Biola welcomes its first Spanish-language newspaper

Pictured: James Browning, Liz Choi, Julia Piper and I worked on the planning stages of El Rincon last fall. Since then, the staff has regrouped and now includes almost all native speakers.

Nothing brings me more joy than opening up a fresh, unusually thick copy of The Chimes (Biola's newspaper) and finding in it a copy of El Rincon (Biola's Spanish language newspaper). El Rincon is the brainchild of my friend James Browning, who writes a highly popular humor column in The Chimes and is an ardent supporter of the Chimes Online. I remember last semester when James told me about the idea and asked me suggestions for how we could bring the project to life. We decided it was highly possible to print it and distribute it with The Chimes.

Of course, there were delays. It was a bit hard to secure funding and cooperation between the journalism department and the Spanish department. When James petitioned funds from our student government, some very recalcitrant senators and their petty constituents raised a fuss about the expenditure. I'm convinced that a lot of the complainers felt threatened because they didn't understand the articles in El Rincon.

Nevertheless, the paper made its debut this semester while I was away in Costa Rica. It was spearheaded by James, but also featured the diligent work of numerous students in the journalism department. I'm continually surprised at how many journalism majors are native Spanish speakers, or Spanish minors, or have studied abroad. Finally, here is a meaningful outlet for all those people -- an outlet for promoting and representing a beautiful culture that literally is all around us. It's an outlet for them to thrive and to explore how God is working in the Spanish-speaking community. It's also a place where new students who enter the "foreign culture" of Biola, which is demographically very white, don't have to feel alone.

I'm also thrilled that many journalism professors themselves -- Dr. Longinow and Melissa Tamplin -- speak Spanish and are at the vanguard of promoting these efforts to bridge cultures.

All that said, it was wonderful to pick up that paper Thursday and know that something great is happening on campus. As editor-in-chief of the Chimes next year, I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure El Rincon not only survives, but expands and increases in scope and quality. Because this is one project that truly vale la pena [is worth the effort].