BITS & PIECES: An unexpected phone call

By JOEL PHELPS | arkadelphian.com

We were elated this morning to get a call from Dr. Trey Berry, Henderson State University’s chancellor. Because we recently shared Ouachita Baptist University’s spring enrollment figures, we felt obligated to report the headcount at both of Arkadelphia’s colleges. We got Henderson’s figures easily and promptly earlier this week, and admittedly we were a little shocked to learn then that Dr. Berry wanted to speak to us. What we learned is that Henderson lost only 9 students between the fall and spring semesters. We will publish a full article about enrollment later. Here’s a quick breakdown of the figures:

Fall enrollment
2,139 
Fall graduates
237
Spring enrollment
1,893

Dr. Berry is the first HSU chancellor to reach out to us since our 2021 launch (technically, Dr. Bob Fisher went out of his way to greet us at the 2023 Arkadelphia Chamber of Commerce Banquet). Prior to our conversation this morning we had sensed a positive change in the atmosphere at HSU since he took the helm. We have faith that Dr. Berry’s leadership, coupled with the community’s support, will bear plentiful fruit. He’s got all the experience and skills needed to put HSU back on the map as a respected four-year university, and we speak for many when we say Arkadelphia is fortunate to have him back home.

Sometimes we’re good at segues, sometimes we’re not: Chuck Ambrose co-authored a book about universities suffering financial problems. He’s now a senior education consultant at the Kansas City-based Husch Blackwell.

Only on rare occasions do we write a news article whose bulk consists of a transcription of dialogue, but we did it this week in our coverage of Monday’s Clark County Quorum Court meeting, when talks grew tense between a justice of the peace and the county judge. Good thing we had our iPhone handy to record the conversation, as we had just left our seat to snap a quick picture and sat inadvertently in a different row, leaving our trusty news reporter’s notebook in the seat behind us. The conversation had already begun — and we sensed it would go south — when we realized our little blunder, so out came the voice recorder app. We couldn’t make sense of why talking about a livestream service gets the county judge so rattled. Sometimes the simplest way to convey conflict is to let both sides talk without inserting narrative. We’re glad we did it that way.

Joe, you gotta keep ‘em separated!

We got permission to use this excerpt from our friends at magnoliareporter.com: 
“Ex-president Trump promises that early in a new administration, National Guard units would be used to round up people living in the country illegally. Of course, if Trump was being intellectually honest, he’d also have to order the arrests of thousands of corporate executives and businesses owners, including hundreds in Arkansas, who employ these people in agriculture, food processing, timber, health care, construction and day care. They certainly aid and abet foreign workers being in the United States. On the other hand, no one worries about Trump being honest, intellectually or otherwise.”
We couldn’t agree more.

This week last year we dug into the reason behind the closure of Arkadelphia’s beloved Sonic Drive-In. It remains our most-read article to date. CLICK HERE to read that story. The closure was not permanent.

Joel Phelps is publisher of arkadelphian.com. Opinions in Bits & Pieces are his own. Reach him at editor@arkadelphian.com. If we have to dig, it means there’s dirt somewhere it shouldn’t be. Read that again.