Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Host Lily Guiney and campus administration reporter Vivian Barrett discuss the MSU Board of Trustee agenda.
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.
Lily Guiney 0:10
Hello and welcome to the 1909: Your home at The State News for everything happening on campus and around Lansing. I'm Lily Guiney. Today we'll be recapping a monkeypox Q&A, protests at a city council meeting and an update on abortion laws in Michigan. We'll also be joined by our campus administration reporter Vivian Barrett, who's going to give us an update on the MSU Board of Trustees. Let's get into it.
This week, the Ingham County Health Department hosted a live stream q&a regarding concerns about monkeypox. Health officials spoke about how to identify the disease by lesions and rashes, as well as how to combat the stigma surrounding monkeypox and the LGBTQ+ community. Doctors emphasize that monkey pox is not a sexually transmitted disease and anyone can get it through skin-to-skin contact. The East Lansing City Council met last week and face protesters who were denouncing charges filed against the DeAnthony Vanatten. A black man who was shot by East Lansing police officers in April in the Okemos Meijer parking lot. The Michigan Attorney General's Office charged Vanatten with seven felony counts and a misdemeanor. The two officers involved in the altercation were not charged. Protesters at the meeting were concerned about policing in East Lansing and expressed feelings of betrayal towards Attorney General Dana Nestle. Mayor Ron Bacon said the council will continue to work with city leaders that are producing models of focused and inclusive living in East Lansing. However, activist said they have very little hope that council members were listened to them and expressed concerns about the state of policing in the Lansing area.
Moving on to the state legislature. Michigan Court of Claims has struck down an abortion ban Michigan Court of Claims declared the state's 1931 ban on abortions to be unconstitutional in a decision on Wednesday afternoon. The law banned abortions except for in rare instances where the health of the mother was at immediate risk. And it was struck down in the case of Planned Parenthood of Michigan versus the Michigan Attorney General House of Representatives and Senate.
The decision came after weeks of litigation surrounding the law and enforcement by district attorneys. The Court of Claims and issued a temporary injunction at the beginning of the summer following the US Supreme Court's overruling of Roe v. Wade. The decision, which was honestly kind of unexpected, at least on my part, is expected to be contested in court by various pro life groups around the state. We're also awaiting a decision from the state's Supreme Court on ballot initiatives regarding both abortion rights and voting rights. Voters are expected to decide by the end of this week, whether or not two ballot proposals will appear in front of voters in November.
And that's it for our rundown updates on news this week. Now I'd like to introduce our campus administration reporter Vivian Barrett. Vivian, how's it going?
Vivian Barrett 2:56
Hi, it's going good. How are you Lilly?
Lily Guiney 2:58
I'm great. So you've put out some stuff this week about the MSU Board of Trustees who are having their first meeting, at the time of recording it's Friday, so tomorrow. So Vivian, can you tell us a little bit about what we're supposed to expect at the Board of Trustees meeting this week?
Vivian Barrett 3:16
Yeah, absolutely. So it's really exciting there's a lot of things on the agenda this Friday, most notably, I would say, is that Provost Woodruff is going to request to appoint Judy-Judith Whipple to be the interim dean of the Broad College of Business, which I've put a couple of articles out about, but the former dean of the college resigned after she was with a mandated reporting. So we'll be looking forward to that to see the board a new appointment. The finance and budget committee is also going to request that the board approves several new scholarships or endowments, which is really exciting for our graduate students in the College of Education and many other graduate programs.
And, I mean, those are the big ones, I would say, that's what I'm looking forward to hear about. Just a couple of other small things, like, authorization to the innovation of the MSU dairy facilities and the MSU greenhouses. And then they're going to hope to name two of the Recreational Sports and Fitness Center or fitness service facility, which so yeah, exciting.
Lily Guiney 4:29
So, obviously, I mean, anyone who keeps up with The State News would know that we've seen some pretty contentious Board of Trustees meetings over the past year or so. Are there any topics on the agenda that you think will you know, get it get a little messy at all? I know we've had some really impassioned public comment sessions about MSU swim and dive and the money that university spends for athletics in general. Is there anything like that that you foresee coming up with this meeting?
Vivian Barrett 4:58
So the only big next thing that I expect to see possibly something about based on the current agenda is this possible appointment of Judith Whipple to be the new interim dean of the Broad College of Business just because the Board of Trustees has hired outside legal counsel just to review that decision to remove the former dean of the college. So we'll see if anything goes on with that. But other than that, I'm really looking forward to our public commenters. This is my first board of trustees meeting as administration reporter. So I'm really hoping swim and dive shows up and we can hear what they have to say and anybody else who has something big going on if they want to talk about.
Lily Guiney 5:39
For our listeners, we've seen in the past several student groups show up at Board of Trustees meetings, we've seen MSU Sunrise Coalition at the Board of Trustees to talk about climate action and divestment from fossil fuels by the university. Obviously, we've seen the fight for MSU swim and dive at multiple meetings to discuss now a Title IX lawsuit guarding the disbanding of the swim and dive team. So I mean, every board of trustees meeting promises to be an interesting social and economic situation, especially given the back-to-school nature of this meeting. And I imagine we'll be hearing from some public commenters about housing on campus and the state of housing.
Do you have anything to add? Just about? I know everyone on campus has been kind of keeping up with the housing situation. There's a lot of transitional housing happening. Do you have anything to add about that or anything you might expect to come up with that?
Vivian Barrett 6:36
What we'll see from what I got from President Stanley and VP Gore during their move in press conference is that transitional housing is already you know, on its way out. As of move-in weekend, there were less than 200 students in transitional housing. So hopefully we'll find out if that number has gone down. VP Gore are said that a lot of students end up being comfortable in their transitional housing and liking their roommates being okay with the situation, so we'll see if that is true for anyone. I know that moving weekend, I talked to one student who was really excited to live with her extra roommate in I believe she was living in Akers. So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully everybody is on their way either out of it or comfortable in it.
Lily Guiney 7:24
Gotcha. I know that if I was in an Akers quad with a fifth person, I don't know if I would be thrilled. But props to the person who is having a positive attitude about it. I know we always monitor MSU parent Facebook groups, and they have had a lot to say about transitional housing and housing as a whole. The back to school process in general is always big for the parent Facebook groups and I would not be surprised if we hear more things from them following tomorrow's meeting.
Um, just really to wrap us up here, you're going to the meeting tomorrow, you're going to be turning another story on that. So look out for Vivian's story on the Board of Trustees Meeting, it will be out by the time this podcast drops. So that's a follow up. And Vivian do you have anything else to add that you hope to see or that interests you about the Board of Trustees meeting?
Vivian Barrett 8:19
I don't think so. I'm really excited to go it is my first board of trustees meeting. So I'm super excited to see what goes down and to update you guys all on what happens.
Lily Guiney 8:28
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Vivian, for coming and joining me today. And that brings us to the end of our news update for the week. We're dropping this podcast every week on Mondays, so join us weekly to hear an update like this each week on MSU news and what's happening around the Greater Lansing area. Thanks for joining us again, I'm Lily Guiney.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai