Calvin News

Recently a fortune cookie told Calvin senior Natasja VanderBerg "A Pulitzer Prize is in your future." Appropriate words for the editor of Chimes, the Calvin College student newspaper? 

"Not necessarily," says VanderBerg. "I always dreamed of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, not the Pulitzer." 

But don't count VanderBerg out of the running for the Pulitzer quite yet. The senior from Ontario is a religion and philosophy major and hopes to found an academic journal that will deal with the interaction between the two disciplines. "I want to create a publication that addresses the challenges Christianity faces in today's world," she says. 

For now, VanderBerg is challenging the Calvin community through the Chimes. She became involved in Chimes a year ago by writing a weekly column. "I was tired of being passively critical and wanted to become involved in the issues that concerned students," she says. "And I love writing." 

She also sees ties between being the Chimes editor and her future religion and philosophy goals. "Journalism helps people realize that there's more than one side to every story," she says. "That's something even people in the academic world forget." Good writing, she believes, is about listening to different viewpoints and being able to relay them in a fair and accurate manner. "You have to have respect for someone's opinion to write it," she says. 

When she graduates in May, VanderBerg hopes to go to the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto to further study religion and philosophy. 

A Renfrew, Ontario native, she graduated from Saint Joseph's Catholic High School and is a member of Hebron Christian Reformed Church, where her dad is the pastor. 

Chimes has been the student newspaper of Calvin College since 1906.