On this week’s episode, the editor-in-chief and deputy editor of the Chronicle discuss athletic organizations, the new student success center, a visit from Alaqua Cox, and Riot Fest event coverage.

Transcript:

0:04: Hello and welcome to Headlines. 

0:06: I’m Will Blakely, the editor-in-chief of the Columbia Chronicle, and I’m Marc Balbarin. 

0:10: I’m the deputy editor of the Columbia Chronicle. 

0:13: And let’s go straight into our top story today. 

0:15: First off, I want to ask you about the East-West gym hours cause I know you are far more familiar with that than me. 

0:21: So, what can you tell our audience, Marc? 

0:23: OK, so the athletic organizations at Columbia College Chicago, we used to have two hour practice times throughout previous years. 

0:32: Because of the higher rental costs at East-West University gym, the place where we practice, 

0:41: unfortunately our times are down to 90 minutes instead, making things a lot harder for us to fully do our activities at practices. 

0:50: Mhm, yeah, I know there are some concerns from students just about the time it’ll take to get to the gym because I know some students have class right before practices or even at the start of practices, so they have to transfer over, and in general it just seems like teams are kind of worried about how

1:06: the court space will work out and everything. 

1:08: I know you’re a leader in volleyball. 

1:10: How are you feeling about it and how it’s gonna impact volleyball? 

1:13: Well, volleyball, in the past we’ve seen like less people, but because of all these first-year students, we’re seeing much higher demand for practice times. 

1:23: And this reduction for us, for example, we used to have a two hour slot on Wednesdays and a three hour slot on Fridays, but now we’re down to one and a half hour slots on both days. 

1:37: And so that cuts into our time we use for open gym and it cuts our time for competitive practices. 

1:43: And so overall it makes things a lot more difficult to

1:46: actually go through all of the things we have to do on our agenda in order to get all of our reps in and to prepare for tournaments, for leagues, and for play against other teams. 

1:58: Yeah, and I mean that’s really unfortunate. 

2:00: It seems like it’s really gonna impact teams this semester, so I don’t know. 

2:04: I hope that hopefully at some point those hours can be increased again, or just in general I hope the teams can hold up their schedules and everything. 

2:14: Yeah, I understand that Colombia is going through a financial deficit right now and obviously there’s gonna be cuts made to certain areas, but hopefully with this increase in demand and increase in first-year students, 

2:26: we could show there’s a higher need for the East-West University gym and higher need for these practice times. 

2:33: All right, next up we’re gonna talk about some good news, news that you also covered, the Center for Student Success ribbon-cutting. 

2:40: What can you tell us about that, Marc? 

2:42: The Center for Student Success was officially opened on Tuesday with a grand ribbon ceremony cutting with President Bolton and a few other staff members, but it’s been open since 

2:56: the start of the semester. 

2:58: It was under construction since spring 2026 as well. 

3:01: The Illinois Board of Higher Education actually gave us a $5 million grant for the center for a brand new lounge. 

3:09: It used to be in the spot where the academic tutoring center used to be and WCRX. 

3:15: Both were displaced to different parts of the building now, but overall it’s just very nice, very shiny, very new. 

3:22: It’s very great. 

3:23: There’s a lounge. 

3:24: There’s meeting rooms. 

3:26: There’s a snack bar that’s usually stocked, but we’ll have to check later. 

3:31: Sure, and students can go to this new center to 

3:36: schedule appointments, to check in with their academic advisors, to really meet with any needs they have on campus. 

3:44: I think the most important part of this center is that it centralizes a lot of support services for students in one single spot. 

3:54: Like, for example, Will, have you ever had to bounce around campus looking for the right person to talk to? 

3:58: No. No? Yes, I have. 

4:01: Like what Columbia student hasn’t had to do this? 

4:04: Yeah, exactly. 

4:04: Yeah, I mean jumping from Columbia Central to advising, to the financial center in the 600 building, which that’s still there, but you can do some of that in the student success center. 

4:16: But no, there used to be all these staff members used to be scattered around campus on various third floors of buildings, and now they’ve all been moved and consolidated down to one spot, to 33 where 

4:29: there is a lot of classes here, for example, first-year writing classes, Big Chicago. 

4:34: And for these first-years, like me and you, we’re juniors/seniors, we kind of know our way around campus, but these first-years might have a little trouble going building to building, trying to find their support. 

4:47: So just being able to stumble across this place to be like, hey. 

4:52: There’s my advisor, or I could talk to someone real quick, or I could ask about my financial situation as well, yeah. 

5:01: It’s just great for them to be able to easily access the service and not only are students able to drop in on staff members, they’re also allowed to just walk next door and “hey, quick question,” instead of emailing back and forth and back and forth. Like if it was me,

5:19: phone calls only or in person, even better. 

5:22: I hate emails so much. 

5:26: It’s 90% of our job, but we do, we do hate emails. 

5:30: Like you know, like Sisyphus pushing a boulder in the underworld?

5:36: Emails are my boulder. 

5:39: I’m forever pushing it.  

5:41: And you forever will be pushing it as long as you’re in journalism, as long as I’m in journalism. Yeah, so Student Success Center, I would say,

5:49: a good thing for the college and it’ll be a good thing for all these first-years. 

5:52: it’s even better that it didn’t come out of the college’s pockets as well. 

5:55: Yeah, exactly, especially given our deficit, they went about a smart way of providing this resource for students, so you love to see it. Anyways, what else has been going on this week? 

6:04: Yeah, we had a big actress come to the Columbia campus for a Deaf Awareness Day event. 

6:13: The actress is

6:15: Alaqua Cox, I believe is how you pronounce it. 

6:17: she is Echo in Hawkeye, and then she also had her own show, but that was her own standalone series. 

6:23: Yeah, it was like a miniseries with Kingpin and Vincent D’Onofrio was in it. 

6:27: She is a deaf actress, and she came to campus to speak about her experiences as an actress, answer some questions of students, and I believe we had some people from local high schools come in as well. 

6:38: Yeah, I think like over 100 

6:40: local high schoolers studying ASL and stuff came to our campus in addition to 40 ASL Columbia students. 

6:48: Yes, exactly, so it was a great opportunity for ASL students, I think, especially since that major has been cut. 

6:55: It was cut a while ago. 

6:56: Well, there’s still the minor. 

6:57: That’s what I was gonna say, there’s still the minor, but I think this is great that Columbia brought this person to campus, to talk about ASL and understanding that community and also being an actor in that community because that’s

7:15: you know, predictably a tougher career field, right? 

7:19: Of course. It closes off opportunities to you because there’s so many speaking roles and so many roles that require people who

7:29: can only speak with ASL and such, but I think recently in Hollywood we’ve been seeing more representation between Echo, we’ve been seeing the first deaf Oscar winner for, oh, what was that film? 

7:43: It was a couple of years ago. 

7:44: It was for an Apple original film that I heard was pretty good. 

7:47: So in general, it’s great to see that representation here on campus, and it’s great that these students were able to come and just talk about these experiences and such. 

7:54: you know what’s happened off campus though? 

7:56: What’s happened off campus? 

7:57: Riot Fest, we finally have our coverage for that. 

8:00: Yeah, our photographer Carlos at the Chronicle, who’s also our director of photography, went and covered two days of the event. 

8:08: Sadly he couldn’t make one day just due to weather and not having the proper equipment, but he covered Friday and Sunday and he took some great photos, a lot of great crowd photos, especially on Sunday when it was 

8:22: a battleground. 

8:24: Oh yeah, you have that firsthand boots on the ground experience. 

8:26: I have that boots on the ground experience, as my friend said, the boots in the trenches journalism, even though I was not on the job those days. Yeah, insane. Sunday,

8:38: it had continued raining from Saturday, the night before, which they ended performances early, because they were worried about the weather. But then it ended up not pouring, so they didn’t have to, which is annoying because I missed

8:52: Bad Religion and Descendants and I was sad, but I saw Tool, which was awesome. 

8:57: But then the next day, it kept raining. 

9:00: You know, with all the people walking around on wet grass, just a slush of mud, like, literally your foot would be buried in the mud. 

9:08: I lost a shoe at one point. 

9:11: I was walking around in a sock carrying my mud soaked shoe. 

9:16: RIP those shoes, they will never be the same. 

9:21: Oh my god. 

9:22: But Carlos went out anyway, took some great photos. 

9:25: There was a mud pit at Pennywise, which was amazing. 

9:30: I love a pit. 

9:31: I love being in a pit, believe it or not, I may dress like 

9:36: this, but I love, 

9:39: I love a pit, and that was so much fun. 

9:41: A photographer Zadyn at the Chronicle joined me the last day because I had someone who couldn’t make it, and he got to experience his first pit, which was that giant Pennywise mud pit, and we both just got half covered in mud. 

9:54: There are some photos of me out there, you can find it. 

9:56: I’m in the Riot Fest recap video. 

9:58: That’s cool. 

9:59: That’s cool. 

10:00: Yeah, so covered Riot Fest. 

10:03: It was a ton of fun. 

10:04: Carlos did a great job. 

10:06: Yeah, no, that weekend I was just comfy in bed sleeping. Loser. Loser? Loser. I’d rather not be in the trenches, be in the mud. Oh, you gotta live life, Marc. 

10:18: Yeah, I live life in my bed. 

10:22: Yeah, but are you throwing mud at other people in your bed? 

10:25: I mean, I could. 

10:26: That’s disgusting. 

10:29: You’re a disgusting person. 

10:32: Improve yourself. Whatever, whatever. 

10:36: Anyways, that’s this week of Headlines. 

10:38: We’ll see you next week. 

10:39: Yeah, thank you. 

10:39: I’ve been Will Blakley, editor-in-chief of the Columbia Chronicle, and my name is Marc Balbarin. 

10:44: I’m the deputy editor of the Columbia Chronicle. 

10:47: Have a good one. 

Copy edited by Isaac Russo