On February 23, President Brien Lewis hosted the virtual town hall meeting for the winter semester. Lewis addressed important items from the February Board of Trustees meeting, as well as providing updates on ongoing and future facilities projects on campus, new grants that have been received by the university, Transylvania’s ongoing financial picture, and many more topics.
While coming later in the town hall, the likely topic of most interest for the general student body is ongoing facilities projects. The clear elephant in the room in regards to campus facilities is Hazelrigg Hall, which has sat empty for nearly two years. President Lewis restated his recommendation to the Board of Trustees that Hazelrigg be redesigned as a technology center with “flexible classrooms and lab spaces.” President Lewis spoke to his hopes that Hazelrigg could show Transylvania’s commitment to technological advancement, stating, “[Hazelrigg] will be a real visual beacon for anyone who comes to the campus to see that we are engaging with innovative and cutting-edge technologies for the benefit of our students.” Lewis also claimed that a top priority would be getting what he called the “Hazelrigg diaspora,” that being professors who once had offices in the hall, back in Hazelrigg. Beyond Hazelrigg, President Lewis also announced refurbishments and renovations to the Cowgill Center and the Rosenthal apartments that will be completed over the summer, the addition of card-access to all buildings on campus that don’t currently support it, and continuation of land-use planning for the open 4th Street lot.
When summarizing the events of the Board of Trustees meeting on February 17th, which was called “a historic day,” President Lewis specifically highlighted a proposal by the Bingham Trust for Excellence in Teaching, a proposal that “enthusiastically endorsed and accepted” by the Board. The Bingham Trust, an organization that has former Transylvania president John Norton Williams Jr. as its executive director, has had a relationship with Transylvania since its founding in 1987, and has provided support through awards that shine a light on excellence in teaching. The Bingham Trust Board, in an effort to deepen the relationship with Transylvania, has approved a grant of up to $25 million over the next 15 years to fund teaching excellence awards. President Lewis acknowledged that not every detail of the new program was set in stone and that more questions would be addressed in a future forum. But he also assured that the program was reflective of proposals from the Faculty Concerns Committee, and that more details would be coming the way of faculty in the near future. President Lewis finished by calling the grant, “a very historic and exciting step for Transylvania and our commitment to excellence in teaching and excellence in education.”
However, not all topics brought up in the Town hall were nearly as positive. This was especially true of the tone when President Lewis moved on to discussing the financial situation of the university, which he contrasted to the earlier exciting news by calling it a “not-so-fun thing.” President Lewis emphasized that while enrollment had remained steady over the past few years, even out-performing some national trends, tuition revenue had not. This is because due to, as he put it, “increased competition for a shrinking pool of students,” there have had to be increased discount rates on tuition for prospective students. While President Lewis was confident in the short-term financial health of the university, he stressed the importance of addressing long-standing structural issues. The university has had to restructure its long-term debt, and when combined with other pressures such as wage increases, health care costs that work on a different calendar, and rising inflation, the university’s net cash deficit for this fiscal year is approximately $2.8 million. Some of this is covered by Covid relief funds, but that is far from a permanent solution. President Lewis reiterated the need to address these issues, stating, “We need to take action now in building our budget for the coming year to maintain as much stability and flexibility as we can going forward.” This involves reducing spending in the next three fiscal years by roughly 2.3% a year, which President Lewis described as “not draconian, but something we need to be serious and thoughtful about.” Lewis acknowledged that it was possible that “we will see some positions go away over this period of time,” but claimed it would mainly be through retirements and “recalibrating” positions once they become open. But overall, the university is counting on increased revenues from increased enrollment and retention, areas which have seen positive growth in the past few years, as well as enhanced fundraising.
Many topics were addressed by President Lewis, ranging from rankings and admissions to fundraising and community support, all with an eye to building towards Transylvania University’s 250th anniversary in 2030. If you wish to watch the Town Hall for yourself, a link to the recording was posted in the February 24th edition of the Daily TNotes that are emailed to all students.
comfortable 82-55 victory, led by a 21-point and 19-rebound double-double performance by Senior Dasia Thornton. The next day, the Pioneers faced the number two-seeded Panthers in the Championship game. The game was extremely close in the first half, with the score being tied at 21 a piece at the end of the first quarter and a late three-pointer by Senior Kennedi Stacy giving Transy a one-point lead at the break. The Pioneers would pull away in the third quarter, outsourcing Hanover by a margin of 29 to 8. The Pioneers were able to easily protect this lead in the fourth quarter, ultimately coming away with a commanding 85-58 victory. 
the nation by D3hoops.com, tied for the highest in program history with last year’s team, which went undefeated until the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. Transylvania also had quite a few appearances in the HCAC All-Conference Honors. Senior Madison Kellione was named Co-Player of the Year, Senior Kennedi Stacy was named Defensive Player of the Year, Coach Juli Fulks was named Coach of the Year, Kellione, Stacy, and Senior Dasi Thornton were named to All-Conference First Team, and Senior Laken Ball was named to All-Conference Second Team. This is in addition to Tournament Honors, where Kellione and Thornton were named to the All-Tournament Team, with Thornton additionally being named Tournament MVP. 
3D-printed flat-Earth models, to everyone willing to listen. He also provided a list of “educational sources” on a YouTube-alternative website called BitChute.com, which is known for containing far-right ideologies, conspiracy theories, and hate speech.
others around us.” Whaley agreed with the benefits of making the sandwiches, saying, “I think it is really eye-opening to be able to see the impact that you are having on the people there. It made me very appreciative of what we do.”
A new column of the Crimson Rambler entitled “Sports Rambling,” was created to talk about sports both within Transylvania and the wider community. The main focus was the start of intramural football between fraternities, with a reminder to the teams: “Let’s play hard and clean, and may the best team win!” Other updates in the column included a note about new basketball coach C.M. Newton, recent freshman commits to the Transylvania baseball team, and rival football teams at Georgetown and Centre Colleges.
to the Pioneers, winning them the first map of the night.
sense of what joining said clubs might be like. In the game room, students enjoyed playing games such as Mario Kart and The Jackbox Party pack in an area sponsored by Transylvania’s relatively new Esports team. When asked what he hoped people would learn about the team through this event, Esports coach Dylan Osborne said, “ We’re a really inclusive program. We have programs available to everyone, even if you want to compete in one of our tournaments …and we have a lot of stuff to offer if you consider yourself a casual gamer and don’t want to be involved in high-level competition, we do offer everything for someone at Transy.” 
stations for students to connect with these organizations, as well as a collaborative banner and opportunities to design mugs and coasters, were set up in the Multicultural Center. “We’re trying to highlight that area [the Multicultural Center] more. It is on the backside of the campus center, so we have tried to draw a lot of the events into that hallway to get students to go back there” said O’Bryan. Other notable features of the events were stations where students could learn more about Greek Life, and an arts and craft area set up by the Student Success staff where students could decorate journals, paint mini-canvases, and collect affirmation postcards. 
primarily focused on the start of the new academic year. The cover story of the edition was a report on the demographics of the new Freshman Class. 174 new students enrolled at Transylvania that fall, which included students from a greater variety of states than previous years and a collection of “valedictorians, salutatorians and other students with high scholastic records in high school,” as the story composed by the Rambler staff as a whole wrote. Other cover stories included an announcement of a new language curriculum, which included new laboratory methods of teaching and introduced French, German, and Italian to the university. The front page also notes the hiring of four new professors to the Transylvania staff that Fall, with the most notable being that future Basketball Hall of Famer C.M. Newton was hired to his first head coaching job at Transylvania that summer. 
Council President to the presidents of various fraternities and sororities. By far the largest section of the edition was an overview of the Student Council Constitution and a piece written by Student Council President Willis Frey accompanying it explaining the importance of the student council. Transylvania was also still considered a Christian College at this point, so significant portions of the issue are taken up by the “Crimson Rambler Prayer” and a piece by the editors urging new students to “get out of the rut of Sunday morning sleep” and regularly attend church. 