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Welcome to The 1909, the podcast that takes an in-depth look at The State News’ biggest stories of the week, while bringing in new perspectives from the reporters who wrote them.
(Alex) It's Thursday, October 12. And this is the 1909, the state news weekly podcast featuring our reporters talking about the news. I'm your host, Alex Walters. This week I'm first joined by culture reporter Jack Williams to talk about three recent holidays building community and remembrance amongst Indigenous students. Then campus reporter Willow Simmons will join us to talk about what's been going on with MSU Student Government. And finally, I'll have the what may be the final update in the years long fight to bring back MSU swim and dive teams. So with that, let's start the show. All right, our first guest is here your first time around the 1909. Do you want to introduce yourself?
(Jack) Yeah, I'm Jack Williams. I'm new at the state news this year. I'm on general assignments on the culture desk. And yeah
(Alex) And you've sort of, you know, your general assignment. But you've found a little nice doing a couple of stories about some of these indigenous student organizations here at Michigan State. So I wanted to have you on, you know, Monday was a federal holiday. Some notice Columbus Day, others know what by a different name, you want to talk about that sort of movement to modify this holiday?
(Jack) Yeah, so I think, I don't know the exact year, I want to say 2018. Maybe it's, I mean, it started really way before that. I think even as early as the 90s, some states started switching over to indigenous peoples day rather than Columbus Day. But I think the real push was within like the past decade or so. And I think that was because more people sort of started to notice that what what we're celebrating is, you know, obviously what we're taught in school, but that isn't necessarily the truth of what might have happened in history. And, you know, the truth is, Columbus wasn't the greatest guy. And the other truth is that indigenous peoples culture, cultural culture, sorry, and land has sort of been stolen throughout the years. And I think it was a way of sort of just kind of taking that back, because that wasn't taught in schools for a lot of people. And so that's sort of the reason for the change of the holiday.
(Alex) And that's sort of you know, I think becoming, like you said, more well known, there's a growing number of states and even smaller municipalities that are changing the sort of official distinction of the holiday from Columbus Day to indigenous peoples day. But in the last month, you've covered a couple more holidays, that, you know, I had no idea about some student groups that have used different days for celebration or remembrance. Do you want to tell me about Michigan Indian Day and orange shirt day?
(Jack) Yeah, so Michigan Indian Day was or is a, obviously a Michigan holiday, which it's, it's very similar to indigenous peoples day. But you know, it's just sort of meant to call attention to the contributions and significance of, you know, natives and what they brought to the state of Michigan. And one of those people, you know, I got to talk to them was Joe Webster.
(Alex) He's the founder, I think, right?
(Jack) Yeah. So he, he started the holiday back in the 80s, I want to say, or seven years. And he's very involved with the community, the Cultural Heritage Center in Oakland, most that I went to. He's, he's very active in that community. But he's a very interesting guy, he, I didn't get to meet him while covering the Michigan Indian Day story, because you just you didn't show up. But for the orange shirt day story, I did get to meet him. He's a very interesting guy who worked for the governor. He was in the Air Force, you know, he's been all over the country. So yeah, he was a very interesting person to talk to.
(Alex) And he's connected with some of these student groups putting together sort of these celebrations that you got a chance to go to?
(Jack) yeah, I mean, he just sort of helps with the Cultural Heritage Center. And a lot of the indigenous student organizations at MSU, hosts a lot of their events through that center. So he is, yep, he's very involved with the community. And what about orange shirt day? Yeah, so orange shirt day is another holiday before, it's the weekend after Michigan Indian Day, so as before, indigenous peoples day, but it is meant to sort of remember and recognize the boarding schools that took place throughout the United States. What do you know, if you don't, if you don't know, we're back in the as early as like the 1800s. And as late as like the 1980s. They would send indigenous children to, you know, boarding schools to try and quote unquote, assimilate them or, you know, make them less native, you know, get them out of touch with the roots, their cultural roots and make them more you know, European and stuff like that. So, you know, a lot of them there were there was a lot of abuse that took place and a lot of kids actually didn't return. And what one thing I was actually found out about was there was a There was a report done by the Department of the Interior where they found found all these graves of like children throughout the country, and they estimated that it was around 500 that they found, but they estimated they were gonna find a lot more. And I think they have been finding a lot more throughout the past couple of years.
(Alex) And this is something that, you know, you talked about the last school closing in what the 1970s
(Jack) it was a 1983. And it actually, I don't know if this was the last one in the country, but this was the last one in Michigan. This was in Michigan. Yeah,
(Alex) yeah. And so it's, uh, you know, we talked about this in historical context, but it really is so much closer to us than that. And you talked to some people who felt like even more locally at MSU. This is a close history of discrimination.
(Jack) Yeah, he talked about just sort of before Stanley,
(Alex) they didn't have this in 2019.
(Jack) Yeah, around that time. And he didn't have, he was talking about how a lot of the Native organizations at MSU did not have really much of a say in what was happening. And he really went as far to say, as, like fear and intimidation was how things were run. And he even talked about how like, you know, if people did stick their head up, they would just kind of be like, you know, they cut funding or, you know, some people will lose their jobs. But it wasn't till Stanley came into office, he said that people began to sort of look at them more, Stanley began to look at them more. And he would meet with them, I think, at least once a month. And he said, President Woodruff has actually continued that, and that's continued under her. Yeah, she's continued to meet with them and all that. So he has said it's gotten better. But and this is something I sort of found throughout every person I talked to you, they all said, it has been, they've seen a push for all all things, you know, indigenous in the last few years, but there is still a lot of way to go, especially when you consider the damage that was done and how like, irreversible it may seem. So yeah,
(Alex) well, and even, you know, more broadly, I think another part of your story that I found fascinating was this idea that the whole kind of land grant promise, right of MSU that we talked about so much of you know, and misuse, given this land by the state, you know, and it's used for education and for research, and it's going to better the whole state by giving these universities this land. But that's so complicated when you become aware that like that land was, you know, kind of stolen in the first place before it was granted. I mean, what's that, like, for the people that you talk to?
(Jack) Yeah, um, I didn't talk I didn't sort of ask about, you know, MSU being a land grant university, and, you know, obviously MSU does recognize that it is, it's on the website, you know, they recognize like, guests, we're on stolen land. But I think for all these, like student organizations, that's like, for sort of the reason for coming together. It's the idea that there is no, they're, they're aware that there's such a small population of Indigenous students on MSU campus, and I think it was, it was actually both muli Bardwell and Roxie sprawl, who run the Neysa, which is the Native American indigenous student organization, they both kind of talked about how they, Native American students tend to have the lowest graduation rates, the lowest enrollment rates, and have any like racial or ethnic group on campus. So I think that's sort of their reason for coming together. And it's that idea that this is on, you know, a land grant, this is a land grant university, and they have had so much of their culture taken away. And that's sort of their reason for coming together to sort of keep it alive and have that space for them.
(Alex) Well, thanks for coming on the show. You can both have Jack's stories, and I'm sure many more in the future on state news.com. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Thank you. All right. My next guest is here. And you're again, another new first timer on the night tonight. Do you want to introduce yourself?
(Willow) Yeah. Hello. Hi, my name is Willow Simons. I'm a reporter on the campus desk at the state news. This is my first semester at the state news and at MSU in general. But this isn't my first student newspaper. So I definitely had to get, you know, adjusted to a lot of stuff here, but I'm having a really good time.
(Alex) So you have been you've sort of taken over writing about as MSU, the Undergraduate Student Government here at Michigan State, you know, we haven't talked about that yet on this season this year of the 1909. So you know, before we get into some of the specifics, you've been doing great coverage. Do you want to just talk about, you know, what is a SMSU? Who's sort of in the leadership this year, that kind of thing?
(Willow) Yes. ASMSU stands for Associated Students of Michigan State University, which is the student government here at MSU. You could think of it like a high school student council except it has much more power than a high school student council. I don't know if many students will realize how much a SMSU like what they do and their bills have, like impact wise on their school lives. A lot of it is also not just helped like helping students but also related to keeping like the Board of Trustees and a lot of the faculty related stuff like I don't want to say in check, like I like, you know,
(Alex) it's sort of advisory, I'll pass this bill saying this is what the students think they might not have power over them. But
(Willow) yeah, it's giving the students the voice, I think without I guess MSU, students would wouldn't have be able to have as much effect on what like, you know, the Board of Trustees, a lot of, you know, the adults decisions happening around on campus. So I do think it's good that their existence, you know, that they exist,
(Alex) willing to go. I think a great example of that is recently you've been writing about these presidential search bills that they've passed sort of voicing concerns about some comments we've talked about a couple times. Now here on the 1909. For those of you for whatever reason, if you're not recurring listeners, you know, Dennis, Dan, oh, he's an MSU. Trustee. He was also chairing the Presidential Search. He told us a couple of weeks ago that, you know, the search committee is giving serious consideration to non academic candidates, you know, people he said, from the business world, or with his words are a very strong military background. And he also said that it's possible that he could pick a candidate, the Board of Trustees could pick candidate that's not endorsed by the Presidential Search Committee. So essentially, you know, he was saying we're going to take those recommendations strongly. We can kind of pick whoever we want. And ASMFC This is one of the issues they've weighed in on to talk about sort of that there was discussions that bill,
(Willow) yes, on Thursday, so October 4, I believe. SMSU presented Bill 6027, which was advocating for the faculty search committee when you know, presenting their decisions to the Board of Trustees. So SMSU was on the faculty search committee side on this, they wanted someone with a strong academic background, not someone necessarily with a business background or military background. And they also didn't want like an arbitrary deadline, like, you know, the Thanksgiving deadline they wanted to avoid Yeah, so
(Alex) I should say, it's another thing that's sort of been in conflict, as Dan has been very steadfast behind this idea of, you know, pick a president by Thanksgiving, and some groups have said, you know, we'll just take our time to find the best person doesn't matter when
(Willow) Yeah, especially as interim president Teresa Woodruff has agreed to be the interim until they get the president so that the transfer of leadership will be as smooth as smooth as possible. So, yeah, ASMSU, they want to ensure that we get to the best possible person, not just whoever, you know, is the most convenient to sign on. So and the build not only, you know, supported that, but they also wanted a ASMSU, the two students representatives for the search faculty search committee, they wanted their approval to be in consideration to the president of a SMSU le Emily Hall Yampa. She is one of those two students. So she was even saying at the General Assembly on Thursday, she was even saying like, Oh, if this bill passes, this is something else I can do for all of you. Yeah, that's what she said to the General Assembly.
(Alex) Well, and that's, you know, I think this is a great example of sort of what ASMC you know, obviously, it's advisory, but like you said, they do have a lot of power just in the weight that their word carries. Because on Sunday, you know, Daniel released a statement, saying, basically walking back or part of it walking part of the back saying, you know, I've listened to the community, I'm committing to pick a candidate who's approved by the Presidential Search Committee, which, you know, after a SMSU, and faculty senate, and the deans and vice provost, and all this sort of advisory groups, you can kind of see their impact there. But as MSU isn't just, you know, passing bills, they also kind of, are there to give students an opportunity to hear I guess, presentations about various topics, ask questions about things going on at the university. And you attended a couple of those this week. Do you want to tell me about them?
(Willow) Yes, I guess when speaking about, you know, speaking on the topic of higher positions in Michigan State University, Interim Provost, Thomas Yeka. Shadow Well, let's go yeah, let's go. Yes. Okay. Thomas gates go. He talked for quite a while he talks to the General Assembly, both explaining his position because he was saying a lot of people do not know what a provost is. And he was saying that he oversees all of the non medical deans. So all of the I believe, I want to say was 18 Dean's? I might be, I think 18 includes America. 18 includes medical, so 15 as the three medical Dean's would be under the supervision of someone who's in charge of health at Michigan State University. But that's a huge part of his job, a lot of the stuff to do with both academics, but also policies MSU. And policy is something he was talking about with the General Assembly. A lot of it was talking about, I guess, new spaces at MSU, both physical and social spaces, I suppose. What like for example, he wants to have new advising spaces in the MSU union. So I assume that'll be like obviously, I don't think they're building new spaces, but they're dedicating new spaces in that building for that. And speaking of advising, they also want at least he and others. Also one into university wide advisors and university wide advising. So traditionally, advising has been college specific, like people receive advisors based on what college they're in. But Yashka was saying how, according to him, 74% of undergraduate students will change their major at least once while being an undergraduate at MSU. So he was saying it makes sense to have opportunities for them to meet with advisors that know more than just
(Alex) you could have an advisor, you know, all four years, no matter what major that's just a general because, you know, the way it was, for me, I have an advisor in James Madison College, I have an advisor in the School of Journalism. But you know, outside, I don't have sort of a consistent person, or this would just be an advisor for for anything,
(Willow) I believe. So. And I'm not sure if I assume if you wanted this advisor, you could also have a college specific advisor, I'm not sure how many of these university wide advisors they would have, I'm not sure if you know, you would choose one, then you'd want to stay with them forever. Or if you would choose, okay, I've found my major now, I don't need you anymore. But that was something that was interesting to me, because that was something I'd never really considered for university was to have advisors and not based on, you know, majors or colleges.
(Alex) And what about you saw another presentation as well, this time from from MSU? PD, right?
(Willow) Yes. This was Detective Jamie. And as from the MSC PD, she was presenting on the topic, I'd never heard this word before. But sextortion you've probably heard the word extortion before, which is convincing someone to give something usually money through force or manipulation. But sextortion is doing that almost always online with nude photos from nude videos. And she was explaining how, especially if these are obtained illegally, that's already a crime. But there's been many situations where someone is tricked into giving nude videos or nude photos to someone that they think they trust. And some people might think like, that doesn't sound like something that be huge problem, I would never do that. But she was saying it's actually a very big deal. Like, from January to September of this year. MSU, PD had 22 reported cases of you know, students well being in that situation, that surprised me, especially when she said that's actually quite a low number compared to most years. Because in the past week, they had six cases of the 20s.
(Alex) what I assume to you know, like other RVSM crimes, it's probably vastly underreported compared to what's actually going on.
(Willow) Yeah, that's even weirder to think about the faculty advisor for or one of the faculty advisors for a ASMSU. Let me find his name. He was saying about how he's worked at for other community for other for other four year schools or three other four year schools. And he was saying that was a problem like he'd been confronted with students telling him this issue of this being in this situation. His name is Andrew Peckham. And I thought that was interesting because, yeah, I I've never considered, you know, being someone in this situation.
(Alex) What did she say? You know, you're getting sex toward it. What do you do?
(Willow) She was saying, a lot of people's first instinct is to delete those conversations they had with this person, like, you know, over social media. And she was saying, as embarrassing it as is, don't delete that because it can be collected as evidence. And that leads to the next step of reporting it to law enforcement MSU PD is that she was saying MSU PD is a good resource for that. As they can go through Yeah, they can go through the social media, they can go through bank records, if this person tried to if this person blackmailed you and you did pay, they can go through bank records are usually that does lead outside of the United States, like surprisingly often, which is complicated. As you know, it's already hard enough to, you know, do things in the United States, when things are abroad, it's even harder to have jurisdiction as cases. But in general, she said also, if they do, if you do get into a situation, don't pay no matter what, they're blackmailing you, because they'll probably just extort you further for more money. And she said, the safest way prevention is yeah, just not taking nude photos or nude videos of yourself. That probably seems like the most obvious piece of advice, but sometimes the most obvious piece of advice is the most helpful one.
(Alex) But if you are in this situation, her advice is not to pay whatever the ransom is,
(Willow) yes. Yeah, do not pay. And she said this is especially true. A representative the students with disabilities representative Julian Robbins in general assembly was asking about like, what about in situations where the nude photo was actually like made with artist artificial intelligence, and isn't real and detective and as was saying, especially don't pay in that case, because that's not even you. And even though they haven't had to deal with that huge amount yet. She imagines they'll have to deal more with that in the future, and it's still very much terrible thing to do.
(Alex) I didn't even think about that to the This couldn't be done sort of like false images through, you know, just AI has become so much more capable and more kind of commercially available last couple years.
(Willow) Yeah, I know people have been using AI like that with like celebrities and kind of strange ways. It hasn't occurred to me that someone would do that with people they know in real life, but it makes sense. Oh, no, I'm giving people ideas of Oh. But yeah, detective and has had a lot of interesting things to say. Or is then I've been saying? Well, is that I apologize. It's not in as alright.
(Alex) Well, you know, thank you for coming on the show. If people want more information about this, they can follow. You know, you've got a couple stories already. I'm sure there are many more to come about this at state news.com. Or I guess they can call your Twitter too, if you want to. I don't know if you share your work there.
(Willow) Yeah, I'm I'm planning to start sharing my work there, as I've been using by Twitter, not for work beforehand. But now it's at Willo underscore r. S. S. But yeah, you can follow me on Twitter there and definitely follow the state news account on Twitter.
(Alex) All right. Well, thanks for coming on the show. It's great to hear about SMSU expect when there's new developments, you'll be back.
(Willow) Yeah. Thank you very much. I would love to be back. Yeah, thank you, Alex.
(Alex) And our last segment today is you know, in other news MSU made it official, the swimmin dive teams are not coming back. This seemingly ends a years long saga from the controversial decision to cut the team to the title nine lawsuit over it and all that passionate advocacy that almost put the swimmers back in the pool. It started in fall 2020 When MSU announced that they'd be cutting the team. And that announcement said that it was because of financial issues brought about by the COVID 19 pandemic, you know, ticket sales, that kind of thing were down because they couldn't have in person events. And I would say what happened next took two different paths. There was some a lot of very loud advocacy directed directly at the university, arguing that they should bring the teams back because it was unfair to cut down they went to countless Board of Trustees meetings, they, you know, actually met with individual administrators, they wrote letters. And then another path, I would say is a group of former swimmers who took to the legal system. And they filed a title nine lawsuit that argued that MSUs decision to cut the teams, you know, although they cut both men and women's team, because it was one of the largest programs with female athletes through the overall balance of men and women out of proportion and MSU athletics.
And so they were you know, arguing that that put the university in violation of Title Nine. You know, that lawsuit went on for about two years, as filed in 2021, wrapped up earlier this year. And what it ended with was this major settlement where MSU agreed to undertake this gender equity review where a third party would go through and look at every aspect of equity, you know, the facilities, the proportion of dollars given to different groups, you know, are men and female athletes getting the same amount of scholarships, overall participation. And that just wrapped up and found that there were a lot of areas where MSE was out of compliance, and that the opportunities for men and women and MSU athletics were out of proportion. And you can read all the details of that very complicated document on state news.com. We have a great story about it. But I'd say that somewhere in that lawsuit is where these two paths come together. And it's the deposition of Bill Beekman. He was the athletic director who was there at the time and 2020, when they announced that they would be cutting the team. And what he said in his deposition sort of changed the public's understanding of what actually went on. He said that the decision to cut the team was essentially made in 2019, you know, long before there was COVID, long before it ever mutated in a you know, in Wuhan. And that it wasn't necessarily a financial constraint because the pandemic obviously couldn't be it was too early. It was a facilities concern. MSU didn't want to be paying the millions of dollars that would have to pay to have this expensive pool that they needed. You know, it's one of the more expensive facilities to operate for a non revenue sport, like swim and dive. And that, you know, admission that was made because lawsuit sort of created a new path for the advocates.
And since January when we first revealed that when we reported on this court filings, the advocates have been raising money in these pledges that basically you know, they go to people who care about this. And they say you can give money to MSU. That's conditional. And the condition on the money is you bring back the team. And they actually got in June, an actual you know, hard deal from the university that said if by October 1, you can raise $26.5 million in these pledges. You can have the team back and they tried and they went around and they told people you donate this money. And you know, you're not actually going to have to donate it unless they bring the team back. And it would go to cover those facilities that Beekman had said sort of killed the team in the first place. But we reached the October 1 deadline earlier last week. And MSU you know they the group had raised I think a little bit more than 5 million was what they ended up getting to and that wasn't enough and I miss you said that the team is not coming back. I think no hope for swimming dive was the quote. So that seems to put the final nail in the coffin for swim and dive at MSU. The advocates say that they still see hope that they could somehow repurpose these pledges go back to donors and see if there's some other option out there. But you know, we talked to MSU for our story which you can read state news.com. And it seemed I think the quote was no hope for so many times. This feels like the end. That's all for this week. We'll be back next Thursday with more until then the stories we discussed and many more available at state news.com. Thank you to our incredible podcast director Anthony Brinson, my guests Jack and Willow, and most of all to you for listening for the nine to nine. I'm Alex Walters.