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Keep Our Students Enrolled

by Paula Umaña

April 27, 2020

Paula Umaña is the Community Impact Director at the Hope Center. Prior to this role, Umaña worked at Community College of Philadelphia as the director of Single Stop, a service that is geared towards increasing student retention by providing assistance in navigating and obtaining additional financial resources and supportive services.

What is the overall mission of the Hope Center and what are your main goals?

Hope Center is an action research center focused on rethinking and restructuring higher education using a systemic change approach to create opportunities for all students to complete their education. We believe that students are humans first. Through research we bring light to the basic needs and insecurities they face including housing, food, childcare, transportation, and mental health services.

We also work to redefine the framing of what it means to be a student-ready college through the #RealCollege movement, which grounds the conversation in real experiences of real college students. We use this term to talk about what people label as "marginalized" or "underserved" students, to acknowledge that the issues students face are not unique to a specific group. The economics of college are very different from what many perceive (not to mention the effect of the pandemic), and those labels fail to dignify students’ experience in dealing with a system that does not set them up for success. We designed an instrument to understand what life looks like for college students and have collected data for five years. In our latest report, we surveyed more than 400 public institutions, including both community colleges and four year universities.

From the 360,000 students that participated in the survey, we know that 39% of them are food insecure, 46% are housing insecure, and 17% were homeless in the year previous to when they took the survey.

How have things changed for the organization since COVID?

Since COVID, of course, these needs have not gone away, they just were compounded by this crisis. In response, we are being very vocal about the need for policies that make sense. We have designed guides and webinars as resources for colleges to help them plan strategically so students remain enrolled and able to return. We also created resources for students to help them cope with the crisis and connect with assistance that they likely did not anticipate they would need. This is a new field for everyone. Demonstrating that we care for our students will be fundamental to help them have both a sense of belonging and as well as the ability to remain in school and complete their education so they can be better equipped to join the workforce.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to focus our efforts on making sure that the students who are currently enrolled, can remain enrolled, and that the students who are going to enroll, get the proper support. It will dictate how colleges will be perceived by their communities in the future.

Our life at the Center changed completely with the pandemic. Prior to the quarantine, we were working to release some reports, including analyses on interesting initiatives that are running on campuses like meal vouchers and transportation. We just released “Hungry to Win” a report that looks at athlete students' basic needs and insecurities, and we have released a report on students who are parents. We really want to understand how the crisis affects students at all of these different levels. And again, we are not just looking at Pell Grant recipients, or students who fall into the traditional buckets of need for additional support. We are looking at #RealCollege students who are sacrificing to get their education up to a level where they can make livable wages.

And what do situations look like for those students?

We know that the college students that colleges are dealing with now, are not the stereotypical 18 to 22 year olds who live with their parents, and come to school with parental support. When a college closes, not everyone is able to go back home and take their classes online on their computers. Prior to COVID, a third of students lived on campus. Those students may or may not be able to have shelter in place.

When a college closes on campus housing, there is an implicit assumption made that the students have other options for secure housing, but that is not always the case.

We are advocating for colleges to create partnerships, offer emergency aid, and help students strategize alternatives. When I was working at Community College of Philadelphia, I worked with students whose housing insecurity was so prevailing that we would spend weeks to help them secure sustainable options and provide resources to help them create a safety net so they could finish their degree and even look into transfering to a four year institution where they could have room and boarding. For colleges like CCP that have no on campus housing, that possibility does not exist for them, which makes the work harder.

The reality of food insecurity has become evident through this crisis. You see endless lines at food pantries on the news. We are very strongly pushing out information about food stamps because students often don’t know that they can qualify and get a monthly benefit in an easy to use card. Recently the Food and Nutrition Service denied the requests from 29 states to waive certain requirements to support college students in getting food stamps. We were vocal and made a statement denouncing this position because, now more than ever, the modest sum of money that food stamps offer can help students with food security needs.

Based on our research findings, 64% of students work. The jobs that allow them to accommodate their schedule and family lives are often service industry jobs. And if they are in these jobs, now, they can’t work because many of these businesses had to close during the quarantine. Before COVID, students already had to make very hard financial choices: whether to buy a book or whether to eat, whether to pay rent or pay tuition. Financial aid doesn't always cover the real cost of college. The assumption that the cost of attendance is just tuition and college fees is unrealistic. The biggest price tags of attending college are housing and food. Not to mention that not everyone has access to a computer, not everyone has internet access. When you don't have income, when you don't have a way to pay your phone, which is how many students get their homework done, when you don't have wifi because you cannot go to campus to get free wifi or the library because they're closed, then how are you supposed to get a good grade, keep your financial aid, and continue with your studies?

We are dealing with a very complex situation right now. How do we best support and keep students enrolled, when all of their basic needs are on the line?

What do you anticipate the lasting impact of this will be? What will carry over once this is behind us, and what do you anticipate the work will need to be?

College was not affordable for 75% of the students attending before COVID. That means that students need to take out loans to make it - not always in significant amounts because we aren't talking about Ivy League students. But if they drop out or are unable to pay for tuition because they have no income, their ability to repay those loans will be compromised. When the economy is shut down, when students are living or reliving traumatic experiences, when they are uncertain and have no control over the circumstances, their outlook of their possibilities will look markedly different.

The situation with parenting students is also very worrisome. There are some support systems to help students pay for expenses associated with their children’s care, but right now, none of those systems are in place because of the quarantine, so students have to perform these functions while doing homework, learning how to navigate online classes, and managing their children’s educational needs. And students who are parents of older children are also experiencing their own set of traumas. These children are also trying to figure out how their transition to college will look like, are trying to cope with the social factor and, in many situations, are questioning if college is even an option once they graduate from high school. This uncertainty of what life is going to look like takes a huge toll on people's mental health and on people's ability to cope with what is coming next.

And then there is the question about the ability to access healthcare. You have different systems, not everyone qualifies or knows how to get Medicaid, or much less understand how the special enrollment period can grant them access to coverage through the marketplace. There are a few states that have opened their marketplace exchange, but there is not enough publicity about it. We have people who had health issues prior to COVID, and their issues are being exacerbated by the pandemic. You have domestic violence going on. How do you deal with students who are in a housing situation where domestic violence is jeopardizing their wellbeing and they don't have a campus to go to, to talk to a counselor and get support. So it's a very complex moment, indeed.

With everything moved online for the foreseeable future, are students receiving what they're paying for? And how can that be addressed?

With the stimulus package, $14 billion is directed towards higher education. $1 billion goes to minority serving institutions, $300 million goes to colleges directly affected by the coronavirus, and $12 billion goes to colleges.

Let's take California for example. $1.7 billion dollars is going to the state. When institutions look at how they will maximize these dollars to help students, it is important that they consider not only those who are graduating, but also those returning to school or enrolling for the first time. We recently put together an emergency aid guide to provide pointers to colleges on how to best distribute funds in a sustainable way that makes sense, especially for those who are not captured by the financial aid markers.

In these times, higher education institutions have to really prove their adaptability to properly respond to this crisis. They have to move online. They have to deploy computers to students, create that infrastructure, and work with faculty who are used to teaching their classes physically. On top of all of that, they have to sort out giving aid and creating a system of prioritizing and identifying who needs it. Our guide addresses how to best distribute aid. Is it just cutting checks? Is it using only the data that the financial aid officers have on who receives Pell?

Part of what we address is, how can you give the aid to people who are finishing the semester and bring them back to school in August. What do you do with that financial aid and emergency aid money so that students in August know that they can come to school? New college enrollees should also have access to some of the aid so get started with their education. The financial aid that is going to be distributed needs to help everyone across the board in a sustainable way. We cannot just give cash out as it comes, and have colleges burn through it by the end of summer. Our guide talks about making decisions that are sustainable and that address not only the needs of those identified by the Pell Grant, or those who are qualified as "low income", or those who are captured in the system, but also to those who are not captured by the system.

Is there a component of this that we're overlooking that you think would be a mistake to sort of not give extra attention to?

Right now, public benefits do not take into consideration college students in a way that considers their reality. In a majority of the country, students have to work in order to get food stamps, they cannot just be full time students. The same goes in certain states for Medicaid. I think that we're missing out on the whole possibility of creating a very base layer of support for college students with public benefits.

Voting in Wisconsin

by J.B. Van Hollen

October 27, 2020

This interview with J.B. Van Hollen, the Republican Attorney General of the state of Wisconsin from 2007 until 2015 and cochair of VoteSafe Wisconsin, was conducted and condensed by franknews.

J.B. | In my role as Attorney General, I took the significance of elections and voting extremely seriously. I made sure that our ballots were as secure as possible to ensure that we didn’t have voter fraud, and also to give everyone who is entitled to vote, an opportunity to vote.

VoteSafe is a national organization. I was asked to be co-chair of this coalition along with the current Attorney General of the opposite political party, Josh Kaul. We have many active and outspoken Republicans and Democrats that are a part of our organization. VoteSafe was formed to be a bipartisan voice to encourage people to vote and to inform them of how they can do so in a safe and secure manner.

The Wisconsin primaries were a rough trial run of voting during COVID. What did Wisconsin install to ensure there is a difference between the primaries and the general?

In-person polling places have done a good job of implementing separation and sanitization. They let one person into the polling place at a time, and that person votes on their own. Once they're gone, workers will sanitize the polling location. Everything that was touched or close to the previous voter will be sanitized. While they take the opportunity to sanitize, the next voter shows their identification through a glass window to the poll worker. Then, they come into the polling location and the process repeats itself.

Do you need a specific excuse to obtain an absentee ballot?

You don't need to have a specific excuse — anyone who is registered in Wisconsin can get an absentee ballot.

You request an absentee ballot either in person or through the mail. The envelope has to be signed and addressed by you, and it has to include a witnesses’ name and address. The ballots can then be dropped off at a municipal clerk's office, at several drop boxes around the state, or they can be mailed back.

Is this a new process for Wisconsin?

We have had an absentee balloting process for as long as I can remember the state of Wisconsin. We're not concerned about it functioning well because we've used it for so long. The only concern that people seem to have in Wisconsin about absentee voting is the numbers of absentee ballots being requested and submitted. These are extremely high numbers compared to the past.

Right. Nationally, it seems that we are being fed two concerning narratives about the election — the threat of voter suppression and of voter fraud. Do you think there is a threat of either of those things in Wisconsin?

In Wisconsin, I feel very good about things. I think voting in Wisconsin is about as secure as probably any state, and also about as accessible as any state.

I worked very hard to implement a photo ID requirement for voting quite a few years ago. People who don't have photo IDs can get them for free through the Department of Transportation in Wisconsin. And on the other end, we have many, many different groups out there trying to register voters and encouraging them to vote.

Voter ID laws are among the most contested points of voter suppression. You spoke about counteracting ID restrictions by setting up a program so that you can get IDs you can get for free. Why do you think that is necessary? Do you see that sort of tradeoff in any other areas?

Well, the other thing is that since the polling places could move slowly, there might be long lines. But you don’t have to get into the polling place by the end of voting hours, you just have to have been in line. This is how we are trying to ensure that even if the lines might be going a little bit slower, people's ability to vote is not restricted.

Are there any other important dates in this process that readers should take note of?

It is important that people cast their absentee ballots sufficiently in advance of election day to ensure they are counted.

Right now, there is a legal debate over whether ballots that are postmarked on election day but received after can still be counted. The latest ruling is that they cannot be — ballots need to be received at the clerk's office by election day.

Even though you technically have up until five days before election day to mail them, there's no guarantee the ballots are going to get there in time. It is important not to push dates.

Do you or does VoteSafe take any position on that ruling?

No. One of the goals of our group is to keep it nonpartisan. All we're doing is as a group is saying that we have very, very good voting laws currently in Wisconsin, and if you follow those laws, your vote is going to be counted and it's going to be safe and secure. Any of these other laws just expand your abilities. Follow the law and it really won't matter to you what these rulings are.

What is the point of restricting the ballots that count in that way?

You know, I really don't know what the argument is other than getting a more rapid, timely response, and to know what the election results are moving forward. Obviously, if absentee ballots can be counted for six days after the election, the entire election of a president of the United States could be in limbo for six days while the country waits for the Wisconsin vote to come in.

Got it. As Wisconsin is such a critical state, is there anything that readers should know or that the public should be watching?

Not really. I think we're going to have a high turnout. We know that there is going to be a lot of absentee ballots cast, and you can't even start counting or looking at those absentee ballots until election day. It is important to note that it could be the next day or even beyond before we have vote totals.

Disputed Elections

by Lawrence Douglas

October 26, 2020

This interview with Lawrence Douglas, professor at Amherst and author of Will He Go, was conducted and condensed by franknews.

You wrote a book recently called, Will He Go, about what may happen in a contested election. What are you most concerned about this election cycle?

We have never had a sitting president or even a candidate for higher office who is telling the American people that our electoral system lacks integrity. This is unprecedented in American history and has been a pretty constant message emerging from Trump. He has consistently said that the only way for our electoral system to demonstrate its integrity is for him to win and if he loses it is proof that the election was rigged.

We can look back to his claims about the popular vote being stolen from him in the 2016 election. We can look back to when he refused to say that he would accept the outcome of the election in 2016 during a debate with Hilary Clinton. We can look back to when he was a candidate for the Republican nomination, and lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz. The very next day he was out there tweeting saying, "I didn't lose the Iowa caucus, Ted Cruz stole it. The results should be tossed out." He has consistently spewed an unprecedented, toxic message.

Can he, or any other president in power, refuse a transfer of power?

My primary concern is that he might do something to muddy the waters as to who has won the election if it hinges on tight margins in a handful of swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.

It is not unlikely that he might have a lead on November 3rd, given the fact that his supporters are more likely to vote in person than Biden supporters. Trump supporters are more than twice as likely as Biden supporters. Trump could try to leverage that lead and claim that he's been reelected and that any coming mail-in ballots have been irretrievably corrupted by fraud.

At one point does this “muddying of the waters” turn into a power grab? When does the rhetoric shift into political gain?

In key swing states, there are going to be millions of mail-in ballots. There's no doubt that there'll be instances of mistakes in counting those ballots. Any mistake will create an opportunity for Trump to spin that into a conspiracy theory. We've already seen him do that in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. A part-time election official who had been on the job three days accidentally threw out nine mail-in-ballots, seven of which apparently had Trump's name on it, and in the first presidential debate, Trump used that instance of harmless error as evidence of a grand conspiracy. And it's not just that Trump was making those claims. We saw that the Department of Justice under Barr launched a formal inquiry into those nine discarded ballots, which gave a sense of legitimacy to the claim that there was some kind of larger malfeasance behind this action.

It's not just a rhetorical move, there could be a real political payoff for him.

What role do you see the courts playing in scenarios like that?

It is certainly going to be the case that the courts will play an important role. There is already a lot of litigation coming through the courts, and there is no doubt that there is going to be more in the wake of the election. Again, a lot of the litigation will be focused on these key swing states.

Both sides will bring various court challenges regarding the qualification or disqualification of mail-in-ballots. There are technical reasons for disqualifying mail-in-ballots, including things like if the ballots were submitted in an untimely fashion or if the signature on the envelope doesn't match a signature on state records. And regardless of the actual outcome, these cases will slow the final count. I think any kind of delay works to Trump's favor — in that it permits him to continue to perpetuate a narrative that he has been reelected and that the mail-in-ballots are fraudulent.

At what point does litigation reach the Supreme Court? Do you anticipate that happening and does that concern you?

It is not entirely clear if or when the Supreme Court would step in to resolve these sorts of disputes.

But, they are already involved to an extent. The Supreme Court just ruled that ballots in Pennsylvania will be counted if they are received within three days of Election Day even if they do not have a legible postmark. One possibility is that Amy Coney Barrett could be a deciding vote, and it remains to be seen whether she would recuse herself or not. That is concerning to me.

Right. Are there mechanisms the Constitution puts in place to prevent a refusal to transfer power? In ways you think might be outside the scope of what is contested in this election, in what ways does the Constitution ensure a peaceful transfer of power and the preservation of democracy?

Neither the Constitution nor federal law does a whole lot.

The president can't delay an election, only Congress can. January 20th, inauguration day, is a hard stop, set in the Constitution. If Trump loses, he becomes a civilian at noon on January 20th. If there is no decision either amongst the electoral college or between Congress by the inauguration, we go by the terms of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, and Nancy Pelosi would be sworn in as the acting president. But beyond that, the Constitution and federal law don't do a lot to secure the peaceful transfer of power; they presuppose it, as opposed to securing it.

A number of people, particularly those from other countries have asked, when do you get a re-vote? In a parliamentary system, you can call for new elections, but we don't have anything like that. There is no plan B.

Are there other times in our nation’s history, where the electoral system has been stretched and tested?

The two elections that came the closest to genuine electoral meltdowns are the race between Hayes and Tilden in 1876, and the race between Bush and Gore in 2000.

In 2000, the swing state was Florida. The entire election was going to turn on what happened in Florida, where the count was mired in litigation and confusion for 35 days after the election. Finally, the Supreme Court stepped in and basically stopped the Florida recount that had Bush with a 537 vote lead.

But, it is wrong to say that the Supreme Court brought closure to that electoral dispute. What brought closure was the fact that Al Gore graciously conceded, and he did so to put the interest of the nation ahead of his own political fortunes.

It's impossible to imagine Trump acting in that fashion.

The election of 1876 was even more complicated. Three states couldn't decide who had carried their state and submitted conflicting electrical certificates. That particular electoral dispute was resolved by a one-off electoral commission, and it wasn't resolved until two days before the inauguration. I should say that the actual compromise was a disaster, particularly for the Black citizens of the United States. Democrats agreed to recognize the Republican winner, Hayes, in return for the removal of federal troops from the South, paving the way for the creation of the Jim Crow era.

You can imagine a similar situation in 2020. If you get conflicting electoral certificates in swing states, the key swing states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina, all have Republican legislatures and Democratic governors. And you can imagine a hold up in Congress, especially if Congress remains divided as it is now. It is important to note that it is not the present Congress that will be deciding things, it will be the newly elected Congress.

Which puts a new emphasis on down-ballot races.

Absolutely. These down-ballot elections could be hugely important, particularly in respect to the composition of the Senate. But, to make things even more complicated, these senate races could also be mired in counts and recounts involving mail-in-ballots. It's not necessarily clear that we will even know what the composition of the Senate is, come January.

Clearly, this election is unlike anything we have ever seen before. There is distrust on both sides. Do you think we can recover from this?

It's true that it's not only the Republicans who have lost trust in the electoral process, Democrats have lost faith as well. However, there is a real asymmetry in the reasons for that loss of trust. We know that there's no reason to doubt the integrity of mail-in-ballots. Trump's attack is baseless. His own FBI director has said there's no evidence whatsoever of any kind of a concerted effort to rig the election with mail-in ballots. On the other hand, the Democrat's concern over voter suppression is legitimate. There is a long history of Republican lawmakers trying to suppress votes, particularly of black voters, poor voters, and other ethnic minorities who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

For constitutional democracy to survive, people need to have faith in the electoral process, and they need to have faith in the trustworthiness of its outcomes.

It's absolutely essential that, regardless of the result of this election, we try and restore that faith. There are things that we can do to restore that faith. We can work really aggressively to protect the right to vote, we can try to invest in election infrastructure to ensure it is not vulnerable to hacking, and we can get rid of the stupid electoral college — which is an archaic, anti-democratic, dysfunctional, and dangerous mechanism by which we elect the president.

Speaking to the asymmetry — do you think that says something about the cultural and political propensity of Republican voters, or a larger shifting American penchant towards authoritarianism?

I am not sure I could necessarily say that there is a willingness amongst a certain number of Republicans to support authoritarianism, but one thing I do think is fair to say is that there is this incredibly siloed media environment.

A large number of Americans are being fed misinformation. Democracy presupposes that people make informed choices based on accurate information.

If you're being fed disinformation, you're incapable of making an informed choice and that's an incredibly dangerous thing for democracy. I think we can stay with that observation — that the American public is not getting accurate information, and they are making their political conclusions and decisions based on misinformation campaigns.

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