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From the Civic Media World Headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, it's the Todd Alba Show.
pursuing truth wherever it may lead.
Here's your host, Todd Albaugh.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Todd Almauk, along with our producer and engineer, Mr. Aaron Zommer is on the board.
It is Monday.
Back to work.
Back to school.
Yes, September and fall is upon us.
Little Earth, Wind and Fire to start us off on a September 22nd, 2025.
It is a great day.
To be Wisconsinites, welcome everybody to the World Headquarters of Civic Media Downtown Madison at the intersection of state and fair child crystal blue skies.
Right now over Madison, the sun is out.
It's a fall day.
Zabber's earth wind in fire after...
September 21st, it's September 20th.
Fall is upon us summers.
Yes, it is.
And you know, we missed it by that much because yesterday was the 21st.
But you know, it says the 21st night of September.
Exactly.
So it still works.
It was that night in
September.
I love the little earth, wind and fire.
Oh yeah.
You can't go wrong.
You cannot go wrong at all.
Welcome into fall and it's upon us.
Busy one.
Busy day ahead, cannot wait.
Great things.
There's going to be a costume change, by the way, today, at halftime during the show.
Because I'm going to change in from my Brewer's polo shirt, gonna get to that in a second, into my Packer polo shirt.
I know, I know.
We heard a great sports reporter, Mike Clemens, talk about it.
Packers ridiculous loss yesterday at the end of the game 13 to 10 to Joe Thomas's Cleveland Browns.
I know who's happy about this Joe Thomas.
I'm sure he is and you don't let's see.
Here's the thing Todd's no fair weather fan.
No, I'm not no no fair weather.
That's right.
And what better balm to put on our Packer loss wounds than a brand new film from our friends Sean Hannish and Paul Giaconi Barry.
two of the great producers of the film just about, just a bit outside the story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.
Exclusively on our show, and we appreciate it when that happens, Sean Hannish and Paul Geconi Berry are going to be here live in hour number two at 335, giving us the details on their new film called No Packers, No Life.
You're going to want to be here for this.
I've seen some stuff from it.
It's very exciting.
Sean and I met.
He was in town this weekend, was filming some stuff this weekend, and we met up for coffee.
And he showed me under threats of non-disclosure agreements and castration.
He showed me the trailer, and he said, no, you can't talk about this until next Monday.
And I didn't.
I didn't even tell Zombers exactly what it was about.
I
can confirm.
Yeah.
But I've seen the trailer.
It's fantastic.
It's about a group of Japanese Packer fans in Tokyo.
who end up, and they'll explain how and why, come to Green Bay for the first time and discover the magic that is Green Bay and Lambeau Field, a disarmers point.
I know a little heartburn after the Packers lost, but this will make you feel better and remind us all why we're Packer fans.
So looking forward to that.
And speaking of that team in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in hour number two, we are going to launch...
this falls rendition of our fall sizzle saver trivia text to win contest.
Otherwise known as Civic Media's go for the green and gold text to win contest.
That too.
Yes.
The go for the green and gold text to win contest.
So get your texting fingers ready.
And here's what you do.
You download the Civic Media app on your Android or Apple device.
Go to the search engine, type in civics, c-i-v-i-c media.
It'll pop up.
You click on the C-M logo.
It takes less than a minute.
It's free.
And open it up.
We're on the first 10 stations.
And an hour from now, I'm going to give you the magic word for the three o'clock hour, and you text that word in.
And the grand prize, beautiful, club-ish level seats at a major stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which hosts a professional football team
whose colors are green and gold.
How'd I do?
You got it, you got it.
And Minnesota's team will be here.
And Minnesota's team will be here as well.
Now, listeners of this show know that last year I flubbed this up because it's very specific and they're dead serious about this.
The attorneys on the 12th floor are listening and watching with prying eyes.
Oh, first of all,
Unlike other contests, this one is a, there used to be a statewide contest.
Now we're a multi-state contest.
And let me tell you, I experimented with some multi-state contest back in college and realized that was for me.
So this is a multi-state contest, but we're not allowed to say the name of the team, the franchises, the league in which they play.
name the location, the specific field or stadium in which they play.
So we have to use all these things like green and gold, a football team, a professional team, and Green Bay.
And for every time I mess it up, I get dinged.
I get fined at the civic media fine jar.
And these fines are not insignificant.
No,
they're not.
It has an unemployment.
So the text to win green and gold contest.
We'll see how long I can maintain my Whatever you want to call
it get
it right
well text in to save Todd's job
And by the way by the way as we like to say there are more text to win contest winners that come from the Civic Media's Todd all ball show that any other Civic Media text to win program
Many people are saying
many people are saying So that'll be a lot of fun and at the bottom of this hour Natalie are of Wisconsin watch will be here to talk about Wisconsin College's vow to keep supporting Hispanic students despite federal cuts want to start with the crew back to back to back
National League Central Division champions, Murph and the boys got it done yesterday.
Well, kind of sort of.
They actually lost the game in St.
Louis, weird game yesterday, but the Cubs lost to the Reds and that clinched it for the Milwaukee Brewers.
They got to celebrate down there at Bush Stadium in St.
Louis.
It was a orgasmic champagne jubilee in the locker room.
Let me tell you, it was fantastic to watch.
Here's a manager, Pat Murphy.
after the clinch.
Like I've always said, it's about the who that's in the room.
And these are the right guys.
They know how to play.
They know how to win.
They know how to bounce back.
That's what's
special.
Well, Yelly's been in the middle of all of that since 2018.
You think about Yelly, Woody, Freddie, what they've done to establish excellence at the level of competition that you demand.
Yelly brings that standard of how to play the game.
He understands the little things.
This team does the little things.
And Yelly's the one that sets that tone.
He means the world to this team way beyond the numbers.
A manager, Pat Murphy, after the Brewers got the clinch via the Cubs loss yesterday.
They are now the National League Central Division champions.
Sal Freelake, my favorite Brewer, was interviewed after the game in the locker room drenched.
In Champaign, here's what Sal had to say on the culture of this team.
Sal, this is three years, three playoffs, three division championships for you.
Just when you look back at maybe the through lines of the themes of these teams, what allows you guys
to do this year after year?
It's just the culture.
I think they built something really special here.
You know, we have a really good group of players and that's all credit to the front office and getting the right guys in here and putting this uniform on.
And yeah, it's really just the culture and, you know, we show up every spring training with the goal of winning the division.
So it's been great to fortunate that I've been
able to do it every year.
Yeah, I mean, like you said,
he reminds us every year that like guys
their whole careers without ever getting to spray champagne and I've been here for it's my third year and I've done it three times and he just keeps saying to us young guys like just know how lucky you are make sure you're aware of what it takes to win and never forget that feeling I think that's just important to reiterate that.
So where was your believe level at in like May 24th?
Yeah I mean
right where it should be I mean there's never I know we started off slow whatnot but like the season's so long and so much can happen and that's what baseball is that no one ever kind of strayed from that goal
even after the first weekend, the first month, whatever it might be.
So, if you always do
it, you
know, I end
up
here.
You talk a lot about the winning volunteer.
What are you talking about?
How much does that verbal kind of call to you?
Yeah, I mean, we got the right guy, you know, and he's someone who just encapsulates that and reminds us every day when we're not doing the things we need to do, just to get us back on track.
Without him this whole entire year, I don't think we would have gotten back on track.
So, all the credit goes to him.
that is Sal Freelick of the Brewers of the culture of Pat Murphy.
Gonna hear later in the show if you have time from Pat.
There was a great special.
I didn't get to watch the whole thing.
I saw excerpts of a great special on the Major League Baseball Network last night with the great Bob Costas sitting down with Murph talking about and the fact that he picks on Freelick so much.
He goes, I know I don't say that much nice about him, but you can clearly tell.
that if Freelik isn't Merv's favorite player, it's one of the top three or four.
Because he called Freelik the it factor.
He says he's got the it factor.
He does everything that he wants him to do.
I'm so happy for these guys.
I'm so ecstatic about this run.
Some really rough news yesterday, the Brewers, and we don't know the whole thing, so we want to be very careful about this.
But Brandon Woodruff,
Great pitcher for starter for Milwaukee.
Apparently had some sort of a, he didn't re-injure the arm, the shoulder he had surgery on, but it's a muscle or a tendon around that that got tweaked.
And very concerning, he's on the 15 day IL.
Key word may be done for the regular season, we'll see, but that could give the Brewers some...
some pitcher problems down the stretch, which they don't need.
But let's let's just focus on what they've done back to back to back and L division champions.
Fantastic.
They're back underway tonight in San Diego 805 for the pregame show late one on the West West Coast.
First pitch just after a 30 the crew taking on the San Diego Padres, which they could see potentially in the playoffs.
Don't forget the Brewers, although they clinched the National League, they're still trying to get the number one seed in the National League.
They clinched the NL Central, I should say, trying to get the NL and Major League Baseball number one seed, which they would give them home field advantage throughout the playoffs, including the World Series.
The magic number to secure that now at four games, there are six games left in the regular season.
exciting times indeed.
Also, by the way, the big sports weekend for better or worse, Badger football team basically had a must win at Camp Randall's.
Clemens reported a loss to Maryland.
It
was 27 to
10.
And fans were chanting the student section by the third quarter, fire, fickle.
I mean, it was audible over television.
And now you got Chris McIntosh, the AD coming out, giving him a vote of confidence.
Be careful, Mac.
It's the same thing he did to Paul Christ two weeks before he fired him.
We'll get into that a little bit later in the show.
But when we come back, a Republican candidate for governor has found himself in some throuple.
Well, I love it when hypocrisy happens to my former party.
We've got the sultry details on the other side.
Don't go anywhere.
It's the All Balls show for a fall September Monday on the Civic Media Pretty Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get
started.
Where the kisses are hers and hers and his, three's company too.
Come and dance on our floor.
That's right.
For the most classic television show of the three's company, it
turns
out three's company thruffles the light also not good if you're running for Wisconsin governor.
I love every part of this story.
by Daniel Bice in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
And I'll tell you why.
As a former Republican who left the party in 2011, my former party is famous, and not just in Republican conservative politics, but also some particularly fundamentalist, MAGA churches, MAGA church type people, they say one thing in public.
And it's not just they say,
They harp on it.
They demonize.
They say if you're whatever you are, if you have a certain sexuality, a certain sexual preference, a certain you're a deviant, terrible person, you're going to hell.
And then it turns out they're doing the same damn thing behind closed doors.
And I love it when they get called on the carpet for it.
And this isn't about, in my opinion,
Look as long as people are of age and it's a legal practice live and let live baby.
That's where I'm at have fun with life But here you gotta here's the here's the headline GOP governor candidate Bill Barion scrubs link to sexually explicit social media accounts from Daniel Bice and the journals Sentinel as Republican running for governor
Whitefish Bay businessman Bill Berrien is campaigning as a conservative leader who stands up for family values.
Berrien's CEO of Pindall Global Precision is especially critical of transgender individuals, saying they are engaged in, quote, radical social experimentation, unquote.
Quote, take it from a dad or a coach.
I will keep boys out of the daughter and our daughters keep boys out of our daughter's sports and locker rooms, unquote.
Barry instead at a recent TV ad.
The new ad praises President Donald Trump for, quote, protecting our daughter's sports, unquote.
But Barry's online footprint tells a very different story.
One that he quietly tried to hide and erase in recent days on medium.com.
And apparently this is all, I never heard of it until this story.
Had you, Zomers, you're more in tune person, medium.com.
I guess it's an old platform like precursor to whatever, Facebook
or- Yeah, I know it exists, but I never used
it.
Yeah.
It says it's similar to Substack.
Barion, who's age 56, had an account that was following a transgender porn star named, quote, Jizz Lee.
And other several other authors of especially sexually explicit essays unquote Now when you follow some one on social media it means to subscribe to their account and their posts show up in your personal feed Other writers that the republican was following include Octavio Morrison author of quote seven types of orgasmic sensations unquote and quote three terrible reasons
to have a threesome, unquote.
And Emma Austin, who calls herself, quote, a wholesome perv with a touch of whimsy, unquote, who has posted such items as, quote, I love getting jackhammered, unquote.
Bice writes, not your typical men's health magazine headlines.
I encourage you to go out and read this.
It is a
fascinating story.
One of the articles that Barry is still following as of September 16th, the sexography blog, our two individual accounts with sexually provocative content called the nine types of couples who you want to have a threesome with and three parts of transformative orgasmic pleasure.
Here's the reason I'm laughing here's because you guys remember it was the Republicans who went apoplectic a block away for where I'm sitting when Joe Gao and his wife the chancellor at EW lacrosse in their own personal time in their own personal account had a Adult film cooking show where they got frisky with another woman
And these Republicans went apoplectic.
Oh my gosh, we can't have this.
Somebody just quoted it.
Maybe Barion was just doing research.
This is horrible that this is happening.
Please give me the link right now so I know to never go there.
And you give people like Barion who are attacked the most vulnerable of our friends, neighbors, and family.
And yet this guy is clearly, people forget.
that stuff lives out there forever.
And by the way, he's not denying it.
Baryon, his latest post today, I won't read the whole thing, says, is this the best they could do just days after I promised to stay in President Trump to protect our state, stop the woke indoctrination, and keep boys out of girl sports.
They come after me with some failed attacks they tried with President Trump.
He's not denying it.
In fact, his staff basically confirmed it and said, yeah, it was him that went in there.
But now they're saying it's an unfair attack.
You know, Trump got attacks for the Epstein files.
Trump hasn't even admitted that.
Barry is at least admitting that he's, he's on.
And as I say, live and let live, baby.
By the way, at the Charlie Kirk funeral down in Arizona, Phoenix, Grindert.
Online grinder got a huge amount like a record number of hey, this is isn't working type of stuff Same thing that happened happened at a Republican National Convention
down which I say down in
Milwaukee down in Milwaukee last year remember our old friend Kristen Brian I got and yes, I'm on grinder I'm a single gay man and it's a it's a quote-unquote dating app by the my longest dating dating relationship did come from grinder
Well good, that doesn't always happen on that app, so
I'm glad to hear it.
But let's be honest, it's also a hookup app, right?
That's the primary
function as far as I'm aware.
And just be
yourself and be open about it, don't attack other people for who they are and the legal things they enjoy, and then do the same thing behind closed doors.
Jeff Perry says, I think maybe Barry has been spending too much time at the Regal Beagle.
Keeping up with the three's company theme.
Come on back.
We'll talk to Wisconsin Watch after this on the 3Z Civic Media Radio Network.
Pursuit truth wherever it may lead and having fun doing it.
Welcome back to the Toddleball show on the Civic Media Ready Network.
Now, 35 minutes past the hour of two o'clock on a Monday, September 22nd, 2025.
Glad to have you along.
Got a couple of texts.
Calls what not on the signal on AUK.
Down to beautiful Milwaukee.
We're upgrading the signal.
That's the great news.
There may be some funky gremlins going on.
So bear with us.
We're on our great engineering team is on it like stink on a monkey.
As Kramer once said in the Seinfeld, you ever see that episode, Summers?
Not that one.
All right.
He was delivering, he and Newman had a scam on bottles or cans or like recycling.
He goes, I'm on it, Jerry.
Like stink on a monkey.
Anyway, so our great engineering team is, uh, is indeed on it.
Uh, by the way, I got some, uh, a couple of texts that said, what, what are you, what is this contest you're talking about?
Because we have, it's the lawyers.
You understand?
I can't say when it comes to our green and gold goal for the green and gold text to win contest, but just think about it, guys.
What sports team in Wisconsin is referred to as the green and gold.
All right.
It's tickets for a game for that team.
and the team over in Minnesota that goes around wearing little horn hats all the time.
And that will be next hour.
That'll be next hour.
We'll give you the, we have not given you the word yet, so stand by.
Don't go anywhere.
We'll, we'll give you the word very shortly to, and by the way, we're giving away cash, cash prizes, cold hard cash, and gold jewelry.
It's a, it's a prize lala pelusa, ladies and gentlemen.
So stay tuned for that.
All right.
Let's turn to more serious issues of the day here at 36 minutes past the hour of two o'clock our friends over at Wisconsin watch You always do a great job headline Wisconsin colleges vow to keep supporting Hispanic students despite federal funding cuts Joining us via stream yard from Wisconsin watch Natalie are Natalie.
Thanks for joining us.
How are you?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me.
It's our pleasure.
Whenever someone comes on the show for the first time, we always like to ask to have you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, how you got into the journalism field and ended up at Wisconsin Watch.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Okay, I grew up in Southern California in Irvine and my mom is from Wisconsin originally and I came back here several years ago and I spent several years working at the Cap Times and recently moved to Wisconsin Watch where I report on pathways to success.
We think of that as being basically about
jobs and job training and how people get into family sustaining work and what's sometimes keeping people from doing that.
That's fantastic.
We appreciate you joining us.
Anybody who watches or listens to this show knows I'm passionate about education in this state, particularly higher education as well.
One of the things I think that gets lost, we always like to take these federal issues and say, how does it apply to Wisconsin?
Your reporting does just exactly that.
A, it talks about Wisconsin colleges, but a growing segment of Wisconsinites are Hispanic, either their mom or dad might have been, or both parents, what have you, and...
It can be tougher.
You know, oftentimes people from minority families come from lower social economic backgrounds.
It's tougher to pay for college, tougher to get in, tougher to have access.
And now with federal cuts in DC, people are wondering what the heck is going on here.
Tell us the premise of your story and how you came to report this.
Yes, so indeed what you said Hispanic students are I believe the fastest growing population of college students in the country.
And there was already a lawsuit from that started a few months back about the question of whether Hispanic serving institutions were constitutional or not, whether they were violating the constitution.
To rewind a step, there is a thing called, quote unquote, Hispanic serving institutions that is a category for colleges and universities in the U.S.
that have at least 25% of their full-time undergrad student body being Hispanic.
And that category was created by the federal government about 30 years ago.
And institutions that meet that criteria are eligible to apply for what is now millions of dollars in grants each year.
It doesn't mean that they get it, but they can apply for those funds to do various different things to improve their schools from supporting teaching and supporting building.
creating new buildings to other forms of student support.
Those exist.
There's a special category of grants that this year was slated to be, oh, I don't want to get the number wrong.
I won't say that.
And there was a lawsuit filed this summer that aimed to take that on, filed by the same group that took on affirmative action.
in previous cases and led to that Supreme Court ruling that essentially overturned affirmative action in college admissions.
That lawsuit was already pending and the federal government had announced that it was not planning to defend
the Hispanic serving institutions program in court.
So that already wasn't looking good for Hispanic serving institutions.
And I was already working on a story about how would that affect Wisconsin where we have four of these institutions.
And then a few days ago, the federal government announced that it was indeed cutting that grant program and other grants for other types of, quote unquote, minority serving institutions.
So.
that is how the story came about.
We are talking with Natalie Yar.
She is from Wisconsin Watch.
You can find this work at everything else at WisconsinWatch.org.
That's WisconsinWatch.org.
I appreciate the reporting because even as someone who thinks I follow higher ed in this state,
I was unaware of this.
And correct me if I'm wrong, I've heard of the HPUs, particularly in southern United States that
That make sure they carve out niches for black African Americans in this country is it similar to that only with with Hispanics in this country and it's just something that is is
all across the U.S., and obviously as a federal fund it must be, I just never heard of, because in your story, I was taken by the fact that you call out Alverto College, Herzing University, Gateway Technical College, and Mount Mary University here in Wisconsin.
I've heard of those, but I'm like, well, why doesn't this apply to the old Wisconsin system of public universities?
What's the unique about this program, and why are they more focused on private universities?
Yes, so the program is not specifically about private universities.
Yes, they exist throughout the country.
There are about 600 schools that currently have this designation across the US.
And many of them are public universities or community colleges or all sorts of different gateway technical colleges, a public technical college here in Wisconsin.
So first of all, are they similar to the HBCUs?
I'm not an expert on HBCUs.
I will say like in in some ways yes, but also it's a quite a different thing by my understanding HBCUs and also the tribal colleges are both very specific designations that I think are somewhat historical.
The you know HBCUs being
historically black colleges and universities, I believe that they had to have been started before 1964 and that this was about schools that were created to serve populations that were not accepted at other schools or were not being served at other schools.
And this is a broader type of category that...
the Hispanic serving institutions and there are others in this minority serving institutions category so the HBCUs and the tribal colleges to be clear are not part of this minority serving institutions category that was cut by the federal government.
They were kind of exempted I think in part because of their historical role and maybe there was also some political motivations there.
This designation is instead just for as far as I know
any college or university that meets a certain enrollment threshold as far as their student body has, for example, in this case, this 25% Hispanic can apply to have this designation.
And the reason that other Wisconsin schools aren't in this boat, by my understanding, is simply that they don't have enough Hispanic students yet to fall in this category.
And so these schools do not
have anything about like their founding that was for Hispanic students or anything like that.
It's just that these schools are acknowledging, hey, a big part of who.
is in our student bodies, Hispanic students, and they would say they want to do certain things to ensure the success of those students.
You speak with Anthony Hernandez, an education policy researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who studies Hispanic serving institutions.
And you quote Professor Hernandez in here saying, quote, for most of the US history, minority students were either explicitly excluded from higher education or funneled into segregated
underfunded schools, unquote.
I thought that was put it well, put a point on it to what you said earlier, is that this is about integrating and learning from each other.
And I've spoken to this show before, someone who grew up in a 99% white community in Southwest Wisconsin and went to UW Richland, having the Central American Scholarship Program where you had 18 fellow students from around the world who were Latino, Hispanic, who were coming there out of
350 students, it made a huge impact on my life and it helped me grow.
I got more out of it, I think, than probably what they did and going back to the country.
So I think this program benefits not just the student, but also the entire institution and everybody who's going there.
Did you find that in your reporting, Natalie?
Yeah, so my story doesn't necessarily get so much at that side.
I mean, that's certainly
one part of the argument for why these institutions should exist, certainly what Professor Hernandez said about these are, this is a demographic of students who often, of course that would not be always, but who often may have for one reason or another been less served, less well served by
the K-12 education system or by the college system.
And therefore, it could make sense to allocate additional resources to support those students in some way.
And so that is certainly the argument that was made for why this should be created in the first place.
This program should be created in the first place.
Of course, now the Trump administration is saying that these
programs are inherently discriminatory and unconstitutional and that they want to quote reprogram those funds.
So we're talking about $350 million that was allocated to these.
There's seven different minority serving institution grant programs that were providing resources to Hispanic serving institutions and other some of the other programs were for different groups of
And they want to quote reprogram those funds to other types of education programs that they do not consider unconstitutional.
Of course, the courts have not actually made a ruling on whether they were unconstitutional or not and making headlines like.
the day that my story published was the news that they were in fact allocating $495 million in one time funds for historically black colleges and universities, so those HBCUs and for technical colleges and universities.
So yeah, basically they moved those funds and some more for this coming year to those schools that were in
different category.
What is not what among the things that are not clear is if the program if they do indeed succeed in cutting this funding for the future whether
those funds will, what will happen in the future for
those
funds?
We're every it may lead and having fun doing it.
Welcome back to the title ball show on the Civic Media Ready Network.
Eight minutes now before the hour of three o'clock.
Big hour number two.
Stay tuned.
Not gonna wanna miss it.
Our green and gold text to win contest where you can give away cash, give away gold jewelry, and a chance at the grand prize, which are tickets to the professional football team in Green Bay, Wisconsin that wears green and gold.
So stick around for that.
Also, filmmakers Sean Hannish and Paul Giaconi-Biri.
They have brought you the film just a bit outside the story of the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers.
They have a new film.
on the Packers called No Packers, No Life.
So stay tuned.
We'll be talking to them in hour number two as well as well.
So breaking news just coming out.
We'll get to that in a moment, but right now we continue our conversation with Natalie Yar of wisconsinowatch.org.
You can find her work and her fellow reporters at wisconsinowatch.org.
Great publication.
Wonderful story, important story.
On Wisconsin colleges, vowing to keep supporting Hispanic students
despite federal funding to support Hispanic students, despite federal funding cuts.
And Natalie, before the break, start to get into this a little bit, but expand if you can, please, on which colleges in Wisconsin are affected, and you didn't necessarily get responses from everybody that you reached out to.
Yeah.
Yeah, so there, as we were discussing before, you know, these cuts will...
eliminate grants to seven different types, sorry, will eliminate seven different grant programs that were designed to support minority serving institutions in the US and Hispanic serving institutions, which is what my story focused on, are one of those categories.
In Wisconsin, that's the only relevant type that we have anyway.
That's the only type of institution that was cut that exists in Wisconsin.
our four Hispanic serving institutions are Mount Mary University, Alverno College, Gateway Technical College, and Herzing University.
And I contacted all of those schools to try to find out what they were thinking about this, what their plans were, how much funding they get through this.
And the only one that I got actual,
answers back from was Gateway Technical College, which is the technical college in Kenosha.
So they are the newest of the
They are the one that has most recently received this designation and thus most recently become eligible to apply for these grants.
And they had applied for 2.8 million for a grant for 2.8 million.
And they were waiting to hear back on whether they were going to get that grant, which I believe was going to be over a five year period.
And then this news broke that the program was getting cut.
So clearly, unless.
something in the courts or in Congress manages to stop that.
They're not getting that 2.8 million.
I have also seen reporting from last year when hersing.
received this designation that they also got a grant for, I believe it was 2.7 million over five years.
And the announcement last week that cut those grants also cut any future payments on existing grants.
So if it's true that to Herzing had 2.7 million allotted, then I'm guessing probably around 2 million or so hasn't come to them yet and isn't coming any longer.
I know a lot of this is the spirit of this, but we heard that the institutions that you've named all private colleges, universities, and so these aren't going to come from this commitment to support Hispanic students, despite federal cuts, not going to come from taxpayer funding.
Is this coming from endowments?
Is this coming from specific people giving grants, or do we know yet?
Yeah, and I should be clear also one part we haven't talked about so I reached out to those four schools asking about their plans and like I said all those other numbers, but I also reached out to The schools in Wisconsin don't have the number in front of you right now, but it's around ten other schools eleven schools that are
quote unquote, emerging Hispanic serving institutions.
Now that's not a designation given by the federal government, that's given by an association of education leaders.
These are schools that are trying to achieve the
the full on status of Hispanic serving institutions, and Wisconsin has more of those.
And I could list them off, but I won't right now.
And many of them responded to me to say, we are still trying to become Hispanic serving institutions, like meeting the full criteria for that, the 25% enrollment numbers, et cetera.
even if there's not going to be money behind it anymore.
It's all very unclear whether that category will even exist.
in the future if the federal government no longer runs this grant program.
But
basically they were saying, we consider it very important to our mission and to serving our students to meet the needs of our Hispanic students.
And we intend to keep doing that.
And we will look for other ways to do that.
We did
not get into the finer details of how they would or whether they'll be able to make up those funds.
I mean, I would I would guess that it's very possible that some of them intend to keep doing that work.
but may not have the same resources to put behind it, at least at first.
I think what they were trying to express is we still have the same intentions and we are not going to stop talking about our Hispanic students or we're not, you know, there's clearly a change in the climate also regarding higher education.
And I think that, for example, when I spoke to the president of Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, my ad, he was,
basically just saying this is just part of how we serve our community well because they were like we are close to 20 percent.
Hispanic student body, Milwaukee is 20% Hispanic.
This is what it means to do our job.
I hope we get to the clock.
Sorry about that.
I got a hard break, but thank you very much, Natalie Yar at Wisconsin Watch.
We appreciate you finding her story.
Everyone else is at WisconsinWatch.org.
Thanks, Natalie.
Have a great day.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
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