On this week’s episode, the editor-in-chief and deputy editor of the Chronicle discuss Rocky Horror Picture Show, midterm elections, Illinois election watch parties and Emmanuel Lalande’s leave.
Transcript:
0:04: Hello and welcome to Columbia Chronicle Headlines.
0:07: I’m Will Blakley, the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Chronicle, and I’m Marc Balbarin, the deputy editor of the Columbia Chronicle.
0:13: It’s good to be back.
0:14: It feels good to be back.
0:15: Yeah, it does.
0:16: It does.
0:16: How was it with Anna?
0:17: I’m sure it was horrid, awful. No, it went really smooth, actually. A little too smooth? A little too smooth.
0:22: OK, good, good, good.
0:24: So you need me back is what you’re saying.
0:25: We need a little bit more
0:28: chaos. Right. Not chaos, but like spontaneity, whatever.
0:32: Well, yeah, that’s Hollywood, baby.
0:35: All right, well, let’s just jump right into it. Big news week, but we’re gonna start with the fun thing for today, which is, Columbia had a production of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I heard it was very good.
0:48: I sadly couldn’t attend, but I knew the director, Felix Spencer Lee, and from what I’ve heard it went really well.
0:56: I have a friend in the ensemble as well.
0:58: I wish I could have gone and seen it.
0:59: No, me too, yeah, actually someone I was in my “Intro to Journalism” class with was in it as Brad.
1:05: But I heard it went really well.
1:07: If people don’t know, like a Rocky Horror shadow cast is like a time old tradition, basically.
1:12: You project the movie on a screen behind the actors, and they act out the film in front of the film and do little bits in the whole thing.
1:21: It’s very fun.
1:22: I, you know, if you missed the one this year, hopefully they’ll bring it back this year.
1:24: I think they will.
1:25: It sold out like immediately, yeah, and it was like it was a big deal because it was the first one in the actual theater building.
1:32: Usually it was just in like screening rooms in 1104, so it’s like a full on production this year.
1:38: So hopefully they keep bringing it back, but if you can’t catch the Columbia one, I highly recommend catching like any Rocky Horror shadow cast you can in the city.
1:46: Music Box does one that’s really great.
1:48: I think the Davis has done one before.
1:50: Bars just do it as like drag shows, really fun stuff.
1:53: Check it out.
1:54: It’s great for the Halloween season, but also they happen all year round.
1:56: Like the Music Box one happens, I think, a couple times a year.
1:59: So highly recommend.
2:03: After that, less fun news.
2:05: What do you mean “less fun news?”
2:07: I mean, it is fun.
2:07: It’s fun for us.
2:08: It’s fun for us.
2:09: It was a great time reporting.
2:10: Did you want to kind of introduce us, Marc?
2:12: Yeah, on Tuesday, it was midterm elections, and so the Chronicle sent out several reporters to.
2:20: different watch parties in different areas of the city.
2:23: I, for one, went to Juliana Stratton‘s watch party, and she won.
2:27: It was a great experience hearing and like seeing everyone cheering as we’re watching CBS or something like that.
2:35: I was like, oh, the state’s blue now.
2:37: Woo, the state’s also blue now, woo, this person’s red.
2:42: The state’s blue.
2:43: Woo.
2:46: Yeah, yeah, I went to La Shawn K.
2:48: Ford’s watch party, which he was running for a 7th District seat, and that one was interesting because they were less paying attention to the broadcast and it was more about
3:01: because Ford’s replacing Davis, who had the seat for 30 years, I think 30 years as of this year, so really it was kind of this very reflective thing, where they’re kind of looking at his legacy and also what still needs to happen.
3:15: So that was really interesting, kind of less of a watch party, more of a kind of a celebration, kind of a party. Yeah, same thing with Stratton.
3:21: Stratton’s replacing Senator Dick Durbin‘s seat after
3:26: nearly 40 years in Congress, so it’s a very historic election, especially with states like Texas turning blue for once.
3:36: Yes, yeah, no, huge deal, Texas turning blue.
3:39: I mean, yeah, it was blue across the map, really.
3:42: Yeah, no, Democrats won both the House and the Senate.
3:45: Yes, yeah, they have complete control over Congress now.
3:47: Yeah, it looks like, yeah, Texas had not elected a Democrat to statewide office in more than 30 years.
3:56: So insane, yeah, flipped the governor’s seat and the US Senate seat, Yeah, no, there’s a ton of historic wins.
4:05: For example, for Juliana Stratton, she’s now the second Black woman to represent Illinois and sixth Black woman to be in the chamber, and she’s also serving alongside Senators Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, three Black women
4:27: serving simultaneously in Congress. Yeah, and Georgia elected their first Black woman representative as well, which is insane, extremely historic.
4:36: I think Georgia also elected their first openly trans and non-binary lawmaker, which is awesome.
4:44: There was a couple elected trans officials, I can’t name the other state specifically, but even aside from the political flip we saw across this country, it was just a huge win for seeing diversity, especially gender diversity in office.
5:00: It’s also, I believe, statistically the gayest office it’s ever been.
5:04: I was reading something about that this morning, so
5:07: good news for me.
5:08: Yeah, no, when I was talking to people at a watch party, a consistent thing that came up was that they’re glad to see someone like them in a position of power now and kind of look out and see themselves in Congress and government and kind of representing their communities.
5:25: Yeah, exactly.
5:26: Now, I was writing the reaction story the day after the midterms, and just it really seemed like most students were
5:35: excited by that possibility, you know Columbia, it’s a very diverse school.
5:39: It’s a lot of gender queerness, a lot of queerness in general, a lot of different races represented.
5:43: So I think young people being able to see people like them in office who actively want to make change for them is exciting and uplifting, especially in, we’ll say times like these, where a lot of things are happening. So yeah, you know, it was a really unprecedented election, and it was so fun to watch.
6:01: Steve Kornacki was just on, I don’t know.
6:04: Did you catch any of the MSNBC coverage with Kornacki?
6:07: Kornacki, I don’t know.
6:09: I grew up in a big Kornacki household.
6:10: He’s the guy who does the board, right?
6:12: He’s like, “Here’s the map, what the map looks like,” and he breaks it down for the audience.
6:16: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:16: You’re kind of dressed like him right now minus the glasses.
6:19: Wait, let me, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:21: Kornacki out real quick.
6:22: Let me Kornacki out real quick.
6:24: Oh God, you are blind.
6:25: Oh, yeah, oh, I’m taking these off.
6:29: No, but Kornacki was just like, everything was shocking.
6:33: He just kept going, “wow, whoa, wow.”
6:36: It was so funny.
6:37: I had not seen him like that, honestly, probably since like the 2016 election, so it was a lot of fun to watch both at the watch party and just through the news, so.
6:47: Yeah, no, and all of our reporters did a great job reporting.
6:50: I’m very proud of them and not just at the watch parties, but like the polling stations around Columbia and, you know, the city of Chicago.
6:57: Yeah, and our social media team did pretty extensive coverage for it, went around, did men on the street interviews. Recommend checking those out if you want to kind of see what Illinois voters were looking for in this election and what you should be looking for in
7:11: our representatives who are being sworn in in January.
7:14: Yeah, there’s a lot of people that were elected into office, or a lot of historic firsts, but do you know who just left office?
7:21: Yes, Emmanuel Lalande. Yeah, the senior vice president of Enrollment Strategy and Student Success at Columbia.
7:28: Mhm, yeah, no, it was kind of unexpected.
7:33: It’s an interesting time for him to leave because enrollment is up.
7:37: Let me pull the numbers here.
7:40: Yeah, in total enrollment increased from 3,958 in Spring 2026 to 4,265 students for Fall 2026, and also the one year retention rate is the second highest it’s ever been, the highest it’s been since 2018.
7:55: And this enrollment rebounded right after a historic drop to the lowest amount of students Columbia ever had.
8:01: Yeah, no, so it’s a really fascinating time for him to leave.
8:05: Marc, I know you have some details about why he might have left.
8:09: Yeah, some sources said that part of his enrollment strategy was discounting tuition, but because one, Columbia is a tuition reliant institution, and two, we are currently in an 18 million dollar projected deficit, although our enrollment is up, that tuition isn’t exactly there either, so some sources have said that
8:31: it was not the most agreeable strategy.
8:35: Yeah, no, and yes, while it obviously brought students in, it’s gonna have some effects on that underlying deficit, but the deficit also did decrease to 18 million dollars projected for this next year, so overall it’s a really fascinating development.
8:52: The college as of right now has no comments on
8:55: how they’re going to replace Lalande or the plans going forward, which makes sense.
9:01: This just happened.
9:02: I’m sure they’re figuring things out.
9:06: We are developing the story so that, when that update comes, it’ll be out as soon as we can get it out.
9:11: Anyways, that’s it for this week of Columbia Chronicle Headlines.
9:13: I’m Marc Balbarin, the deputy editor of the Columbia Chronicle, and I’m Will Blakley, the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Chronicle, and we will see you next week.
9:21: Next week.
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