The final editorial of the semester has a tried-and-true pattern, often offering encomiums and a love letter to journalism — and I, for one, am happy to carry on that tradition. After nine issues together, I have little else but gratitude on my mind. The path from accounting to The Record may not be well-trod, and it certainly wasn’t in my college plans, but I’ve found the newspaper’s central role as a forum for campus discussion to be captivating. When I had my first article published (an opinion on starting college amid a pandemic), I was fascinated with the process...

By Caleb Shenk • November 30, 2023 • Features

It’s no secret that Goshen College is across the street from a funeral home. The building is hard to miss, and it’s not uncommon to see vehicles lined up for a procession. But there’s another connection to death next to campus: a cemetery, hidden behind the trees and tall grasses of the prairie south of Newcomer Center.  After a trip to the Goshen Historical Society, the Mennonite Historical Library and the graveyard itself, I began to get a picture of where the cemetery really came from and what it has become.  This cemetery is no longer active, but houses more...

By Kate Bodiker • November 9, 2023 • Features

Sadie Gustafson-Zook, a singer-songwriter from Goshen, spends most of her time in her home office — a room that used to be her bedroom back in college, when the small red house was college housing.  Now, she’s transformed her old bedroom into a home studio, complete with recording equipment, instruments and goals on a bulletin board labeled “goals,” “schemes” and “plans.” South-facing windows let in natural light as she works at a desk left over from some college student years before. “I started really early,” Gustafson-Zook said. “My family was Mennonite, so we were singing a lot in church. I...

By Tyson Miller • November 9, 2023 • Features

Dear editor, I appreciated the coverage of the philosophy minor in The Record last week and would like to offer some of my thoughts. During the fall of my first year, I took the course Philosophy, Wonder and Existence with Professor Woodington, an adjunct who is no longer at GC. Now, in my fifth year, 160 credit hours later, I still remember it as being one of my favorite and most formative classes. The topics we covered were completely unrelated to my film and communication studies, but I was fully engaged by the content. We tried to understand the fundamental...

By Jackson Steinmetz • November 9, 2023 • Features Eli Reimer • November 9, 2023 • Features

Most student-athletes don’t have time to complain about being bored. They are too busy juggling classes, practice, games and a social life. But Summer Cooper is a juggler’s juggler.  Cooper, who is often in the market for interesting hobbies, has taken up “joggling,” a combination of juggling and jogging, to go along with her loves of crocheting, knitting and playing chess.  The style of joggling looks different from person to person, but her go-to objects to toss are small mesh balls because “they are easy to wash,” she said; and they do need to be washed, whether from falling on...

By Kate Bodiker • November 2, 2023 • Features

Chad Coleman’s office is decked out. Star Wars and Game of Thrones Funko Pops. Dozens of stacked up Apple product boxes, along with a Steve Jobs bobble head and biography. A palm tree. A Jimmy-Buffett-themed shelf. Chicago Bears and Cincinnati Reds merchandise. “I have all this stuff here,” he said, “a lot of it for conversational pieces. That’s one of my mottos is [to] surround yourself with things that you like, especially in areas you spend a lot of time in.” Coleman, coming up on his 21st year at Goshen College, has quite a bit to talk about. He started...

By Phil Witmer-Rich • November 2, 2023 • Features

Located next to Shrock Plaza, the current Commuter Student Lounge stands in a central location on campus, with quick access to the education department, union dining and the Good Library.  According to Gilberto Pérez Jr., vice president of student life and Hispanic-serving initiatives and dean of students, the lounge has had several locations in the past several years. It was originally in the Welcome Center, but has since been in the basement of Kulp and on the first floor of Coffman. Regarding these previous locations, Pérez said, “None of those spaces really felt as though they were central.” Ashley Valencia,...

By Mackenzie P. Miller • November 2, 2023 • Features

Dear editor, The violence unfolding in Israel/Palestine is horrifying and heartbreaking. As a follower of Jesus, I stand for peace and am opposed to killing. And as Dr. Martin Luther King said, “There can be no justice without peace and there can be no peace without justice.” The tensions between peace and justice makes this conflict so heavy and morally disturbing. The brutal loss of life and hostage-taking on Oct. 7 left me speechless, and now the horrific violence of the Israeli response grinds on relentlessly. I grapple with painful images, rhetoric from activists and media on both sides, and...

By Rebecca Stoltzfus • November 2, 2023 • Features

Last summer, just over a year after Sierra Ross Richer graduated from Goshen College, she met the Wiederkehr family on assignment. The self-sufficient Anabaptist family lives on a farm in a remote section of Ontario, Canada. Ross Richer had written about the Wiederkehr family and their 100 acres of farmland a few months earlier for the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative. She was assigned to write 48 articles and stories about Anabaptists around the globe and was drawn toward their self-sufficient lifestyle. For the article, she carried out her interviews remotely. In her article titled “Composting: An act of pacifism,” Ross Richer...

By Charlie Aldrich • October 26, 2023 • Features

By Isaac Sawatzky • October 26, 2023 • Features

As of the time I am writing this, I have noticed a distinct lack of administrative statements on the crisis in Gaza. This is especially striking because President Stoltzfus issued statements on both the Russo-Ukraine war and the Jan. 6th Capitol riots shortly after news broke. It has been several weeks since Israel declared war on Hamas and began the siege of Gaza. Let me preface my own statements by noting that I am neither Palestinian nor Jewish. I found Emma Gingerich’s piece on the importance of the Palestinian perspective insightful and poignant. You can find it in the Oct....

By Liam Morris • October 26, 2023 • Features

Dressed in his black chef cap, long-sleeve cooking jacket and apron dusted with flour from the morning’s prep work, Jeremy Corson took a seat and began to talk about a subject that has little to do with his credentials as a culinary arts graduate and his work as the head chef at Goshen College: Corson is a beekeeper. “I can talk about bees at length,” Corson said, smiling. He has been keeping bees since 2013.  He got his start when a family member asked him to join her in taking up the hobby.  “My sister-in-law, Jennifer, did this,” Corson said....

By Ann Howe • October 26, 2023 • Features

Seth Smith Kauffman (photos) and Tyson Miller (text) traveled to The Papers Inc. in Milford, IN, to take photos and interview the people who print The Record. Seth Smith Kauffman for The Record Seth Smith Kauffman for The Record Jon Anthony fine-tunes settings on the press as issues of The Record emerge. Seth Smith Kauffman for The Record Seth Smith Kauffman for The Record Jon Anthony stands at the controls of the press. The press can print 40,000 papers an hour. All 500 copies of The Record are printed in three minutes. Seth Smith Kauffman for The Record Rich Krygowski...

By Seth Smith Kauffman • October 12, 2023 • Features Tyson Miller • October 12, 2023 • Features

After years of spending time in Goshen, loving baseball and being the men’s baseball assistant coach, Brad Stoltzfus has been promoted to head coach of the Goshen College men’s baseball team. Stoltzfus brings a new energy to the baseball team and trying to cultivate a community unified with GC’s core values. Stoltzfus grew up in Souderton, Pennsylvania, fifty minutes north of Philadelphia, but he was always surrounded by Goshen alumni. He made a visit to Goshen his senior year in high school because he had relatives that attended, and said, “My parents, my brother, my grandparents and some relatives all...

By Griffin Eash • October 12, 2023 • Features

Editor’s note: This article was adapted from an Expository Writing class last May Term. Nikki Beer, the owner of Miller’s Orchard, is a first cousin to the author.   In the southwest corner of Nappanee, a small town about thirty minutes outside of Goshen, a rustic wooden building trimmed with green is nestled beside a border of towering trees and a simple white picket fence. Behind the building, a large expanse of vibrant green stretches toward the road. Dotted amongst the grass are rows of small, spindly trees, numbering almost 500 in total.  The apple trees planted in Miller’s Orchard...

By Lindsey Graber • October 5, 2023 • Features