City of Goshen
November 2, 2023
Mayoral conference held at GC
Goshen College hosted a mayoral candidate forum featuring Gina Leichty, a Democrat, and Benjamin Rogers, a Republican, last Thursday. The event, hosted by the Student Senate, was in the fellowship hall of the Church-Chapel. Students filled the room, requiring some to grab extra chairs and sit in the back. Along with Rogers and Leichty, all candidates for various council seats were in attendance and were recognized before the forum began. After a few opening statements and gratitudes, the forum began with the declaration of question topics given by Daniel Eash-Scott, a senior and vice president of marketing for the Student...
March 23, 2023
Pérez makes local and national impact
At Goshen College, Gilberto Pérez Jr. serves as the vice president for student life and the dean of students, but outside of the college, he seeks to make an impact in as many ways as he can. In the larger Goshen community, Pérez has served as a city council member for the city’s fifth district since 2020. “That work has really placed me in a lot of different settings across the community,” Pérez said. “It’s looking at ways that the city is helping residents who have issues with traffic, issues with trash pickup, issues with how well streets are [maintained],...
February 23, 2023
Local treasure of coffee and community
Tucked away on East Washington Street is the unofficial caffeine supplier for the city of Goshen, The Electric Brew. A hodgepodge of decor along with various places to hide away and forget the outside world for a while greets you. To enter the shop is to wait in line and be given a chance to look around. A 1920s vintage bicycle divides the seating section from the front counter, a large painting of Earth as seen from space encompassing half of the wall, thrifted furniture of oak and pine wood that could only mesh well together in this setting, a...
February 2, 2023
CONNECT Transit Plan pushes for improvements
The CONNECT Transit Plan (CONNECT), a collaborative, 10-year plan for interurban transportation in the Michiana area, has entered its final stage of development and is seeking to make major improvements to the area’s transit systems over the coming decade. The trolley is a resource many people rely on in Goshen and surrounding communities, such as Dunlap, Mishawaka and Elkhart, giving 338,606 total rides in 2022. It is also especially important to Goshen College’s community, since students, staff and faculty have free admission with their GC IDs. The plan has been spearheaded by the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) and...
January 19, 2023
Light is shed on Goshen’s ‘sundown’ past in new documentary
This past Saturday, “Goshen: A Sundown Town’s Transformation” premiered at Umble Center. The project has been months in the making. As a Maple Scholar this past summer, Silas Immanuel, an accounting and film double major, researched and began work on a documentary about Goshen’s history as a “sundown town.” In James Loewen’s book, “Sundown Towns,” a sundown town is defined as an organized jurisdiction – a city, for example – that for decades kept African-Americans or other groups from living there or even staying overnight. This piece of history has already been made public and officially acknowledged. In 2015, the...
September 16, 2022
Arts on the Millrace attracts local artists
Goshen’s ninth annual Arts on the Millrace (AotM) took place on Saturday. The event featured over 44 artists, local guilds and local musicians. “It’s a curated event where the community can connect with — and shop — master artists, but in a casual, family-friendly, outdoor setting,” said Adrienne Nesbitt, director of events and co-founder of AotM. Arts on the Millrace is a juried event, located near downtown Goshen at Powerhouse Park and stretching south along the Millrace trail. It was a sunny Saturday in Goshen, so the Millrace welcomed many faces throughout the day. The activities included live music, food...
January 20, 2022
Inside-Out program returns after two-year hiatus
During the May 2022 term, the Goshen College Criminal and Restorative Justice Department will welcome back the Inside-Out Exchange Program. The program was created as an educational tool to bring imprisoned students, referred to as “inside students,” and college students, or “outside students,” into a classroom-like environment. The goal is to study issues from crime to societal problems while learning from each other and creating strong relationships. Inside-Out was brought into fruition in May 2014 by the late conflict studies professor Carolyn Schrock-Shenk. “After Carolyn’s death, I inherited some of her classes and projects; Inside-Out is one of them,” said...
January 20, 2022
GC to be considered for new ice rink
A new proposal could bring an ice rink to the edge of Goshen College’s campus. A project years in the making, the original idea for the multi-use pavilion and ice rink was announced by the City of Goshen in 2017. Its construction was set to start in 2020, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the project stalled. Now, it has come back onto the city’s agenda in 2022, and the first issue to settle is where the rink will be located. The original idea, and the city’s preference, is for the rink to be built downtown adjacent to the Millrace...
October 28, 2021
City works to acknowledge Sundown Town history
An effort is currently underway to erect a plaque on the lawn of the Goshen City Hall in acknowledgement of Goshen’s history as a sundown town. The Goshen Community Relations Commission (CRC) is considering installing the historical marker as part of a commitment to creating a more inclusive city. The term “sundown town” is the name given to towns that practiced the exclusion of people of color from an area after sundown. The practices barred people of color from owning property, starting families and living in certain areas through means of intimidation. The city of Goshen officially recognized its history...
October 28, 2021
Zero Waste Goshen features Recycling Works
Late Thursday, the Zero Waste Goshen webinar series will dive into the local recycling scene with guest speaker Daniel Zelaya. Zelaya, a representative from Recycling Works, the largest recycling plant in the region, will be the second speaker in the series. The Zero Waste Goshen initiative and webinar series was launched by the City of Goshen’s environmental resilience department in September, with funds from a grant through the Community Recycling Grant Program of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. “We’ve been on a trajectory for the city of increasing our waste 10% per year for the last several years,” said...
October 7, 2021
Students gain access to Goshen Public Library cards
Starting this year, Goshen College students have the opportunity to receive a library card from Goshen Public Library. This new partnership aims to provide additional resources on top of the college’s Good Library, which already provides students access to many digital and printed resources. Prior to this year, if students wanted to find additional resources that the Good Library did not have access to, they would have to go and search for the resources themselves. This program was set in place to make it easier and less time consuming for students to obtain resources for their course work. Goshen Public...
October 7, 2021
GC’s new Center for Community Engagement to be housed in Newcomer
(from left to right: Dave Kendall, Duane Stoltzfus, Erika Buhring, Suzanne Ehst and Jan Shetler) Goshen College will soon have a new hub for partnerships in the community, thanks to a total of $5 million in grants, from both the Lilly Endowment Inc. and the Community Foundation of Elkhart County. The grants will fund new programs and partnerships and make Newcomer Center the home of the Center for Community Engagement. The Center for Community Engagement is Goshen College’s newest initiative to strengthen ties with the greater community, according to Suzanne Ehst, professor of education, director of the core curriculum...
September 16, 2021
County Council votes against applying for CDC grant
The Elkhart County council elected to deny health education for it’s marginalized communities when it voted not to apply for a CDC grant at the council meeting last Saturday. The grant, offered by the national Center for Disease Control, would have provided $995,698 to train and deploy up to six new health workers to promote education about chronic diseases among local Latino, Black and Amish communities. Instead, council members chose to preserve what they saw as freedom from government overreach. “I think the grant is a social justice issue,” said Gilberto Perez Jr. who attended the meeting where the decision...
September 16, 2021
Arts on the Millrace features local artists
Goshen Arts and Events hosted the annual Arts on the Millrace this weekend on Saturday. Upon arrival at Powerhouse Park, live music led the way to the trail of artist booths. Event coordinator and Goshen College alum Adriene Nesbitt founded the event in 2014 as a “way to get artists excited about living in Goshen.” Nesbitt works as the Director of Events at Eyedart Creative Studio located in Goshen. Last year, the event was held solely online due to COVID-19. Nesbitt expressed excitement about the return to normalcy: “We were happy to be back in person; art sells a lot...
September 9, 2021
Millrace drained for dam repairs
The Goshen Dam Pond has a new look: cracked mud, dried aquatic plants and fish carcasses cover the area that a month ago, was under water. The unfamiliar appearance is due to a pond draining deemed necessary in order to repair a critical toe drain inside the dam. Ronda DeCaire, director of Elkhart County Parks explained that the toe drain is a perforated underground PVC pipe that collects water soaking into the east bank of the pond and diverts it back into the river downstream, preventing seepage and erosion on the populated river-front. The water level in the pond was...