HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College kept most of the usual freshman orientation playbook this year, icebreakers and all. The campus tour didn’t make the cut. In its place, the school put its incoming class on buses and sent them 5 miles out of town to the John Anthony Halter Shooting Sports Education Center, where nobody touched a trigger until the safety briefing was done.
Orientation staff had soured on the tours anyway. Steering close to 400 freshmen around campus at once rarely went to plan, and most of the class had already walked the grounds with family over the weekend. Thus, the schedule got a rework: the honor code lecture moved later into the afternoon, and the registrar gave the same presentation twice so morning and afternoon groups could each fit in a trip to the range.
Freshmen arrived in waves of about 100, then broke into four groups and rotated from station to station. Range staff opened with firearm safety and handling. After that came supervised air rifle shooting, the traditional on-ramp for new shooters, followed by outdoor turns with bolt-action .22-cal. rifles and AR-platform rifles. Certainly, for some of the freshmen, the visit produced the first shots they had ever fired.
The idea started as a pitch from operations associate Katherine Vander Wall, who saw an awareness problem worth fixing. Plenty of freshmen arrive in Hillsdale without knowing the college has a range, much less that it offers for-credit classes and fields competitive teams there. Vander Wall and Benjamin Roche, a junior and captain of the rifle team, each raised the idea with administrators in separate, informal conversations. She figured it would take years to gain traction. Jeffery Rogers, Hillsdale’s associate dean of men, signed on almost right away, according to the Hillsdale Collegian, the college’s student newspaper.
Early numbers suggest it worked. The Collegian that the shooting program’s email list collected more sign-ups than ever before and that the first club practice of the year drew its largest turnout yet. Most of those new faces were freshmen who had been part of the orientation shoot.
Freshmen who want more have a clear path, and it starts in the same place for everyone. Hillsdale requires every student taking shooting sports classes to complete Introduction to Shooting Sports first, regardless of experience. Instructors teach the NRA’s intro to firearm safety course in that one-credit class, along with the history of firearms, firearms law and basic marksmanship. From there, students can move on to Basic Shotgun, Intermediate Shotgun, Basic Rifle/Pistol, Indoor Air Rifle/Pistol or Introduction to Archery, each worth one credit hour. Firearms, ammunition and safety gear are provided, and most students in the introductory sections start with no shooting experience at all.
Students chasing competition can try out for programs with hardware to show for it. Hillsdale’s shotgun team and action shooting team both have national championships to their names. An air rifle and pistol team open to men and women gives students another way in.
Few college freshmen get their first range lesson at a facility like this one. Opened in 2008, the Halter Center spreads across 125 acres. Its shotgun side covers international skeet and bunker, American trap, a 25-station sporting clays course and an enclosed, climate-controlled five-stand range, while rifle and pistol shooters work out of a 62,000-square-foot building with indoor and outdoor positions. There’s also an action shooting range and an international archery range. Since 2019, the center has served as home of the USA Shooting National Team, and it hosts USA Shooting’s skeet and trap nationals along with Junior Olympic development camps and championships. Members of the public can use the range as well, through memberships and classes.
The freshmen will figure out where the library is eventually. A good number of them already know the way to the range.
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