BCVoice Midweek Radio Show March 11, 2020

(Final campus studio broadcast)

Transcript
INTRO MUSIC 0:52

BRANDON WELLS 1:19
Good evening to the 2-2-8-1-2 and welcome to the BCVoice Midweek Radio show. My name is Brandon Wells, co-station manager here at BCVoice and co-host of the Beyond the Blitz podcast, and I will be your host for today’s show. As you all may already know, Bridgewater has officially cancelled all campus events, beginning tomorrow up and through April 3. I will keep my opinions on this to myself to avoid on-air controversy, but our show must still go on. For all of those traveling the next few days, please be very careful and stay healthy. I want–I’ll transfer the show over to Cheylyn Grant and Isaac Miller for all the most up to national and local news headliners, including all the most stressful topics, including gun violence, stock market crash and, of course, the Coronavirus. Take it away guys.

CHEYLYN GRANT 2:11
Hi, everyone. I’m Cheylyn Grant

ISAAC MILLER 2:13
And I’m Isaac.

CHEYLYN GRANT 2:14
So we’re gonna start off with some local news. According to Richmond local news, a 14-year-old brought a loaded gun to school for self-defense. And this took place in Stafford County, Virginia. He was a member at Mountain View High School, and a 14-year-old brought a loaded gun — specifically a 40 caliber Taurus handgun — and placed it in his gym locker, and he was arrested for bringing it to school. Immediately he was brought to the juvenile detention center. Luckily, no one was harmed, but he’s being charged with possession of a firearm on school property. And he actually claims that was for self-defense as last Friday, he was actually attacked by three other teenagers and one of them was carrying an Airsoft gun and he was assaulted with it. Um, that’s kind of scary.

ISAAC MILLER 2:58
It is. And you know, if this is a 40 caliber handgun, this is this isn’t a little peashooter, this is a…

CHEYLYN GRANT 3:05
It’s a big boy.

ISAAC MILLER 3:06
…that’s a big boy gun that’s gonna do quite a bit of damage. So I mean, you know, certainly, hopefully the bullying incident that caused this is going to be looked into. But this is definitely not, if there are any younger kids listening, this is not the way to respond to bullying correctly.

CHEYLYN GRANT 3:25
If you’re getting bullied, do not bring a gun to school. Tell someone (Absolutely) do not ever bring weapons to school. Okay, so the next issue we’re going to focus on is the economy.

ISAAC MILLER 3:37
Now the markets took a huge hit on Monday. This has been a combination of both the fast spreading of the Coronavirus, leading to countries like Italy getting quarantined entirely. It’s having a huge effect on the world economy, as well as a downward cycle in the oil market as competition between Saudi Arabia and Russia has escalated. That has stemmed from them failing to reach an agreement for an extension on essentially oil production targets — that they would cap their production in order to keep prices high. However, the Saudi Arabians announced that they would ramp up production, causing oil prices to go down and scaring investors in the oil market. Along with the price, the increase in production the Saudi Arabian National Oil companies, Saudi Aramco announced that it would also offer steep discounts on any oil shipments to Europe in the month of April, which is one of the largest buyers of Russian oil in the world. Now the stock market to go back to that it fell, it evaporated. The fall in the market caused over $5 trillion dollars to essentially disappear, in a single day. It fell a total of 7.8% on Monday. It actually triggered a mechanism in the market that was installed in 2013 to prevent these crashes from spiraling out of control that froze the market for a couple hours on Monday. Now stocks did bounce back Tuesday; however, today they again took another drop going down 5.8%, which brought about the first bear market in 11 years, which for those of you who don’t know, a bear market is when the market closes at least 20% below its previous high.

CHEYLYN GRANT 5:30
Yeah, that’s not good. No, oh my gosh, yeah, I heard about this yesterday. One of my professors was saying that Saudi Aramco actually went public, I think last year or the year before, and it’s a really popular investment within stocks. And right now is not a good time for that, especially if someone just invested in Aramco. Their stocks are demolished.

ISAAC MILLER 5:52
They are hurting big time. And a lot of the stocks, too, they’ve been going not only the oil industry, but a lot of like airline industries — Boeing stock, I believe, has dropped over 18% in the past three days. MGM resorts saw their stock drop over 10%. So a lot of tourism, transportation — it’s all it’s getting hit very hard right now.

CHEYLYN GRANT 6:13
Oh my gosh.

ISAAC MILLER 6:15
Now, thankfully, Congress is actually planning to work out a Coronavirus relief package that they hope to get passed by the end of the week. They’re preparing to vote on a bill that would provide enhanced unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and food assistance for individuals in the United States who do are affected by the Coronavirus and may be forced to quarantine. The House Democrats have been working with the White House on this in order to try and reach an agreement that can pass easily. Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland who is the number two House Democrat said that they would vote on this bill tomorrow. And assuming the White House approves of the bill that gets passed, the Senate plans to vote on it immediately with the hopes of President Trump signing it into law on Friday. This is all important because the House–Congress is actually going on a week-long recess starting on Friday, so in order to get this relief out quickly and not have it delayed by another two weeks, they have to hurry and get it out now. There have been talks about also a wider economic stimulus package as well, as we’ve seen with the stock market taking such a huge hit. As of now, those talks are going to be delayed until after the recess. In part thanks to a proposal President Trump made, floating the idea of entirely eliminating the payroll tax for all Americans for the rest of 2020, which on its face, sounds great. However, that would cost the federal government roughly $800 billion, which was about 18% of the entire national budget in 2019. And needless to say the idea has received for that reason, bipartisan opposition.

CHEYLYN GRANT 7:56
Oh my gosh, wow. Well, the first thing: Do we really think it’s a good time for Congress to go on recess? Like right now, in the middle of everything going on: the stock market just crashed, the Coronavirus is spreading throughout the United States — and a week later after everything happens, they decided to take a recess. I mean, I know they can’t move. I know it happens. But now it’s just not convenient for that. Oh my gosh.

ISAAC MILLER 8:20
Oh, absolutely. The pre planning worked out pretty pretty terribly in hindsight on this one. Yeah, for sure. But it is good to see that they are planning to address this quickly. Especially with the what the economy did Monday and Tuesday. It’s really, really important that they get around on this fast.

CHEYLYN GRANT 8:37
Oh my gosh. Alright, now we have some other Coronavirus news, don’t we?

ISAAC MILLER 8:43
Yes, we do. So Bridgewater College, as Brandon made reference to in our introduction, has decided that it will engage in a distance learning from March 16 through April 3, which will essentially be an online instruction of classes. All students are–all residential students–are expected to leave campus by Friday at noon. And classes will be canceled both tomorrow and Friday in order to help facilitate the making of last minute travel plans.

CHEYLYN GRANT 9:20
And like we said, we’re going to keep our opinions on this private; however, just do the basics. Make sure that you’re taking care of yourself as best as you can. This is another virus and just like any other virus, you want to protect yourself as best as you can from it. Just make sure once again, sanitize yourself, clean yourself regularly, take some medication if need be, and just watch out for any symptoms that you may or may not have.

ISAAC MILLER 9:42
Yes, that’s the most important thing if you if you have any symptoms or you’ve been around somebody who has had these symptoms, and you may think you may be infected, get it checked out better safe than sorry.

CHEYLYN GRANT 9:54
Yes. And also, while this package that we announced earlier, may come into play and may come into effect, I saw something around it. This is actually really smart. Someone mentioned that if you don’t have insurance or any health care, what you can do is go donate blood and they have to test the blood. And by testing the blood they’ll see if you have any symptoms with the Coronavirus

ISAAC MILLER 10:15
Oh wow.

CHEYLYN GRANT 10:15
So that’s a really smart method. If you’re struggling to see a health care provider, because of lack of insurance, get your blood tested. That is another alternative to finding out whether you’re infected or not. And with other Bridgewater news, our Title IX coordinator, Heidi Hoover, is leaving. She’s been our Title IX coordinator since January of 2016. And someone else is taking over her position, the name of Shannon Pope, and she currently serves as a deputy Title IX coordinator and Director of Student Wellness. But now she will be the deputy Title IX coordinator. We will miss Heidi. This was also completely sudden. So two things majorly happen in Bridgewater news today, Bridgewater College news today. We get to leave. And then Heidi Hoover’s also leaving. Wow.

ISAAC MILLER 11:05
Yeah, it’s a big, busy day here a lot busier than the typical Wednesday is here at Bridgewater for sure. Now let’s I want to take another moment to talk a little bit about the Democratic primaries that have been going on recently. We didn’t have a chance to talk about Super Tuesday last week; however, there was another round of voting yesterday. Six states voted yesterday including Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho, North Dakota and Washington. Joe Biden won four of those six states. Bernie Sanders was able to win North Dakota. Washington State remains too close to call with roughly 67% reporting, and Joe Biden was able to win the remaining Michigan, Missouri Mississippi and Idaho. (Wow.) Now, he–so Joe Biden now also currently leads the overall delicate count with 864. Bernie Sanders is in second place with 710. And they both very easily lead the field. Now and again, the magic number with those delegates is 1,991. So, jumping from a couple weeks ago after South Carolina where we had candidates sitting in the 60s leading, the field is built very quickly. Now, Biden, you know, this has been a huge comeback for him, especially after the first few states — Iowa where he played a very low; New Hampshire where the same thing happened. The come back in South Carolina really, really kicked him back off. He won 10 to 14 last week on Super Tuesday, and so he’s really taken a commanding lead in this race over Bernie Sanders.

CHEYLYN GRANT 12:42
That’s something that surprised me, especially with the amount of popular support in 2016 — I don’t know if you remember, but I remember — everyone wanted Bernie to win so bad. And it seems now within the Democratic Party, there’s really a di–you can see a major divergence between whether people are going to vote for Sanders or Biden. Now that’s completely clear. I feel like in 2016 that wasn’t.

ISAAC MILLER 13:05
Yeah. And you know, it’s a big part of what’s helping Biden too is that a lot of the field shrank dramatically after South Carolina. Pete Buttigieg dropping out right after that. Amy Klobuchar dropping out right after that — both of them, of course, endorsing Joe Biden. And then of course, on Monday, you get endorsements for Biden from Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, both of whom dropped out earlier in the race, but the field of the Democratic Party seems to really be coalescing around Joe Biden now. So I think it will be a little tough for Bernie going forward to potentially come back and win the nomination. However, something interesting I wanted to point out looking at some exit polling yesterday out of Michigan: 77% of voters aged 18 to 29 in Michigan voted for Bernie Sanders, while 73% of those aged 65 or older, voted for Joe Biden. Now the age 30 to 44 groups and the 45 to 64 groups both kind of follow the trend of the groups that are near the 30- to 44-year olds preferred Bernie over Biden, but not by as extreme of margin. And then the opposite was true with the 45- to 64-year olds; however, voters at 45 and older made up 62% of the voters in Michigan. So very much the older voters behind Biden, and the older individuals are the ones getting out and voting it would seem.

CHEYLYN GRANT 14:26
Man. All right, one more piece of news that I’m gonna fit in here. So this has to do with gun control policy: the Virginia General Assembly, approved more gun control initiatives Saturday as they were part of Ralph Northam’s 2020 plan. So Democrats in the House and in the Senate worked out minor differences, but the chamber agreed on bills to expand background checks: Senate Bill 70 and House Bill 2. This limits the purchase of handguns and background checks will also be expanded to private transfers of weapons unless it’s between family members. So if I’m giving you a gun, you do background check. And the legislation on handgun purchases will limit one handgun within a 30-day span. So you can only purchase one handgun within 30 days. Yeah,

ISAAC MILLER 15:11
Yeah. So I think, Virginia, of course, one of the interesting things about Virginia, and if you didn’t know, in their state legislature, their elected legislative session is extremely short: usually only a month or two long, I believe, I don’t remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it’s no more than two months. So generally, once people are elected, they have to get things done fast as soon as they can. And that’s why we’re seeing this rash of gun control legislation coming through, because we had the Red Flag laws that got passed earlier this year. So the Democrats really taking good advantage of their position they’ve gained this year to get through some gun legislation. And they’ve done pretty well with the background checks, I think is one of the bigger priorities they’ve been looking at it, and definitely something that will be good for their political interest in the long term, I believe.

CHEYLYN GRANT 16:04
Hopefully that can stop 14-year olds, 14-year olds bringing guns into school and with that being said, I’m Cheylyn.

ISAAC MILLER 16:10
And I’m Isaac.

BRANDON WELLS 16:14
That was Isaac Miller and Cheylyn Grant with your local and national news headliners. We are here at BCVoice would like to wish Heidi Hoover happy travels as she moves to the next phase in her life, and we thank of her all she’s done for this campus. I would like to remind everyone before we move on that you are listening to the BCVoice Midweek Radio Show here on BCVoice-dot-org. Our next segment, also heavily dealing with the Coronavirus, is local and national sports headliners. Here dear BC Day of Giving our athletics department and college staff worked hard to raise money for our college. It’s not too late to donate and help your fellow Eagles achieve a better academic environment. Next up we have Joe Caron and Justin Rogers with all of your sporting updates. Take it away guys.

JOE CARON 16:57
What’s up Bridgewater, I’m Joe.

JUSTIN ROGERS 16:59
and I’m just

JOE CARON 17:00
And we’re gonna bring you all the recent sports news across all sports and all localities, starting off with local basketball Bridgewater Eagles. After a great season, the women’s team fell to Roanoke and the ODAC quarterfinals. We beat them earlier in the season. Yeah. But I mean, they had they had a great season, they had like a 10-game win streak.

JUSTIN ROGERS 17:23
Oh, yeah. Now one of the best seasons I’ve seen from our women’s team in a long time. So I mean, kudos to them. And, I mean, they have a lot of, you know, they don’t have a lot of seniors on the team. So next year, they’re gonna be strong. Yeah, this is gonna be a really strong team.

JOE CARON 17:35
Yeah, they’re looking good. They’re looking good. And the men’s team also fell to Hampton, Sydney in the first round of the playoffs. Congrats to the seniors, and the whole team, on a successful season. They had some great moments, some great wins throughout the season. And, you know, similar to the women’s team, they have a lot of young talent coming back. So the future’s looking bright in general for Bridgewater basketball. So moving on to college basketball in general. Well, I mean, it’s hard to talk about really any of these topics without Coronavirus sneaking its way out, it seems. So today, the NCAA demanded that there will be no fans at any of the March Madness games.

JUSTIN ROGERS 18:18
Yeah, that’s crazy. I mean, that’s, I mean, I mean, it spreads more when you have more people, and I understand that I understand why they’re doing that. But I mean, you know what happened happened and now how’s that gonna affect the players though? Especially because you get pumped up with crowd noise and now it’s pretty much like a pickup game of basketball when you’re a kid

JOE CARON 18:39
Like there’s there’s gonna be more people at the intramural games here at Bridgewater tonight. It’s, it’s, That’s bizarre. And even imagine being one of those players and playing a real game in front of an empty, for an empty stadium.

JUSTIN ROGERS 18:54
Yeah, it’s just gonna be interesting. Again, with like, even just brackets and like how all that, just March Madness in general. I mean, now with all you have all the conference tournaments going on, like the ACC, Big 12, like all those conferences, they’re doing their tournaments right now. Especially in the middle of this too. You’re kind of transitioning, okay, because there’s teams that don’t even know if they’re gonna make the tournament, so what does that even look like for them? Especially coming off the last year’s tournament, which was just crazy with Virginia UVA coming back from losing — first team ever to lose to 16 seed and then winning it all the next year. So hey, it’s March Madness. Anything can happen.

JOE CARON 19:33
It truly is March Madness. So I mean, despite all that, we’re still they’re still remaining on the same timetable. Selection Sunday is March 15.

JUSTIN ROGERS 19:42
Yep. So this Sunday?

JOE CARON 19:43
Yeah. The first four is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, March 17 to 18. Nationally, top four is looking like Kansas, Dayton, Gonzaga and San Diego State.

JUSTIN ROGERS 19:59
Dayton and San Diego State — I would have never — like no Duke? And Duke’s been getting upset by almost everybody in the ACC it looks like, I mean. And then North Carolina like UNC, that unless they somehow demolish to the ACC tournament, which I don’t think, I mean, I haven’t checked scores or anything.

JOE CARON 20:16
Cole Anthony would have to drop 35 a game for that to happen.

JUSTIN ROGERS 20:19
Exactly. It’s just this is such a weird college basketball season in general, because there’s so many teams that you’re used to being so good. And then they’re not the SEC is like not even, like as good as it used to be like Kentucky yesterday like top 10. But still, yeah, so this is this could be one March Madness, where we could have a lot of lower seeds moving on.

JOE CARON 20:41
Yeah, I think it would be really interesting to see a team like Dayton winning the whole thing,

JUSTIN ROGERS 20:47
Even if they’re a number one seed, like we’ve seen Dayton in the past as like a lower seed get into the sweet 16 and stuff like that. So yeah, I think it could definitely happen.

JOE CARON 20:57
Yeah, I mean, it’s still like that, it still would be a Cinderella story for them even San

JUSTIN ROGERS 21:00
Even San Diego State

JOE CARON 21:01
Yeah, absolutely. Moving on to NBA. We got the Lakers earlier in the week on, over the weekend, they beat the Bucs, they beat the Clippers, so two big wins. Then last night they drop on to the Nets.

JUSTIN ROGERS 21:19
I mean, that’s interesting. I mean, you know you have — and this goes with any sport — where you have a team that has great against good teams and then they just flop to the bad teams. So especially like the Lakers have a pretty good lead. I believe their lead is like two or three games or three to four games as far as having the number one seed and right now I mean, if you beat the good teams like this, you’re going to get the number one seed. But then, you know, what if you, you know, you’re down the stretch, you’re playing some bad teams and you have teams like the Clippers and the Rockets, who are playing some subpar teams and they’re beating them. It could get very close really quick. But I mean, it’s just one game though. Yeah, I mean, you know, we haven’t seen them kind of taper off. A couple games in a row except at the beginning of the season, but that was the beginning of the season.

JOE CARON 22:03
Yeah, I mean now having said that, the Nets are pretty solid team. They got some, this Caris LeVert guy — he’s playing really, really well.

JUSTIN ROGERS 22:12
And they have injuries on their teams too. So I mean, even despite injuries, you beat a good team like the Lakers. I mean, that’s good for your fan base.

JOE CARON 22:19
Yeah. So I mean, it’s the NBA. You know, any team, any team really can beat any team on any day. That’s how it works. Um, moving on to a subject that isn’t really talked about maybe on a lot of sport broadcasts, we got the UFC — Ultimate Fighting Championship. Saturday night was a big, very highly anticipated fight between Israel Adesanya and Yoel Romero. Adesanya fighting out of Nigeria-slash-New Zealand; Romero fighting out of Cuba. Very kind of different styles, both of them big, powerful strikers. Adesanya having a huge reach advantage. I think he this this this fight really was a toss up coming into that because both both these guys have the power to end the fight in half a second. That’s how that’s how hard they punch. Israel ends up retaining his middleweight belt by decision, and I mean a lot of people watching the fight were kind of underwhelmed. It wasn’t it wasn’t really a you know big slugfest or like right or Rocky Balboa-type fight it was they’re both kind of passive. I think they were both aware of how the other fighter could really end the fight easily knock, knock them out, so they didn’t take many risks — kind of a defensive fight. Adesanya, he did a number on Yoel’s right leg. He kept throwing these powerful roundhouse kicks and Yoel’s right leg, and he I know he was he’s feeling that now. It looks like the next middleweight challenger will be Paulo Costa out of Brazil. Um, so yeah, and then before that, that was the main Fight of the Night, and before that, was one of the — What’s it called? What’s the one of the fights called leading up? Oh, the undercard. Actually, it was it was also, this was also a championship fight between Zhang Weili, out of China, and Joanna Jedrzejczyk, out of Poland. She’s very long last name. Weili wins by split decision. And, I mean, anyone who watched that fight was far was was absolutely entertained. The announcers of this fight called it possibly one of the greatest women’s UFC fights of all time. The fighters combined for 350–351 significant strikes. Okay. Let’s cut that number in half like imagine being punched in the face 175 times and still staying on your feet. I mean, that’s crazy. It that’s a stat like, even if you’ve never watched any combat sport in your lifetime like, that is a very impressive stat.

JUSTIN ROGERS 25:10
You have to have a lot of endurance to just endure that and to take those hits. And then not even that, but also like, wow, even like in sports like, you know, basketball or anything where there’s not really any physical contact, you still get tired, you still get drained. So you have that as well as physical injuries. And so how do you even at the end of that fight, even try to throw punches?

JOE CARON 25:33
Yeah, no, absolutely a Herculean task (very impressive) by both of these women. And I mean, I think like, like you said, like, you know, everyone knows about like the punches and the physical beating that you take in a combat sport, but there’s just as much going on in the lower half footwork, you’re moving your whole body to try to gain an advantage,

JUSTIN ROGERS 25:56
or you’re shifting that weight to, you’re shifting your weight down from below, and then you’re trying to get it in. And it’s even coming from different parts of the body because it is UFC, it’s not just boxing.

JOE CARON 26:05
Yeah. So, I mean, you’re using your whole body for 15 minutes straight just trying to get through this fight. So, truly an insane outing we saw there. Okay. So I mean, I I will definitely be watching more UFC fights in the future. I mean, it’s not something I watch often, but it’s something that (underrated) … Yeah, it’s very, it’s impressive to watch. It’s like an insane feat of human endurance. Baseball MLB is in the middle of spring training, and they’re split into the the Cactus and the Grapefruit leagues. Have you ever heard about that?

JUSTIN ROGERS 26:51
So I haven’t really heard anything about those. But I know that some teams what they do is they’ll kind of split their roster. So they’ll have, like I don’t know if it’s like the starters and then like all of like the people in the minor leagues, but they’ll like split the rosters and then those two rosters will kind of go out and that’s just between them. And like again, off-season, for like any other you know league, you’re trying to make a roster. You’re trying to get a roster spot so you can only keep a certain number of guys and so having spring training like this because, yes, you do have like the extended practices and everything but then you’re going from week-to-week and everything. And then like you know Triple A, and Double A, Single A — all that’s going on at the same time, so I mean and this is just showing you know you have a lot of guys. Like I’m again I live in like the DC area so hearing like a lot of Nationals stuff going on like you got guys like Aníbal Sánchez throwing four innings and only having one hit. So this is showing like, guys especially like him who had a fantastic postseason, they still got their stuff. So again, it’s like I think it’s a little bit different than like preseason for like basketball, hockey, football. That kind of stuff because you still have starters. Like you can go four innings and that sometimes that’s even what you do in a game, and a live game, so you still get that live game feel but not as much of a risk of injury as others.

JOE CARON 28:13
Yeah, so a little more more action in baseball spring league then say the NFL preseason, a little for more

JUSTIN ROGERS 28:19
Yeah, and there’s a little, I mean, granted there is a lot on the line, and I would say that but I mean, because you have the different leads. And you have the pay grade is insane jumping from Triple A to MLB because MLB, you’re making millions of dollars; Triple A you’re making thousands, so that difference you’re fighting for that. So yeah, but nothing against any of the preseason for any of the other sports. I mean, players, I’m sure I mean that then during that they have to have just even fight for a roster spot is insane.

JOE CARON 28:48
Yeah, that’s that’s absolutely crucial. So moving on to football. So the Bridgewater Eagles fall’s 2020 fall schedule was released. We’re, I mean, obviously we’re still in the ODAC, we’re playing a lot of the same teams. We played Stevenson last year; we’re replacing that with the Apprentice School. We will be hosting them this year. There’s a stretch in the middle of the season where we have five out of six games are home games.

JUSTIN ROGERS 29:19
That’s good, though. Is that this is you said towards the middle of the season?

JOE CARON 29:22
Yeah, in the middle of the season.

JUSTIN ROGERS 29:23
Okay, that’s not that bad. Where, how does that affect like the end of the season? Because they have that stretch?

JOE CARON 29:28
I mean, we have we start off the season with two games on the road, and then we end the season with also two games on the road.

JUSTIN ROGERS 29:35
Okay, so it’s not that bad.

JOE CARON 29:36
Yeah. So I mean, that’s definitely some must-see football, knowing we have a lot of, we still, we graduate a lot of seniors obviously, but we still have a lot of young, explosive talent on both sides of the ball.

JUSTIN ROGERS 29:47
And especially because you have those five straight home games like that’s gonna be good for the younger talent just because like you have that home crowd behind you.

JOE CARON 29:54
Yeah, and they can like, you know, get in a rhythm. Like you new guys, we’re just getting getting playing time. So that’ll be exciting to see. Now wrapping it up with the NFL free agency starts on Sunday (Sunday). Okay, now we have some early moves being made. Josh Norman goes to the Bills. For one-year $6 million deal. Six, yes, $6 million deal. The Chargers agreed to a four-year $24-$24.5 million extension with Ekeler.

JUSTIN ROGERS 30:27
Austin Ekeler, other than Melvin Gordon. In my opinion: great move. This is a great move. Because Melvin Gordon, he sat out last season, he’s wanting, and granted, like, I mean, I say this all the time, if you listen to Beyond the Blitz podcast that me and Brandon have, when I talk about this all the time: running backs are easily replaceable. So this is a great move by the Chargers — keeping him because he’s versatile. I mean, you’re looking at the new, you’re talking about a new wave of quarterbacks — how about a new wave of running backs? Guys like Christian McCaffrey who can catch and run.

JOE CARON 30:49
Yeah, I mean, he definitely produced last year, so I think that’s well deserved. And that’s just about all we have for you today, guys. A lot of solid sports news going on. I’m Joe

JUSTIN ROGERS 31:10
and I’m Justin

JOE CARON 31:10
And good night Bridgewater.

BRANDON WELLS 31:13
As they just said that was seniors Joe Caron and my podcast co host Justin Rogers with your weekly dosage of sports. I’m expecting these March Madness ratings to be the lowest in recent memories due to the impending protests against empty live venues. Moving on, I would like to remind our listeners that you are listening to the BCVoice Midweek Radio Show. Also please be sure to donate for Bridgewater’s Day of Giving before the night ends to help your fellow Eagles achieve a better tomorrow. Next up we have Ayinde Roberts and Zach Rogers with a friendly entertainment discussion to help relieve the tension in the air.

AYINDE ROBERTS 31:52
What’s going on everybody?

ZACHARY ROGERS 31:53
Hello, hello.

AYINDE ROBERTS 31:55
Yeah, so given a lot of the news right now, that just came out, we’re gonna try to ease a little bit of the tension. Give a little bit of entertainment news just like our main man Brandon said — thank you for that. So, first we have to talk about the Sipe Center once again, showing, they got a movie showing this week, if you plan on still going to hit up the Sipe Center, congratulations, you get a chance to watch the movie Sonic the Hedgehog.

ZACHARY ROGERS 32:20
I heard that was a great movie. I haven’t seen it myself.

AYINDE ROBERTS 32:22
I have seen it I can tell you I had a blast watching this movie, man.

ZACHARY ROGERS 32:27
And it’s fare for free Thursday and Friday, I think, believe the times is 6:30, for the showings.

AYINDE ROBERTS 32:34
Yes. You still, you, if you’re still in the area you go ahead and go catch you some Sonic the Hedgehog. And what now we’re gonna move on to some TV and movie news. First off, the first reactions to Disney’s Mulan on have hit the internet and they have been overwhelmingly positive. Apparently they’re calling it very immersive. It’s a very immersive remake. It’s very epic remake. Oh, we will see. We’ll see how the release date gets affected by a lot of the coronavirus but who knows, man.

ZACHARY ROGERS 33:06
I, you know what, I, my expectations were low on this movie. They’re still kind of low in this movie because I don’t want to go overhyped because Mulan, the animated version, is still like, one of my favorite anime Disney movies, Disney Pixar, but that’s another topic, but like we’ll see. I don’t know. We’ll see I it’s definitely a different version from the cartoon. So they’re adapting it from the original screen, whereas like the original book, the original story, so like, we’ll see how they like put that from like, story film to film.

AYINDE ROBERTS 33:39
Yeah, I agree. I, I again, I have said recently, that I am not necessarily going to support the film on its opening weekend given politically where I stand and where the film will — some of the film’s actors, more primarily, the film’s lead actress — stands on the protests in Hong Kong. That had had been going on, so I feel like I’m obligated not to see it. But that does not mean I’m going to — I’m not going to go see it opening weekend, but I am going to see because I am excited. It looks like it’s going to be a good movie.

ZACHARY ROGERS 34:11
Speaking of like movies coming out like the last couple weeks since we weren’t here last week, The Call of the Wild came out and Invisible Man.

AYINDE ROBERTS 34:20
One interesting notable thing that we, that I wanted to touch on is another, they had a film event for the anime My Hero Academia, and they they have their second film, Heroes Rising, which I actually got to see. I got to see that and the Invisible Man in the same weekend and talk about a great weekend about for movies, dude.

ZACHARY ROGERS 34:43
Oh, it’s so fun. You got a little anecdote — fun going home and just relaxing. Going to the theaters, watching movies. I watched Onward — such a good movie. Pixar made another good hit.

AYINDE ROBERTS 34:52
If you get the chance you go, always go take yourself to a movie. It always feels good going and treat yourself to a two-hour flick, one-hour-and-a-half flick. It’s always a lot of fun. But we have to talk about some of the big news in the film, especially the film convention industry. South by Southwest, the annual film convention, has been officially canceled. And interestingly enough, no refunds are being distributed to batch holders as of now.

ZACHARY ROGERS 35:23
That’s gonna be, that’s gonna hit hard.

AYINDE ROBERTS 35:25
Yeah, because there are a lot of studios and a lot of people that spend a lot of money, and you’re going to sort of tell those people that hey, we’re not going to give you your money back. Now, regardless of whether or not this convention is canceled and I think that’s not a good look for especially people who want to come back for next year,

ZACHARY ROGERS 35:45
Especially since businesses, some businesses are going down, especially because of the Coronavirus.

AYINDE ROBERTS 35:51
Absolutely. There are a ton of people that are ton of things that are still happening given the Coronavirus Heck, we just saw wres–this is a little bit on the off of the entertainment news — but WrestleMania has been confirmed to still go on in Tampa Bay, even though there have been a lot of concerns about the Coronavirus. So it does make sense to sort of give, given the wide scale that South by Southwest has all for the film industry. I think it would make a it makes both a good logical sense for you to cancel it but at the same time you need to refund these people.

ZACHARY ROGERS 36:28
Oh yeah, because they spend hard-earned money for this.

AYINDE ROBERTS 36:30
Exactly, 100%

ZACHARY ROGERS 36:32
Moving on to more lighthearted news and happy news, Guardians of the Galaxy and like the cast for Guardians of the Galaxy, or just the characters themselves, are going to appear in Thor Love and Thunder.

AYINDE ROBERTS 36:44
I am 110% excited for this. I have been on record saying that I’m not that excited for Thor Love and Thunder. This is the thing that pulled me right back into being excited. I love the fact that you had that tease at the end of Avengers: Endgame talking about as Guardians of the Galaxy, I want to see that in a movie and we’re about to get that. You want to hear more about this story, check out this Sunday, my podcast my talk, we’re going to be going into this story a little in a little bit more detail along with other stories where we talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its entirety. But enough, enough shameless plugs, we got to get into some video game news.

ZACHARY ROGERS 37:26
Video game news. Well, going back into the into the little sad, depressing,

AYINDE ROBERTS 37:31
Oh, we’re going into cancellation-central here.

ZACHARY ROGERS 37:35
Whooo. Well, so according to CNBC, the game to the Game Developers Conference, the GDC, has been cancelled due to the increase of the Coronavirus as well as

AYINDE ROBERTS 37:46
Well, I we got to get into this because this one we need to spend a little bit of time on because this is history. For context, for the past 25 years, there has been a little convention in California called the Electronic Entertainment Expo also known as E3. It has never been canceled in the past 25 years regardless of any sort of outbreak or. It’s been going on for 25 years and now this is the first year in its history that the Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 will not be happening in June. It has been officially canceled as of this morning.

ZACHARY ROGERS 38:29
Well, it’s especially concerning, or maybe some people might say relieving, because, like there’s been people dropping out of the conference, Playstation dropped out for the second year. Can remind me the guy’s name?

AYINDE ROBERTS 38:43
Geoff Keighley

ZACHARY ROGERS 38:44
Geoff Keighley for the first time is not coming to the conference

AYINDE ROBERTS 38:47
And they lost one of their creative directors over the past couple weeks, so the writing may have been on the wall that E3 may have, made, we may not be seeing an E3 or not going to see an E3 that has been what E3 was like,

ZACHARY ROGERS 39:02
Well, we’ll never know.

AYINDE ROBERTS 39:03
Yeah, we’ll never know now, now we have to wait until 2021 for the next Electronic Entertainment Expo.

ZACHARY ROGERS 39:08
Ooh, here’s something I’m so excited about: NFL is currently working with 2K Games in the making of new games in the future. I’m so excited.

AYINDE ROBERTS 39:19
I think that 2K has been doing a lot doing really well with a lot of their to the NBA games. Granted, I don’t like the whole the gambling system that was in the newest ren–edition of NBA 2K. Also WWE 2K 20 is a broken, buggy mess, but I digress. I think this is they’re going to do well. I think EA needs means the EA has has such a hold on that the NFL that it feels like it’s bizarre that we’re going to see another game company thinking about making games for them, but I’m excited. I’m really excited. And also speaking of new games, we got a new release: A Call of Duty War Zone that released yesterday. It is a free-to-play Battle Royale game that’s available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, along the lines of Apex Legends and Fortnite.

ZACHARY ROGERS 40:14
Oh, it’s also coming out with Blackout from Black Ops 4 that’s kind of like a con–not a continuation of that, but just like going on aong lines of that. But it’s more of a modern warfare thing, because it’s if people had the game, like, they could just download it on the side, but if you don’t have the game, you can still download it. So I feel like this is a big leap for people who want to get into Call of Duty but don’t necessarily want to buy it for 60 bucks. So I don’t know, I have to give this a try.

AYINDE ROBERTS 40:45
I might give it a try. I’ve never been a big fan of Call of Duty but you know, if there’s a there’s a new game and everyone’s been raving about it, and I hear good things about this, you know what I might put it on my PS4 alongside that Final Fantasy 7 demo.

ZACHARY ROGERS 40:59
Well, speaking of cancellations central, here we go again,

AYINDE ROBERTS 41:04
Hop on the train and for cancellation central

ZACHARY ROGERS 41:07
We’re going to a little tech news according to Forbes, they’re the rumored Apple event that was going to happen in March, that was going to release some products, is going to be canceled. It wasn’t necessarily like it wasn’t gonna happen, but it was that usually happens it was maybe gonna be a sure thing. But it’s not gonna happen anymore as it was confirmed. These this event would have included a new iPhone SE 2, new iPad Pro models, new over-the-ear airpods, so along the lines of like Beats over-the-ear headphones. But I believe, according to Forbes, it is still going to happen, but it’s not going to be a public press, it’s not going to be a public event. Since because the Coronavirus they might just do an online presentation only instead so they can get their product out but not have anyone infected or affected by the Coronavirus.

AYINDE ROBERTS 42:09
Yeah, this is not the first time that we would have something like this. I mean, if you go back and you look at something like Final Combat, which was the Mortal Kombat tournament that happened a couple weeks ago, actually a couple days ago, it was still on but there was no live audience because, of course, the Coronavirus

ZACHARY ROGERS 42:28
Yeah, going off topic a little bit, this is kind of the same thing what’s happening in sports, just like there are games are still going on, but there’s no audience in attendance to reduce the the kind of like the chance of the Coronavirus spreading. But, um

AYINDE ROBERTS 42:45
But it’s also interesting as you’re seeing a lot of big places that are also still not getting shut down by the Coronavirus. Disney Parks is still on, is still going to open its doors regardless. Yes sir. It is still opening its doors regardless of the Coronavirus. However, the GLAAD awards will no longer be held on March 19 in New York City due to the Coronavirus; however, like I said previously, you have one of the biggest biggest wrestling no wrestling events that is sort of synonymous with sports and entertainment. So I mean, we I mean, it’s it’s technically entertainment so we can talk about it. And that is, of course the biggest show of the wrestling year, WrestleMania, still being on in Tampa, as I’ve said before, regardless of the Coronavirus. Overwatch League, however, canceled their events due to the coronavirus. So it’s a it’s a little bit startling. And if you’re a fighting game fan, you are looking at Evo very, very, very carefully. Evo is the con, the big fighting game convention competition that happens every July, and I believe it’s July or August, but either way if this gets really bad. E3 has been canceled, and that is in June. What’s going to happen for the biggest fighting game competition in the world? Everyone’s going

ZACHARY ROGERS 44:05
Yeah, well I’m thinking just in general, like how is this — how is the Coronavirus — cvid 19 — COVID-19 — how is that going to affect just like game releases in the future? Especially coming out this summer and the fall? Like there’s gonna be big game releases coming out.

AYINDE ROBERTS 44:22
I mean, in April, you have three high profile games coming out. You have Final Fantasy 7, and you have game Resident Evil 3, they both come out weeks apart from one another. So that

ZACHARY ROGERS 44:36
Yeah, my thinking is like the games are gonna release, there’s no doubt about that. But how this this gonna affect sales because people are, depending on the area we live in, going to be self-quarantined, and not going to go out and buy the game, or like digitally not gonna have time to play the game. So

AYINDE ROBERTS 44:53
Well, yeah, it’s it’s a little bit sad to see some of these big conventions, especially if you’re looking, if you’re a gamer, to see them get cancelled, but it doesn’t matter. We’re gonna still get great games. We still got Cyberpunk coming down the line in September. We got the Avengers coming out down the pipeline in September. And also if you’re a movie fan and you’re looking towards South by Southwest, don’t be alarmed because you still got great movies. You still got Black Widow who released this new trailer this week. If you want to know more about that, check out this Sunday’s Cinema Talk. We’re going to be talking about all things MCU and special MCU themed episode, but I think that’s going to be sort of the time that we have here.

ZACHARY ROGERS 45:35
I just want to say to everybody who’s listening, be careful, especially the students who have to go home. Just be careful as you go home, take necessary precautions and just stay safe.

AYINDE ROBERTS 45:47
Yes, please stay safe. Make sure you’re washing your hands, using hand sanitizer, wherever you need to. And, as always, this has been the entertainment section, and we will see you when we get back.

ZACHARY ROGERS 45:58
See y’all later.

BRANDON WELLS 46:00
Ayinde and Zak — always with the heartfelt entertainment conversation. For more on entertainment, please tune in to the Cinema Talk podcast that Ayinde has produced himself. That is up on BCVoice’s YouTube page, as well as Spotify and Apple podcasts. Look that up with Cinema Talk. He’s also on Instagram and Twitter. Moving on is time for Brandon-spoiler-free weekly movie review. Today I want to discuss the Invisible Man. I rate this movie a solid 8 out of 10 and an early contender for a horror movie of the year. Its use of suspense from beginning to end is something I seldom see and a movie like this. I recommend seeing this — and before you ask, yes, I was skeptical too. Before we move into our last segment tonight, I want to remind our viewers that you are listening to the BCVoice Midweek Radio Show here on BCVoice-dot-org. To end tonight. Justin Rogers returns with bi-weekly segment, Corner Club, Club Corner — other way around. Today, he sits down with Zach Couden to discuss comitatus, which is the on-campus sword fighting club. Sounds fun and intriguing. Let’s hear all about it.

JUSTIN ROGERS 47:09
What’s up guys? Another edition here of Club Corner, here with Zack, to talk about comitatus. Is that how you pronounce it? Awesome. So tell us a little bit about what comitatus is and a little bit about like, what you do for the club and what your position is.

Zach Couden 47:28
So, I’m the president of comitatus I have been for the last two years and Comitatus is is a Western martial arts club — or Eastern martial arts club. Sorry. And we teach sword fighting, for lack of a better word. We teach you how to fight with long sword spears, axes, shields — medieval weaponry abound.

JUSTIN ROGERS 47:44
Yes. Okay, so how did you when you first came to campus, how’d you first get involved in this?

Zach Couden 47:51
I was actually contacted before I came to campus by the media coordinator of my freshman year over Facebook and they were like, we saw that you came to the activities fair, and put down your name on our list, and I just wanted to reach out to say like, we’re really excited to have you on campus. And I asked him some questions about the club. And he gave me the rundown and was just like, we we do sword fighting. Yeah. And I was like, I’m sold. I’m in.

JUSTIN ROGERS 48:16
So how do you do you talked about sword fighting a little bit that got you intrigued. But what is the one thing as a freshman because, you know, freshmen and sophomores, they’re just looking for cliques. They’re just looking for places to be, how did you get sold on this club? How did you get sold on comitatus? Um,

Zach Couden 48:30
it started out that I needed a place to exercise and comitatus was a great place to exercise. But after attending two or three meetings, a lot of the members that were, you know, returning members were very welcoming, very warm people very just genuinely friendly people. And basically, they just kind of adopted me, I became one of their friends.

JUSTIN ROGERS 48:49
That is awesome. You still keep those friendships today?

Zach Couden 48:51
I do. I’m in regular contact with pretty much every previous member who has graduated.

JUSTIN ROGERS 48:56
That is awesome when you have clubs like that, like I mean, I’ve been in clubs before, and I’m still am in clubs, where you know, some of the people who have graduated before I still talk to them, like on a regular basis. So that’s awesome when you have a club, especially when you get to swordfight, though, and we’re going to talk about a little bit right that now. So what is a typical practice look like for you guys? And how often do you guys meet? Also there like tournaments and stuff that you guys do or? Tell us a little bit about it.

Zach Couden 49:19
So we differ on semesters, like how each semester goes. Fall semester’s usually, it’s when all the freshmen show up and we teach them how to fight with long swords, the first weapon they have to do. And the whole semester is focused on just teaching the longsword weapon. And then at the end of that semester, we do our fall tournament, which is every returning member. So far, we haven’t had less than 80 people show up to tournaments.

JUSTIN ROGERS 49:44
Wow, that’s awesome.

Zach Couden 49:45
They pick up the longsword, they put on some gear and some armor and we go at it in a round robin style. Everyone gets to fight everyone. Whoever has the most victories is declared the champion.

JUSTIN ROGERS 49:54
That’s awesome.

Zach Couden 49:55
Then in spring semester, we do what’s called mixed weapon combat. That’s where you kind of branch off to any other student in the club, who was already got training in a weapon you want to learn. Learn that weapon. It can be anything from an axe to a spear. We’ve got daggers, we’ve got long swords, one handed, we got shields. And you just train in that weapon, as well as any others you want to learn. And then at the end of the spring semester, we have a tournament of mixed weapon where you have to cycle through every weapon you’ve authorized in throughout the year, and prove that you know how to fight with a multitude of weapons that everyone else and they’re authorized.

JUSTIN ROGERS 50:26
Okay, so for people who are teaching on how to use the weapons, do you have to get like certification? Or how does that work? And like, I mean, if you’re brand new to the club, and you’re thinking like, these people just like learn on the fly or? Like because like, I would want them feel like I’m yielding, I’m wielding a sword here, I want to make sure that I’m safe and that the person that is teaching me actually knows what he or she is doing.

Zach Couden 50:51
So there’s two routes you can take when you get into comitatus. You can take a certification route, which is for those that don’t want to fight, like the hands-on, put-on gear fight. They just earn how to use the weapon. They go through a very intense training from Gavin Lawson, the professor who is the adviser to the club. And he teaches you how to hold the sword, how to swing the sword, what the stances and the guards are — you learn every little in and out of the weapon and how to use it. The other method is called authorizing. Um, you pick up the weapon, you get training throughout the semester to use it — learning to swing it, how to swing it properly, how hard to swing it, where to swing it, what it is, what it’s called, where it came from — and then you pick a pre standing member in the club who is authorized in the weapon and you two have a fight. It’s a three round fight. Round one, one of you attacks on the defense. Round two is the opposite, and then round three is full combat, and it’s to see if you know how to use the weapon safely in an authorized good manner. And Lawson supervises this so at the end of the fight, if he thinks you’re ready, you officially can start training others.

JUSTIN ROGERS 51:48
Start training others. Ah, that’s super cool. It’s cool that you guys do that. Um, so how often do you guys meet?

Zach Couden 51:56
We meet three times a week, Tuesdays at 9:30 in the morning, Fridays at 4:30 and then Sundays at 3.

JUSTIN ROGERS 52:02
Okay, and how popular is this on campus? Like how easy is it really to kind of like get involved in it and just be in it?

Zach Couden 52:09
Um, so as far as popularity on campus, we currently have 11 current standing members who have paid dues and do come to multiple club meetings a semester or in a week. As far as getting into it, you just have to show up to one of the practices. You get a month’s worth of practice without having to pay dues. And you’ll get a full training on how to use the weapon. You can’t fully fight until you pay your dues but you just show up tell him you want to learn how to fight and we start teaching

JUSTIN ROGERS 52:34
Okay, and you talked about like that pretty much semester long training on the longsword. Why is it a semester long?

Zach Couden 52:41
Comitatus — number one thing is we preach safety above all else. You, we do fight. It is in an aggressive manner, but we have you know, rules and stuff you know,

JUSTIN ROGERS 52:51
That’s why you train

Zach Couden 52:52
Yes, we have very specific, you know, hard like, you know, you can hit this hard and we do demonstrate on them on the pell with consent. But it’s safety. It’s all safety. We spend that semester on longsword and your freshman year, the first semester you’re there. So you know how to hit, how to train, how to use the weapon, what is safe, what is not. So when you move on to other weapons, we don’t have to repeat that training with you,

JUSTIN ROGERS 53:13
is it? So you would say it’s kind of a base weapon that you would use?

Zach Couden 53:18
It is the foundation. The longsword transitions to literally every other weapon we have in our arsenal.

JUSTIN ROGERS 53:23
Is it also because it’s the hardest? Or is it just because again, like you said it, the skills that you learn, you can pretty much attribute to almost every other weapon you try to learn?

Zach Couden 53:33
I would say it’s actually the easiest weapon because it is lightweight, it’s easy to hold, it’s easy swing, it’s all leverage-based. And it just transitions to every other weapon so well, that the training you learn that you can just kind of move into another weapon seamlessly and never have a different issue.

JUSTIN ROGERS 53:46
Now the weapons that you use, like how authentic are they? Are they like real weapons they use? And then second question, if they are like, what is the armor? How protective is it? Because these are some questions. I’m Sure people would actually, you know, want to learn the answers to.

Zach Couden 54:04
So it’s great question. Our weapons are period style accurate in terms of length, weight and shape — how they, you know, it looks like a weapon from the time period. However, all of our materials, the weapons are made out of a synthetic plastic; it’s a very durable kind of like the material used in Kevlar vests. And it’s a dull edge, so there’s no risk of cutting or stabbing. And, and, you know, it’s very safe to use. We have weapons, namely glaives and spears, they’re made out of PVC pipe or wooden rattan. And then we wrap them in foam in certain areas, and then we wrap that in duct tape. Now foam sounds like it might be safer. I assure you if you’re not paying attention, it will, it will hurt.

JUSTIN ROGERS 54:46
Yeah, I’m sure you can get a lot of bruises from these.

Zach Couden 54:48
Yes, that’s why we run through the extensive training. You don’t let you fight with a weapon until we know you were safe with the weapon. And then as far as armor goes, we’re actually in the process of buying upgraded better armor. But currently it’s a plastic chest plate that covers most of your torso. There’s elbow guards, knee guards, fencing style mask helmet, which actually works really well, really durable. And then set of really reinforced gloves in case you get hit in the hands, you don’t mess up your fingers. The gear we’re buying, we’re buying reinforced jackets that cover your entire body, arms and hands, as well as a set of slacks that go over your current existing pants. And that is the actual equivalent of like police-style Kevlar. And we’re buying steel fetters for to give members training, if they wish it, with Lawson one-on-one, to go professional in HEMA, which is the organization we’re based off, after they graduate.

JUSTIN ROGERS 55:40
That is cool. So would that be like something that you do, like obviously you graduate, you get your own job, but then something you do on the side? Is that like national?

Zach Couden 55:48
Yes, there is roughly in every state, about three to four HEMA groups, that you can sign up with and train with outside of you know, your business times, when you have free time on the weekend, that you can, you just show up up once a, once a month. And then there are national competitions across the states. There are different leagues. There’s an Eastern, a middle, and western style league, and there’s also a weird one in the south that kind of like congeals everyone. But overall there is a pretty diehard fan fan base outside of college for HEMA, which is a pretty serious competition, actually.

JUSTIN ROGERS 56:23
Dang, that’s awesome. You talked about making some weapons like out of PVC and stuff. How often do you guys actually like make your own weapons? Or is it mostly like you buy them with the money that you have in the, you know, the department and everything that the school gives you? So like, how often do you make weapons or do you make them at all?

Zach Couden 56:41
So we get reimbursed in the school through student senate. We can request funding and usually, if members, we take out a poll at the beginning of every semester about what weapons and armor and gear they want for the club. And they can send in requests and shopping lists to me, the president, and I give them to our advisor. He signs off on them. If people want a specific weapon — like the glaives which is not sold on any of the websites we usually go to — we he researched how to make them safe and real like to use in the club and bought the materials and we held a workshop for about three hours. Each person got to make their own glaive if they requested to do so. And the same goes for any other weapons: if anyone wanted gear, specific gear, we would build it if we could not find it elsewhere. We have a shields — full arm shields and kite shields, which are very long shields meant to be ride on horseback. We made those out of plywood, rubber and some some straps and stuff, and they work great. But we make weapons pretty much every semester based on club appeal.

JUSTIN ROGERS 57:42
That’s awesome. So you were talking about, a little bit towards the beginning, I mean, that’s, this club is where you have you know a lot of your really tight knit friendships, so how is this helped you personally to form friendships on kind of when you came on campus? But also like, see as camp, in the club as a whole, being a leader as well, kind of seeing that how have you seen that?

Zach Couden 58:06
Um, so as far as friendships go, when I first started and kind of got through the club, my friends kind of consisted of the comitatus club. I didn’t have many friends outside of that when I first started. But as I hung out with them, a lot of them hung out with people that were outside of the club, and I kind of expanded my friend circle through just becoming friends with the friends that I made. And then after I became president, I kind of took on a much more social role in the club. I did do a lot of glad-handing student events; I got to talk and interact with a lot of the student body. And a lot of people just came to know my name and know me as the sword guy. So usually, if someone has a question, and they they don’t really have any kind of an issue, walking up to talk to me. I’m a pretty friendly guy, and I seem to kind of pick up on that. I’ve made a couple of dozen friends, especially this year among the freshmen class, because almost our entire club this semester is freshmen. Our current president, or coming up president, her name is Hannah McPherson. She is a freshman female, first female president of comitatus, by the way,

JUSTIN ROGERS 59:02
Wow, that’s awesome.

Zach Couden 59:04
And she’s a freshman. And we gave her this opportunity to be president. And she, she leapt at it. Um, but, you know, I made great friends with a lot of freshmen and other people over the years just because I had to be social events and just learn and talk to people.

JUSTIN ROGERS 59:19
Yeah. And again, like for anybody that’s listening with, not just with comitatus, but really any club that you want to join, I mean, it’s a great opportunity just to get to know people. And I like what you said a lot about like you met people, and a lot of your friend group, I’m guessing like the first semester you’re here, your fall semester was them, but then through them, you got to meet more people. And then you get to meet more people, more people and then your friend group just expanded just through being in a club. So I mean, for freshmen, literally just anybody if you’re kind of you know, feeling a little lonely don’t really have a big friend group, just join a club, you know. Even if, you know, you don’t know how to sword fight or anything so. And kind of going off of that, who can join the club? Do you have to have experience or can you just like, come in and like, just try to get the experience? Or also like, what if you come into the club and then you’re not really getting it but you still want to be in the club? What does that look like?

Zach Couden 1:00:12
So for the most part, anyone can join the club. There are some tiny things that might bar you from participating in practices, like you have a medical injury. if you can’t safely, you know, participate, it might bar you, but anyone can join. The only requirement is that, you know, you can breathe. And you’re not like, you know, going crazy during clubs. Um, and then as far as for people that don’t really get it that just kind of want to hang out, we highly encourage that. We’re just a giant group of friends and just hanging out.

JUSTIN ROGERS 1:00:43
That is so awesome.

Zach Couden 1:00:45
Half of practices is usually just telling puns and then swinging swords, like it’s, it’s a pretty fun time. We’re pretty serious nerds actually. Um, so like, we have a member this year, who, you know, can’t really participate They, they don’t really get it. In addition, they have some stuff that kind of stops them from being physically active a whole lot. So they just come and hang out at practices and they just have a blast just watching us, you know, goof off and they are joining in the fun. They laugh. We also have foam weapons. So for people that can’t really do a lot of physical activity, or can’t really use the weapons, they can pick up the foam weapons — and they’re probably safer than like most foam, nerf toys — and they can participate and have a blast that way.

JUSTIN ROGERS 1:01:25
That is awesome. That’s good to hear. So every viewer trying to look for a club — Comitatus — when we come back on campus. Be looking out for it. You guys, what have three meetings, you said you got?

Zach Couden 1:01:36
Yeah three meetings — Tuesdays at 9:30 a.m., Fridays at 4:30 p.m. and then Sundays at 3 p.m. — all in the Funkhouser.

JUSTIN ROGERS 1:01:42
Yeah, so be looking out in the Funk for comitatus. Thanks for chatting with me, Zach.

Zach Couden 1:01:48
No problem.

JUSTIN ROGERS 1:01:48
All right, and thank you guys for listening to Club Corner here on BCVoice Midweek Radio. Back to you, Brandon.

BRANDON WELLS 1:01:56
And with that our show is over. Thank you to Zach Couden for coming down to be our guest tonight. We always like to hear from members all over the campus and community. Please stay safe in the coming weeks as the threatening pandemic continues to threaten all aspects of our lives. We will be back on April 8 after this all calms down. Until then, please be sure to check out our website periodically for new articles, and breaking news, over our absence. My name is Brandon Wells and thank you for joining me on this journey.

OUTRO MUSIC

Transcribed by https://otter.ai