We hear a lot on campus about the “Calvin bubble.” During our four years, it’s easy to get sucked into things like dorm activities and classes and forget about what’s going on around the world — or even across the street.

One of the ways we at Chimes tried to pop that bubble was with our national and world news section. It was a way to keep Calvin students informed about their home countries and states and to help us think in terms of a global community.

Unfortunately, we weren’t being very effective. Most students got the news they wanted from more credible, time-sensitive outlets, like CNN or BBC, not from our pages several days later. Very few people read these articles, judging by our website traffic for these articles. And when we looked to see if peer newspapers were having the same problem, many of them didn’t have a national-world news section at all.

We also weren’t preparing our writers well, as most articles pulled almost all their information from other news outlets.

The goal of the national-world section, as well as the goal of Chimes as a whole, was to provide timely, relevant news that would enrich the Calvin community, but we have realized that the national-world section was no longer reaching that goal.

So you’ll notice that this year, we’ve replaced our national-world section with a religion section, which I encourage you to check out. We have a great introduction to that section on the religion page.

But don’t worry: we at Chimes remain committed to popping the “Calvin bubble” and thinking globally. We’re intentionally engaging the Grand Rapids area through our local section. We’re engaging research from the broader science community through our science and technology section.

And now, we’re proud to continue reaching outside the “Calvin bubble” with diverse perspectives on faith through our new religion section.