(elegant music) - President Biden wants to forgive some student loan debt.

Some praise the move.

Some hammer away at it.

A federal judge says Cleveland State University violated a student's rights by forcing him to submit to a video scan of his room before an online test and two lawmakers want legal protections for those who want to display the thin blue line flag.

Ideas is next.

(elegant music) Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The Biden administration says it'll forgive student loan debt to help struggling borrowers cutting $10,000 of college loan debt and 20,000 if you used a federal Pell grant.

Some love it, some hate it, and strangely, both candidates for U.S. Senate in Ohio agree that it's a bad idea.

A federal judge ruled that Cleveland State University violated a student's right to privacy by requiring a webcam scan of the student's room before an online test.

Two lawmakers in Columbus propose a bill that would prevent landlords and homeowners associations from prohibiting the thin blue line flag, which is meant to support law enforcement, but also has been co-opted by racists and the effort to stem an outbreak of monkeypox grows as the LGBTQ community says the response and outreach has been too slow.

We'll talk about those stories and the rest of the week's news on The Reporter's Round Table.

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, director of Engaged Journalism, Marlene Harris Taylor, and senior reporter Nick Castele, and in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

President Biden said this week, his administration will forgive $10,000 in student loan debt to help struggling borrowers.

Those who received a Pell grant, generally lower income folks will get a $20,000 break.

Borrowers must make less than $125,000 a year, individually, or less than 250,000 as a couple to qualify for the loan forgiveness.

It's become a big point of debate.

Marlene, reaction to the policy is split along a number of lines, racial and generational for starters.

I know a lot of people my age, and I'm a gen X person, who say you took out the loan, pay it off, and if you could only afford Cleveland state, don't take out a loan for Oberlin.

That's one of the arguments.

That you shouldn't get a benefit that I don't.

Others and many of them younger people are overwhelmingly for debt forgiveness.

So we have a real divide here.

- There's a huge divide.

I can say in my family, I have some millennial nieces and nephews and when the news came out, they were ecstatic.

I mean, they were throwing a party, because they've been struggling with this debt.

You're right, Mike, it's very, a wide variety of opinions, from people like you said, who said, hey, you took out the money, you pay for it, to other people like former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner she's been on Twitter, just really going at it.

She thinks this doesn't go far enough.

So the Biden administration is in this place where they've got a lot of people who are unhappy, but they also have a lot of people who are happy.

I think it's more of a divide around economics more so than anything though, Mike, I mean the people who are in that bracket of lower income or lower to middle income, who've been struggling with this debt, parents who already have debt themselves, and then accumulating debt for their children are just so happy because, listen, what do we say is the American dream?

The American dream is you can go, you can get higher education.

You can pull yourself up out of poverty.

How many times have we heard people say that to folks, pull yourself up out of poverty.

Get a great education, and then folks do that.

They have to sometimes take out loans to do that.

Even at places like Cleveland state or Kent state that are a little more affordable and then there's saddled with this debt and then we say, hey, tough luck.

- Karen, well you know it 'cause you're in the midst of it.

You've got.

- I'm in the midst of it.

I have a son in college as we speak.

A sophomore at Howard university, so I understand.

Yes.

- And I've got a senior at Bowling Green and we're just about to the end of that process right now.

That's the last one.

- Lucky you, lucky you.

- You'll be there someday.

Karen, the reaction is also split among political lines.

The timing puts this in play obviously for the midterm election.

- Yeah and I think it's really important to note that there is a political split here, even as we start talking about how Tim Ryan and JD Vance both agree in this area where they disagree with Biden on this, but you describe the two groups at the beginning.

Policy matters Ohio and The Buckeye Institute.

Policy Matters Ohio is a more progressive research group and so yeah, they've been saying this isn't enough and Buckeye Institute, a very conservative group has been saying they're critical of this because it really doesn't do anything to take on the cost of college and I think that's really something that a lot of people would agree on though.

That part about what do you do later on?

How do you reduce college costs going forward?

I think that this is kind of one of those things that could put Ohio in play.

Just this past week there were two major groups, Sabato's Crystal Ball and Cook Political Report who have looked at Ohio's Senate race and said, it's a more competitive race than they expected.

Still leans Republican, but more competitive than they expected.

So having this action happen now before the midterms certainly does suggest that there might be some political move to it and I also wanna say that Marlene was absolutely right about Nina Turner, the former democratic state Senator from Ohio and the former congressional candidate from Cleveland.

She's been out there for a while, talking about forgiving all student debt.

So for her and for others who follow her, this isn't enough.

- This is a racial issue too, Marlene.

Policy Matters has pointed to a study that they released in February of 2020 that shows minority students are much more likely to have student loan debt.

- Yeah, absolutely.

When people talk about, you hear folks say there's a difference between equality and inequities.

When you think about equality, we think the United States, everybody should be equal.

Everybody should have the same opportunities, but when you're already starting far back in the pack, getting the same equal opportunity is not the same.

So that's what's going on with African Americans for so many years, not being able to access money, access loans, and then now when people say, well, you have the same equal chance as everyone.

Well maybe your parents don't have an opportunity to help you pay for school because maybe their dad didn't get the GI bill back in the day and they're able to invest in a home and then they're able to use the equity from that home to help you go to school.

So it's a historic issue that people don't always like to look at.

People like to look at the now and the current situation and say, hey, we should all be equal, but it's a matter of thinking about people who are not at the starting line to begin with is what some folks are saying.

- Most progressives, as we've talked about, Nick, think this doesn't go far enough.

They're for cancellation of college loan debt in general.

We got an email from Jeff who says those upset by the college loan forgiveness program should not allow the perfect to be the death of the good.

The program is far from perfect, but I celebrate that action has been taken.

So even a little bit is okay with him.

You would think that the person running for U.S. Senate on the democratic side in Ohio, if you had no other context would be the person that would say this is a good thing and the Republican would say, this is a bad thing.

The conservative would say, this is a bad thing, but as Karen alluded to in Ohio, both Tim Ryan and JD Vance say this is a bad deal.

- Well, yeah, Tim Ryan was critical of it.

His fellow Democrat in Ohio, Senator Brown was all for it.

I think this is in line with the strategy that Tim Ryan has been taking politically.

We've seen him trying to speak to more conservative voters.

I think it's clear that the Ryan campaign is making a bet that Ohio is a more red state than it used to be and if you wanna win as a Democrat, you gotta speak to and appeal to more conservative voters and I think that his statement on student loans is very much in line with that campaign strategy.

- He argued.

- Can I add something?

- Yeah, please do.

- What's interesting is to look at Tim Ryan's statement and how it evolved from a statement in October of 2021, where he said that he supported loan forgiveness and so while he took this stance against loan forgiveness, back in the March debate, sponsored by the Higher Debate Commission and still holds to that opinion, this is still a departure from where he was in October of 2021, and when his campaign was asked about that, it said that he has always supported making college more affordable and accessible, but he feels that the cost of college is too high.

- He argued that the government should prioritize other policies over this broad forgiveness, such as tax cuts, medical debt cancellation, targeted forgiveness for essential workers, and he brings up this point, that the disparity about how much people make, that you can qualify for this, if you make up to $125,000, which is a ton of money and his point that he brought up was that, and here's a quote from him, he said, again, it's about opening opportunities, waving debt for those already on a trajectory to financial security sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohios without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet.

- But are they on a trajectory to financial security, and that's the other side of the argument is that many people who have college degrees are not on a trajectory to financial security because these loans are weighing them down and one of the things that I find interesting about this whole debate and many people have noted this, you don't have the same kind of debate or vitriol when rich people are given tax cuts.

So we talk about people who make $125,000 getting a break or a couple $250,000, when the prior administration gave massive tax cuts to, really rich people.

I don't recall people being this angry and this kind of debate and this kind of vitriol around that.

- And one thing too, to note here, the vitriol seems to even be coming from the top.

I mean, on Twitter last night, The White House was retweeting videos of prominent Republican elected officials who have been criticizing the student loan forgiveness and noting that many of these people had PPP loans from the pandemic that were forgiven and saying basically if you're opposed to taking out loans and having those forgiven well, then why did you do that yourself, and so I think that that's an interesting strategy that the white house took on last night.

(elegant music) - A federal judge has ruled in favor of a Cleveland State University student who sued the university after he was forced to submit to a video scan of his bedroom before an online test.

CSU argued that the process is used nationwide to ensure academic fairness and integrity.

Judge Phillip Calabrese, however, ruled the camera scan amounted to an unconstitutional search of the student's room.

Nick, this story blew up.

You'll see it shared all over social media because it's a real precedent that it's setting.

- Yeah well, according to Ogletree's attorney, this is a really breaking new legal ground in setting up a precedent on these webcam, what do they call them, room scans?

Basically webcam searches of students' houses.

- But what does that do?

So you look in someone's house and then this test begins and they bring the paper out from underneath the table that they had hidden.

I don't get it.

- Yeah, evidently.

Well, and I think that was part of the argument was that this is not really effective.

It doesn't do anything.

Now I think the school argued that the student is in control of this process, 'cause they're the one with the webcam, but Judge Calabrese said that this was being first of all, inconsistently applied at the school, and in that it just ultimately constituted an unlawful search because you weren't searching for evidence of cheating for instance, that you knew was there.

You were searching to see if you could find any evidence of cheating.

You didn't have any probable cause.

You had no reason to believe a student might be cheating.

You're just checking to see what could we find here, and I think that was part of the reason why this search was deemed to be unreasonable.

- Even brother Joe Shabala at St. Ides did not check your desk unless he suspected that you were looking at a cheat sheet but in this case though, that's the part that I'm perplexed about is I don't know how this scan would.

I wonder if there's ever an instance where a scan turned up, someone cheating because I don't know, that's a test you just failed.

The cheating test.

If literally a room scan, which by the way is essentially the same as if you're on a zoom call and people can look on in room around you, how that would somehow prevent cheating on a test.

Although apparently it's the national standard, according to CSU.

- Yeah, but you're right, it doesn't quite make sense.

You'd think that if you've got your cheat sheet, you'd be smart enough to hide it from the webcam.

- You would think.

Yeah.

So there's a precedent that's been set.

Marlene, any thoughts on, I guess this is, what this points to is the fact that so many tests and so much schooling now is online and they've gotta find a way 'cause there isn't a professor there to keep an eye on you.

- Right and I was just thinking about how intrusive it is for them to look around your room and maybe your bed is messy and you don't want all the other people on the call seeing your messy bed.

Everybody sees it.

Yeah.

So I think it's very intrusive.

I understand why the court ruled the way it did.

I do feel for the schools to your point, Mike, everybody's trying to find a new way because we were thrust in some ways into this world where we had to do this.

Although colleges had started, they were one of the places that had started this online class thing before the pandemic.

So it's something they've gotta figure out.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but apparently the court says this isn't it.

(elegant music) - Two Republican state lawmakers wanna prevent homeowners associations from banning displays of a flag that is used to show support for police.

The bill sponsored by Tim Ginter of Salem and Kevin Miller of Newark would prohibit HOAs from banning the thin blue line flag.

It's a black and white replica of the United States flag with a blue stripe and while it is meant to represent support for police, it's also seen by some as a racist symbol.

Karen, let's talk about that.

Why are some HOAs banning that particular flag?

Are they attuned to the idea that this can be a signal of something much more nefarious than support for police?

- I think it's more that HOAs just kind of ban a lot of different displays of things.

You can't have gardens in some HOAs or you can't have certain banners that you put up on your house.

So I think that this is in line with that kind of thing and this is kind of a blanket ban on any ban on those particular flags and one of the two sponsors is representative Kevin Miller.

He's a 22 year veteran of the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

He was appointed to the Ohio house last year and so he said, he views this flag as supportive of law enforcement and he doesn't think that HOA should be able to ban it just like they can't ban the American flag.

They can't ban the Ohio flag.

They can't ban the POW flag or military flags.

He says, this should be in there and I asked him specifically about the concerns that some activists have about how white supremacist groups and others have used this flag in their displays and he said, he doesn't believe this is political.

He just believes this is a flag that supports law enforcement and so he believes it should be able to be displayed.

I have gotten a couple of emails though about this specifically noting that this flag, again, it's a black and white flag with that blue stripe in the middle is illegal under U.S. flag code.

So I don't know if that's the case.

I haven't had a chance to look into that, but I think that that's interesting that this is a flag that some people view as not only tied to certain racist groups, but as an illegal display of the American flag.

- You're right.

That is another argument.

Not just what it represents, but what it does to the flag.

- Yeah and I think that's still something to look at.

I also asked representative Miller about the other flag that I've seen, which I guess you'd call the red blue or the thin red line flag, which shows support for firefighters and he said, this legislation is specifically targeted at that thin blue line flag and then someone else wanted to come up with something else that would allow for the firefighter support flag to be displayed.

He lets them handle that.

- Marlene, there are a whole lot of flags or other symbols that maybe not everybody is aware that signal something other than what they are.

- Yeah, like the Confederate flag, that's another example.

- We're aware of that one.

- Well, yeah, I mean we're aware of it, but there's still people who feel like it, that there's virtue in that flag because of the history connected with it for the south.

So there still isn't 100% percent agreement that that flag should not be flown even though we know the history of it.

So it's might be a similar situation here with this flag, people see in it, what they want to see in it.

I think that this one brings up so many issues.

There's the issue of freedom of speech.

Should HOAs have the ability to ban anything?

As Karen noted, it's a very common practice for HOAs to ban all kinds of things and when people decide they're gonna live in a HOA community, they agree that, okay, I'm gonna abide by the rules of this community.

So it shouldn't be a surprise to them that certain things should be, will be banned by that community.

- I think if you drive around Ohio, whether you're in Cleveland or Lakewood, where I live, you might see, you're gonna see people expressing their political views on their property.

Whether that is having signs in their yard saying in this house, we believe kindness is everything.

Women's rights are human rights, et cetera.

You go out to rural Ohio, you'll see people flying Let's go Brandon flags.

- Actually I saw that in Brook park.

- In Brook park, absolutely.

Well you can see it in Cleveland too.

People want to express their political views and values on their property.

I think trying to prohibit people from expressing certain views on their own property is dicey territory and it seems to me that that's a fundamental free speech issue.

- Isn't that what HOAs do though?

I mean.

- I don't know if they should.

- Maybe they should not, but up to this point, they've had the right to say, you can do this, you can do that other than what was prescribed by the legislature.

Yes, you gotta make sure people can fly the American flag, et cetera.

(elegant music) - The city of Cleveland will host a monkeypox vaccination clinic today.

Ohio has 147 cases.

According to a new dashboard created by the Ohio Department of Health.

Cuyahoga county has 61 cases.

Most of those in Cleveland.

The virus is disproportionately impacting the LGBTQ community.

Marlene that community, the LGBTQ community is speaking out about what it sees as a slow response to the virus, including a lack of outreach and education about risks.

- Yeah, Ken Schneck did a report for us on that and they were pointing to the beginning in the early parts of the summer when the first cases were starting to hit Ohio, they didn't see a quick and rapid response from health officials right then.

At least that's what they're claiming.

Now, health officials are saying that well, part of the reason you didn't see this big response is that we decided that unlike the past, where we were gonna have all these open calls, come get your vaccine, that we were gonna work through networks that we knew sort of behind the scenes and work that way but according to the folks that Ken spoke with that was not working.

People were not getting the messages that they needed and we've seen a turnaround, I would say in the last week or so that there's been a lot more high profile press conferences, open clinics where people can go and get the shots, but we still do have a problem with the amount of vaccine that's available in the state.

There's not a lot right now.

The state officials are saying more is coming, but we don't know exactly when that's coming.

- We should note Ken Schneck who is often a guest here on the round table is the editor of The Buckeye Flame, which is an LGBTQ online publication and Ken was contracted by us to do that story for Ideastream too.

Marlene, an interesting thing that we need to address is every time we talk about monkeypox, it's accurate to say that most of the cases in the United States and in Ohio as well, and in Cleveland are LGBTQ.

They're gay men.

Men who have sex with men, but it's not limited to that and it is not, there's a stigma that can come if that's what you concentrate on.

- You're right, and that's been part of the dilemma that the health officials have been facing because they didn't want to create a situation like we had with the AIDs crisis, where the LGBTQ community was very stigmatized and people thought that was a gay disease.

So they were grappling and struggling with how do we get the messages out about this knowing that this community is being impacted at the rate it is, and not create this stigma, but it is true.

The city health director, Dr. David Mongolia said that in a press conference that that's the community that's being impacted locally but because it's skin to skin contact, close contact, it can be anybody who has close contact with that person.

- So now it's that population, but in several months or longer, it could be a different population.

- And I believe the public health community expects that it will expand beyond this community but right now that's the group that's being impacted the most.

- One last thing, and that is something you noticed and we talked about it in our news meeting the other day, we now have the county health department and the city health department where before there didn't seem to be any communication, now it seems like there's some real coordination.

- Yeah, it was very refreshing to see the city health director and the county health director having a joint press conference.

I mean, that doesn't seem like such a big deal, but it hasn't been happening.

The city health department was a island onto itself and especially during the COVID pandemic, the county was really forward facing having lots of press conferences, making sure people had information.

Whereas the city, in some respects, you had to go dig for it, right Nick?

- Well, and they also had a lot of organizational troubles during the pandemic, which included the former director, I think being removed or demoted, and so yeah, the city had its own just internal issues to deal with.

- And so now that there's a new administration, there seems to be a turn, if you will.

I know that mayor Bibb has said that he wanted to be more cooperative with the county.

There's some people who have advocated for the two merging together.

I don't see that happening right away, but it is great to see more open cooperation and communication with the two.

(elegant music) - When you think of bratwurst, you might think of brew, but in Bucyrus it comes this year with a brew haha.

All right, thank you everyone.

- That was a good one.

- The bratwurst festival queen has been dethroned less than two weeks before her reign was to end and now there are lawyers for the queen and the festival board grilling each other.

Thank you.

The Bucyrus bratwurst festival board of directors terminated the contract of 2021 queen Abigail Brockwell earlier this month, apparently because she went to a luncheon they didn't want her to attend.

I'm thinking, what were they serving?

Notwurst?

Since she was stripped of royalty, both the board and Brockwell have hired lawyers and litigated their cases through the media.

Brockwell has been threatened with criminal charges if all the items she received as queen are not returned to the board.

She also lost out, I think Nick, on a $1,000 scholarship.

- That $1,000 scholarship is part of what the bratwurst queen receives.

- And she probably has to give back the grilling tongs too and all that kind of stuff, but what is it?

Wait a minute, she's a queen who went to a lunch.

What's wrong with that?

- Mike, the story is more twisted than a Bavarian pretzel.

Evidently the bratwurst festival board did not want the Queens, the bratwurst Queens to travel to other Ohio festivals to go to these luncheons because they, for whatever reason felt that the behavior of the Queens was not reflecting well on the bratwurst festival incorporated.

- How much trouble can you get in at a lunch?

- Well, I don't know, but evidently the bratwurst queen went to this festival, this festival luncheon in Baltimore, Ohio, anyway.

However she says she did so not as the queen but as a commoner in her normal clothes, not wearing the German crown.

- No crown, no tiara.

- And so she says she was just there with a friend, but evidently that did not cut the mustard for the bratwurst board and they've removed her, but yeah, I mean, now she's lawyered up and this lawyer is speaking to the press saying this was unfair what happened to her and they want the production of documents evidently to make their case.

- And all of this over, I mean, it's a couple of things she's giving back and a $1,000 scholarship.

So it really isn't about the money.

It's about, I guess, pride too.

- Poor Abigail.

I feel sorry for Abigail.

Did she have to give back the crown?

Did she have a crown?

- They said everything.

- They said there's a long list of items that they wanted returned.

- You don't have that committed to memory?

- I tried to.

Crown, sash, cloak, charm bracelet, bratty charm, copper kettle, parade name magnets.

There's a bag, a blanket, printed umbrella, and the list goes on, including by the way, unused thank you notes, which they also want returned to the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival board.

- Monday on the sound of ideas on 89.7 WKSU we'll talk about education.

Specifically, the teacher shortage, many school districts are facing.

We'll discuss the ramifications of that with our new education reporter Connor Morris.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for listening and stay safe.

(elegant music)