nine departments and all four divisions at Hope.

Three more rounds of funding are on the docket to fund additional courses as is the creation of a summer research program for 2018.

Keeping it Real: A Librarian’s Advice to Ending Fake News

Since the dawn of the Internet, college librarians have been concerned about the communication of accurate stories racing around the “information superhighway.” Never ones to subscribe to the “if it’s on the Internet, it must be true” idiom, these information professionals have long questioned and looked closely at internet source reliability, authority and bias.

But now that fake news has the spotlight in real news, (i.e., the recent Pizzagate fiasco), one Hope librarian wants students — and all of us, really — to remember that what we search for and read on the internet, especially on social media, is often precisely what we want to search for and read. It’s this “filter bubble” that is causing fake news to find its way in our news feeds in the first place.

Hope College - Students and staff working at the Van Wylen Library on Hope campus.
Jessica Hronchek instructs students in the Van Wylen Library on Hope campus.

“A ‘filter bubble’ means you are primarily seeing news (on social media) that you agree with and are blocked from viewing those things that you don’t agree with,” says Jessica Hronchek, a research librarian at Hope’s Van Wylen Library. “[Facebook] newsfeeds are the results of complex algorithms that attempt to show you what they think you want to see. This will be based on your networks of friends and the content you have clicked on and ‘liked’ in the past, as well as many other factors. The end result is a newsfeed that heavily reflects your own opinions on major issues…. And that gives us no sense of perspective or balance at all.”

Fake news thrives when readers refuse to investigate both sides of an issue, or look for other notable news sources, or succumb to emotion rather than reason.

Filter bubbles lead us to one-sided debates and harm real research, Hronchek believes. Fake news thrives when readers refuse to investigate both sides of an issue, or look for other notable news sources, or succumb to emotion rather than reason. So, asking critical questions about the bias and authorship of a story should be mandatory for any article online, “because who the source is tells the story as much as the words they use,” Hronchek says.

“Right now, it feels like information is cheap because it is so available and so abundant,” she explains. “But good, real, authentic information is anything but cheap. It has value socially, politically, and of course, persuasively.”

Spreading false news and information can have a measurable, negative impact and it harms real research.

Information must be used in the correct way for its value to compound. “Pizzagate” is just one example of how spreading false news and information can have a measurable and negative impact. It is enough to give pause for every Internet user to ask, “how can I be sure what I read is real and how can I stop the proliferation of what is not?”

Hronchek, a purveyor of truth, gives these suggestions to help answer those questions:

  1. The likelihood of an article to trend online is not necessarily connected to its accuracy. If something resonates with you and you share it without taking a moment to do some basic fact-checking, then you may be only spreading false information. Look at the source. Is it credible? Have other outlets written a similar story, or is what you are reading a stand-alone piece? If it’s the only story of its kind on the Internet, it’s probably not a factual story.
  2. Fake news capitalizes on emotion.
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    Not real! But a lot of readers on the Internet thought it was.

    If an article online deeply angers you, ask why. Then double-check your source.

  3. Avoid “click-bait” headlines — those with vague, wild stories that offer up caricatures of issues instead of realistic portrayals (Fisher-Price Happy Hour playset.) And remember, satire stories from The Onion and the New Yorker’s The Borowitz Report are meant to make you click, laugh, and think, while not actually being real news.
  4. Slow down. Take time to ask critical questions of yourself and the story you just read. Don’t be tempted to see a story as the only facts you want to see. Instead, look and think more broadly. The world is wide with ideas; don’t narrow your exposure to just one.

 

Hronchek concludes: “If you are going to stand on a soapbox to proclaim your point of view, you need to do so from a fully informed position. And it’s a position that says, ‘I’ve read all about the issues from both sides. I’ve been responsible. Now I can stand here and make my point and here’s why.”

Now that’s keeping it real.