Content warning: This episode contains discussions of sexual assault and violence.
What did we learn from Northwestern’s yearly security update? Who were the protesters on the I-94 overpass? What’s the story behind the award-winning student documentary “Hey Hugo?” The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
JACK GREENSPAN: On today’s episode: ICE protesters on the I-94 overpass, a new yearly security update from Northwestern and an award-winning documentary film collaboration between Medill students and their incarcerated peers in the Northwestern Prison Education Program.
From the Daily Northwestern, I’m Jack Greenspan, and this is The Weekly: your breakdown of the top headlines from this past week.
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I’m joined by Max Turetzky and Ashley Dong, who were able to go to the protests on the I-94 overpass on Church Street. Can you just describe briefly what this protest was about, just to give us a little bit of context?
ASHLEY DONG: So recently, a new group called North Shore Says NO! has emerged in Evanston, and they’ve been organizing overpass protests along I-94 for the past month or so. They started in September, and they recently decided to continue through October.
MAX TURETZKY: These protesters are mostly protesting during the morning and afternoon, during rush hour traffic, so they can get as much attention as possible. And what they’re protesting is the presence of ICE in Chicago, the Trump administration ramping up its immigration enforcement actions. The impetus for these protests was the start of Operation Midway Blitz, which was the Trump administration’s massive influx of ICE agents into Illinois — into Chicago especially — to basically round up people who they suspect of being illegal immigrants.
The main sentiment that we saw was outrage. I think people are outraged by what they perceive as the intrusion of ICE into their communities, by the Trump administration’s escalation of immigration enforcement actions in Chicago. People feel that their due process rights are at risk of being violated. They are outraged at the deportations, by the constant presence of ICE in their cities and what seems to be now the incoming presence of the National Guard.
ASHLEY DONG: A few of them were dancing while holding their signs, and they were all cheering when a car honked at them when they’re passing by or shouted something encouraging. So, yeah, I think there was also a really positive energy.
JACK GREENSPAN: And one of the people you talked to when you were there was mentioning how they wanted to get younger people involved. And they were kind of saying, everyone here, we all are the same age. Our hair is all the same color: gray. And I thought that was kind of interesting because there weren’t a lot of young people there. Do you think there’s a reason why there wasn’t a lot of young people there?
ASHLEY DONG: Yeah, so a lot of the people we spoke to actually expressed how much they wish more young people would take part in these sorts of demonstrations. I think Northwestern students tend to be a little more focused on activism groups within campus rather than joining ones that are like wider Evanston activist groups. So a lot of the people we spoke to really wanted more college students and high schoolers, and a lot of Northwestern students to really get out there and protest alongside them. One of them mentioned a potential Indivisible Evanston event on Northwestern campus. They’re hoping to hold some sort of demonstration on campus to be able to engage more of the student body.
JACK GREENSPAN: Was there sort of an element of power that these people expressed?
MAX TURETZKY: Most of the protesters were white. A lot of them were older, retired. And I think that you’re right that that maybe puts them in a position of power. They’re not Hispanic. They’re not the kind of people who are being targeted by ICE right now. And I think that a lot of them, as people who’ve been involved in political activism for a while, they kind of see the threat that this poses to the rest of their communities, even if not them personally. The main concern that a lot of people talked about was due process rights and they’re worried that — I mean, for their community members, obviously, the people who are being targeted right now — but also they’re worried that if rights are taken away from other people, that will lead to an erosion of rights for the rest of the country and for them too.
ASHLEY DONG: And a sentiment that I’ve heard expressed from multiple people is that being able to protest is a privilege. And it’s one that they’re proud to exercise on behalf of the people that can’t. And so I think that’s a really powerful thing to do it on behalf of your community and for your country as well.
JACK GREENSPAN: One of the protesters mentioned that the response they were getting from drivers on the highway was overwhelmingly positive. Did you notice any negative responses to the protest?
ASHLEY DONG: Definitely. There were a few, like, middle fingers and angry honks. But, I do think while we were out there looking down at the cars that were driving past us on Church Street as well as the ones passing below us on the highway. Most of it was positive. It was kind of difficult to even hear them as we were interviewing because of all the happy beeps that were going on below us and right next to us.
JACK GREENSPAN: Well, Ashley and Max, thank you so much.
Next, we have some more info on Northwestern’s yearly security report. There were some pretty significant findings this year, an increase in hate crimes among many other things. I’m here today with Ryan Ottignon. Ryan, what should we know about this new security update and what’s significant?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Yeah, so this was a report released under the Clery Act. It’s released annually by NU and all other colleges in the U.S. receiving federal funding. And this one covered 2024. And the first thing I noticed was this uptick in hate crimes with nine in 2024 compared to one in 2023. And it was largely driven by this category that we’ve never seen before in these reports called national origin, with five out of nine being motivated by that descriptor. But I was told by communication freshman Yushu Wu that while it didn’t make him more nervous, it made him want to be more alert on campus, and I think that’s a sentiment shared by a lot of students on campus.
We also saw spikes in sexual assault reports, specifically fondling, which is the nonconsensual touching of private body parts. But while we saw this spike to 12 in 2024 compared to two in 2023, Weinberg Senior Sahil Desai told me as director of Sexual Health and Assault Peer Educators or SHAPE, that while this may reflect an actual increase in fondling on campus, it may also show an increase in students’ educated and able to report to the Office of Civil Rights.
And the final big change was that we saw zero fires on campus in residential facilities in 2024. There were lots of fire alarms, but zero fires for the first time in recorded history under the Clery Act.
JACK GREENSPAN: You said that national origin was one of the areas where we’ve seen an uptick in hate crimes. Are there certain nationalities that are victim of this more than others?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Yeah, we haven’t seen that data reported in the Clery Act, so it doesn’t disclose which nationalities are the victims of these hate crimes.
JACK GREENSPAN: Do we know if the victims of some of these crimes that we were talking about, are we talking about our undergraduate students? Are we talking about our graduate students? Is it taking place on the Evanston campus or the Chicago campus? Do we have any more data like that?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Yes, so they’re affecting all students. The Evanston campus is the most prevalent out of all of these statistics. But we are seeing a lot of public property crimes on the Chicago campus, so that means crimes that are not from within buildings on campus, but they’re outside of them that are often against students. So while the Evanston campus is overrepresented, it is also occurring to especially graduate students on the Chicago campus.
JACK GREENSPAN: What should be the most important takeaway of this yearly security update?
RYAN OTTIGNON: The overall sentiment that we’re hearing is that campus is safe. These are uptakes in individual stats and a lot of them don’t tell the whole story because we don’t get a lot of data about the individuals, and it’s very difficult to dig into the data more to figure out, as you said, things about the nationalities that are targeted in these hate crimes and so on. So, campus is safe.
JACK GREENSPAN: Thank you so much, Ryan.
RYAN OTTIGNON: Yeah, thank you.
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JACK GREENSPAN: For our last story, I spoke to Cayla Labgold-Carroll, our assistant campus editor, to talk about the documentary “Hey Hugo,” a film made by two Medill seniors that tells the story of Hugo Ocon, one of their peers in the Northwestern Prison Education Program, currently incarcerated at the Sheridan Correctional Center.
Can you tell me a little bit about the Northwestern Prison Education Program as a whole?
CAYLA LABGOLD-CARROLL: So to my understanding, at least, I’ve never done a program within NPEP, but basically they connect NPEP students who are usually Sheridan classmates with students at Northwestern, specifically Medill usually. So this class specifically was a prison documentary program where they were pairing students with incarcerated students at Sheridan and telling their stories.
JACK GREENSPAN: So, in the case of “Hey Hugo” specifically, what sort of was Hugo’s story that they wanted to capture?
CAYLA LABGOLD-CARROLL: So I think the main point of their story was showing his connection with his family and the impact that him being incarcerated was having on his family because they have so much love for him, and they wanted to show how his incarceration and like him waiting to hopefully have his sentence overturned was taking a toll on the family.
JACK GREENSPAN: What was the process of making this film? How long did they spend filming? How long did they spend editing?
CAYLA LABGOLD-CARROLL: So they said it was definitely a challenge because they only had one quarter to do the entire film start to finish, from connecting with Hugo, deciding who in their group of classmates they were going to tell the story of and filming. They filmed in the prison, I think one day a week, and then they also had time where they went and interviewed his family members outside of the prison.
But they said it was definitely a challenge to put together in such a short amount of time. And one of the directors told me that she was like looking back now while she’s working in the film industry. She was shocked by what they accomplished in such a short amount of time. Now knowing the immense production that it takes to go into a film.
They won a bunch of different awards for the documentary. A lot of Medill students in the documentary program go and their films are put to these film festivals, like put up for consideration. And they won the Best of Youth documentary for CineYouth Film Festival. And what that means is that now in late October, they’re going to be showing their film in the Chicago CineYouth Film Festival, which is a pretty big deal.
The main award that stuck out to me and to them was the one that they won like from Hugo himself that he gave them, where he handmade and painted this paper award because they NPEP program did a student recognition day and the other Sheridan classmates nominated Ysa and Annie for this best directors award, and he made it for them himself.
When I was Zooming with them, I believe it was Ysa, like pulled it up and like she had it in her apartment off campus, you know, like she’s no longer a student here and like had it super accessible because she’s so proud of that award. Professor Brent Huffman told me that pretty much all his students who take this class document carceral injustice said that this is like the most meaningful experience they’ve ever had, is taking that class with him.
JACK GREENSPAN: And I assume Hugo was very happy to have his story told?
CAYLA LABGOLD-CARROLL: So I wasn’t able to speak with Hugo directly, but from the statements I received from him through NPEP, he said that he’s really thankful to Ysa and Annie. He feels like they’ve changed his life. And that he’s really hoping that more and more people will see his film and hear his story.
Something that they emphasized to me was that not only was this Hugo’s story that was being told, but he also was a producer on the film. Him and the other Sheridan classmates were giving them feedback constantly throughout the film. They would show them a clip and they would say where do you think this should be in the film? How does this flow? What’s a good way we can make this work together into the story? It was a collaborative project. And I think that’s something they really emphasized was like not only was this, this wasn’t just them telling Hugo’s story, this was Hugo telling his story.
JACK GREENSPAN: Awesome, well thank you so much, Cayla.
CAYLA LABGOLD-CARROLL: Yeah.
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JACK GREENSPAN: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Former district 65 superintendent indicted on 17 counts of embezzlement and fraud
Rapid Recap: Northwestern 22, Penn State 21
Bienen freshman honored as U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts
JACK GREENSPAN: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Jack Greenspan.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Jack Greenspan, Max Turetzky, Ashley Dong, Ryan Ottignon, and Cayla Labgold-Carroll, and produced by Jack Greenspan and Finian Hazen.
The Audio Editor is Finian Hazen. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Sydney Gaw, Christina Lin and Sarah Serota. The Editor in Chief is Emily Lichty.
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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