InFocus News

SIH recently held the latest installment of its Second Act 911 series targeted at senior citizens.

WSIU's Brad Palmer spoke with Dr. Barbie Gatton, the medical director for the emergency department at SIH St. Joseph Memorial Hospital.

She was one of the presenters who focused on the 911 and emergency room process as well as the importance of personalized first aid kits.

Ornithologist Mike Baltz continues his look a the many natural resources across our region. This month, his audio essay looks a the history of The Nature Conservancy in southern Illinois and its partnership with Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the Forest Service.

A new air service provider at Veterans Airport of Southern Illinois is welcomed news for Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

We talk about that first with SIU-C Chancellor Austin Lane, who was on the inaugural flight on August 1 from Marion to Chicago.

SIU-Carbondale is helping lead the way in the fight against climate change.

WSIU's Brad Palmer talks with two faculty researchers who, along with a group of students, are working on a carbon sequestration process known as OHD.

This is part two of a two-part series.

SIU-Carbondale is helping lead the way in the fight against climate change. WSIU's Brad Palmer talks with two faculty researchers who, along with a pair of students, are working on a carbon sequestration process known as OHD.

This is part one of a two-part series.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling recently the consideration of race in admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina is unconstitutional.

This means selective colleges will have to rethink what they can do going forward to maintain a racially diverse student population or to increase diversity.

SIU President Dan Mahony talks about what the system is doing in response to the ruling and other topics.

A recent decision from the U.S. Supreme Court was a win for two local attorneys and SIU Law School graduates, who are part of a team representing whistleblowers in the case.

Dale Aschemann and Tim Keller helped bring the case – accusing pharmacy chains SuperValu and Safeway of violating the Federal False Claims Act.

"And in the area of False Claims Act practice, it really is a pretty big deal because it resonates in terms of the defenses available to defendants, saying I didn’t have the requisite knowledge to submit false claims. And the courts clarified now that the false claim says what it says and the knowledge the portions of the statute should be given their claim meaning."

Specifically, Aschemann says, the two chains were offering a price-matching program after WalMart began offering a $4 price for some 30-day maintenance prescriptions. But SuperValu and Safeway were charging Medicare and Medicaid higher prices – a violation of the False Claims Act.

The High Court struck down an appeals court ruling, sending the case back for review.

"Justice Thomas looking at the facts of our case, which we had a very developed record. He circled back to the summary judgment standard and applied those facts, even though it was a pure question of law. He raised a lot of the facts that that suggested that the defendants, in fact, knew what they were doing."

Tim Keller is Aschemann’s law partner. He says the case was a long time in coming, in part because of the way the False Claims Act works through the process.

"So when we filed in 2011, the defendants didn’t even did not know there was an action pending against them. And while it’s under seal, the government investigates the allegations and decides whether to take over the prosecution of the action from a civil context. In this case, they decided to pass on intervening in 2015 is when they both came unsealed and we proceeded on the declined cases."

Fast forward to 2023, when they both found themselves in Washington, in front of the highest court in the land. But Keller is quick to point out *he* didn’t actually argue the case:

"So that’s something I need to clarify. I don’t know how that is either, because we hired an appellate expert who actually presented the argument. Now, I was sitting there beside him, feeding him notes, making suggestions, but he’s going to gender saying actually stood up and presented the argument. But, you know, I was 8 to 10 feet away from the justices."

"It was surreal, really brought this soul in many of the practice of law, the whole," Aschemann said.

Keller says while it’s great to get a win from the Court, it’s important to remember that the legal process is long and sometimes complicated.

" If you’re going to practice law, you have to persevere. You have to work hard and you just got to keep pushing. And there’s no such thing as a clear cut case. You know, however, we see the allegations, there’s always the defense and they will mount and they’ll mount it vigorously. And you have to be prepared to spend a lot of time and a lot of money. And, you know, the process worked here, though. You know, it took it’s taken three years, but we’re back where we should be."

Aschemann, who is also on faculty at the SIU School of Law, says he expects more cases like this to come before the courts over the next several years.

"In light of last couple of years, there’s been unprecedented federal government spending. COVID related. I think we’re going to see a lot of COVID related cases. People misappropriating government funds. But a lot of those cases are under seal at present."

And Keller says cases like this one should give hope to someone who might find themselves in a whistleblower position.

"This empowers the little guy to fight back against the corporate conglomerates or even, you know, he doesn’t have to be corporate behemoths. There’s local physicians that we we brought suiting. It’s that we’re engaging in fraud. So if anybody you know, if you see something that you just doesn’t seem right and it involves federal moneys, this is an avenue that’s always available to try and right or wrong. And they get paid for their efforts up to 30% of whatever she recovered."

WSIU's Jennifer Fuller reports the afternoon news and weather for Wednesday, July 12, from Carbondale, IL

Mass shootings have become tragedies experienced by schools across the country, but their effects can be more widespread than some may think. These events can prompt faculty and administration from neighboring schools to take proactive action - many times by learning from past incidents.

In 2018, Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky suffered a shooting – and it left an immediate impact on not only that community but the communities surrounding it as well. Josh Stafford, the superintendent at Vienna High School in southern Illinois, says the Marshall County shooting brought worry that Vienna may be the victim of a follow-up attack.

“I remember one of the immediate reactions being, okay, is this an isolated incident or is there maybe some regional coordination that we need to be concerned about or be aware of in schools throughout the region.” Stafford said. “So, we were in immediate contact with local law enforcement to analyze that situation. Everyone came to the conclusion that we felt like it was isolated there but we still followed some immediate safety protocols here in Johnson County.”

Stafford says the number of shootings nationwide has put a major spotlight on the issue, prompting schools to focus more on it than ever before.

“Right now we are in this time where this is the prevalent crisis. We’re all scrambling trying to figure out what is the best response. Is it armed resource officers? Is it social workers? Is it building hardening such as bullet resistant film on windows? Is it metal detectors? I would say, honestly, it’s all of those things” Stafford said.

He says Vienna started their school resource officer program prior to the Marshall County attack, but it has only grown larger in the years since.

“We’ve run a school resource officer program now for a number of years and our school resource officer program existed pre Marshall County. Since Marshall County and just as time has naturally moved forward we have added additional officers to that pool of school resource officers. We currently have 6 SROs in our SRO pool and are always looking for ways to fund and add more” Stafford said.

Vienna has also implemented magnetic lock systems in their doors and an automatic alert system to the community and law enforcement in the case of a shooting happening at their school.

Colleges including SIU have also taken steps to ensure the safety of their campuses due to the number of shootings around the country. Jaime Clark, the student health services director at SIU, says organizations across campus are constantly trying to learn from past shootings to know any precautions they need to take. That includes a drill this past spring that included a shooting simulation.

“I sit on the EOC, which is the emergency operating center. We do practices of these all the time. We learn and watch videos from past schools, we learn and talk about what we would do at ours. We look at how we handled the response or the different activities that we do, like our April event. We look at what we could have done better, here's some areas we need to firm up” Clark said.

While these are great changes to make in case an event were to happen, schools have also taken steps to help prevent shootings from occurring in the first place. Edna Bundren, a social worker at Vienna High School, says kids feeling connected in school is one key to prevention.

“I just think that probably staying connected and trying to catch those kids that aren’t connected is probably the greatest and most important thing. Trying to get to the point where they have a trusted person through school they can talk to” Bundren said.

She says the school is constantly reaching out to students to know what may be bothering them and to be aware of any future risks.

“We do a lot of interviews with students and surveys for interest and things like that. I would say it is more directed in asking the students what they want” Bundren said.

Jaime Clark says SIU also reaches out to students to know what resources they may need to help them handle the added stress brought on by shootings or other aspects of their lives.

“That’s one of the first things I wanted to do here is to do some focus groups with students. What’s going well, what’s not, what services do we have and that has led to the after hours things. In those conversations with students, that’s led to us having clinicians in satellite locations and it’s also led to us doing the 24 hour crisis” Clark said.

SIU added their 24 hour crisis hotline and more drills like the active shooter drills they performed in April as a result of these focus groups with students. However, Clark says these drills can sometimes trigger stress or anxieties of a shooting in students and the college is prepared to help them manage.

“We absolutely do have counselors that can really assess what is the need. So, for some of them, that is the only reason they are coming in. For some of them it might bring up a past trauma or a past experience that makes them think about that” Clark said.

To help students at VHS connect with people who can help them in any time of need, Edna Bundren and the staff have introduced numerous new clubs and activities.

“For us we need to connect with those students who maybe don’t like school, don’t feel like they fit in, and really try to find things that they like. We’ve started new clubs here this year like E-gaming clubs. The E-gaming clubs have really sparked a lot of interest in kids that normally aren’t connected to other things” Bundren said.

Schools across southern Illinois are employing measures to help students cope with stress and prepare their campuses for any future threat that could occur. To learn more about how schools are protecting students, click here.

Enrollment numbers are still projections, but administrators at SIU Carbondale say they're hoping a bump in new students will push the university's overall student population higher this fall.