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☀️Sunny but cold, with highs in the 30s. Sunset is at 4:26 p.m.
Today we have a story digging into the economics — and controversy — of college sports. But first, we look at the big national news from over the weekend through a local lens.
About 10,000 Venezuelan immigrants live in Massachusetts, said Carlina Velázquez, president of the Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts. And since the U.S. launched a military attack on the country’s capital of Caracas this weekend and detained the country’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, they’re wondering what will come next.
“We already have a president, Edmundo González Urrutia,” Velázquez told GBH’s Sarah Betancourt. “Maduro stole the elections. Venezuelans are looking forward to go back as soon as possible to restore the economy and to live in their houses, restore the country.”
We’ll be following this story as it unfolds and will keep you updated here and on GBHnews.org.
Four Things to Know
1. A federal judge in Massachusetts extended a deadline for about 230 people from South Sudan living in the U.S. legally under the Temporary Protected Status program, also known as TPS. The Trump administration tried to take away their status effective today, saying South Sudan is safe enough for them to return. Now TPS recipients from South Sudan can keep their legal status until the judge makes a final decision.
“Anybody who is even paying any attention to what’s happening in South Sudan knows that South Sudan is not safe for South Sudanese TPS holders to be returned to,” said Diana Konaté of the group African Communities Together, a party in the lawsuit. “People often say that immigrants should come here and do things the right way. Well, these are folks who have done everything the right and whose status is just being stripped from them. And that has real consequences.”
2. The Kraft Group is one step closer to building a 25,000-seat soccer stadium in Everett for the New England Revolution. Last week the business group reached agreements with the cities of Boston and Everett, which include the Kraft Group paying $100 million for environmental cleanup at the site where they want to build, which is the former site of a power plant.
They also include paying Boston $48 million over the next 15 years and covering infrastructure improvements at Sullivan Square in Charlestown. Before construction begins, the Kraft Group will have to submit detailed plans and get them approved by Everett’s local government and the state.
3. A group of primary care doctors in Western Massachusetts is hoping a collaboration with a company in Cambridge will help them better navigate negotiations with insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. Usually medical providers are paid for each service they perform. The Cambridge company, called Arches, has promised to help Valley Medical Group negotiate contracts that can pay per patient.
Paul Carlan, president and CEO of Valley Medical Group, said he hopes that leads to a system that prioritizes preventative care and is more flexible. “Suddenly we can provide care over the telephone or through the portal without visits for simple problems that maybe don’t need a visit,” he said, “which we think is a great benefit.”
4. Researchers who applied for funding from the National Institutes of Health and have seen their applications stall amid legal fights may soon get updates about their requests: the NIH agreed last week to resume reviewing grant applications.
“Essentially, NIH agreed to do what it should have been doing all along, which is to review the applications based on scientific merit and not stall or slow walk the applications based on political ideology,” said Olga Akselrod, a senior counsel at the ACLU’s racial justice program.
After an abysmal season, UMass Amherst’s football program faces scrutiny
UMass Amherst spent about $50 million on all of its athletics last year, according to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which is a 32% increase from 2015. About $1.4 million went to hiring a new football coach, Joe Harasymiak. Another $1.4 million went toward buying out the last coach, Don Brown.
And despite that spending, the UMass Amherst football team finished the season with 12 losses and zero wins.
“Not very many people seem to understand that students and their families are paying for most of this,” Michael Cavanaugh, an independent researcher and writer in Alexandria, Virginia, told GBH’s Kirk Carapezza.
UMass is not alone: universities across the country, including Big Ten schools like The Ohio State University and Rutgers, reported spending more money on their athletics programs than they made. With federal dollars for research and student loans more limited and the number of college-aged people in the U.S. dropping because of lower birth rates (more on that here and in more depth here), higher education economist Catharine Hill, managing director at the research firm Ithaca S+R, told Carapezza it makes sense to question whether that money is worth spending.
“It’s not exactly strengthening your academic program, which ultimately, I think, is the reason for the federal and state governments to be subsidizing higher education,” Hill said.
UMass Athletics Director Ryan Bamford said the school’s programs give students “an opportunity to combine their passion in the classroom with a Division I athletic experience.”
He pointed to a report last month in The Chronicle of Higher Education saying SEC schools in the south are attracting students with “sunshine, football, and a particular vision of college life.”
“We can’t change the weather in Western Mass,” Bamford told Carapezza. “But we can change the fact that we can have success in athletics. And that can drive both student engagement, student retention, and ultimately help us in the recruiting process for student athletes and general students to the campus.”
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