HBC Dodgers radio Dodgers at the dark welcome back to another episode of unfiltered and uncensored talk with young alumni from historically black colleges joining us tonight Or is the Morganite tiff about to get thrown off the show and a special My dear brother Katie from copping By way of the petty ass podcast which he never shows up for but didn't show up for this taping Um We got a we got a we got a lot to discuss It's been a while since we've had since we've had a recording, but certainly a lot has transpired in the HBC community in the weeks since our last broadcast out to you First and foremost, I kind of want to begin with this the story that's kind of blended. It's been at college Which we know some weeks ago Had their accreditation appeal and fell short Has since sued the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on colleges They remain accredited and on probationary status For at least the foreseeable future until they determine How it's going to go to court or if they're going to pursue other accreditation options and so far They are pursuing accreditation with the transnational Association of Christian colleges and schools That is not old news, but it's older than recent news, which is Cheney Which is also on a show-calls probation with their accreditor The middle states a higher education commission And as we know Cheney being you know under dispute one of the the oldest HBCU in the country in significant financial streets From most angles more severe even than Bennett And has been for years particularly as a public institution and this is on the heels of another Headline that just surfaced this week's about Denmark Technical College in South Carolina Which in a few weeks is under proposal to possibly End as an institution as a as a degree granting institution and be reopened as a career development center. So We bridged the three of these topics together To have a conversation about What we've talked about so frequently before which is How are some of these HBCUs? whether geographically Whether through you know antagonistic state government, whatever the case may be They're dropping If you look at those three Add that to Payne College Add that to Knoxville College add that to Morris Brown was just hired a new president which we'll get into You're seeing a cluster of schools on a verge if not Shutting down on the verge of shutting down I would ask you guys And we'll let Katie start because the Pettie guest Yeah on this 313 day You forgot to introduce my dear brother Lawrence Winston coffee the third is that midnight Midnight Wednesday on my fault Thank you. So Katie, we'll start with you. So a number of HBCU's face enclosure having closed And obviously there's this common theme of alumni which are really really fighting it Been it being the one that has drawn the most attention, but what's your reaction about the the dissonance between What financially is happening to these schools and an alumni stepping in to say we absolutely can't let them go My first start as an alumni campus at university is I hope the God we're not next because Jesus copman's Enrollment copman enrollment stays below whatever it is. So let's say we need 4,000 And we're always in that 3,200 or something like that And so my thought is we are always on that line as well I mean recently when I was in school had an accreditation fight, thank God we came out on top But we still had to do some restructuring. So my first thought is really not enough love alumni to fight is that What is it like to be a student at a school that's going through that? It depends on the program you're in because they don't always attack the entire school Sometimes they just attack certain programs. So for the school of business management or the school of sports medicine I believe it was they were sitting there like oh my God my degree not going to mean that or not degree not going to mean nothing And then two years later they rolled all of them to the school of business And expanded that program and that was their way of saving the accreditation for the business school And so the question is like Where's the leadership? Like why is the leadership not being honest for the students? How will you attract the new students and not?  It seems like they just pimping the students to keep the doors open so there's a certain amount of people can keep some jobs And that's just not fair Or is that's right up your alley? We have many times that we talked about it before how the transparency about operations about finance about your standing and You you don't disclose it to anybody, but yet you want so much of a support system behind you when it's like, okay It's do or die time right I mean, I couldn't agree more but again this goes back to My overarching theory that again one with Cheney It's clear to say the Pennsylvania doesn't have a dog in the fight about if they if they're going to make it or not They say Pennsylvania doesn't care But but even even more so that again, even with Bennett remorse Brown and I will talk about that a bit later But I mean it to me is it's disgusting It's disturbing and it's embarrassing as someone who cares about historically black colleges to see institutions who have these you know quote-unquote qualified quote-unquote experienced You know administrators But they operate with such low efficiency. They operate with such low transparency and with such low integrity and so to see what Morris Brown is done to see what Bennett has done and I you know, I'm always a big proponent of I'm about thriving not just surviving and I agree with you At some point Jared in terms of I'd rather have 50 strong HBC Then be at 105 or whatever you know with with this level of There's a lot of operation this level of efficiency. So it's unfortunate, but it just makes me upset because Like you said, it is pimping the students It is getting all this tuition revenue for school that we know I'm going to with this degree that won't be accredited And that affects communities not just individual students Tim, do you think that there's a concern that if you if you let it go without a fight or you willingly give it up? That that is a poor reflection of the sector at large and the reason I ask that question is because the Denmark tech situation There's a the there's a sister a black woman who actually proposed this change to the school and her remark was look that Forget the HBCU thing forget the degree granting thing This is a this is a facility that what it does helps us maintain revenue and jobs in this city, right? If we keep it as a school, it's going to shut down and there will be no jobs and no revenue At least if we keep it as something a career development center a technical training center Yes, you lose a school, but you still keep some infrastructure that helps power your city So this is this is a black person saying this there's a black person reading it for look We gave it a good run. It's not working. Let's do this So the civic the civic infrastructure can stay in place But do you think people hold on to it knowing that it's probably not gonna last but Also knowing that we you know if we don't if we don't fight for this then this is a symbol that we you know We might as well hang this whole thing up that we call HBCU Please see the story of Morris Brown College, but we're gonna get into that in a second Like when when when are you going to hang it up? Where is that line in the sand? You can't consistently say or do or be like I Don't want to close. I don't want to quit. That's like quitting. It's not when you take a calculated Or when you make a calculated decision based on the things that have been happening How you maybe have not been improving how maybe your your programs are Lacking how you maybe don't have the students that you could and you should have and they're just not coming you have to do something different Like I don't I don't understand why we think changing How we do things Mars our legacy it doesn't if anything you're Trying to ensure that you're gonna be here in the next five to ten years It's maybe longer and honestly, it's gonna sound terrible, but I Thought Denmark was a career school Well, it's a career technical school. It's a it's a it's a it's a technical school.  It's not well It's a jump in the sense that you you won't have an operation that students can use Federal financial aid and go earn a degree that they can then use to transfer to a larger Institution if you get rid of that component You just basically have a Well, it's not it's not a degree granted. It's not a credential thing It's like you you go to learn HVAC somewhere and you get it You get a certification, but it's not an academic credential that you could use to get somewhere else I would have to look into how ITT ITT tech wild tech and friends were using financial aid For their students because That was a whole problem a few years ago. They were using Financial aid. Well, the problem the problem with them is that ITT tech was teaching, you know Real skills the issue was you would leave and the industry in which you were trying to work Who would hire somebody from ITT tech? So it was almost like you're It was predatory but not predatory in the sense that if people are choosing to go there How can you fight the school for accepting your your money? My point is they had the ability to accept financial aid And if that's what's in question for Denmark, then clearly if ITT tech wild tech and friends can do it Clearly, maybe there's a possibility for Denmark to do the same We got to get to because the common thing with all of these is is schools losing enrollment and in a fast way Um, then it went from a thousand plus down to four hundred Denmark tech went to from twenty four hundred to four hundred students You know, it's Cheney the same thing Eighteen hundred down to four in like a period of six years. So this these are dramatic Like they're falling off a cliff here in terms of the people that are not coming to the institution But yet from the outside Once now though this at you because you you send people to schools and you try to pair students from Detroit With schools that'll fit their personality and their skill set Do you do you guys in the midnight golf program? Look at stuff like that and say yeah, this may not be a good fit Like when you match up the students with these schools and say, you know You ought to apply to these three schools because they fit what you're looking for is the research such that You look at their enrollment you look at their finances and say well, maybe never mind It seems like this would have been a good fit, but now that I've done a little more research. Maybe not Oh, no, absolutely. So, you know, we we take an in-depth look at You know, all of those things where we're talking about where we're gonna have a you know A child specific in the next four or five years of their their life And you know, we told them you're not making a for your decision You're making a 40 30 year decision about a place you want to go back to that you want to invest in Hopefully when you get done that, you know, you'd be giving money back to your institution and those things But we definitely look at you know, like where the trends are headed with that school You know if the moment is increasing or decreasing those are all things that that definitely come into the equation for us You know for that last year particularly, you know being in the state of Michigan There's a lot of talk about situations with Michigan State and the things that they were going through and whether or not You know, that was a fit for some students based on the things they were hearing their parents having concerns and having to talk You know those things through with families about what was going on there So certainly we're looking at you know the news wires and and then looking at numbers and regards enrollment and those things and Determining whether or not it's a fit and why For a student so certainly that would you know a situation like Bennett will be caused for concern You know, I think especially now, you know looking at what's going on there And and those would be things we at least want to bring it to the table We try to also encourage them that you know, you're making the decision for you We'll have a you know litany of things that we'll discuss You know sitting down, but you're ultimately you're gonna make the decision We want to make sure you have all of the information in front of you in order to make an educated decision Real quick, I think part of it is and this is my perspective living in Baltimore City for as long as I have I Know for a fact two powerhouses in my state one of which is Johns Hopkins University Private the other public one is the University of Maryland Copy state University was to merge with any one of those two we're getting swallowed up You know, it's copy state forever and always and and we're really bothers me about that is that the state of Merlin Bell about you be twice actually three times if I'm not mistaken and it's like They wouldn't do that for copy right, but they will let John's Hawkins come in and use that new facility Right. So that that part of it is this kind of scary to me I think that's the thing that that's where you have to have the people respond Like if you don't like that if you don't like that prospect of copping indeed, which is like an anchor of West Baltimore Legit like if you don't like it then send your kids then go You know I mean give back like it forget giving back take that out of the equation Go how come enough enough students aren't going now We know part of that that answer is because other schools will give you more money they'll incentivize you not going to copy The state will play a part in that by not giving copping great degree programs same thing for Morgan same thing for most HBCU's But if that's how you feel then vote with your pocketbook And I don't think there's still a stigma the HBCU's though I think we still I think we still living in the 1980s 1990s with a stigma that HBCUs are of Calibre to some of the PWR equivalents. Well, we know that did not be true We know that our students are far more successful coming out of HBCUs and PWR's but the world the large still puts more to a UT or Kansas State than they do or Morgan or Howard or Hampton That's just that's just the part of the community that we haven't been able to shape And I don't know why because I guess we can't get a hard look at the numbers Well, nobody really wants to do the investigation But I think we still are fighting the stigma that HBCUs aren't adequate even though we know it's not true I think part of that too though is we got to start to stop thinking about things like it's apples to apples because it's not And I think we've talked several times about, you know, you can't try to promote Our schools necessarily the same way that you would a PWI and we get out of that phase of trying to do the apples Apple thing you can start to hinge on the things that you do well hinge on the way that you can be successful and getting and retention rates and the types of students and you know The putting in those buzzwords of urban and underrepresented and every List of things that a lot of you know, predominantly white institutions will talk about as far as trying to get the students there And even if you can't necessarily put the money up, what are you? What are you putting up? What's the benefits of your of sending your son or daughter your niece or nephew? Whoever it is, you know to those historically black causes universities because there are things that that stick out And there are things that are really going to benefit a certain type of student And if we are we are public knows and having those conversations that we're still trying to do apples apples I think that's where it starts to fall continue to fall back and you have to do outrageous things like You know Benedict College drop in enrollment like, you know Elizabeth City State, you know, but the North Carolina promise and even though this debate about how successful or great it is It's still doing something drastically different than what's being done because you know We're not going to get anywhere continuing to go the same path that that we've been to that point that Katie Said as far as like we live in the 80s and 90s like it's gonna have to be something different than what it is Well, you know what? It's actually a perfect segue into our next segment We're gonna go to break real quick and when we come back. We're gonna talk about these white folks getting caught up at these Ivy League schools By way by And what it what are the outcomes for for black students and HBC use this is not just after dark. We'll be right back That just at the dark. We're back just wrapped up a conversation about the struggling With a struggle of certain HBC using does it damage the sector at large and now we want to talk about some of these white schools Who apparently are part of a wide-ranging network of wealthy white folks who just let kids in And this is and this is what escapes me about it These parents are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to cheat to get their kids in for the right to pay hundreds of $1000 more for them to be their intuition That if that if that ain't white privilege though Well, but here's the angle I want to take for it for HBC use I Would imagine that there are some some of our black Institutions that there are people who will they may not pay hundreds of thousand dollars for them to cheat to get in But they certainly will try to work their networks To take advantage of being a part of that hierarchy. So Howard Hampton Tuskegee Um, you know, those are some of the schools where a parent might call in or may call a trustee They may call somebody they know and say, hey, you know, I got to get my kid in But is that I won't say is it I'm gonna ask the question. Is that just as bad as breaking the law to do it? But is that Should that be a part of hbcu culture trying to wield whatever influence that you have to get somebody an opportunity And and and whatever benefit that may come with whether that's a scholarship that they may or may not deserve Whether that's a housing placement. They may or may not deserve whether that's a passing grade. They may or may not deserve Do you think hbcu should have a part should have that? Um, I guess influence is a part of their culture Okay Tiff since you know, let's start with tiff because she went with Howard. She thinks it's better. So they more like What should that Howard bias be a part of hbcu culture First of all There is no Howard bias That's a lot And again First of all No, but seriously You don't have a response. This is why she's struggling with this Might have been a beneficiary of it. Ms. Rosita. Shout out to Ms. Rosita.  Thank you very much. Okay. So do you think Should it be a part of it with people on campus? For the people who haven't done that should they have access to that experience just on the word of their mom or the word of a relative If they haven't done it Then that's on them Once you get into Howard or get into your number one hbcu It's on you to make those relationships if they aren't if they haven't been established For you now have I been put in situations where Because people might know my grandfather or know my aunt or know my parents that people might want to help me a little bit more Yes What Amy church shout out No, I'm talking about my dad's people. I'm not talking about my mom No, seriously like people my grandfather was a very well known doctor in Detroit. Okay People will stop me and be like Your grandfather delivered my my son like that's been my So like It's still up to me or the individual to solidify that relationship to build upon what's already there Well, that's once you get there But I'm talking about Midnight golf student from anybody else because those students build upon the relationships Then midnight golf has provided for them and you will know them and you will want to help them because they're helping themselves Right, but that's when they get there. I'm talking about should should I as a father be able to call Morgan And say y'all know my name now. Let junior Katie There's two different levels of this like part of it is If junior is qualified if he meets the credentials if he's falling within those averages Then yes, you should be able to make that call for influence. That doesn't mean you should give it mean mean that they should do it You should be able to call for that for that influence But my issue is when it's people who aren't qualified who don't meet those standards Um who make the call. That's why I have the issue. It's not about Can I say this though because in retrospect this ain't happening at black schools I dare to say If it is happening it ain't it ain't like it doesn't it doesn't happen at hundreds of thousands of dollars To pay for a child to go to school just to get into a school then pay There are there are phone calls and check. We may not be checked that big But there are phone calls and alumni checks written to those schools in Atlanta To that school in dc. Yeah, and to that school and in hampton like I'll say that I got family members that go one of those schools. There are people who some kids who may have 2.5 and 2.6 Who said hey, I remember my life member 2.5 you can get into howard with the 2.5 But you can't get into more houses spellmen with a 2.5. Yeah, not not more on the spell man No, but he's talking about unless when unless when they pull your fast And your household income to the quarter million dollars right 2.5 gonna get you in if it says A quarter of a quarter million dollars you may not get it right See that's that's what I'm asking should be a part of like look higher education That's how it runs like if you're a benefactor of an institution It makes sense like okay. I've been giving y'all a lot of money And you can't give my child a chance Um, whether they're whether they're qualified or not That's how higher education works and I'm not talking about breaking the law where you're you know You're having somebody doctor sates and give a fake athletic scholarship But I'm saying because hbcu's don't have many of those Those slots especially the scholarship slots available They don't have that many bids available Should that be a part of our culture at all because you would think that You have you have a lot of international students at hbcu's Who are there there 4.0 aces like they earn their way there And then you have some students who can afford to be there they can pay like they between them and their parents they can make it happen But if you're tiffany's president already said yes I he did an interview with you a couple months ago. Who is tiffany's president first tiffany's tiffany's tiffany's alumni president Mr. Frederick dr. Frederick mb md mba. I'll put his full I'll put yeah, I'll put his full thing down, but no, I mean he even came out and said like You know, he's incentivizing parents who can afford to pay for the tuition and cash that he'll give them a discount If they pay in cash when you financial aid that makes sense for how they make plenty of sense because it means their bottom line And that translates to I as a president am now saying inadvertently to my admissions director By the way the more parents who fit this criteria More we need to accept get them in here. So if you so if you're if you're saying as a school We're focused on getting as much cash tuition as possible And it's somewhere my and I pay for morgan and all cash. I have no loans for morgan I paid all in cash So if you're if your focus is we want more cash Then what are you going to do? You're going to discount the tuition. You're going to incentivize bringing students who Parents can afford to pay cash. How do you do that? You look at their FAFSA and you see what the household income is And you go ahead and run that now is that totally fair To some student who maybe to maybe the the student who's on the line in terms of gpa and grades on the line Who's that overwhelmingly 4.0? Maybe not maybe so but The other side to that is which i've heard President Frederick say is the more money we can get from people who can pay It can go to finance. It can go to kids who don't who can't afford it So we have to strike a bound you do but and I wonder how you do that when you're an hbcu because here's the problem If that kid that that has parents that can afford it is a 2.3 Now now you're waiting into some murky water right because you you're now the the discussion is We got a slot for this program in this school available And the choice is a kid who academically has earned the spot Versus a kid whose parents can pay for the spot So here's what i do but where is it from though a 2.3? From a wcac school in dc Is very very different than a 2.3 from dc public schools or from public schools A step further is when i'm looking at transcripts on whether i'm going to admit a student or not They have a lower gpa and a meddling S.A.T. or a or a ct test score report I'm going to look at the transcript because if they've taken a p i b honors dual enrollment Clearly they're hitting college readiness benchmark. Now. That's a good point gpa doesn't matter all that much But if they're a regular student who hasn't taken challenging courses That would be a testament to whether they're college ready or not. No, I ain't got it from the lowest performance In the state You gotta look at you gotta look at the schools, you know the system schools though too that you know, you know The rigor from those institutions are preparing a child for the potential rigors Our students for the potential rigors of the university You can look at those things, you know, you know those things That's if you know the areas you're recruiting for your school You have an idea what those look like But all of that makes plenty of sense when you're sitting from the perspective of tiffany who's an enrollment professional Or you're sitting at midnight winston who is a college entry liaison an expert You guys know the math on all that stuff. I'm talking about when the president calls and say, um, jerry carter Is going to be submitting an application. You got it Like that and it doesn't matter what it doesn't matter what the math says It doesn't matter what it doesn't matter what the gpa says. It doesn't matter what the It doesn't matter what the checkbook says because if that school is morgan state And somebody calls and says jerry carter said it Then you not acknowledging that means somebody gonna wind up in a digest in about a week If I don't get the answer that I want You can't use yourself as an example because like no, I know we all know that you ain't got no pulling morgan First of all jerry got more pulling morgan than the youngest one credit for he don't got no pull with wilson I don't got him full at morgan wilson is not all the morgan All I know that was a pretty gangster line that he dropped though. Like you don't want to hit up in the dive You don't want a headline bro, let me um, we're gonna switch gears real quick and this is going to be orza's uh segment coming up Next on uh digest at the dark we're gonna talk about this storyline Which really isn't a storyline like I thought it would be um, but that's the the proposed separation Of the school of law from texas southern university. This is digest at the dark. We'll be right back Dodgers at the dark and we're back just wrapped up a conversation about uh Rich black folks trying to buy their kids into school How I have some pull at morgan, uh, just not over the president um And should that be a part of hbc culture in light of what we're seeing with the Illegality going on with um white folks trying to do with the ivy league um But we want to transition into some a little more serious and a little closer to home with hbc use and that is a headline that really isn't a headline um, which is the proposed a legislative proposal down in texas to separate texas southern university school of law from the university Uh, the proposal suggests that the law school will operate as a standalone institution with its own board um its own budget and the right to imminent domain in a certain land mass around the campus um effective september 1 if it passes um Or as you live in the third world proper uh You go to school uh Not at texas southern but adjacent so we don't need to mention your pwi ties um But you just so you're kind of like the digest you're kind of like the digest texas correspondent on this So can you fill us in on what you can share about? What where is this story because it's not I haven't seen it anywhere else but the digest and that's crazy because I wrote it. So It's not in the chronicle. It's not in any of the black newspapers down there. Where is this story and like what's happening? So right now it's really just between alumni of tsu And you know the people who are involved in in the space like I am a lot of my classmates My pwi uh grad school program Our tsu alumni my corporate fellow was a tsu nba alumni And he also is a member of their business advisory board. So um Oh for the former class I had not my not my next class, but so I've I've had some conversations I've spoken to my state representative Garnett um And I've called dutton's uh officer the representative who made the legislation I called his office numerous times What it basically sounds like is that uh, and from what I've gotten is that dutton His position is trying to protect the university particularly protect the law school or the law school's integrity um, because I think that he doesn't have faith in wherever Um tsu as an overall institution is leading and I think that his his idea though I just agree with it is that if we save The tsu law school, then at least we can save that vital arm of what used to be tsu And I'm purposely not using the law school's name because it's he's used it in the legislation as a way to separate the institution overall From the individual school of law Um, because again, we know tsu school of law is one of the best hbcu law schools Some would argue it is the best um in terms of putting out black female judges black female prosecutors Especially in texas in louisiana and the neighboring areas so my perspective is dutton's legislation is basically to protect the law school at the expense of tsu Because I believe he thinks like many other people believe that there is a larger state power moving in the city of houston They already have a medical center there that has a med school And they offer mds and phds and in the myriad of of sections As we know how our university's president because residency there in houston at the university of texas medical center um And then also you have a a ut mba program that operates in the city of houston And so I think that that's really what um What dudden is is trying to protect the school check protect the law school from Because obviously you already have a publicly funded law school in the city of houston And you have a private law school a block away in south texas college of law And you have tsu's law school And texas is the kind of state state that will consolidate um And obviously tsu's mission since its inception has been to try to survive Against uh and they've done pretty well at that If ut comes along Their survival isn't going to be as imminent um because of the power and the money that ut has As you've seen what they've done in the city of dalas see this is what is bothersome to me about this story one White people ain't talking about it in the news Which means that they there's something that they want to have happen And they don't want to draw a lot of attention to it if you don't believe that Try to find coverage of the maryland hbc lawsuit up here Because they've been having a whole bunch of negotiations and proposals made you can't find coverage of it anywhere um So that that is troubling that a legislative bill Has been proposed to split a law school from a from a black college and ain't put so many black law schools in this country And nobody's saying a word about it. That's number one number two. Maybe i'm stupid, but tiff katie Midnight wins and y'all correct me if i'm wrong If a if a school got word That a larger system was coming in And and possibly going to incriminate on them steel students steel resources and all kinds of stuff And somebody said we're going to save the law school Not the university, but the law school Doesn't that strike you as a little odd? That's that's almost like, you know, we we go into morgan And somebody says well, you know, hopkins is getting ready to take over all these Baltimore, but let's save the school of engineering So i don't i don't i don't mean to cut it real quick one thing i did want to mention just just for reference tsu is independent Just as morgan's independent So tsu is not a part of any any state system Unlike the majority of public hbcu's tsu is independent which puts them in a different space than a pv For instance, which is which is going to take a day in them system But my question is but text but but ut coming in Would suggest that okay if we set up anything in houston proper In the in the in the anywhere in the region That whoever and whatever has been going to tsu is probably going to go to ut That because they're going to have the scholarship infrastructure They're going to have the technological infrastructure the facility infrastructure right away. They can build tomorrow They like they like the marina and it goes like the marina's case. They ready to fight tonight Right and it goes back to our first conversation is how do you enrollment go from 1,800 to 400? Right. How that's That is exactly how Yeah, it's it's troubling because if if it becomes separated That's even more of Something that would support Or create a barrier for black students pursuing Illegal education at texas southern And and and and don't forget texas southern's law school is one of the most if not Actually, I'm gonna say it is the most profitable section of the school They make more money on law school tuition law school graduates giving back than any other area of the school Like that that is the money maker Now and there's some other things that we have to talk about with that too I don't mean to cut you off too, but I want to throw this in there There has been texas southern law In recent years has been under fire because the the graduates have not been passing the bar um And so they've been criticized And the state has been critical about saying well, how is it that you you know? You're one of a of a handful that we have the only one that's dedicated to minority education in law And you're underperforming so I wonder how much of this is tied to that like We feel like if you if the school was separated from texas southern university That there would be a better chance for leadership a better chance for improving But also keep in mind that a lot of those scores are coming from Prior to lane taking over when lane to go about people were fired The first class to fully come in under under his His leadership fully in terms of recruiting coming in and finishing won't graduate till I mean the 2020 2019 or 2020 so Those standards are still based off of you know old cohorts and you know law school people just you start and you finish There's no there's no in between. So I think that that some of that has been a bit harsh, but again The the biggest issue and this is for all hbcu law schools and I know eric and I went back and forth in the chat with This looking at the numbers It's not really a fair apples to apples comparison. We look at these with these bar passes scores but even more so Even like Tiffany was saying access to to black lawyers. I mean there really is no other option in this area besides Southern and then once you get outside of there There's not a lot of public law schools that are going to accept hbcu students in the state of texas They may get into uh But even a lot of uh undergraduate black students go to tsu law school. So It's uh, it's a slippery slope. But even then just nationally is texas southern It's southern. It's famu. It's north Carolina central. It's howard. It's udc That's it That's it. That's that those are the only black law schools And famu is program is only I think it's right around the 10 year mark or maybe it's approaching 10 years mark of even You know, uh, giving out degrees So after after 40 years basically or 50 years basically of the state of florida basically Restricting the ability for black students to get degrees. So we're not even really 50 years in with these schools Do you look at the act? You look at access to law It's very very low.  That's true. I did. I apologize As I was saying I She's so spicy Texas southern as an independent school, I believe or Texas southern's law school as an independent law school Would create um yet another barrier for black students who want to Excuse me pursue, uh A legal education or or any other um Masters or professional level Education like as it is. There's only 10 percent of black students Who have who are in grad programs in the united states? Even with our hbcu's that have grad schools and grad programs the number is still 10 percent It should be more but there are barriers now. Let's say If it did become a standalone independent law school You would need somebody out here Whipping checks whipping donors getting money day in and day out and then you would still need money or still need To have specific policies In place to spend that money on students from hbcu's or other minority serving institutions to get into your law school to make it Accessible they can take it. Okay. Let's say you use you're right. You want to protect the school and make it stand alone Who's to say that the university of texas doesn't move in right next door and say give me that school five years from now And clothe and say you can close this undergraduate school because we just took their best program Right, we can say we can we can add them to the uh system real quick Or add them to the to the ut system real quick and go and keep it player And that's all that that's that's all it's gonna have me again like I don't go to Tsu for my graduate degree for a very specific reason It is due to the lack of funding and a lack of innovation Within the program that just wouldn't work for me as a work professional pursuing a higher a higher degree but If Tsu didn't if they move the law school, how can they survive? I mean, I I see the situation of separating divide.  The scores are bad and rolling this down We're gonna come through and take this very very very high price High in demand downtown houston land because let's not let's not forget also Tsu is not in waller county. Right. It is in downtown Houston, Texas, right? I you know, it just goes to show you how how long People in power can can lie and wait and plan We were talking on air About texas did this or ut did this Some years ago and it got it got rejected. You have a system said we don't want it a lot of law makers said we don't want it Um, but it goes to show you that if if the University of texas has anything to do with this This is something they've been plotting on for years And even to draw it closer to home Katie, how long have we heard rumors just up here in baltimore about something's gonna happen between ub university of baltimore and copping Man, we've been fighting that I ain't gonna say we've been fighting it, but we have been On high alert about that. They've been saying it for years. It's never happened It's never happened like people don't propose anything But they've been saying it somebody will crop up and say something every couple years And it just goes to show you that And that's why I wrote that up because it always is we need to bail ub out now We need to bail copping out right now. I'm not saying cop is in a great space But i'm saying we're much better than ub right because we don't go in debt every five years to the point where we need to Stay to merlin to say Give me some money, please and ub is still struggling on top of that enrollment is still down UT is a whole different animal though because if they eat anything like the university of merlin, then yeah, I don't see that's a hard Yeah, they're way bigger way better like university of merlin, right? They laugh at that Merlin is smaller is smaller than ut systems number four school, right? You got ut you got ut sd ut arlington ut dallas and ut all just those four schools Is like 200 000 students. They're probably looking at it. How are we not in houston? Who says we can't be in houston? We're in every other major city In texas. What do you mean? What do you mean? We're not in houston But it actually takes us to our final topic tonight and we're going to take our last break and this is one We're going to kick over to winston Um, which is some some positive news for hbc is very positive news for the first time in seven years Enrollment collectively at all hbc use is up for the first time in nearly a decade So we'll talk about that when we come back. I just have to dark I just have to dark. We just wrapped up a conversation about uh, the proposed separation of the school of law from texas southern university um, and the ramifications that could have before that uh, conversation about uh Some of our struggling hbc use and some of these white folks stealing their way into school. Um, but now We um, have some positive news. So this is actually from a few weeks back, but it's certainly we're bringing up today Uh, for the first time in seven years Enrollment total enrollment at hbc uses up um, and what makes this significant is that For the seven years prior where we lost an average of 10 000 students a year between 2012 and 2015 And then that dropped down to about a thousand students a year for the next three years We're now up 6 000. Um, so it suggests two things one that uh Clearly something something happened between 17 and 18 um That that no, but you see I know where you want to go and I'm not going Because a lot of people A lot of people think that it was Trump a lot of people think that it started with Missouri and the student protest there I tend not to I tend not to believe that and here's the here's the reason why And this is just my theory If we were going to use hbc use as a an expression of black pride Wouldn't we have done that in 08? And when we have done that in in 12? Why do you why do you wait or to be honest with you? Enrollment was going up at hbc use all the you know our record high for enrollment of hbc use was 2011 The year before the bottom fell out with the plus one thing the record high of hbc use was over 326 000 That was our highest of all time And then the plus one thing happened and we and we dropped by four, uh, you know, maybe 38 38 000 over the next several years But if it was if if hbc enrollment was going to be an extension of racial pride when we have done that for obama It had to in this say no he wasn't our president who We are not going to do that. Oh my god, I'll do it. Wait, who said that was that kd or kd say that's kd's obama fan Me and oars are not. Yeah, winston is new. Um, I'm definitely neutral Well, let me ask you this so These are we're going to we're going to give you the the kudos because you single-handedly in my mind Help these 6 000 kids get to these hbc use so kudos to you If you had nothing to do with it, you about to be thrown off the show, um Hold the movement is actually question. Where's this so from your perspective it's if you can also weigh in What were you guys getting were you guys getting feedback that this was about racial Tension this was about I guess racial uprising and in kids choosing hbc Um So For us, you know, I think it'd be an admission in one of those those states that unfortunately We don't have an historical back college university in our state lines I think a lot of you know students not going in those directions at least speaking from our program Perspective is just a lot of lack of a lot of people parents out of lack of knowledge You don't really know what options or opportunities are available and you know for us the state schools when they hitting the kids It's hard, especially in a you know, minority numbers and they're hitting, you know those the kids that better be sure It's really hard trying to get them to transition to to those options that we're just like oh I'm just gonna go to east of michigan because they come to my school every week or you know I know michigan state has a bunch of black people there. It's i'ma go, you know there Whatever the situation whatever the case is. I think a lot of it for us was just the lack of knowledge What we often find what I often find when we're counseling we're talking about general options For students in general and I'm always trying to bring at least say let's at least have the conversation about The story of your back colleges and what are you aware? What's your knowledge? How much are you aware of them is when we start that conversation? It's like, oh, yeah, my uncle Graduated from Tennessee State. Oh, I went to to Morgan. Oh, yeah, I've heard of you know more houses But whatever the situation is and then it's okay. Well, let's do some little bit Let's dig a little further into what what what these options really are what they bring to the table What's unique and what what benefits exist there for them? I would say funny enough in you said 2011 was The year that it was the highest For for us as a program respect of 2015 for whatever reason we had a ton of kids that year Who were curious about about the option and so much of the Detroit free press or the owners of the news or the free press They did an article about it because we had like almost half of our kids I want to say at that point who were like just seriously looking to and were curious about the option They wanted to know why and what was you know their thought process and those kind of things and You know for us. I think a lot of it is just that that lack of knowledge I mean you would think in 2017 That there would have been way more for for that 2017 class who made me interested I think it did start to change back 2016 to kind of dull off for us, you know from a progress record But then 17 begin that increase and then 18 I think for us We had a ton from all different obscure choices that don't normally Go outside of the state of Michigan north kind of central to the Lou and Paladiga and we had kids were going to some of the more obscure that we don't hear as much about You know in the in the power of five or you know, whatever top conversation of HBCU so from my perspective I think a lot of it just is what you don't know is kind of the detriment to Why you're not even not even think about, you know North consensual or Elizabeth City State or or Dillard or Xavier or whatever it is because it's not You know being up north. It's not really a conversation piece for a lot of those especially from the counselors the counselors at their schools Hmm if you're responsible for about 10 students getting in. Um, what's your what's your perspective? You know what that's the other one, you know what? Anyways, um, no well Winston said about Students and guidance counselors just not knowing that really is 95% of the battle so In terms of yes educating them about HBCU that's a strong and viable option cool But following that up with policies In procedures, that's a whole other thing And we haven't caught up at least in Michigan in Michigan like that Yeah, no, no, but I'm working on it because I'm I'm dead ass don't invite me to your lunch I don't want your 30 minutes I was undivided attention To this matter with your students with your parents and with your guidance counselors because there's not much If you are responsible for 500 plus students and you don't know The HBCUs are a thing You are literally guidance counselors who literally just don't know that's real I like that. I like to take it from a different perspective too Um, I think it's a social economic thing. Okay on our schools cheaper than most PWY right? Yes, so it's like if my estate if you if you have a HBCU in your state and it's cheaper than UT the university in Maryland the Penn State Why not just go to school waste cheaply especially if you pay attention to the news High education is under attack in general because people defer like degrees are worthless But a good portion of the work that you can do out of college is going to get automated Um, and so you want this process to be as cheap as possible There is another and the other thing is that a lot of students are going to um Community colleges first and so I think the guidance from a community college is a little different than the guidance from high school That's a community college. Yeah has a lot more connection in the area And they tend to connect with the cheaper institutions because it's easy to get those students in and they need enrollment. Anyway, those programs are a great bridge Between you know, what you can do at any um with an associate's degree We should do with our bachelor's degree when you see it jump that dramatically when one year you lost a thousand students in the next year You jumped plus six thousand. I think it's not just people Concern about affordability. I think it's some students who can afford it outright saying I'm going to choose an HBCU I don't necessarily think that it's It's a situation where Again, this is where this is part of our racial rebellion Um, because if that were the case, I think in my mind You would have seen enrollment jump katie. Like you said at some of the the upper crust hbc You would have seen howard go off the charts. You would have seen southern go off the charts Um, you know hampton tiske all those way upper tier Institutions would have just jumped off the radar like oh, we're up 4 000 kids if that was if that's what it was going to be But but wait, wait, wait, you're talking about enrollment as in students who have enrolled not necessarily how many they admitted Correct. This is just this is a straight up fte enrolled. Yeah right, but like they could have What they could have admitted a large amount of people, but if they don't come then they don't enroll I mean, but but the admission thing is that that's never really the discussion because hbc's do admit a lot of people and they did That's just they got admitted last In september and she didn't even start her senior year in high school and she's on her way to Morgan So admittance is not an issue. Right. It's how many how many invites to campus is not a problem Yeah, but but we're talking you you use howard as an example who not who? If they get admitted to howard who not following up with howard like that's that's He goes how it buys Well, they can't pay. All right, who if they get their admissions into howard Who's not gonna follow up if but see one semester. So hold up. Wait a minute But but but again, you're taking from a standpoint of somebody who's going there because they want to be at howard and howard only There are tons of students.  I'm going to Atlanta. I'm going the same way And invite those same people that have exactly so the same pool And experience all that they can for however long that they can is my point but but but the major difference is that More house and spellmen don't have the retention. I'm not saying howard has a retention issue But they don't have the retention rate that howard does. I'm gonna give you a perfect. Oh, I'm gonna give you a perfect example There was a I saw a headline the other day a young lady Who at 16 years old had graduated undergrad and was going to law school She got into texas southern She got into southern. She got into howard She applied to several hbc. You law schools. Guess where she's going Southern southern method southern method is Yikes You so to your point about would you who would turn down how apparently a 16 year old?  Um a lot of how State institutions as far as like k-12 grow is based on federal funding They get federal funding because they have to submit themselves to federal testing. Well park Um, which I think is the national test It's geared towards college readiness And so if you're gonna do that you have to tell everybody about all of their options And so I think that's where a lot of the education is about a education about hbc use came in Is because now I had to give these every student an option All of this is it's very complex, but it comes back to one simple thing go to an hbc you you do that you solve all the problems Most of the problems most of them right there's a lot of things we got to get into in future episodes. So With that I appreciate y'all like your alpha buy it. Oh god. Um, I didn't I didn't invite another Oh, yeah, we'll go back to the chat who invited another alpha on the show Oh Well, oh, okay, does your other alpha brethren lost his damn mind right and you replaced him with another alpha brother Yes, I did For the record, I am not greek For the right reason I didn't even leave in with my greatness. That's not how I wanted to be identified this evening But tiffy won't let it go won't let it go Thank you. Thank you all so much Or is the morgan I thank you for dispatching live from houston. Um Midnight Winston. Thank you for the extra six thousand students hbcu's Uh, tiff, thank you for the profanity tonight. Um, you're definitely getting What? What profanity? Dear brother, thank you so much for coming on the show not over my house for dinner, but on the show Um, greatly appreciated and um, so are we gonna do this next week or it takes 10 minutes to get up this driveway? That's true. Um That's true Oh, we're gonna try to do it again next week tiff or we gotta look uh later on this because it's still spring breaking We got episodes to get out. That's true. All right. Thank y'all so much for listening This has been digest at the dark on hbc digest.com and serious 142 hbcu the howler university Uh serious satellite radio network. Thanks for tuning in. Peace


Okay, welcome to part two. Thomas, please go ahead. Yeah, okay, so, right. So to recap, both in the Grisimani in case and in the Toric case, there is a positive part of these spaces. The positive part is a real semi-algebraic thing as a topological space. This topological space has a phase post set and the phase post set matches in the Grisimani in case the positive or a stratification and in the Toric case, it matches the Torus orbit closure stratification. And this analogy is pretty potent. So there's a lot of things that are in parallel. I wrote down what the top form is on the Grisimani in, but I think I won't explain this formula. Let me go on to talk about coordinate rings. I'll come back to this analogy between the Toric case and the positive Toric case. Maybe I should have done this first is, since this is more an analogy with Schubert geometry than with Toric geometry. So if you look at the homogeneous coordinate ring of a Schubert variety, which you can define to be this ring, which is you take global sections of these various line bundles, various twists on the Schubert variety, then you get this homogeneous coordinate ring of the Schubert variety. And these vector spaces, the global sections of a line bundle on a Schubert variety, they are things called Demezurial modules. There's a similar description of the coordinate ring of a Positroid variety. It's again, what you do is you take this line bundle of D and you look at the global sections along the Positroid variety. And I call these things Ciclic Demezurial modules. And up to a dual, they're basically defined in this way. Actually, this is not a hard theorem at all. It's that you can take a bunch of Demezurial modules and then appropriately rotate them. So this chi here, this chi here, your Ciclic rotation. So it's whatever the map is on these global sections induced by the action on the underlying vector space, C to the N. On the underlying vector space, there's a Ciclic rotation that takes the basis vector EI to AI plus one. And that is an element of GLN. And that will act on these global sections. And if you sort of intersect N of these Demezurial modules and you get something called the Ciclic Demezurial module, and this thing is quite interesting because it has a crystal basis like the, like, well, like sort of irreducible representations of GLN and also like Demezurial modules have canonical bases and crystal bases. So does this intersection. You can show that this rotation is compatible with these constructions. So this was also studied by Lakshmi Bhai and Littleman and studied from a different perspective in this recent work of Moosa, Gao and Huang from a Grubbner basis perspective. I think something that I've been wanting for a while but have sort of made no traction on is the question of what is the character of this Ciclic Demezurial module. For example, what is the dimension of the space of global sections of a line bundle on a positroid variety? Can I find a formula for that? And we know there are nice formula in the case if instead of positroid variety, if I put Grismanian then there's this wild character formula and wild dimension formula. In the case of Demezurial module there's Demezurial character formula for this a recursive formula that computes what the character of this thing is as a T module. Same thing, I would like to know what the character of this is as a T module. As far as I know, nothing is known about this question. It doesn't seem to be an easy, at least as far as I know there's no easy way to get it from something that's known. Now there's another coordinate ring to look at. So this was coordinate ring of a closed positroid variety. You can also look at a coordinate ring of an open positroid variety. And a couple of years ago with Galaxian we proved that the coordinate ring of an open positroid variety is a cluster algebra. So the open positroid variety, so the closed positroid variety is irreducible normal CNF. Open positroid variety, it's not projective, it's smooth and affine. So the properties are a little bit different. So you don't need to take homogeneous coordinate rings you can just take its coordinate ring and this open positroid variety is just spec of a cluster algebra. This cluster algebra has been around since the work of Posnikov but it took a while and there's here a bunch of references. Now, before we eventually proved that it was a cluster algebra. And actually this is a little, it's a weak analogy but it is a sort of an analogy of the toroid case. In the toroid case, the strata are tori and tori are very, very simple cluster varieties. And something that I thought would, I really underestimated when I was working on this problem was I thought, oh, surely this result that the coordinate ring of the open positroid variety is a cluster algebra means the coordinate ring of the closed positroid variety is also a cluster variety by somehow sort of de-projectivizing in some particular way. In the way that Scott presented the homogeneous coordinate ring of the Grismanian as a cluster algebra, it also showed that the top open positroid variety was a cluster algebra as well. So there were two things being shown there. A little bit surprising is I think it is still not known whether the homogeneous coordinate ring of a positroid variety, which is this thing that I'm talking about here. The thing who is a graded ring whose graded pieces are these cyclic demazurial modules. I don't know whether that is a cluster variety and has something to do with obviously these two guys are related by, I mean, these two rings are related by some kind of localizing. Here we have to invert a bunch of Pruca coordinates. But it seems a little bit surprising to me and maybe I'm wrong and it's really easy that there's some obstruction to easily proving that you can get rid of the things that you invert and it's still cluster. Okay, yeah, so I won't say much about this. Let me move on to, I want to try to state one of the mirror symmetry statements for the Grismanian and the sense of mirror symmetry that I'll be talking about is the sense due to Given-Tau. I mean, there's a lot of work on mirror symmetry and Given-Tau popularized a point of view where you're allowed to pair a funnel variety, not a kalabiyau as initially in mirror symmetry but a funnel variety with something which is supposed to be mirror to something else and that something else is not a funnel variety. So it's not mirror to the same kind of thing. It's mirror to something called a Landau-Ginsberg model. So in the mirror symmetry statement for the Grismanian that I want to talk about is that the Grismanian is mirror due to the open positroid variety and a potential. So this thing just to start out, so this is the dense open positroid. So there's one positroid variety which is dense in the Grismanian. So that's the top one. So that's what this notation is. And so it's mirror not just to the open positroid variety but the open positroid variety equipped with a potential. This potential is going to be a holomorphic function on the open positroid variety and it will be a rational function on the Grismanian. And the formula for it, so there's a number of different ways to write it. The formula, the way I've written is due to Martian reach. This potential looks like this in terms of Pucca coordinates. So in the denominator are the cyclic miners. So the miners, the Pucca coordinates labeled by I up to I plus K minus one. And then you change one of the, you swap out one of the indices to make one of the things in the numerator. It won't be important for us, but there is a queue here if you, there's a quantum parameter somewhere in this potential. Okay, so what is the statement of mirror symmetry? So when you say the sentence that the Grismanian is mirror due to this, what is the statement? So I want you to find a version of mirror symmetry where the statement is sort of in the spirit of all the things I've talked about so far. So here is the statement. The statement is that on one side, we just take the cohomology of the Grismanian. And on the other side, we take the twisted cohomology of the open-positroid variety. So what is this thing here? Yes, first you take algebraic forms on the open-positroid variety, which means the algebraic DRAM complex of the open-positroid variety. So remember this open-positroid variety, it's a special case of one of these things. So its coordinate ring is just this cluster algebra. So we're just taking the module of scalar differentials of that ring. But instead of using the usual derivative, we use this twisted differential. And so the usual algebraic DRAM complex would just be this part of the definition. So you just take the forms on the open-positroid variety, algebraic forms, and just take the usual exterior derivative. Now, the extra information of this potential, what we're asked to do is to twist it. So instead of taking the derivative to be D, we twist it by also doing DF wedge. So this DF wedge, so DF is going to be a one form, and DF wedge will do the same thing as D. So D will take a zero form into a one form, a one form into the two form, and so on. DF wedge will take a zero form into a one form, one form into a two form, and so on. So it goes from the right pieces in the DRAM complex. And so the mirror symmetry statement is that if you take the cohomology of the algebraic DRAM complex twisted, twisting the differential in this way, then it's isomorphic to the cohomology of the Christanian. Let me say that clarify this even a little bit more. So the right hand side should be somewhat familiar. So the left hand side is the sort of foreign object. This left hand side is a complex, and it turns out the complex, so without taking cohomology yet, this complex only has cohomology in one degree. It only has degree, it only has cohomology in the top degree. And in that degree, the cohomology group has dimension and choose K, which is the dimension of the cohomology of the Christanian. So that's one of the statements of the, a consequence of the mirror theorem for the Christanian is that this weird thing that you define from the open positron variety, it has cohomology just in one degree and the dimension is equal to this number and choose K. Yeah, so let me emphasize again that, I mean, this right hand side is familiar and this left hand side is not, that this left hand side is a purely algebraic construction. So now that we know that the coordinate ring of the open positron variety is a cluster algebra, that's a ring and if we think we understand that ring, then we can apply just algebraic constructions to build the algebraic Dirac complex from that ring and compute this. That's not how the proof goes, but I'm saying, in principle, this left hand side is some purely ring theoretic digits. The open problem is, and people have looked at this for a while now and I think still we're not very far here, is that what if instead of doing the top piece, so I said, Christmanian is mirror due to the top positron variety with this particular potential. The conjecture is that the closed positron variety should be mirror due to, I think the open positron variety with some potential and therefore there should be some, what this mirror duality statement should say is something analogous to this. So it should say that the cohomology of a closed positron variety is isomorphic to the twisted Dirac cohomology of the open positron variety with respect to some potential. This potential should have a shape that's not too different to this. So in the mirror symmetry world, this particular form of the potential, actually each term in here is supposed to correspond to one of the boundary devices. So actually there's a bijection between these terms in the potential and the positron devices in the Christmanian. So if we understand the positron geometry well enough, we should try to guess what this F is for a positron variety. And this is a place where the, I think the analogy with the toric case is very potent. So one of the test cases for given how final variety conjecture is if you take a final toric variety, then it's mirror due to, what is it mirror due to? Is it mirror due to just a Laurent polynomial? So it's mirror due to a super potential on a torus. And one way to think about this torus is that this torus is sitting inside a toric variety. No, maybe a mirror due toric variety, not the same one, but this is a dense torus. This is one of the dense torus orbits. And then on it, the super potential will be some, some Laurent polynomial. There is a question in the chat. Yes, pi F final. Yes, I think I would call it, I would call it final. So the anti-canonical divisor is the class of the union of the positroid divisors inside that positroid variety. And that's effective. Okay, so finally, I want to end by talking a little bit about the topology of these positroid varieties. And so I can compare to Schubert's cell, then it's a little bit boring. So I want to focus on the topology of the open positroid varieties. If I compare to the Schubert cells that Schubert cells are boring, they're contractable, they're just affine spaces. So there's no interesting topology in the Schubert cell, but there is interesting topology in the Schubert variety. However, if I look at the open strata, then I could also compare to the toric case. And there it's not contractable because it's a torus, but it's still a little bit boring. So it turns out that the cohomology of these open positroid varieties turn out to be pretty interesting. So as I said, the smooth affine complex varieties, and it's got a mixed hot structure. And the mixed hot structure of an open positroid variety is not pure, but it satisfies some condition that it's mixed-tate or hot-tate, which makes it a little bit nicer. So the mixed hot structure of Deline endows the cohomology, a particular cohomology group, say the cave cohomology group of a complex variety with some additional filtration. For simplicity, I'm gonna think of it as something called a Deline splitting. So it's just a direct sum over p comma q of some additional pieces. And in the mixed-tate or hot-tate case, these pieces are non-zero only when p is equal to q. So then what you get is basically a bi-grading. So I'm just gonna think of a mixed hot structure as a bi-grading of the cohomology. So an additional grading. So a relatively recent theorem of mine in Galaxian is that we can calculate the mixed-hodge polynomial of this top positroid variety. And it turns out to be a sort of familiar polynomial. So as I said, in general, the mixed-hodge structure gives you sort of the free indices k, p, and q, but in the mixed-tate or hot-tate case, there's only two indices. And I'm not gonna write down the exact definition because there's a lot of indices to remember, but you get a bi-grading.  The mixed-hodge polynomial is gonna have a two-variable polynomial. And it's a little bit more elegant to state the result when you mod out by the free torus action. So there's a torus sitting inside p, g, l, n, that acts on the columns of this k-bi-n matrix, acts on Grismanian. If you mod out by this torus, then this torus acts freely. It turns out on this open positroid variety. If you mod out by it, then the mixed-hodge polynomial is just this qt-catalan number. So I pretty well studied two-variable polynomial that generalize that. So if we forget the two variables, so we just plug in one, then we just get the catalan number back. So a consequence of this theorem is that the Euler characteristic of the space is just the catalan number. So it has this really elegant simple formula, one over n times n choose k. And this is, I mean, this is relatively new stuff. So we've known this for two or three years now with Pasha. And we're still thinking about, we're still thinking about how this works. So in some ways it's still a bit mysterious to us, but it does show that this open positroid variety has topology that's extremely interesting. It's Euler characteristic is a catalan number. So it's a very nice number. One feature of this is this generating function only has positive signs and that reflects, I mean, it's in the conventions of mixed-hodge polynomial, but basically it reflects the fact that this space only has even co-amology. And this is something that I think one of the immediate open problems in this is, why is it that this particular positroid variety, when I'm mottled by Taurus, I get something that has only even co-amology. So it doesn't have a stratification to even cells. It doesn't have, so it's not like the Grasmanian, it's not a projective thing with a bunch of affine, with an affine paving, but its co-amology is even. And the open problem is for which positroids is it true that the co-amology is even after you mottled by the Taurus? And that's something that's been puzzling us for a couple of years now. Okay, I think I'll stop here. Thank you. All right, well, thank you very much for a great talk.


All right, this is LG spank mate.  Nani? What is this range? I'm gonna he's been getting banged out two seconds left ice bands Do you want to strangle me? Oh my god position.   What is this addon boat that drove the airs? It's bug sack shows me all the alleyway bug sack Bulls actually I'll never I just yes, but okay. Yeah, and then you go here and then I send the wire I'm going first into the checkbook chip or yeah That's it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, cheap. I don't be just a major. I wish it keep going keep going keep going keep going. I Think he's dead. Oh, I think he's dead if he doesn't affect. He's that is it spamming. It's not a chip. Oh, yeah.  Oh If you have that yeah Listen, listen one more ship one more ship one more ship. No, no, you've used it. Yeah, just run into the man. I swear I'm gonna chip you Answer the city Fucked up the first one. Yeah, fish.  It sounds like a Let's get set up man. I'll stop the series Each ship into months Voting now, but I don't think we can aim Death to do this Okay, I can ship the guy now I got it I'm not stopping this. Yeah. Yes, it's fine If you feel now I pulled something on you. Yeah, I'll for him now. Yeah Good position. Good part. Good part.  What do you see us it I? No, I broke it. It was me. I didn't get off I'm gonna ship ship them on that.  I'm bro.  I need to like know. Yeah, be careful. I Can I can't I swear if we don't kill pets nothing can happen It could win on my ship this guy You want to go pet here? Yeah I wish he Ferry I When I ship luck and go charm on a bit burning Yeah, I'm casting to miss it. Yes. Yes me. I'll dip so you can burn I'm gonna shoot yours. Welcome me. I should show man It's still burning still burning. Yeah, he's getting a new pet. Send this guy. Send it. Yeah, I'll find him now He's burning. Okay. Yeah Stunned drinking During He couldn't use an S. I burned it. Yeah, I'm gonna try to know whether the lock another the lock obsessed Listen to the pleasure What is this? It's a useful. You have to kill it. I can make it. Yes, awesome.  Yeah, that's what we were doing, right? Yeah It's green. Yeah, you go right. I go left Yeah, sure. Okay, I got a yeah, I'm gonna never so you can double shimble Even if you don't build on double you got sacred cleansing instant Okay, I'm just going to him, but he's gonna watch me. You can turn up. Okay. I got it. I got it Yeah, I'm gonna send him in sensible. Yeah, but then you better.  I keep sending Rina what? I'm just sending Coming to fair. Yes. I saw If you yeah, yeah, nice. I guess.  Oh, you didn't I'll deep here Demage into CS Nice ship. I'm gonna help you with the leakage. Are you fine? I can ship me miss miss cake. I'm gonna chip on the game.  No, no, I'm okay. Okay, but we feel the family. Yeah, if I can get to him I'm slow. I'll chip I'll chip for you. I can't I Yes, sacred cleansing. Maybe I wait a sec Okay, I do it. I do it. I do it. He took it.  Goose on you so good. Yeah, line line line freelance got the freedom. Insta Okay, we win next one. I'll try to ship him for sale. He's gonna watch me watch it Oh, I ship I ship I ship you gotta get it. We need a nice nice. I can know about the decay. Okay. Yeah, it's gonna. Yeah, it's fine I can wish it I'll nobody came we ship Okay, wait a bit.  Yeah, I wish it one more time. Yep. Okay, you know You know I should get on Deep at the end big down Nice got the same Off-air off as well really good go here I'm seeing worry Shouldn't be able to stop it. Nice. He wasted that jumping them off double trinkets. We can get power a bit here When you're ready off here Don't break or maybe it's okay. Maybe we can get both Getting the freedom. Got it. Nice dude


Welcome back to Mises Weekends. I'm your host Jeff Deist and this weekend we are talking about last Monday's Mini crash in the equity markets Bloomberg is reporting that the world's 400 richest people a.k.a. The Forbes 400 lost about 124 billion dollars in wealth at least on paper Monday alone So here to talk about what we should make of all this and whether deflationary crashes are actually the cure Rather than the problem is our own dr. Joe Salerno. So if you're interested in markets, stay tuned for a great interview Dr. Joe Salerno, welcome back to Mises Weekends. How are you? Thank you? I'm fine. I'm happy to be here to begin Joe, I'd like your thoughts on last Monday's stock market crash I see Bloomberg is reporting that the Forbes 400 wealthiest families lost about 124 billion dollars At least an equity value on Monday alone. Should we view this as a loss in real wealth? There was this all just a paper loss. It was it was paper wealth It's false wealth that has resulted from the zero interest rate policies of the Fed When you push interest rates down that low what happens is that you know future Incomes are capitalized at a much higher value So households look at their balance sheets and they see their 401ks going up and they see the value their homes going up and so on and that gives them the full sense of security and the prices savings rates as we saw in the Early part of the 2000s same thing is happening today Of course, the losses feel very real to the average investor They endure a lot of psychic pain and at least on paper They now have less money than they had before last Monday Absolutely, not only do they think they had more than they do but they also Active on on that premise and they didn't save enough or they reduced their saving rates Which means that they're making themselves poor in the future again thinking that that they had all of this wealth already stored up It's interesting Joe that the financial press correctly identifies Monday's mini crashes a deflationary event of sorts But they never want to talk about the inflationary monetary policy that led up to the crash itself that led Equity prices to be overheated in other words for a bubble to burst there has to be something that inflated it in the first place Yeah, well the problem is twofold one mainstream economists have convinced journalists and so on that when that inflation is Simultaneous increase in all prices in some sense that it all happens at once But as Austrians we know that's not true that it happens step by step that it affects first one sector Then the next sector first housing and then maybe equities and so on and eventually affects prices of everyday goods that we purchase and and number two There's a problem because Milton Milton treatment for example has sort of banished He has a lot of influence and he's banished the whole idea of asset inflation from a vocabulary That's starting to come back now But when people talk about inflation or deflation They are only referring to the prices of consumer goods or or or wholesale of producer goods They never look at at asset markets anymore And that's because of these theories that were developed by Keynes and then later by Friedman Joe deflation is routinely characterized as a monster to be slayed something that Monitoring fiscal policy has to fight against but if deflation is defined as falling prices as a result of greater productivity Isn't it benevolent? I mean why is it so hard for people to understand deflation as a benevolent phenomenon? because they've been convinced that prosperity means rising prices and that The way the Fed operates during periods of growing real Output we've also had increasing prices with the Fed increases the money supply at the same time So people have had a look on that phenomenon as sort of all part of the same thing That is prosperity means increases in my nominal income my my the price of what I sell going up And so they don't understand that prosperity can also be distributed throughout the economy by falling prices And your income your nominal income your salary and so on staying the same But being able to purchase more real goods and services That's the natural way that an economy grows where you have a gold standard of some other market commodity is money So Joe since the great crash of 2008 the monetary base Basically the Fed's balance sheet has more than quadrupled in the same period the Dow Has roughly tripled so doesn't this suggest that there's potentially a much greater than 10% downside out there for equity markets Yeah one one reason why they should be aware it is because eventually There's going to be banks as Let's assume that they they buy a speculative story in a sense that they believe the economy really is improving and you you begin To get more lending and so on what's going to happen is that the money supply not not the base money But the money supply the money deposits and currency in the hands of everyday people is going to increase And we're going to have a burst of inflation in consumer goods prices and so the Fed may react to that by Beginning to sell off part of its balance sheet That is to get rid of the mortgage-backed securities and so on and at that point You know who knows what's going to happen to the housing sector Joe Do you think Monday's crash puts to rest any possibility that the Fed will raise interest rates in the fall? You know I saw something very interesting Well, you know William Dudley the president of New York said yesterday said that It does put it in doubt that they'll raise interest rates or makes the case less strong for raising interest rates, but the guy named Dalio Who is the head of a hedge fund a billionaire mentioned that he sees maybe them raising Interest rates very very, you know 25 or 50 basis points but then going ahead after that and using that as a cover to Continue QE that is to bring in another round of quantitative easing in which they go crazy and and and buy Begin buying up assets and expanding the balance sheet again So he sees them you're carrying through on what they said But in a way that really is neutralized by what they do after that that is Implementing another round of quantitative easing. I find that very plausible Joe people watch what the Fed does and what it says because they want to get some predictive value out of it, right? What they want to do is time markets But there's so many billions of inputs involved in any particular stock market and so many billions of individual actors across the world You know, how should we view this idea of market timing and the tremendous knowledge problem that goes into any attempt to succeed at market timing? Okay, the Austrian stress that that the unit of analysis in economics is the human being and human human decision and we know that human decisions and Actions depend on expectations about the future and those Expectations are very volatile or they can be very volatile Especially in a period of monetary disequilibrium that we have today So what what what happens is that yes, there's going to be certain movements or certain trends But we don't and as Austrians we know that a bubble can't last forever But there are a lot of stories out there that drive the bubble what a Brendan Brown call speculative stories And one of those stories came to an end today came to an end this week, of course That the Chinese economy was so strong and and recently we know the story about commodities continually going up and the US having a miracle and in the Shale oil and gas that came to an end to as commodity prices have tested new lows Bottom line is that you cannot time because you cannot predict The changes in expectations that that people go through during a period of monetary disequilibrium Well, you bring up China Can we put to bed once and for all this myth that when a country devalues its currency it can somehow create? generalized economic prosperity by doing so yes What's happened there though is you know people are blaming China in some sense for Taking a shot in the currency war, but really what happened was that its currency was losing value They were actually holding the currency up They were buying up their own currency, which is the opposite of what they were doing You know in the past when they bought up US dollars to keep the value of the dollar higher So all they did was they on they unhinged it from from the peg I mean a peg is a price control and they allowed it to drop 2% I Whereas for example, if you look at The euro the euro for a while dropped by about 10 to 20 percent against the US dollar and other currencies have dropped against the US dollar and no one has Has really complained about about that as being a part of the currency war So so so China was was just that's not the problem with China The real problem with China is that from 19 on up from 2009 Until this year it's been increasing the money supply on a yearly basis by 15 to 30 percent And that has caused a tremendous bubble in the stock exchange in real estate sector and so on and just in the last year They've decreased the rate of growth in the money supply to 10 percent So as Hayek's pointed out when an economy becomes Adjusted to to a very high rate of inflation Even if you cut back that rate of inflation or rate of monetary growth to something that's lower like 10 percent, which is very high you begin to get the the first the beginnings of What we might call a recession Okay, and and and financial disarray and that's what you see in China But shouldn't we cheer the fact that China is no longer engaged in price fixing by pegging its currency to the dollar Yeah, I mean in fact we we wanted them to stop Keeping the value of the dollar up. We told them to stop price fixing a number of years ago We put pressure on them the IMF put pressure on them And now that that the tendency of their currency is to drop suddenly everybody's up in arms about what China has done Well, I applaud what they've done You know Given that we have national fiat currencies Which are each controlled by their own nation's central banks. They're different commodities and they should Fluctuate in value against one another. It tells the truth about their their actual values So when a country or a central bank purposely sets out to devalue its currency Isn't it just in effect shifting wealth from savers to exporters? Yes, and that's only in the short run by the way As you devalue your currency, obviously you what what you're doing is you're printing up more of your currency um And putting into circulation to drive down the value of your currency now If exchange rates change first and they usually do so the value of your currency goes down You do give a boost to your exporters at the expense of your consumers at home We'll have to now pay higher prices because your currency is cheaper But eventually that's offset by the fact that prices rise in your country as a result of the greater amount of Currency in circulation so in order to keep boosting exports You have to inject new money into the economy again and again to keep the to keep the the currency depreciating and and so you get into a circle of inflation Joe one last question for you at our event earlier this year in stanford connecticut both david stockman and jim grant We're talking about the importance of the federal funds rate And stockman calls it the single most important price in the entire economy And for those unfamiliar, we're talking about the overnight rate at which commercial banks Borrow from each other for liquidity purposes. Can you talk about the systemic effects that flow throughout the entire economy? When the fed engineers or suppresses the overnight federal funds rate? Yeah, yes, because the interest rate is part of every price Okay, our economy is a structure of prices that incorporates Time that there are time at all prices if you have any sort of a capital good or a piece of land The value of that land depends on how you value money over time So when you distort the interest rate, you change the whole into what we might call inter temporal Structure of prices. So the interest rate really is a proxy for this the structure of prices Which is then distorted and that's What james grant's point was and and he was quite correct What has to happen is that the fed has to step back and allow Interest rates to adjust to what we austrians call their natural level which will reflect the actual profits Or long-term profit being earned in various production processes Right now the economy is over financialized in the sense that It's it's finance and interest rates that are driving the economy rather than the other way around The real economy Entrepreneurial investments and so on should be what drives the values of stocks bonds the height of interest rates and so on Dr. Joe Salerno, I really appreciate your time today and thanks for coming on the show ladies and gentlemen You have a great weekend