The Weekly: Transgender students express frustration, Bienen junior finds a tune, NU researchers’ plasma discovery

Wallis Rogin and Clara B. Freeth

May 3, 2026

The Daily Northwestern · The Weekly: Transgender students express frustration, Bienen junior finds a tune, NU researchers’ plasma discovery

WALLIS ROGIN: Last week, The Daily reported on the lack of support transgender students said they feel at Northwestern, Bienen junior Tehya Shapiro’s life as a trumpet major and a new discovery in plasma research at NU’s labs.

From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Wallis Rogin.

CLARA B. FREETH: And I’m Clara B. Freeth. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.

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WALLIS ROGIN: I’m here with The Daily’s, Isabella Mason, who reported on the lack of support transgender students say they feel from the University. Isabella, what happened in January and how are these students feeling now?

ISABELLA MASON: So in January, there was a memorial (on The Rock) for a trans student who passed away in May of 2025. And it was painted over, but not in the usual way, where everything is covered over. But this big X was drawn in the middle of that memorial, and below that drawing, read, “the Bold Duke of Burgundy.” So, a lot of students feel like this trans memorial was defaced and with a symbol that is commonly now associated with alt right hate groups.  

WALLIS ROGIN: How are these students feeling now?

ISABELLA MASON: I think a lot of these students are just feeling, it’s this constant disappointment. Already they’re a community that aren’t the most visible on campus, so then with this happening and the lack of the University’s support, and the University’s inaction, for these students, it feels like the University just doesn’t care about them, about their safety, about their well being, about their mental health, about them having places to feel like they are in community with other transgender students.  

WALLIS ROGIN: And who did you talk to in this article and what is their perspective?

ISABELLA MASON: I spoke to a lot of people. I spoke to a lot of trans students at NU. I spoke to someone that works at the Gender and Sexuality (Studies Program) on campus. And I also spoke to two people that work at LGBTQ advocacy groups in Evanston. And their perspective is the University has to take these things seriously, even though the University says they unequivocally support transgender students, there’s no action behind it. A lot of students share the sentiment that the University just did not take it seriously. The University is willing to sacrifice the comfortability, the safety of their trans students in order to gain funding. It’s just this disappointment I think students are feeling.

WALLIS ROGIN: What do you think is the key point readers should take away from this?

ISABELLA MASON: I just think readers need to remember that there are more students on this campus that do not look like them, maybe do not resemble the same values, but are humans nonetheless and deserve to be recognized, deserve to feel safe on campus.  

WALLIS ROGIN: Thank you, Isabella, for joining me on The Weekly.

ISABELLA MASON: Thank you.

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CLARA B. FREETH: I’m here with reporter William Fisher to talk about how Northwestern researchers recently found a way to use plasma in key industrial chemical reactions. William, can you tell us about what happened and why it was worth writing an article on?

WILLIAM FISHER: So basically, what happened is that this lab or group, mostly consisting of people from Dayne Swearer’s lab, they found a way to use plasma to convert methane to methanol. And the current process in for like industry, is a two step process, and it’s highly carbon intensive. This is just one step, so there’s no intermediates there. And you know, the plasma is kind of used to make the reaction go faster, higher selectivity for your products.

And I guess what kind of drew me to it is you can kind of call it lightning in a bottle, which is a very cool visual, because as the reaction takes place, it takes place in a flask with water. You know, there’s methane coming in as the plasma goes through the flask itself actually lights up. So I think that cool image just drew me to it at first.

CLARA B. FREETH: Did you get to see that happen?

WILLIAM FISHER: I saw the images. And there’s actually a video you can find on NU’s website or everywhere. But it’s very cool to see, yes.

CLARA B. FREETH: Who did you talk to for this piece, and why them?

WILLIAM FISHER: I talked to three people involved. I talked to Dayne Swearer — he was the corresponding author, and he kind of leads the group which did most of the research. And I talked to James Ho as well. He was the first author. He was the one who actually kind of got started on it, because he was working in Swearer’s lab, just messing around. How could this reaction happen? And then as he got more interested, then other people started going, like Stephanie Pecaut, the other one of the other authors, I believe, out of six or so. And so I talked to them about the impact of the research, how it actually happened, and what the future might look like for it.

CLARA B. FREETH: What will this technology do in the future?

WILLIAM FISHER: So from what I was talking with them. None of them thought that, especially in the short term, that it’s going to replace the current method, which is two step highly carbon intensive, mostly because, well, the current method has just been researched so well in terms of amount made, it’s very hard to compete with that. And their method is highly electricity intensive just to have to use the plasma.

But one of the applications they thought it might have eventually is well heads are used to get gas out of the ground. And sometimes they have leaks, and when this happens, that natural gas just is added to the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. But with this method, they could make some sort of machine using this reaction and attach it to those and rather than having that go in the atmosphere, convert that into fuel.

CLARA B. FREETH: Finally, what’s one thing you learned from this article that you think people should know about?

WILLIAM FISHER: I think one thing that I just found kind of cool is, I think plasma, in a lot of people’s minds, you know, the fourth state of matter. You don’t think it would come up a lot other than that’s what lightning is made out of. But actually, from my understanding, from what they were saying, plasma is actually used in a ton of different chemistry. And a big takeaway from the research is that they’re going to try to use this reaction, using plasma, to see what other chemical reactions that can be applied to.

CLARA B. FREETH: Thank you so much, William.

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CLARA B. FREETH: I’m here with reporter Maryclare Nestor to talk about Bienen junior Tehya Shapiro’s journey to finding community and connection as a trumpet performance major. Maryclare, how did you choose Tehya to profile?

MARYCLARE NESTOR: I chose Tehya to profile because I was speaking with one of my friends who is a Bienen student, and she said that Tehya was someone who was very dedicated to being a music major, and she always spent a lot of time practicing at Bienen, because she’s not only a student at Bienen but she also works in the Bienen box office, so she’s basically there her whole day. And also just that Tehya is extremely talented, and she has a really cool background, so she’d be very interesting to talk to.

CLARA B. FREETH: Who else did you talk to for this story?

MARYCLARE NESTOR: I talked to a couple of people. I talked to Prof. David Bilger, who is Tehya’s primary trumpet performance professor, and he was super interesting to talk to because he served as a principal trumpet of the Philadelphia Orchestra for 27 years. So he had very interesting insights to share. In addition to his fantastic comments about Tehya, I then also talked to sophomore Lilie Shlyak, and she kind of also provided the student perspective on Tehya and how Tehya served as a leader in the trumpet performance community. And I also talked to freshman Kylie Holes, who said similar things, so it was very awesome.

It was also just really special being able to talk to so many people in Bienen because all of them gave this perspective that I had never kind of realized about how much work goes into being a Bienen student, how much practice, but also kind of the very tight-knit community that is formed. So it was really interesting.

CLARA B. FREETH: What previous knowledge before doing this story did you have about Bienen students? What did you learn from it?

MARYCLARE NESTOR: So one of my closest friends is actually a Bienen student, and I’m a frequent attendee of the orchestra concerts. I know from my friend who’s in Bienen how much work it is, how much time commitment it is, and I really want to be able to highlight that for the rest of the student body, but I feel like I still didn’t even understand a lot of the elements of Bienen, like I didn’t know anything about the summer festivals program. I didn’t know very much about the types of community that are formed and that a lot of their classes are freshmen all the way through master’s students, which was something that I didn’t know. So I think I definitely learned a lot throughout the process of writing a story.

CLARA B. FREETH: What is the summer program?

MARYCLARE NESTOR: The summer festivals program it’s kind of similar to, like Tehya described it, very similar to an internship. So music majors from across the country apply for these summer festivals. And it’s these two to three week programs where they travel either in the U.S. or to another country and perform with professional musicians, undergraduate musicians, sometimes even high school musicians. They all perform together, and they put on these free concerts. Tehya talked about her favorite experience with summer festivals, which she got to go to Taiwan and put on these concerts. And she said it’s really cool because you sometimes get members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and such also performing with students, which she said was really special.

CLARA B. FREETH: Maryclare, thank you so much for joining me on The Weekly.

MARYCLARE NESTOR: Wait. Of course.

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CLARA B. FREETH: Here are the other top headlines from the week:

Man dies in construction accident at former Allen Center site, authorities say.

District 65 moves to reinstate middle school library program.

Daya announced as Dillo Day daytime headliner.

Lacrosse: Northwestern clinches 4th straight Big Ten Championship with Child’s overtime winner.

Deering Meadow construction replacing water valves draws curiosity.

From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Clara B. Freeth.

WALLIS ROGIN: And I’m Wallis Rogin.

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Clara B. Freeth and reported and produced by me, Wallis Rogin.

The audio editor is Wallis Rogin. The multimedia managing editors are Ruby Dowling, Isabella Jacob and Matt Wasilewski. The editor in chief is Anavi Prakash.

Email: [email protected]
X: @wallis_rogin

Email: [email protected]