industry and funded by your local cable and satellite carriers. a look at what's ahead tonight on cspan 3. next the center for immigration

studies, about unaccompanied immigrant children. later a program on minority stuf stinlts and higher education, followed by cyber security issues. next a look at how one city in america is dealing with immigrant children, placed there by the federal government. the main speaker is republican mayor judith kennedy of na ma. she talks about efforts to provide undocumented children and education and health services. the centers for immigration studies hosted this hour-long event. good morning, and my name is mark corcoran, we wanted to host

an event that puts some context and some real life numbers and real life acts on to the fallout of what we're seeing and have been seeing now u for a while in the border surge of central americans, especially coming across south texas. and what -- what we have seen really bears out the observation a that every state is now a border state and every town is now a border town. and so one of the border towns that we wanted to hear from was lynne, massachusetts, ways some 1,500 miles from the border with mexico, it's outside boston. and it has been dealing, not just for the past few months, but really for the past couple of years with the consequences of this growing surge of central american illegal immigrants, many of them ostensibly,

unaccompanied ostensibly minors. and we have the mayor of massachusetts, judy flanagan kennedy is the sixth -- which is an interesting long pedigree there, she's been mayor for about almost five years now. and even before that, her work kind of gave her an insight into some of these local effects. she was on the school committee and practiced real estate law for a long time and a so has, really has an up close intimate familiarity with what local communities have having to deal with, because of this failure of the federal government to do its job. so mayor kennedy, jfk, mind you, is the initials, will be telling us, some of her thoughts, some of her experiences and then after that, jessica vaughn, who's one of our top analysts at

the center for immigration study also give some national numbers and some of the public safety issues we're seeing on the border and then we'll open it up for questions. so mayor kennedy, it's up to you. >> thank you, mr. kerkorian, i usually drop the flanagan, it's kind of formal for casual speak issing here. as you know, lynne is a coastal city, about 10 miles north of boston. we have a population of about 90,000 people, making us the ninth largest city in massachusetts. but we have the fifth largest school system. we have seen a great increase in our school system over the past couple of years. and in the fall of 2012, my school superintendent came to me and said, i have been noticing a large number of unaccompanied minors, unaccompanied children

coming in from guatemala, and they're all coming, she thought it was a city, it turns out it was a province, they're all coming from san marcos, so i don't understand how all of these people from san marcos are making their way up to lynne. so we look at the numbers, from september 10, through june 2010 -- from september 11, through june of 2012, we had 26 out of country admissions from guatemala into the school system. now from september 12 to september 2013, the period at which the superintendent noticed this, we had 84 new admissions from out of country from guatemala, so we started to look into this a little bit. and a lot of these children, that were coming in to our city were coming through a blase called the jubilee center in san

antonio, texas. so our first thought was to find out what is this jubilee center and what's going on here? as best we could determine, it appears to be a type of clearinghouse, that is used to resettle these people who are coming across the border. and they are not all children. one of the things that we did notice when we were processing some of these students coming in, was that they were adults. they were all claiming to be somewhere between, well, the vast majority of them were claiming to be between 14 and 17 years old. but there were people with graying temples, hair around the temples, there were people with more wrinkles than i have around their eyes and we were told through a directive from the department of justice that we were not to question or verify or attempt to verify these ages.

a lot of the children gave a birth date of january 1. a lot of them could not sign their names, they had to sign their names with an x. and a lot of them were illiterate. not only in english, but also in spanish. and spoke a tribal dialect, a mountain dialect, so that it really made it difficult to place these students in any kind of a classroom setting. so what we decided to do in that 2012 to 2013 school year, there were 56 of these unaccompanied minors that were placed in a night school. and they were fed, they were given a meal, at the night school, and during the day, they were allowed to go about their business, some of them close to work, many of them worked in landscaping in those warmer months. and that was working fine, until the lawyers stepped in, i consider myself a recovering lawyer and when i tell you

something like this, you'll understand why. and they said, you are not giving these children an education equal your full-time daytime program. you have to have 990 hours of education, so you either have to expand your night school program to 990 hours, or you have to integrate them into your regular public high schools. well, the superintendent chose to do the latter. but because we have these students who are illiterate, we're not putting alleged 15 and 16-year-olds in classrooms next to 6 or 7-year-olds. so we decided to put them into the ninth grade, so that meant from september 2012, through june of 2013, we had 56 unaccompanied minors from guatemala placed in the ninth grade alone, we decided we need to find out from the federal

government, what was going on, why were we getting all these new students and why were they all coming from the same province. so we with started to mete with senator scott brown from massachusetts. and unfortunately, he lost his election a couple of months after that that to elizabeth warren who became our senator and for a variety of reasons, we did not pursue this with senator warren. we kind of suffered in silence up in lynne and did the best we could with these students. now from september of 2013 to june of 2014, this trend showed no signs of abating, ninth grade admissions for children from guatemala societotaled 101 from school year 2013, to 2014, that's almost double what we had gotten the year before. as you recall, that number was 56. at the same time, they were starting to be some national

exposure about this issue. so the superintendent and i decided we were no longer going to sit back and just take these students, but speak out and let the federal government know, that all of the places they were housing these unaccompanied children, you mean, places like ft. sill and places like marietta that were getting -- marietta, california that were getting a lot of these students were not the only communities affected, that there were people as far north as little old lynne, massachusetts that were being affected by this. and i have to tell you an interesting story, and this made us sit up and take notice, and it showed us that these children really are illiterate in both languages. because he couldn't read, he didn't realize he was presenting

his own arrest warrant. so we called the local police, who in turn called i.c.e. who in turn delaware kleined to detain this gentleman, we know he's enrolled in school, but we don't know what happened to him. so we have been struggling with the number of students that we have received. just to give you an idea of whether the trend is continuing or not, if you believe to the press, sorry to those of you here. if you believe what the federal government tells us in the press, these numbers have curtailed significantly. we all know that the train broke down, we also know that during warmer weather, there's been a decline in 2 border crossings because who wants to go through the desert in july? but right now, prior to the opening of the 2014-2015 school year, we have ten new students

enrolled, just between that number i gave you from june of 2014 and now, we have ten more ninth glarade students enrolled and one more tenth and one more eheavy vennth from -- we have the fifth largest school department population. we have to hire aides for these students, we have to find classroom space for these students. we have to also spend more money on all of these students. massachusetts has a school spending fospen spending formula, for each school district, from's a dollar amount that has to be met. in this particular case n all cases actually, we have to have that baseline amount to spend per student. thereafter, if the student is an

english language learner, there is a premium put on that base requirement. and if the student comes in with special emotional needs, which many of these students do, there is yet another premium put on that base. now unfortunately, i cannot separate out refugees from legal immigrants, from unaccompanied minors, but i can tell you that the trend for out of country admissions for the school system, in total from all countries, has gone from 54 in 2010 to 2011 school year, from 329 from 2011 to 2012, to 421 from 12 to 13, and we had from 2008 to 2013 to 2014. and as i said, we have had tachb

in guatemala already. we have been trying to accommodate this, we have built a new middle school, however that school is not scheduled to open until september of 2016, and it is already deemed to be overcrowded before it's doors even open. we have also seen a real uptick in our public health services that are required. because all students have to be vaccinated before they come into our school system. so just by comparison, in -- let me see, july of 2013 -- well, let's take july of 2011. my health department gave out 11 vaccinations. in july of 2013, the house gave

out 229 vaccinations in july of 2014, to the health department gave out 159 vaccinations. we have only had our public health clichbic open for vaccinations a couple of hours a week, historically. but because of this surge, we have had to increase the number of nurses that we have and increase the number of hours that our clinic is open. and although i have -- u i do know that primarily, the increase in my required school department spending has caused me, when crafting my 2015, fy 2015 budget to have to cut all of my other departments between 2% and 5% on the total that they had gotten for last year's spending, whereas my school department has got on a 9.3% increase. how that affects one in real

life, i had a great program inland, a community policing program where the six sectors for the city of lynne as the city has divided it, each had the -- to take care of quality of life issues, to look into problems before they got to be big problems, to keep an eye on gang recruitment, and for the last few years, the city of lynne has brought down it's number of known gang members and affiliates down to 350. i contribute that in part to the community policing department that we have had in place, that have had to be continued because that money has had to be dive diverted to the school system. when there are more people in the community, the on theage goes in.

when the tonnage goes up, the tipping point goes up. within other lines of what we call the inspect aational department, and we have already had to take from other line items from inspectional services to accommodate the needs in the public health department. we have gotten frustrated and i decided when i saw that these stories were becoming national news, to speak out about it, i have met with officials from i.c.e. and they will tell you that they were talking at this time when the detention facilities were becoming a big issue, and they said, well, things are really great, because 80% of the people can get resettled and we only retain about 20% of the people in the detention facilities, well the 80% of those people who are

being resettled are coming to places like lynne. and i'm not here to talk about broad federal immigration policy, because that's something for the federal officials to work out. i'm simply here to explain to the federal officials that their actions or inactions will affect places that are on a map in such a way that they would never be considered to be affected by their decision making. but they truly are. now lynne has always had a thriving guatemalan community. at least as of a couple of years ago, it was about 2,400 people. and when these students are coming in from guatemala and they are asked down at the jubilee center where they might know somebody, naturally, they're going to say, well, we know people in lynne because there already is a sizable community here and it's a natural place for them to want to resettle.

and i just guess that i'm looking for a more equitable solution from the federal government, and whether that equity comes in the form of giving me a regional school, so that these students can be educated regionally rather than becoming a strain on my particular school system. or whether it becomes a form of financial aid so that a city like lynne can have more money to deal with the issue, or whether it becomes a question of having other surrounding school system, be part of the school system. to take the pressure off of my community, i'm not proposing that any one solution is any better than the other, but i am simply asking that the federal government be made aware of what's happening in communities where his unaccompanied children are settled and what we have to

do about it. the other issue i do want to bring up here, is that none of these children come in with any criminal record history. so we have no way of knowing whether they have been in trouble criminally in their home countries, we have to simply accept what we get at face value, and i think that does pose a potential danger for my children and for my community at large and i would just like to see something done about it. to when i heard jessica vaughn on the radio, i reached out to her, and she said oh, my god, i have heard about your community, i would reallilike to talk to you as well, and for the last couple of months, jessica and i have worked together trying to get the worth out, trying to keep this discussion, at least from my point of view, on a purely economic level, i don't want to start casting aspersions on people, lynne is a very diverse community. i love the fact that lynne is a

diverse community. by speaking out about this, i have been called a racist, i have been called a hater. that is not the case, i'm simply looking at this from the point of view of the economic impact it has on my city. so i know there will be a q & a session later, i would be happy to answer any questions you might have, but in the meantime, i think jessica has some points to add about her analysis of the issues that arise when the unaccompanied minors come to the united states. >> thanks so much. what i wantinged to do is, i think lynne is a very interesting case stud yay of the true local impact of our failure to get control of this influx of people from central america which started really a couple of years ago, as evidenced by the statistics that may year kennedy

gave us just from her community. what i wanted to do is i guess just try to blow up the information for information on how the surge is collectively affecting the nation and is sum total of all of our communities and also talk about one particul particular aspect, one particular -- that is reichly to occur from this one -- from central america. we had some packets of information that i'm going to refer to throughout my presentation they hope people had a chance to pick up and if not, i think there will be some on the table outside the room that give you a reference for some of the numbers that i'm going to mention and some that i probably won't have a chance to mention. but there has not been a lot of detailed information released by the department of homeland

security about the true size of the influx that we're experiencing. what they have told the public is that as of july 31st of this year, in this fiscal year, 60 -- about 63,000 unaccompanied alien children and that is illegal migrants that are younger than 18 years old and not accompanied by a parent, they are accompanied usually by a smuggler or by friends or family members, about 10,000 have turned themselves into the border patrol. most of these encounters occurring in the rio grand valley in south texas. we are also told that in this fiscal year, as of july 31st, about the same number, almost 63,000 family units have presented themselves to the border patrol and take on into

custody. -- exactly how many people that number represents in the family units, but obviously it's at least two people, probably more in many cases, so u at least 2/3 of this surge made up of family units coming to the united states. this is not just about the children or the teenagers, we do know that more than 200,000 individuals who are not from mexico, have been apprehended at the border. so that gives us an estimate of how many this has turned tout to be v. it has got to be in the neighborhood of 200,000 just this year. according to border patrol

documents, they're expecting 120,000 uacs, unaccompanied juvenile to be accompanied next year and probably a larger nib of family units as well. now the location of the resettleme resettlement, again, there's been no information released on where the family units have been allowed to resettle. most of them were released from custody before the department started detaining them. and the reason for that was, you know, were multiple. but one of them was that i.c.e. didn't have a detention facility that was appropriate for these people. despite the existence of a mass migration plan, in which they knew how they wanted to and could stand up for a detention facility for a situation such as this, i.c.e. either forgot the

plan or tossed the plank or whatever, for whatever reason it's not using the plan, it closed it's family detention center before this got out of hand. what i.c. echl ended up doing was releasing most of the family members, some of them getting parole status. they have released information on where the unaccompanied juveniles have been resettled so far, which i have put in the packet. total of 37,000 of them, they have provide details on, the majority going out of state. which is a little bit different than the usual settlement patterns, over 5 thooishlgs in texas, 4 thooirks in new york city, 4,000 in california, almost the same number in there from as in california and also significant populations of almost 3,000 in virginia and maryland. what they're doing is going to

places where there's already established numbers of latin-americans. the numbers i'm sure are going to increase next year, and the reason is that no one is being sent home so our country has yet to establish an effective deterrent for more people to come here illegally through south texas. according to news reports, there have been roughly 280 of those 200,000 new arrivals who have been deported from the country. and that's about 280 people associated as a family unit who were deported from arrest teasa, that's a minuscule number of deportati deportations to the side of the

influx. the major problem that are -- is education. given what the sum total of this cost is going to be, i took a look at what some of the states that are affected have estimated for the cost of providing an education to just -- and to all of the kids who have arrived in this inflaux, teinflaux--influx elson mates that it's going to be spending about $9,500 per child and that's a figure that was developed for their budgeting process in the legislature chir. florida has estimated that it's cost for educating a child is about $8,900 per child per year, but that these unaccompanied juveniles require an vaechlt of an additional $1,900 per child.

and in the national average, both of those states by the way seem to be running a little bit less per child cost than the national average, which is closer to 11,0$11,000 to $12 thooirks per child. so if you apply just those costs to the number of unact companco juveni juvenile, that works out to about $25,000 just for those who ahave arrived this year. it's an enormous sum of money that american taxpayers are going to be putting out to cover the costs of education. and again, we don't know how many kids are in the family units, it's got to be at least 60,000. you know, assuming one child, one parent. and it's almost certainly much more than that. another relatively undiscussed impact of this surge is going to

be on the labor markets in our communities. how many of these individuals are going to be working and where and what kind of jobs? we know that some of the kids in lynne are working, particularly in the landscaping industry as i understand, and i think it's reasonable to assume that that's one of the primary motivating factors for them to come here is that they will be able to work, whether legally or illegally. what many people don't realize, is the family units who were admitted before they started detaining some of them because they were released as parolees into the united states are eligible to apply for a work permit and many of certainly will be granted work permits while they're here. work permits really have become the primary vehicle for executive amnesty, the executive branch has the authority without restrictions from congress on issuing work permits, they can issue an unlimited number of

them and it has become apparent that when the president can't issue more work visas, he turns to the work permit as an option for providing people with the ability to stay here and support themselves. but finally, the worst unintended consequence of our failure to control this influx is the public safety consequences that are going to be a result of this. the most affected state has already quantified this and that's texas. they have already budgeted $300 million for this year, which they had anticipated because they have seen the surge happening over the last couple of years, they have had to add on an additional for public safety, to back up the border patrol because many border patrol agents are taken off a the line in order to manage the custody of the families and juveniles who are crossing.

but beyond the immediate expense of trying to contain the surge and limit the ability of criminal enterprises that are exploiting this weekly controlled border in texas, there's another very serious but very predictable inintended consequence and that to the legal of violent illegal street activities that's going to result from this influx of illegal immigrants and the mayor referred to the decline of the number of gang members in lynne, i think it's a pretty safe prediction that lynne and other cities like it that have been absorbing a lot a of this influx are going to see an increase in street gang activity. we know this from experience, but we also know it because of changes in i.c.e. policy that have affected their ability to do gang suppression and dismantling efforts and it's

predictable because it has happened before. one of the unintended consequences from a previous wave of immigrants from central maerk in the '80s and '90s was the influx of a new breed of extremely vicious street gangs, the most notorious is ms-13, but also those like 18th street and other gangs. ms-13 was created by violent thug who is settled decades ago when gang activity was not a focus for law enforcement and they were able to expafbd across the country. a large share of the membership and leadership of ms-13 and 18th streets and certain other gangs is comprised of illegal aliens. that made them before and makings them today vulnerable to immigration enforcement in a way

they were not so vulnerable to local law enforcement and even the fbi. as a result of targeted immigration enforcement activity starting in 2005 and continuing until just a couple of years ago, to a program that ice rang, known as operation community shield, these gangs were depleted and weakened throughout the country. it was a huge success. i.c.e. made more than 30,000 arrests of gang members across the united states and a significant share are from the three central american countries of the surge. and i have given you statistics on the number of arrests. and a disproportionate share of the most violent street gang members and leaders and associates are who arrested do come from the central american countries and particularly from ms-13 and 18 hl street. the success in i.c.e.'s program

was possible because of the use of local enforce mngtd authorities. they were arrested just because they were here illegally. i know that sounds like -- they were targeted because of their known affiliation with a criminal street gang. and mostly due to their involvement in crime i.c.e got them off the street and prevented a lot of crime as a

result. they have recruited a lot of imgrangtds there. where r where they operate with more impunity there. but in recent months, they have had the opportunity to take advantage of the chaos at the border to return, and in fact many of them are involved with the smuggling organizations. either doing the smug mg -- because of changes in immigration policies. agents are resfrikted in who they can arrest. they have to wait before people are convicted of a serious crime before they can keep them in custody and process them for deportation. family ties that a gang member

has, can trump criminal affiliatia fi affiliations or crimes against the public, even crimes they have already committed. some of these gang members have quasi-legal status because of having come here because an unaccompanied juvenile. and i.c.e. policies often leads to the release of gang member who is have been take on into custody, arrested and charged by some of i.c.e.'s investigative agencies. one branch is arresting them and eat branch of i.c.e. is releasing them. all of this leads me to have grave concerns about the potential for an increase in violence and crime due to gang activity in those areas absorbing the surge.

so i think it's probably about time to see what you phoenfolks to talk about and take your questions, which we're happy to do. >> there's a microphone if you could wait for that and if you could identify united states. here, margaret, up front. >> hi, penny star, cns news, this is for the mayor. you were talking about the ages of the students. can you be more specific? are you able to determine the actual age of the students and, say, some are as old as 18 or even older. it sounded like you were indicating that. >> we have no ability to confront the student directly and demand an accurate age. every once in a while we'll be able to determine that somebody is well above the age at which they would be entitled to an education in the lynne public schools. for example, if a student does not show up for a few days of classes, we will send our truant

officers to go out and find out what's going on at that home. so when they knock on the door and say we're looking for so-and-so and the responding person says, well, they're at work. then every once in a while, a person will -- for one example, the woman who answered the door said he's 35 years old, he's not going to show up at school. so we have good authority. buzz we cannot per d.o.j. guide lines, we cannot ask them for anymore verification of their age. and most of them don't come with birth certificates anyway. all they come with is a form from the jubilee center, that says their date of birth is 1/1/98 and we can't go beyond that and it does become very frustrating. >> any other questions? if you could identify yourself too please.

>> thank you, i'm a member of the fair board of advisors and wooir i'm also a massachusettsian originally bay birth. mayor kennedy, why haven't towns and cities like yours stood up to the federal government and the justice department and made them sue you for your doing your due diligence to establish the facts regarding your students and why haven't you asked the national congress to cut the budgets of some of these agencies that aren't doing their jobs and redirect that money to cover the costs that the federal policies are imposing on your local government? >> well, actually, one of the reasons why i am down here in washington is to meet with some of the staff members of members of congress.

to ask them to find solutions to communities like mine. i can't speak for other communities, i don't know why they haven't stood up, i they the superintendent and i finally just reached our breaking point. i had gotten a very good hold of the city's finances when i became mayor 4 1/2 years ago. we went from a baa1 bond raiding to a b-plus bond rating, at win point i had $300,000 in surplus for my city. i had a solid financial backing for my city and in the last couple of years it has all fallen apart. this year a i'm meeting with staff members, but i am planning another trip in the next five or six weeks to come down and meet directly with the congressional senators and representatives to find out what we can do to

assist communities like lynne in getting the money to pay for this increase in population. >> hi, my name is mike maxey, i'm a citizen of fairfax, virginia. i have spent six years in central america and another five years in south america. so i'm aware of some of the issues in and what's causing the mass migration. the specific issue that we're looking in fairfax county is title one resources, i'm wondering what's been your experience with title i, which is basically the need for free and reduced lunches s that helping? is it increasing? is it going to be part a of your discussion with congress? >> well rk, lynne has always be historically a lower income community, a real blue collar community and we have about 81%

free or reduced lunches as far as our student pop laigs goes, so the title i impact hasn't been sfachblt since we were at such a level even before this inflaux. one issue that i failed to bring up in my initial presentation, regarding the schools and i know this is more at the state level, but i wonder if virginia has something similar. we have a massachusetts comprehensive test for students in the fourth, seventh and tenth grades that students are required to pass. and they are expected to take and become advanced or proficient on their mcas as it's called by their second year in the school system. and our state funding can get jeopardized if our students don't score advanced or proficient. when i tell you that these people are being placed in the ninth great and they're illiterate in both english and

spanish, the odds of us getting them to path a tenth grade math examination are negligible. so i am expecting that this is going to hurt the city of lynne's standing with the massachusetts department of education. the other issue concerning the school that is did want to bray up is our dropout rate. u now the way massachusetts c l calculates this is if joe smith is a student in our system and he drops out in april, takes a landscaping job, comes back in october, drops out the following april, that sount counts for us as two dropouts even though it's object one person. and we have had one of these students drop out four times already and that affects the city's standing with the massachusetts department of education. so we see a lot of problems coming down the road, beyond the

ones that we're dealing with that are primarily financial right now. i'm glad you all have taken a interest in this, but i'm acting in a way as a beaconor a warning that this is result of the policies that the federal government has pursued. >> does this impact prospects of economic development in lynne? and what do the government officials tell you? what words do they use wlahen y come up and say, i can't check their age, what are you doing to us? >> well, like i said, the i.c.e. officials that i have met with have told me that they're doing a really good job resettling these people, but i don't think they're really keeping track of where they're resettling them. we're not getting any finances, we're getting reassurances that feel more like pats on the head that are like just go about your

business, and in fact i have talked about the numbers, unaccompany aed minors that have been resettled here in the city of lynne. once they get resettled and they're claimed by a sponsor, those sponsors can be illegal themselves. but those sponsors then become conferred with the type of protected status because they are obligated to have control over that unaccompaniy eied min until their status hearing dated, those status hearing date where is being pushed back to 2017 right now because of the backlog so we haven't gotten they answers from any federal officials about what their long-term plan is for helping out the kmufblt communities where the resettlement is occurring. >> and the economic development. >> i really haven't seen any kind a of impact on our economic development. lynne is as i said a poor community, it's an old factory

community. we have had actually a positive impact on the prices of our rental units and the availability of our rental units, especially the ones in the desirable section of town, the prices have gone to the point where there are bidding wars when they come on the market. the stock in apartments is really scarce right now. so i guess in that way, there's this kind of perverse positive effect on the economic development. as far as business development, we have added a couple of businesses that have, one that's going to generate 500 full and part-time jobs in the community and another one that has generated 200 job fors for the community. so we haven't seen any direct effect on the economic development prospects in the city of lynne. [ inaudible ] >> yes.

>> so are people in the town glad to see the price goes up? >> no. >> no, the landlords are happy that the prices are going up. but we have -- i guess as a consequence of that as well, the scarcity, we have started to see, although we can't directly confirm this, that apartments are being subdivided which does create a public safety hazard for the community. one reason that we know this is happening is recently, about two or three weeks ago, we had a three-alarm fire in two multifamily homes, it started in one and spread to the second. and when the firefighters got to the third floor of the second building, they were finding it difficult to get into the bedrooms and find out whether there were people trapped in there because there were locks placed on those bedroom doors. they in effect became subdivided apartments and that apartment was effectively used as a

rooming house. so we don't know how many more of those apartments are out there, i would love to be able to just knock on doors and take a look around, but i'm prohib prohibited from just bursting into people's apartments and checking that out. and unfortunately, we found out about it when the fire occurred. fortunately nobody was hurt. but it could have posed a real danger for either people trapped inside those illegally locked rooms or the firefighters that were wasting valuable time trying to look and check to make sure everybody had gotten out safely. >> yes, sir. >> dana milbank with the post. you mentioned alleged teenagers with gray hair and wrinkles. can you say how many there are? have you seen them yourself? are there photographs? are from names. >> i have seen their applications, their processing forms that have come from the jubilee center. and i would say of the 30 or 40

forms that i have seen maybe 7 or 8 of them clearly to me looked older than the 17 or 18 years old that they were claiming to be. >> so that is from photographs? >> photographs, i have not personally seen these people, because by the time i have become aware of them, they have been placed into the schools and i suppose u i could ask the superintendent if i could take a walk over to the school system, once school starts, for us it starts wednesday after labor day and maybe i'll be able to get some first hand, up close looks at these students. but clearly from some of the photographs, these people are adults. >> can you give us a legal break down of the new students that are enrolling over the past few years? >> that's one of the problems with the figures i have been zbaich. when i get this -- it doesn't

tell me how many are refugees, how many are illegal immigrants, including unaccompanied mean knorrs and how many have arrived in the community legally. but i can tell you, just based on my conversation with the superintendent, that virtually all of those ninth great guatemalan admissions are the unaccompanied minors. another thing about lynne, we are projected to be the number one settalment for refugees coming into the state of massachusetts. lynne is projected to and that opposed to the second largest city in massachusetts, springfield, is getting 58. boston's getting only 19. so we have -- >> these are not central americans. this is through the regular refugee program. >> right. right. we have a multitude of problems. >> those are, by definition, legal immigrants and you don't know how many of these others are illegal immigrants.

now given that and the fact that the surge that you had actually predates the real surge that we've had in unaccompanied minors at the border, why are you so sure it is related to that as opposed to these other problems? >> because the start of our surge predated the national so-called -- when the national stage first became aware of this. as i said, in -- through 2012, we had only three ninth-graders from guatemala in 2011 and 2012. by 2013, it was 56, i believe. and then in 2014, it was 126. that was clearly the start of a trend. it was not any new factor that was introduced that was complicating those figures.

and again, we know that a lot of these unaccompanied children are coming through the jubilee center and the paperwork that they're coming up with is from the jubilee center. >> do you know how many you got from the jubilee center is it. >> i don't have the exact figure right now. i can get that. and by the way, if any of you have additional questions that you'd like me to answer that i don't have the answers for right now, you can send me an e-mail. the e-mail address to use is jcerulli@lynnma.gov. i'll be back at work tomorrow and i'll be able to start answering any more questions you might have. i'll have more access to research and be able to contact the school department to get any other information you might want. >> let's take a couple more questions so that you don't get e-mails.

did you have something jessica? >> i was just going to add that, there were some photographs of some of the individuals claiming to be juveniles who arrived in lynn that were published. so -- couple months ago. i can tell you where to get those. >> matt boyle. i wanted to ask you, what is the effect of this on lynn's citizens and on legal immigrants that are there, and are they aware of this and what is the community's thoughts of this surge that's happened? >> most of them are very afraid to speak publicly about it because they don't want to be branded as a racist. however, i can tell you that through the e-mails i have received and through the personal conversations i have had with the individuals in lynn, they are very concerned about the number of people who are coming in. they want to see it stopped. they're glad that i'm speaking up about it.

and even the legal immigrants are very frustrated that they had to wait eight, ten years and spend, in some cases, thousands of dollars to come to the country legally. they don't feel that it's fair that people who are coming across and throwing themselves at the mercy of i.c.e. are being able to get resettled more quickly and more cheaply than they were able to do. >> other than economic compensation for your budget, what specific changes in the immigration policy are you advocating before congressional staff? >> well, as i said, there's nothing specific. i will leave that to the policymakers at the federal level. but simply allowing all of the -- well not "all of." but to have a direct line from

the resettlement centers, such as the jubilee center, to the city of lynn without compensating the city of lynn for that direct line i think is unfair. i think, for example, if lynn has experienced an 8% increase in its school population, maybe there has to be a way to redirect students so that until every surrounding community has an 8% increase in their student population, then there's a moratorium placed on having the students enter the lynn school system. just to balance it out. that might be the fair way to do it. having immigration law changes might be the way to do it. having a tougher border security might be the way to do it. i'm not here to advocate for the value of one approach over the other. i'm simply making people aware that there are communities far away from the border that are feeling the economic impact of the policies that the federal officials have in place currently and i'm asking them to

look at them to acknowledge the impact that they're having on communities far, far away from the border and do something to change it. but as far as specifics, i leave that to the experts. >> some experts in the form of department of homeland security officials, border patrol and others of us who have studied this program over the years think that the appropriate response is to address the surge by deterring the continued entry and resettlement of people who are coming. we know that certainly the border patrol believes and has said and has written that when there are no consequences for illegal entry, and when people are allowed to rejoin family members who are already living here illegally, and when people who are here illegally are not subject to immigration enforcement unless they're convicted of a very serious

crime, and when our local governments creates sanctuary policies, for example, to prevent local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with i.c.e., those are all the conditions that lead people to believe that they will be able to successfully resettle here, and often with our government's help. so the answer is to enforce the laws we have, use the tools we have, to turn off the faucet of illegal entry rather than trying to redistribute funding to help out all the communities that are forced to absorb it. >> we're going to have to -- i want to respect people's time. we're going to have to -- one more question very quickly. quick answers. then we'll wrap it up. >> melanie uhb from numbers, usa. during my research on places like the jubilee center, i found they describe their uac programs as placing children in foster care as one of the main priorities.

do either of you have any insight to the foster care program? have you talked to anyone who's been a foster parent? are they americans? the figures, the process. anything? >> i have not. that's a quick answer. >> okay. thank you, folks. i'm not sure whether the mayor or jessica will be around to be accosted afterwards but you can always try. i appreciate everybody coming. thank you very much. and thank you, mayor kennedy. >> thank you. here's a look at wednesday's night primetime programming across the c-span networks. here on c-span 3 at 8:00 eastern

remarks from the president of the kennedy center, deborah rutter. on c-span 2 at 8:00 we'll show you american university citizenship conference, civic, business and education leaders discuss what it means to be citizen. on c-span at 8:00 we'll have more congressional retirement interviews. our focus will be on senator carl levin and representative ralph hall. this thanksgiving week c-span is featuring interviews from retiring members of congress. watch the interviews through thursday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> much as we've accomplished in 36 years i don't want to look back at that so much as to look forward to the next couple of months. in the next couple of months there's a couple of things i would like to do. one is to get my defense authorization bill passed.

this is an annual effort, a major effort involving large amounts of staff. i would also want to finish up some work on the permanent subcommittee on investigations, looking at some gimmicks which are used to avoid taxes. >> i've been a member of congress for 34 years and, you know, to finally get beat, if i was a manager for a baseball or football team and i had a 34-1 i would be in the hall of fame. so it doesn't bother me. really it done bother me to get beat because i wasn't set on going but i had 18 co-chairmen who were chairmen in my district that support me and wanted me to run and i did. >> also on thursday, thanksgiving day, we'll take an american history tour of various native american tribes. that's at 10:00 a.m. eastern following washington journal. then at 1:30 attend a ground breaking ceremony of the new

diplomacy center in washington with former secretaries of state. and supreme court justices clarence thomas, samuel alito and sotomayor at 8:30 p.m. eastern. that's this thanksgiving week on c-span for our complete schedule go to c-span.org. thanks for your comments about our programming. here are a few we received about q and a. >> i just watched your program question and answer, and i find that it very offensive to put someone online for an hour, on air who knows very little about islam, very little about sharis. she misquoted the life of muhammed and his political facts that's inaccurate and one can on

a scholarly basis, i find it offensive and completely shocked as someone who watches and respects c-span to see this program. i'm completely, completely shocked and that's the worst program i've seen on c-span in 20 years. >> i wanted to comment on the q and a on c-span with the author. she has given the most complete and concise, articulated explanation of the muslim region in the modern world that i have not heard of and i am a religious scholar of over 65 years. she should be commended just for this speech. thank you very much, c-span. >> continue to let us know what think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400.

e-mail us at commentsass c-span.org or send us a tweet @c-span #comments. up next a look at the national labor relations board's ruling earlier this year backing the formation of a union by football players at northwestern university. the house education committee heard from baylor university president and former solicitor general ken starr, patrick iler and others. yon klein of minnesota chairs the committee. this is two hours and 15 minutes.

>> a quorum being present, the committee will come to order. good morning. i'd like to begin by welcoming our guests and thanking our witnesses for joining us. we appreciate the time you've taken to share your thoughts and expertise with the committee. college sports have become a favorite past time for millions of americans, whether filling out a tournament bracket, never works for me by the way, tailgating on a saturday afternoon, for many fans, college sports is a way to spend time with loved ones and stay connected with old friends. fans are known for their loyalty, student athletes are renowned for their passion and talent. for some competing at the collegiate level is a step toward a career in professional sports. for most student athletes, playing a sport is a ticket to an education they simply

couldn't access without an scholarship. their dreams can be turned upside i down by a sports related injury. when that happens, institutions must step up and provide the health care and academic support the student needs. most institutions are doing just that and stand by their athletes for the long haul. but some are not. no student athlete injured while representing their school on the field should be left behind because of the misplaced priorities of a college or university. can the ncaa and institution to do more to protect students? absolutely. they can start by giving students a greater roll in shaping policies that govern college athletics and work to ensure that a sports injury doesn't end a student's career. while promoting change is often difficult, student athletes deserve a determined effort. does that mean unionizing student athletes is the answer? absolutely not.

franklin d. roosevelt declared, quote, a better relationship between labor and management is the high purpose of the act. it's hard to manage president roosevelt thought the law would one day apply to the relationship between student athletes and academic institutions yet that is precisely where we are. a regional director of the national labor relations board ruled that football players are employees of the school. the ballots cast in an april 25th election have. impounded pending review by the full board. given the track record of this, i suspect the board will rubber stamp the regional director's decision setting a dangerous precedent. in the meantime, schools, athletic organizations, students and the public are searching for answers to countless questions stemming from that unprecedented ruling. for example, what issues would a union representing college athletes raise at the bargaining table. would a union negotiate over the number and length of practices? perhaps they would bargain over the number of games.

if management and union on an impasse, would they go on strike? would student athletes attend class and have access to financial aid? how would student athletes provide dues to the unions. would dues be deducted from scholarships before being disbursed to students or are they expected to pay out of pocket. how would they shoulder the cost of joining the union. where will with the smaller colleges and universities find the money to do this. are these schools ready to make some difficult decisions such as cutting support to other athletic programs like lacrosse, field hockey or even raising tuition. and how will other policies affect our higher education system. are college campuses prepared for microunions and ambush elections, are they equipped to bargain with computing unions,

will students be able to make a decision about joining a union in less than ten days while attending class and going to practice? these questions should be discussed before the students and administrators are forced to look at this. we share the concerns of players at that time progress is too slow. forming a union is not the answer. treating student athletes as something they are not is not the answer. the challenges facing student athletes should be addressed in a way that protects the athletic and academic integrity of higher education. the recent decision takes a fundamentally different approach that could make it harder for students to access a quality education. i strongly urge the obama board to change course. and encourage key stakeholders to get to work. i look forward to today's discussion and will now recognize the senior democratic member of the committee, mr. george miller, for his opening remarks. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm glad we're having a hearing to better understand what is happening in college athletics.

to air out the very legitimate grievances that have been raised at northwestern university and around the country. the days when student athletes really were "students" first and when college sports was just about learning teamwork, self-discipline, sportsmanship, while getting exercise and friendly competition, those days are pretty much over in high-level athletic programs. during the last four decades colleges and universities through the ncaa have perfected the art of monetizing athletic play of their best football and basketball players and teams while steadily encroaching on the players' academic opportunities. they have created nothing less than a big sports empire. the empire's consumed and driven by a multi-billion dollar exclusive television, radio, multi-media deals, branding agreements, primetime sports shows, celebrity coaches with seven-figure salaries. our nation's talented athletes have become commodities within this empire. they are units of production that are overscheduled and overworked, left without safeguards for their health and safety, encouraged to put their

education on the back burner in favor of success on the field. some athletes have figured this out and are now starting to ask smart questions about this whole arrangement. they want to know what happens to them if they suffer a catastrophic injury on the field that leaves them without -- with a lifetime disability. will they lose their scholarship? and with it the chance of an education and a career? how much of their health care will they and their families need to pay out of pocket? they're reading about new studies on long-term effect of head injuries and they want to know if the schools and coaches are doing all that they can to prevent concussion and brain injury on the field. will their health come first when the decision is being made about whether or not they're fit to play? or will their team's desire to win trump the health concerns of the individual player? they're raising questions about the adequacy of their scholarships and the restrictions that leave them with little or no support or out-of-pocket and incidental expenses they face. why are some of the teammates finding themselves unable to afford enough food to eat or

books for their classes while the university makes millions from their effort? they want to know why so many players didn't finish their academic programs. they want to discuss a fair transfer policy. how can policies be changed to support the player's success in academics, not just athletics? the national labor relations board decision regarding northwestern university football players documents an all-consuming sometimes eye-popping demand of a college football player in today's mega profit driven ncaa world. at northwestern, the daily life of a football player revolves around practice and preparation, commonly a 40 to 50-hour week commitment during the fall season, with any classes or homework squeezed on top. you can see the sample schedule displayed here, i believe, on the screen of the northwestern players. it's over underneath the screen, excuse me. players are expected to report to the training room by 6:15 on monday mornings for their

medical checks by 7:00 a.m., various team and position meetings, then pads and helmets until noon. at night they meet with coaches to review game films. and there is always the agility drills, conditioning, weightlifting, workouts and playbooks to study in between. from the beginning of the month-long august training camp through the grueling 12-week season to postseason bowl play and to mid-january, winter warmups to february winning edge week to mandatory spring workouts to high-stakes football preparation, not academic obligations become the focus of these players' lives and the obsession of their coaches. meanwhile, players worry about their health and safety, their financial future, their prospects for jobs after graduation. the big business empire of college sports is doing very well. its revenues are up 32% in the last six years. and many universities are hiking tuition and fees turning to underpaid, overstretched adjunct faculty, and cutting students' services. the ncaa and the superstar football programs are making more and more money and the athletes they depend on are getting less and less. in the end, this is a classic

labor dispute. the ncaa empire is holding all the cards, making all the rules, capturing all the profits. the hardest-working, most valuable components in this system, the players are left with little to say, little leverage, and no blocking or tackling but themselves. by banding together and bargaining, these athletes can win the kinds of things union workers have demanded and won across the country. a say about avoiding serious injury on the job. medical benefits and securities if something goes wrong. meaningful input into how they will balance their work. in this case, football is their work. with their academic needs and their other responsibilities. the respectful treatment and care they so richly deserve. i look forward to today's hearings and hearing from today's witnesses about how we can do more to help protect and support these hard-working student employees. >> thank you, gentleman. pursuant to committee rule 7-c all committee members will be permitted to submit written statements to be included in the permanent hearing record. without objection the hearing record will remain open for 14

days to allow statements, questions for the record, and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be included in the official hearing record. it's my pleasure to introduce our distinguished panel. in light of my failing voice and the very, very long resumes of our witnesses i'm going to be extraordinarily brief. starting to my left we have the honorable ken starr, president and chancellor of baylor university in waco, texas. mr. bradford livingston is a partner in seaforth shaw llp in chicago, illinois. mr. andy schwarz is a partner at oskr llc in emeryville, california. mr. bernard muir is director of athletics for stanford university in stanford, california. and mr. patrick eilers is managing director at madison dearborn partners in chicago, illinois and former minnesota viking. okay. i couldn't stop. before i recognize you to provide your testimony, let me briefly remind everyone of the

five-minute lighting system. the system is pretty straight-forward. when i recognize you you'll have five minutes to give your testimony. the light will be green, after four minutes it will turn yellow. i would hope that you would be looking to wrapping up your testimony. when it turns red please wrap up as expeditiously as you can. i'm loathe to gavel down a witness. we're here to listen to you, you're here to give us the benefit of your expertise. i'm less loathe to gavel down our colleagues when we get into our five-minute questioning system. please try to be respectful of the other witnesses and wrap up your testimony. all right. let's start with the honorable ken starr. sir, you're recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it's an honor to be here and to discuss this very important issue for private higher education as the chair kindly recognized.

i serve as president and chancellor at baylor university. i've served as president and ceo of baylor university since june of 2010. baylor university is located in waco, texas. it is a private christian university. it is ranked as a high research comprehensive university. and it's a vibrant community home to over 15,000 students, including over 600 student athletes. baylor is a founding member of the big 12 conference established in 1994. we sponsor 19 varsity teams. very blessed at baylor to have student athletes who succeed both in the classroom and on the playing field. over the past three years, baylor university has been the most successful division i program in combined winning percentages of football and men's and women's basketball.

but these accomplishments do not count, ultimately, in terms of what we emphasize at baylor. as commencement approaches next weekend on our campus, we are celebrating our academic accomplishments. like we gather together monday evening at baylor's farrell center to do exactly that, to honor our student athletes' performance in the classroom. during the prior academic year, mr. chairman, 86% of senior student athletes at baylor received their undergraduate degrees and many have gone on to pursue advanced degrees. this past fall semester the grades are not in for the spring, our student athletes achieved a cumulative gpa of 3.27. that's an all-time high. and 347 of our student athletes were named to the big 12 commissioners' honor roll. so these are remarkable times

for baylor and its athletic program. yet the reality is that even in these best of times, college athletics, including at baylor, is not a profit-generating activity. it does not generate profits for baylor, nor for the vast majority of institutions of higher education. the nlrb regional director's recent decision in the northwestern university case has characterized our student athletes as employees. this is an unprecedented ruling, as the chairman noted, and in our view it's misguided. the term student athletes is real on our campus. we would invite members to come to our campus and see for themselves. at bottom it is a relationship which provides a college education and even beyond. that at baylor, student athletes are first and foremost students and they are expected to be and

required to be. we are far removed from a professional sports franchise. we are dedicated to each and every student's welfare, including our student athletes. now at baylor and across the nation, student athletes benefit from a wide array of services that are specifically designed to maximize their potential as students. and then to prepare the student athletes for their journeys in life after college. these services and programs contribute significantly to their ultimate academic success. they include academic advising, degree planning, career counseling, many institutions including baylor provide very high-quality academic support such as tutoring service, computer labs, and study lounges. we have study hall. student athletes also receive

specific financial benefits which help them progress toward degree completion. and these traditional benefits are very familiar. tuition, room, board, fees, books and other related educational expenses. now, what's the purpose? the purpose in offering financial assistance is to encourage our student athletes to carry on and to complete their academic work and the vast majority do. now, the nlrb has expressed a view that the legal issue of employee status is ultimately a matter of congressional intent. and we agree with that. in this instance, however, the regional director has mechanically, and we believe erroneously, applied a rigidly wooden test drawn from the common law, notwithstanding as the chairman suggested the absence of any congressional intent to include college athletics as an employment venue.

now, the decision by its terms applies only to private institutions. but it does create a dichotomy. for example, the decision rightly notes that northwestern university is nonsectarian. but the nlrb has been struggling in various dimensions with religious liberty limitations on its own jurisdiction. so we should reasonably expect some private religiously affiliated universities to challenge the board's authority to be regulating institutional missions expressly grounded in a religious world view. the second and more structurally significant disparity is the decision's implicit exclusion of state institutions and intercollegiate athletics, private universities compete with state institutions, and this will likely create many discrepancies among the nation's universities. >> thank you. mr. livingston, you're recognized. >> good morning, mr. chairman, members of the committee.

good morning, mr. chairman, and members of the committee. as the supreme court has noted, principles developed is nlra's purposes in allowing employees the free to choose whether or not to form a labor union and bargain collectively, the nlrb itself has recognized the problem of attempting to force the student university relationship into the traditional employer/employee framework. that problem is apparent here. a university's primary mission is to educate its students, including student athletes. student athletes are neither hired by a college nor providing it services for compensation. athletes are students who are participating in its programs. with a dual role as both student and athlete, treating these participants as nlra covered employees changes them from students who are student athletes to professional athletes who are also students. but even if student athletes

could be considered employees, and the term is unconfined in the nlra, employee status conflicts with the remaining principles contained in that act. consistent with labor agreements from other industries, a college athlete's union could negotiate over the scheduling and duration of practice time, distribution of playing time, scholarship allocation by dollar value, and player position. where they're nonbargaining unit players, in this case walk-ons, have the right to play in game and the broad range of statutory wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment described in nlrb precedent. they could likewise negotiate over academic standards, including minimum grade point averages, class attendance requirements, the number and form of examinations or papers in any course, grievance procedures to challenge a professor's grade, and even potentially graduation requirements. and unlike with statutory requirements, a college cannot refuse to bargain over changes

to its own, its conference, or ncaa rules. eventual differences in the conditions under which collegiate teams practice and compete will guarantee competitive imbalances. if college football players are employees, the nlra makes it clear they may organize in an appropriate bargaining unit, not the most appropriate bargaining unit. because the petition for a unit will be considered appropriate unless a larger group shares an overwhelming interest with that group, a college would have difficulty proving the remainder of the football team shares an overwhelming community of interest if a labor union seeks to represent just the team's offense, perhaps just its quarterbacks. different potential union rules among discrete groups within one team are modest however compared to what will happen when college teams compete under different work rules negotiated with a their respective unions. in professional sports every

team has a private employer under the nlra's jurisdiction that can be covered under a single collective bargaining agreement. the major professional sports leagues have collective bargaining agreements that cover the league and all of its teams. those agreements provide a relatively level playing field, whether with salary caps, minimum wage progressions, free agency, drug testing protocols, and revenue sharing. unlike professional leagues, the same will not be true in college football. because its jurisdiction is limited to private employers, the nlrb is creating rules for student athletes at only 17 schools. fewer than 15% of the participants. it is almost certain that the nlra's regime for recognizing and bargaining with unions will not apply to the remaining 85% that are public universities governed by state laws and beyond the nlrb's jurisdiction. some states expressly regulate public sector employee collective bargaining.

others often either limiting it to certain subjects or types of employees. other states have no laws or prohibit public sector bargaining entirely. a bill before ohio's house of representatives clarifies that student athletes at its public colleges and universities are not employees. conversely too, connecticut legislators indicate they will introduce legislation stating their public college athletes are in fact employees. without a unified collective bargaining agreement like the nba or nfl every college team must fend for itself with its employee athletes. athletic departments that can afford it may be able to hire the best employers. institutions with fortunes and job offers are not as robust may attract lesser talent. the resulting patchwork of conflicting statuses as employees are not bargaining rights, labor contracts, and student athlete rules will create competitive imbalances. the national labor relations act is not an appropriate vehicle to

address student athletes' concerns or disputes with their colleges and universities, athletic conferences, or the ncaa. for these and the other reasons contained in my written testimony, treating these student athletes as employees covered by the nlrb is simply unworkable. mr. chairman and members of the committee, i thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today. >> thank you. mr. schwarz, you're recognized. >> chairman kline, ranking member miller, members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to testify on these issues related to college football. my name's andy schwarz, i'm an economist who specializes in anti-trust and the economics of college sports. i'm a partner with the firm oskr but i'm testifying today solely on my own behalf. as the members of the committee know, the nlrb authorized an election for northwestern football athletes. so to start i want to provide a few facts from those proceedings. scholarship football athletes at northwestern devote 40 to 60 hours per week during a

five-month season. 15 to 25 hours per week the rest of the year. they receive no academic credit. they're not supervised by faculty. and football is not a direct part of the curriculum of their undergraduate majors. i understand this panel is focused on unintended consequences of unionizing college football so i want to explain the biggest threat to college sports from collective action is the price-faxing cartel called the ncaa. by price fixing 351 division i schools including my beloved stanford stifle healthy economic competition through collusion to impose limits on all forms of athlete compensation. college football is an enormously popular consumer product, generates passion from fans, and billions in revenues from schools for broadcast television networks, for merchandisers and apparel companies. fbs football is a professional sports industry. fbs football alone reported $3.2 billion in revenue in the most

recent federal filings. d-1 basketball another $1.4 billion. individual athletic departments regularly generate more revenue than almost all nhl and nba teams. former ncaa president miles brand explained maximizing revenue was the only responsible path for college sports. that's exactly how a vibrant business should behave. but there's an economic dark side to college sports that comes from collective action which is price fixing. the nlra and the anti-trust laws work together to ensure that when sports leagues and athletes form partnerships, negotiations are fair. and either choice is valid. in a unionized collective bargaining path or a more free market approach governed by anti-trust laws. given the one-sided power imposed by collusion it's not surprising players have turned to labor law and unionization for a modicum of bargaining power. other american sports involve a league negotiating with a union to achieve a competitive outcome.

leagues generally encourage unionization. in 2011, the nfl players sought to end their union but the nfl went to court to demand they remain a union. against the players' wishes. as an economist, i focus on the athletes' free market value which is high. but as a union cap is focused on very different things, they're focused on enhancing educational and safety component of the bargain, better medical coverage, reducing head trauma, improving graduation rates, establishing educational trust funds to ensure athletes can finish their degrees. because of time limits i'll summarize my points and leave the rest for the questioning period. because most athletes do not go on to work in the nfl, ncaa collusion effectively denies 95% or more of college athletes of their four best sports earning years of their entire career. for some those may be their four best earning years. money that would go to male athletes is instead funneled to coaches and into elaborate recruiting palaces. college football coaches can

make as much as $7 million a year. shunting money to coaches also deprives women athletes of title ix matching funds. collusion shifts the burden from a private school like northwestern to taxpayer-funded pell grants, food stamps, by forcing students to leave school to support their families. the current tax code exempts from taxation the tuition portion of athletic scholarships as well as tuition remission paid to university employees as part of a broader compensation package. nothing in the nlrb ruling should change that. if it did, congress itself has the power to make sure that doesn't happen. finally, the ncaa limits consumer choice with a centrally planned one size fits all product offering. i also want to say that the student -- term student athletes itself was created to dodge legal responsibilities for athletes' safety and to avoid economic competition. but the resources for -- from new tv deals alone are sufficient for an orderly

transition from a command and control economy to a market-based one. americans have a legal right to economic markets free of collusion. until that right is respected for college athletes, of course they'll seek collective alternatives. an athlete who has bargained individually or collectively to ensure he's well fed, given real access to a full range of majors and programs at his school, provided with health and safety rules that lower the risk of serious head trauma or life long disability, is going to be in a better position to benefit from a true education than a hungry or concussed athlete forced into a dead-end major. thank you for your time. >> thank you. mr. muir, please. >> chairman kline, ranking member miller, and members of the committee. i am pleased to be here to provide some comments about the experiences of student athletes at stanford university. my comments are specific to stanford and are not focused on the details of the case currently before the national labor relations board. i hope to help illuminate some

of the larger issues you are addressing today. stanford has 7,000 undergraduate students and nearly 9,000 graduate students. and the university's recognized internationally for its academic quality. we offer 36 varsity sports, 20 for women, 16 for men. about 900 students participate in intercollegiate sports. 53% of the men and 47% of them women. stanford has won the director's cup which honors the most successful program in ncaa division i sports for the last 19 years. we're proud of athletic achievements of our student athletes. what i want to emphasize in my testimony this morning is in athletics we never lose sight of the university's larger mission. stanford as a university first and its academic mission comes first. we believe the most important thing for our student athletes, walk out the door when they leave stanford with a stanford

degree. 97% of our student athletes achieve this goal. including 93% of our football student athletes. the athletic experience is not pursued at the expense of the academic experience. or separate and apart from it. each enhances the other. one out of every eight undergraduate students at stanford is a student athlete. so this is not a separate group. having a separate experience from the rest of the student body. they're in the same classes, the same laboratories, the same undergraduate housing. they have the same exam schedules. even if it means to take a proctored examination on the road. the same degree completion requirements as other students. the rigor of the academic enterprise begins with the admissions process. stanford does not admit anyone it is not confident can succeed academically at the university. stanford reviews each applicant for undergraduate admission holistically, looking at academic excellence, intellectual vitality, the personal context each brings to the table. this evaluation occurs in the admissions office independent of the athletic department. our student athletes demonstrate how importantly they view a stanford education by taking all steps they need to complete it. as two brief examples, andrew

luck of the indianapolis colts and pitcher mark appel of the houston astros organization both bypassed the opportunity to leave stanford with a year of eligibility left and enter the professional sports world. instead, they remained at stanford to complete their degree. even among the few stanford athletes student athletes who do not complete a degree before becoming professional athlete many do come back to finish later. the majority of our student athletes will not go on to earn a living in professional sports but whatever path they take their stanford experience will provide them with outstanding preparation for success in the world. the academic grounding they receive is solid and the athletic experience builds on it by teaching leadership, strategy, team dynamics, problem solving, and other capacities critical to success. i discuss all these issues more extensively in my written testimony before you. i want to address a related question about how revenue from athletics is used. at stanford, while football and men's basketball generate net revenue through ticket sales and

tv contracts the vast majority of our 36 sports do not. all the revenue that the university receives from these two sports is used to support the overall athletic program, including the 87% of our student athletes who participate in those other 34 sports. we use these revenues to support athletic opportunities for the broad cross-section of our students, both men and women, providing these opportunities is very important to us. let me close by discussing how we address the needs and concerns of student athletes. we work hard to ensure both their academic and athletic experiences of our student athletes are excellent and properly supported. soliciting honest feedback from our students is critical to that objective and we have a variety of avenues for doing so. many of the issues that have been identified by the union seeking to represent student athletes are issues we are already addressing at stanford. although there are areas where our actions are governed by ncaa regulations we're always open to making improvements that are within our purview and to working with the ncaa to improve

its rules on issues such as minimum academic progress for student athletes and scholarships that include fair stipends for student athletes' expenses. i hope the strengths and benefits of programs such as ours will be considered as the national discussion continues. i recognize there is a variation on these issues from school to school and while i've been speaking about stanford, there may well be differences at other institutions. stanford stands ready to talk with and work with others who are likewise interested in continually improving the experience of student athletes across the country. thank you. >> thank you. mr. eilers. >> mr. chairman, ranking member miller, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and present my views on the ongoing quest to improve the environment for student athletes on college campuses. before i do so, i would like to make it clear that my comments today are strictly my own. although i was a student athlete at the university of notre dame,

and later attained a master's degree from the kellogg graduate school of management at northwestern university, i do not speak for nor do i represent these institutions. i speak only for myself. i graduated from the university of notre dame in 1989 with a bachelor of science degree in biology. by also pursuing a second undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering which i received a year later. while i was a student at notre dame i played four years of varsity football and also played on varsity baseball team. i had transferred from yale university the beginning of my sophomore year and had a fifth year of academic eligibility, affording me the opportunity to complete my second degree. i transferred to notre dame to pursue excellence in the classroom and on the football field. i felt notre dame offered me the opportunity to do well in both. while it wasn't easy, it certainly was achievable. the infrastructure was and remains in place to assist student athletes to achieve at notre dame.

i have a daughter who is currently a collegiate student athlete there. i have witnessed even further improvements in the program, such as mandatory study hall for all incoming freshmen athletes. i am here today as a former collegiate student athlete. i am not an attorney and versed in labor law so i'll leave the legal argument to the experts to my right. the impetus for today's panel is the nrlb regional director's ruling that college athletes are deemed employees. which would enable them to potentially unionize under the national labor relations act. the union pursuit is a means to an end, a vehicle if you will to implement improvements to our collegiate athletic system. i believe there is little debate about necessary logical improvements which i will describe. i believe the debate today should instead be focused on seeking the most effective vehicle to cause the implementation of these improvements. the crux of the problem is that

the student athlete should be students first and foremost. i'm concerned that calling student athletes employees will make the system more of a business than it already is. in my mind, we need to gravitate collegiate athletics toward a student-centric model, not the other way around. i also worry about the unintended consequence of being deemed an employee and what unionization could bring to college athletics. that said, as a former student athlete, i support many of the goals of the national college players association and the college athletes players association that the ranking member described in front. i favor mandated four-year scholarships, health insurance benefits, and stipends. i will address transfer eligibility briefly. four-year scholarship. as a student athlete you should be able to maintain an athletic scholarship for at least four,

debatable five, years from the date you entered college. assuming you maintain the school's academic and disciplinary standards. with the goal of obtaining an undergraduate degree. the obligation should be maintained regardless of your productivity on the athletic field and even if you sustain a permanent injury. the sad reality at some colleges is if the student athlete is not performing on their field, their athletic scholarship may not be renewed year to year. this incenses student athletes to focus on scholarship renewal at all costs rather than striking the balance of performance in the classroom and on the field of play. health and insurance benefits. after sustaining a sports-related injury a student athlete's scholarship should neither be reduced nor eliminated and there should be

guaranteed coverage for medical expenses for current and former players. student athletes that sustain permanent injuries should be afforded health care and insurance benefits for life. i also hasten to add that all college athletic programs should enhance their efforts to minimize the risk of sports-related traumatic brain injuries. stipend. student athletes should be afforded stipends so they can handle out-of-pocket expenses associated with attending college. at the very least on a needs-based assessment. transfer. if four-year scholarships are mandated, not at the option of each college, then i'm okay with current transfer restrictions. i was a product of these transfer restrictions. i was ineligible my sophomore year at notre dame. however, if honoring four-year scholarships is not required, then the one-time, no-penalty transfer option should be afforded to all student athletes, not just select sports. so in conclusion, these initiatives are, in my mind, obvious and necessary improvements. the first three have monetary implications which i recognize make them more difficult to implement for athletic programs that already operate in the red.

however, i believe there is clearly plenty of money in the system for necessary improvements that's been highlighted. the national collegiate athletic association is "dedicated to safeguarding the well-being of student athletes and equipping them with the skills to succeed on the playing field and in the classroom and throughout life." if this mission statement is true, why then haven't these goals already been implemented? i believe this problem exists simply because the fact that the ncaa is a membership-driven organization "made up of colleges and universities but also conferences and affiliated groups." perhaps because of this charter it appears to me the ncaa may not have been able to get consensus from its diverse membership on these issues. i don't have a solution to this problem. but i question the need to unionize to effectuate the implementation of these initiatives. one final note.

it is difficult to maintain that we truly have a student athlete system given the relatively low graduation rates for student athletes at many institutions across the country. this is not an acceptable outcome. and i don't see how classifying these student athletes as employees is going to improve this situation. so finally, i was a student athlete at notre dame. period. i was not an employee of the university. nor did i want to be one. conversely, i played six years of professional football, including three here for the redskins, where i was an employee and i wanted to be one. thank you. i would be pleased to answer any questions you have. >> thank you. thank all the witnesses. true panel, true experts. because you're on a roll there, mr. eilers, i'm going to start with you. guy from st. paul that goes on to do all these things, we're very proud of you. i know that when you were at notre dame, i think you were

part of a national championship team. and i'm just deeply disappointed you couldn't help the vikings be a super bowl team. you mentioned that your daughter is playing lacrosse at notre dame. and with her, watching her experience and your experience, i'm wondering if you were ever discouraged at notre dame from taking a class or pursuing a major because you were a student athlete. >> i was not. and i think, further, they encouraged us to pursue our academic passions, mr. chairman. >> and you wisely moved on from a bachelor's degree in biology, which i also had found useless. if you -- i think probably most of us on this panel, i know i can't speak for everybody on both sides of the aisle, but you mentioned a lot of issues that

could be and should be addressed. injuries, for example. you had sort of a list of things that ought to be looked at. and your conclusion was that that's something that the universities, notre dame and all of them, including baylor and stanford, ought to be addressing. and that being a member of a union, the student athletes be a member of a union, being employees, wouldn't help that . am i oversimplifying your position there? >> i don't think you're oversimplifying. i would say that i think judge starr's baylor, bernard's stanford, notre dame, it is an option to provide four-year scholarships. each of our institutions provide that for our student athletes. that's not universally adopted across the country. and i think for a student athlete not to graduate from a university with a degree in hand is a total disservice. >> thank you. and i think, judge starr, you mentioned something like 86%.

could you talk about your graduation rate for your student athletes again very quickly? >> yes. this last year, academic year, 82% did, in fact, graduate. a number did, in fact, as did pat go on to pursue degrees as well. advanced degrees, graduate degrees. and here's the key point. it's individual choice. what is the culture? that's the responsibility of the university. does the university create a culture that encourages the student to do the best that he or she can? there are obviously important issues to be addressed. we completely agree with that and we're part of a conversation that is nationwide. with respect to what can we do better? we know there are things that can, in fact, be improved. especially the full cost of attendance. completely agree with that. but the real question, i think, with respect to the nlrb, mr.

chairman, is are we going to, in fact, use the national labor relations act as a tool for negotiating improvements? and it seems to be exactly the wrong way to go. for starters if i may make one additional point, the collective bargaining agreement or the collective bargaining unit that was recognized by the regional director doesn't include the entire football team. if you're a walk-on, one of the 35 members of the football team at northwestern, the representative, if the union is in fact elected, is not going to be representing you. you're going to be outside the unit. quite apart then from the nonrevenue sports. and that is a fundamental issue. we are treating all of our student athletes the same. and we want to, in fact, encourage this culture that we want you to go to school, we want you to earn your degree. and we want to help prepare you for your journey in life. >> thank you. mr. muir, back to stanford.

in your testimony you talked about how football and basketball were moneymakers and that money went to the other sports. could you remind us again of how that distribution goes? >> yeah, the resources that we derive from our tv or media rights goes back into supporting 36 sports, in our case, which is one of the larger offerings around the country. but it's to enhance that experience overall for all our student athletes, the 900 we support. we think that's very important. >> okay, thank you. mr. miller. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. starr, i assume you weren't calling for a larger bargaining unit. >> no, it does raise, mr. >> i appreciate that. i just want to make clear. >> the continuity of interest, the community of interest. >> mr. eilers, i want to thank you very much for your

testimony, because you testified in very straightforward manner about the issues that the students at northwestern were raising that are endemic, i believe, to the football programs around the country. and that really was, as you pointed out, the security of their scholarship, four-year scholarship, as opposed to year to year, that can be used as a weapon against the student or performance or to get out of -- to add somebody else to the squad. the health and insurance benefits. the concern when you're injured or suffer disability as a result of that. or you lose your athletic ability, you lose your scholarship. these things start to accumulate on some students. the stipend issue that you've raised. and the transfer issue. student. the sti pend issue you raised and the transfer issue. these are the issues the students felt necessary to form a union around. i expect you'd find that if you travel to most of the college campuses that have sports programs that the students just feel they're caught up and are only there four years, five years, short, whatever period of

time. they aren't being addressed. i find it interesting that other witnesses have held their testimony to that notion and that's their belief that this is a student athlete. your student athletes at northwestern said what about the athletic side of it? where we spend 50 hours a week. what is this imposition on us and what security do we have? and apparently that can never quite get addressed. that brings me to you, mr. schwartz. if you read mr. livingston's testimony, he can tell you why this integral work between conferences and ncaa and the colleges and maybe even the media would not be a shield against issues raised by this bargaining unit. they could travel all over and has them going into the academic side. that same network is used as a weapon against the athletes. >> that's right. >> that same network is used as

a weapon when they want to talk about, as our stipend fair, is our policy fair because they don't have any voice in that at all and the school is happy giving you a four-year degree. but that's not every school in the league, maybe not even in the pac-12. i don't know. we have to check with the conference. we're bound by the rules. also remember today what conference you get in, i mean, conferences are like commodities. they are moving them around to generate tv revenues. it's no longer the old rivalries. it's what are the revenues that will be generated midweek, weekend playoffs. if you are a handful of student in the northwestern program, how you're going to be heard and get results during your career? >> sure. if i could just address a couple of things. one statement i heard is baylor treats all of its student athletes the same. that's not true. there's a cap on how many

students can receive scholarships and walk-ons are prohibited from receiving scholarships if they exceed that. there's already a caste system that's created. that's a term that mr. muir has used to describe paying athletes that distinguishes between scholarship athletes and those who likely would get a scholarship if the school were allowed to exercise individual choice. there's a cap that prevents it. the -- directly to your point, the way i like to think about the claim that schools are poor in their athletic departments is that it's similar to say a wall street banker who brings in $1 million of salary but maybe he's been divorced twice so he has alimony payments, maybe kids in college, a couple of mortgages. once he's done paying for all those things there's not a lot left and wall street banking doesn't pay that well. >> that's sort of the point the knight commission found in 2010.

not enough money to provide those scholarships, to help the other sports but as they pointed out, the escalating coaches salaries are creating an unsustainab ablable growth. >> and $3 million into coach's salary, i recognize that's the exception but more and more people are joining that fraternity. then you plead poor mouth that you can't quite take care of your athletic obligations campuswide. the ncaa has constructed a very interesting and overwhelming network to be used against these kind of questions being raised, even commissioned as prominent as the night commission that examined this impact and relationship of student athletes. and that's why these students chose to become employees because they recognize the situation they were in. classical employer/employee relationship. thank you. >> gentleman's time has expired.

i ask unanimous consent to submit a letter from the american council on education which warns treating student athletes as employees would have a range of negative and troubling questions. >> i wish to submit an article from the stanford daily. student athletes have access to easy courses. >> without objection, both will be entered in the record. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i want to thank all of our witnesses here today. you have provided some fascinating information to us, and i am grateful to you. someone who spent a lot of time and education and higher education, dealt with student athletes and students who weren't athletes. so i appreciate the information. judge starr, i understand baylor's priority is education. in fact, all of you have talked about that. would you describe how baylor's athletic programs work with the

academic programs to ensure student athletes can prioritize their studies while also meeting their commitments to the team? >> one of the keys dr. foxx is the planning process that goes into developing the major, planning then the schedule and student athletes have priority in terms of registration so we do not have a crowding out kind of question at all. and so throughout the academic year, there is a careful monitoring of that student's progress and if there are issues being identified, then those issues are going to be addressed. i think that's why we have seen a steady increase in recent years, even before my watch, but it is a point of personal emphasis an my watch that we want the student athletes to have that entire reservoir of support and that's why the gpa, cumulative gpa average is 3.27. it's a labor intensive and

student athlete specifically focused activity. >> i'm assuming you have study halls? >> as elsewhere, mandatory for first years, for freshmen and then there are abundant study facilities available. they are very conveniently located as part of the academuc and athletic center. >> let me come back to the regional director's opinion. he includes a list of restructions placed on athletes. he says they have to obtain permission from the coaches before applying for outside employment, posting items on the internet and speaking to the media. they are also prohibited from using alcohol and drugs and engaging in gambling. a judge this -- this may sound like a silly question, but please tell me why you place these restrictions on student athletes?

>> it is to create a team culture and also to ensure as best we can, appropriate behavior. dr. foxx, when the student athlete arrives, he or she is presented with the student athletic handbook and the earliest pages say here's the kind of behavior that is forbidden. because it reflects poorly on the university, poorly on the team and it's destructive of the culture of the team. there are a number prove hibitions but they are all grounded in human experience. these are things the student athlete should not be doing. >> some of those things are things no student should be doing, correct? >> that is correct. when you go through the thou shall not list it is very comparable to that of any other student. there are obviously some athletics specific activity but it is, in fact, a community of rules that we're in community together and these are the rules that bind us all. >> i'd like to ask you this

question and then if mr. muir has an opportunity to respond to it also, i would appreciate it. we know that the decision made by the nlrb gentleman has implications beyond the nlra. it has implications for title 9 of the education amendments of 1972, workers' compensation laws, tax law, fair labor standards act. could all be implicated. would you tell us your thoughts on the possible implications of these laws for baylor and then mr. muehr for stanford? >> i think very serious issues with respect to title nine in particular. if the football scholarship student athletes are all employees, then in fact, it's going to create a very serious issue in terms of then balance with respect to what title nine requires. there are going to be a host of other issues as well. injuries are important.

health is very important. we're very sensitive to that. and, therefore, the question will be triggered, does osha have jurisdiction in this context as well? so i think it's going to raise a hornet's nest of issues. >> yes, i believe if we go down that path, first and foremost, our students are students first. and we want to ensure that. many of the issues the northwestern student athletes raise are issues we're already covering at stanford. if we go down the path eventually that we all our students student athletes employees and they just become a true working relationship, then i do think some of those things as title nine and making sure we provide a broad offering for all of our students becomes at risk. the pressures become greater. >> gentle lady's time has expird. mr. bishop. >> thank you, mr. chairman. to our panel, thank you for your testimony. mr. eilers, thank you for your testimony. you highlighted some of the

issues that i want to talk about. you described the effort at northwestern as a means to an end. i think it's also fire describe it as a cry for help. i think that we talk about having the student athletes interest at the center of what we do. and i used to run a college. it was a division 2 school. there's really nobody talking for the students. i think that's happening at northwestern is this san effort to get somebody to listen. i want to address this to judge starr and to 3mr. muir. you both represent -- you both are members of very large conferences, and i want to just go over what the players at northwestern are asking for. they are asking for efforts to minimize college et