How is President Michael Schill standing against the Trump Administration? How is the federal government affecting ETHS? What is Northwestern lacrosse’s secret to success? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: On today’s episode:
University President Michael Schill joins more than 200 academic leaders condemning the Trump administration for academic overreach.
ETHS responds to federal funding threats.
And Northwestern Lacrosse wins the Big Ten Regular Season Trophy.
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Dov Weinstein Elul. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: First up today, I spoke to Managing Editor Jerry Wu about University President Michael Schill’s decision to join other academic leaders in a statement condemning Trump’s “overreach” in higher education.
So you’ve been one of The Daily’s main reporters on all the Trump administration policy changes and effects, obviously leading to this moment where Schill has signed the first statement against the administration with other university leaders. Can you just start by giving us like a 45-second summary of everything the Trump administration has done to Northwestern so far?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I mean, one of the things directly from the Trump administration that we obviously know is that there was a $790 million federal funding freeze a couple weeks ago and that’s really had a lot of trickling down effects to Northwestern and we’ve seen dozens of projects being terminated, researchers, PIs receiving stop work orders directly from the Department of Defense, and you know, we’ve seen several students at Northwestern, whether undergrad or recent graduates, who’ve had their visas revoked. But, you know, a lot of the times we’ve also seen some of these things been backtracked as well from the Trump administration.
Just for example, yesterday, the Trump administration paused any forthcoming visa terminations in the coming weeks as they’re searching for this new database. But anywho, you know, the two things that we’ve mainly seen are, you know, lots of cuts to research, primarily among The Graduate School and, you know, these visa terminations for the most part.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So, this statement that Schill just signed, what did it say?
JERRY WU: Yeah, I mean, the statement probably represented one of the largest fronts from dozens of academic leaders taking a stand against the Trump administration. Basically, they were condemning the Trump administration for what they billed as his administration’s overreach in higher education institutions. And Michael Schill, our University’s president, penned his name on the letter a few hours after the letter’s initial release, and it was in fact one of Schill’s first public signs of opposition as well as the University’s sign of oppositions towards the Trump administration, just given the fact that we’ve mostly seen our top university leaders maintain the fact that they haven’t received any official communication from the White House on any federal funding decreases in all and everything else that has happened to, to our university so far and it was in fact pretty a telling statement from academic leaders including Michael Schill himself.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Who else signed the statement?
JERRY WU: There were over 200 academic leaders, to my understanding. A lot of them were university leaders, chancellors that have seen huge chunks of their federal funding been frozen, so we saw Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and a few others. I mean this just spanned the entire nation, in terms of the signatories, so it really was a big, big effort.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So, now that these university leaders have signed this statement, what does it actually do?
JERRY WU: You know, I think it was more of a symbolic representation of just the growing discontent and perhaps brewing opposition from university leaders towards the Trump administration. I mean, we’ve seen Harvard University kind of spearheading at least this effort where they’ve actually pursued litigation against the Trump administration. I do think this letter really is a symbol and is a representation of a growing movement from university officials to mount a comeback to the Trump administration.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So, now that Schill has signed the statement, what might be happening next? Do we have any insight?
JERRY WU: I think right now, I think the University is taking a more reactionary stance where they’re at least closely monitoring and don’t necessarily want to get in the crosshairs of the Trump administration and face more lengthy legal battles and all that stuff, but I mean as of now, that’s that’s my assessment.
But honestly, I think in the coming months we could see a whole different picture where NU may perhaps get involved in litigation, or continue monitoring and responding to these executive orders and witnessing sort of litigation from other courts that have dealt blowbacks to these executive orders from the Trump administration and they act accordingly.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Jerry Wu, thank you so much.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Next, I spoke to D&I Chair and former Weekly host Edward Simon Cruz about the ways the federal administration is affecting ETHS.
It’s good to have you back, Edward. So, The Weekly’s been reporting a lot on the Trump administration’s effect on Northwestern. You’ve taken a different angle looking at some of the policy changes that are affecting the city of Evanston, specifically Evanston Township High School. In what ways is the federal government impacting ETHS?
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: Well, a lot of the Education Department’s policies have encompassed both universities but also K-12 schools. And so when we see Trump signing an executive order at the end of January targeting schools that provide gender affirming care or recognize transgender students or teach about what they say are anti-American ideologies about race, those are targeting K-12 schools. When we see them threaten to revoke funding from schools that have DEI programs that they say violate anti-discrimination laws, those are targeting K-12 schools.
And ETHS is part of that. It gets about $4.5 million which also translates to about 4.5% of its funding from the federal government, at least that was in its most recent budget. And theoretically, that shouldn’t affect its operations that much, but we do know that some staff have expressed concern that there could be staff cuts. There are also concerns that if schools like ETHS were to lose federal funding that that could affect their special education services since the federal government is supposed to provide a decent amount of that financial supports for individualized education plans, other services that students with certain special needs or disabilities may need, and ultimately, some of this will be rendered moot for now because as of Thursday, the Education Department was blocked by a federal court from enforcing some of its threats to cut funding for schools, but these threats do still kind of loom large, especially given how prominent a lot of these conservative politicians are on the national political stage right now.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So amid all these concerns, how is the school responding? What are the teachers doing?
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: ETHS administrators and teachers alike have remained pretty steadfast in their commitment to promoting inclusion and belonging. They haven’t explicitly used the phrase “DEI” for the most part in a lot of their kind of public communications, but the superintendent, Marcus Campbell, about a week into the (Trump) administration, he released a statement saying the school would continue to support Black students, LGBTQ+ students, students with disabilities, students whose families may have emigrated to the United States.
We also see that the teachers we talked to aren’t really changing the way they do their classes, so if they’re teaching about sex and gender in a certain way, they’re gonna continue to do that. They’re going to continue to recognize the existence of transgender people and given a lot of the attacks on teaching “critical race theory” in classrooms, which is usually more often a mask for talking about the more kind of complex parts of American history and its long history of racism. Some of the teachers we spoke with at ETHS do address these topics more head on — they talk about people like Martin Luther King and topics like African American Studies in ways that tend to go beyond some of the kind of traditionally prescribed narratives that conservative politicians like Ron DeSantis have tried to emphasize about American history.
But even before the federal court kind of sided with teachers unions and against the Trump administration, we saw that ETHS, unlike some other schools around the country, wasn’t necessarily looking to just fall in line with the Trump administration. That’s kind of a key difference. Between that and either other public schools and also with Northwestern where we’ve obviously talked a lot about its scrubbing of DEI web pages and references to DEI. We didn’t really see that record of what some teachers called “anticipatory compliance” at all from ETHS.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Edward Simon Cruz, thank you so much.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: Thanks, Dov. It’s nice to be on this side of the interviewer’s seat this time.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Last up today, I spoke to Design Editor and lacrosse beat writer Henry Frieman about the team’s recent dominance.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: So, Northwestern lacrosse just finished an undefeated season in the Big Ten and won their third straight Big Ten title. What has made this team so special this year?
HENRY FRIEMAN: Yeah, I think it’s really a testament to head coach Kelly Amonte Hiller’s ability to inherit a roster that has had such turnover, you know. Northwestern lost contributors such as program legends Izzy Scane and Erin Coykendall and Dylan Amonte and was able to seemingly recover, bounce back and be at the top of the Big Ten once more.
There’s been a lot of new contribution from a couple of transfers; Riley Campbell looks phenomenal on the ride and the meteoric ascension of Madison Taylor, who finished the regular season leading the nation in goals with 83 and points with 117, I believe it was a 5.19 goals per game average, a hat trick in 15 of 16 regular season games, she is a game wrecker. She is clearly the best player in the Big Ten, in the country, some could argue, and in my opinion she’s a clear favorite for the Tewaaraton Award. A lot of great defending, Sammy White, Jane Hansen have been crucial for the ’Cats, but yeah, it’s really just Kelly Amonte Hiller doing what Kelly Amonte Hiller does, which is winning.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: The fan attendance record was shattered by 1,500 fans at the Michigan game, the second to last game of their season. What brought all these fans out and what does that symbolize about the team’s energy and momentum?
HENRY FRIEMAN: Yeah, well, the team really marketed this game heavily from the beginning of the season. I believe it was like January post. They said, ‘Help us set an attendance record. Let’s have lacrosse night in Chicago.’ So, I spoke to Kelly Amonte Hiller about it in the week building up to it, and she was really overjoyed about the state of growth in Midwest lacrosse. s many people know, lacrosse is a traditional East Coast power school. No team except for Northwestern has won a national championship outside of the Eastern Time zone. Northwestern’s done it eight times.
And so when Kelly Amonte Hiller was hired in 2000 to revive a club team from the depths of budget cuts to resume varsity play in 2002 and immediately make an impact, to flash forwarding 25 years and looking at Martin Stadium and seeing all those people in the stands, I believe the final number was 3503, really just speaks to the growth of not only the game in the Midwest, but really the, the work that Northwestern has done to make Illinois a lacrosse state.
Illinois’ high school girls lacrosse wasn’t sanctioned until the early 2010s, and you see all the time, Kelly Amonte Hiller giving back. She has an annual camp that goes across the country to develop the game of lacrosse. And really this is a pinnacle, for now, but once the Final Four and National Championship come in 2026 at Martin Stadium with that expanded capacity, I fully believe that this is only the stepping stone. This is an appetizer.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Looking back at the season now that it’s over, what have been some of the top highlights?
HENRY FRIEMAN: You know, it’s funny, I always complain when I have to write a lacrosse story, like as a joke, because every game is the same. Every game is won by 10 or more goals, frequently. And so I have to, I’ve run out of words to say blowout. Really the whole season, the whole Big Ten slate has been a highlight reel, but I think some really impactful ones are winning on the road at Syracuse — Delaney Sweitzer’s homecoming — beating No. 4 Maryland at Ryan Fieldhouse, 16 to 4, dominating the entire run of possession, and obviously Lacrosse Night in Chicago which record-setting, clinches a share of the Big Ten title, can’t make it better than that.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: What are some of the players or the coaches been saying about what this team is like, what’s so special about it?
HENRY FRIEMAN: Yeah, I know Niki Miles, graduate student attacker, transferred here from Penn, so is used to playing at Northwestern, is used to losing to Northwestern. I’m sorry, if Penn Quaker fans are listening to this, but that’s the truth.
And so she’s come here and and she says she’s been blown away by the team chemistry and how the group has worked together to really just make each other better.
DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Henry Frieman, thank you so much.
Since this interview was recorded, Northwestern has defeated Maryland 8-7 to win the Big Ten Championship. They will now compete in the NCAA Championship Tournament.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Trump signs executive order targeting universities’ accreditation process.
Slow Pulp and BigXThaPlug announced as Dillo Day mainstage performers.
And a heated dispute at Table to Stix sparks community uproar.
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DOV WEINSTEIN ELUL: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Dov Weinstein Elul.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Dov Weinstein Elul, Jerry Wu, Edward Simon Cruz and Henry Frieman and produced by Ruby Dowling and Dov Weinstein Elul.
The Audio Editor is Isabella Jacob. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Anavi Prakash, Misha Manjuran Oberoi and Danny O’Grady. The Editor in Chief is Lily Ogburn.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke For Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
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Related Stories:
— President Schill joins academic leaders in statement condemning Trump’s ‘overreach’ in higher education
— Lacrosse: Northwestern takes home conference-best eight All-Big Ten selections
— ‘They’re going in with a sledgehammer’: Federal policies threaten Evanston Head Start programs
