Editor’s note: This is a collection of stories from the KentWired staff showing how the partial government shutdown, which went into effect Dec. 22, has been affecting individuals and organizations of the around the Kent community.

Shutdown fact sheet:

Information from House Appropriations Committee fact sheet.

What is the shutdown? Because a budget appropriations bill has not been passed by Congress, several federal government agencies do not have funding and have been forced to close their doors until the bill is passed.

Why is it happening? There is a dispute between President Donald Trump and the Democratic-controlled House over whether to approve $5.7 billion in funding for improved border fencing along the U.S. Mexico border. The president wants the funding, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, refuses to pass any budget bill until the president’s “wall” funding is granted.

Why does it matter? When a shutdown happens, some federal agencies lose funding. This means those agencies are not providing services or carrying out regular duties.

When did it start? Dec. 22, 2018 

When will it end? There is no scheduled end date. The shutdown will end when a compromise is made between the House and Senate on border funding and both sides approve a new budget.

How many people are directly impacted? 420,000 federal employees working without pay, 400,000 more furloughed (sent home from work without pay until government reopens).

Shutdown hits home at Kent campus

Abigail Miller

The nation’s ongoing government shutdown is causing major problems across the country — problems that span from D.C. all the way to the Kent campus.

KatiLynn Miller, a senior school health education major whose family qualifies for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, said her government benefits have been affected by the record-breaking shutdown.

“I just got my January balance deposited on Jan. 16, getting a second (for February) on Jan. 20, which will just sit there really, until February comes around for me to use it,” Miller said. “The problem though is, if we don’t get (SNAP benefits) for March, I have no spare amount anymore. If something happens then I’m out of luck.”

In order to save money for groceries and prepare for the shutdown’s indefinite future, Miller splits the bills for groceries with her roommate and plans to be even stricter with her spending than she was prior to the shutdown.

Prior to the shutdown, Miller decided to not work this semester so she could have extra time to spend on school. Now that she has the shutdown and her finances to think about, she’s worried.

“I feel like it adds an additional stress to my education that I shouldn’t have to bare,” she said. “I actually made a decision to not work this semester, to focus just on school, and I feel in the end, that decision will hurt me.”

According to a report done by CNBC, there are some 420,000 government employees who are required to work without pay during the shutdown.

Kevin McMullen, a Kent State alumnus and air traffic controller at Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is one of them.

“We get paid every two weeks, and I didn’t receive a paycheck for the first time on Tuesday,” McMullen said. “There is also no paid leave available during the shutdown. If I had to take a sick day or if I had scheduled time off of a regular shift, the leave would be coded as furlough time, and therefore become leave without pay.”

McMullen, 26, has the added stress of providing for his wife Emily, who’s 12 weeks pregnant, and has to work full-time due to the shutdown for extra cash.

“I haven’t had to miss any bill payments yet, but the most stressful part is not knowing when it will reopen,” McMullen said. “My wife is pregnant, and she wants to go down to part-time at her job but not until we know that I will start getting paid again.”

Collette Johnson, Kent State alumna and administrative officer at the Ohio River Islands National Wildlife Refuge System in Pleasants County, West Virginia, has been out of work since the shutdown began on Dec. 22, 2018.

While out of work, she’s been coping mentally by keeping herself busy with volunteer work. Johnson, 38, is a volunteer firefighter with the Tuppers Plains Fire Department, where she also devotes some of her time serving as the fire department’s treasurer. Johnson said her volunteer work keeps her mind off of the current shutdown.

Financially, she’s had to not only cut corners, but take it a step further and apply for unemployment.

“The family and I usually go out to dinner once a week, so we’ve had to cut that out,” Johnson said. “I cancelled some subscriptions, like Amazon Prime and others. Just cutting down on any non-essential expense, and I’ve also applied for unemployment, but I’m still waiting for that. The process is quite slow.”

Due to the large amount of students affected by the shutdown, the university has started to help students. Helping students affected in the College of Communication and Information is AJ Leu, the CCI diversity director.

Since the start of the spring semester, Leu has seen a massive amount of students with financial issues linked to the shutdown. Students’ financial issues range from being unable to pay their tuition to being unable to purchase a required Adobe subscription.

“Some students can’t even pay their tuition because their checks aren’t coming through, which are supposed to pay that tuition,” Leu said. “Other students, have paid their tuition, everything seems fine when you pull them up in the system, they have a zero dollar balance, but they haven’t received their check or their payments aren’t getting their payments because they work for the federal government. And so, they can’t afford their books, or they can’t afford the Adobe subscription.”

Leu has been working with each affected student to help assess their financial situation and help them in any way that best benefits them. The college has created “emergency scholarships” for students affected by the government shutdown. Students were made aware of the emergency funds through an email sent by CCI and are encouraged to seek help from Leu should they need it.

Leu said the students coming to her for help have been determined and motivated to take care of the issues brought upon them by the shutdown.

“All the students I’ve met with are like, ‘Here’s what we gotta deal with,’” Leu said. “They’re being proactive and they’re trying to do everything they possibly can. I’m just one step on their list of trying to do everything they possibly can, and that’s the best situation to be in.”

Abby Miller is a features writer. Contact her at [email protected].

Research applications, funding on hold during shutdown 

Nicholas Hunter

Since the federal government partially shut down Dec. 22, a wide array of government entities have lost funding until it reopens.

Among those entities is the National Science Foundation (NSF). With a requested budget of more than $5.8 billion for 2018, the NSF provides a great deal of funding for hard science research at universities, including Kent State.

NSF staff members have been furloughed, which means they are barred from working — in-person at government offices or remotely — in any capacity.

With staff unable to do its jobs, work isn’t being done. This affects each shutdown department in different ways, but for the NSF, it halts all non-emergency functions. 

That means no research grant applications can be accepted, no updates can be processed for in-process grants, new grant opportunities can be announced and ongoing grants cannot be paid out, according to a fact sheet on the NSF website.

The only exceptions will be in the case of the Cooperative Support Branch, which will have staff ready in case of emergencies that would put lives or property at risk if not attended to.

Paul DiCorleto, the vice president for research and sponsored programs at Kent State, said the university will carry out ongoing research for the foreseeable future, despite the shutdown.

“The university just goes ahead and spends the money,  knowing that the government will pay the money when the check arrives, essentially,” DiCorleto said.

Despite the ability to keep ongoing research running, the shutdown is putting new work to a halt.

“Usually the delay in getting things back up and running is longer than the period when the government was shut,” he said. “So if the government is shut for one month, in some cases it could take two or three months before everything is back to normal. So this is a significant issue.”

In a letter published in Nature, a weekly international journal on science, Anne Jefferson, a professor of geology at Kent State, broke down the impact the shutdown could have on scientific research.

“In Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, we’ve planted thousands of saplings with the help of hundreds of volunteers,” Jefferson wrote in the letter. “Those tiny trees are supposed to be part of a decades-long experiment on the critical zone, the life-sustaining region from groundwater to treetops.

“The only thing that protects the saplings from hungry deer is a thin fence. And the Park Service rangers who protect the fence are furloughed — not working because they’re government employees.”

Jefferson also wrote that while her concerns lie deeply within the survival of long-term research projects, she’s worried about the well-being of scientists themselves.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” she wrote in the letter. “I can get paid and carry on with some research and teaching. (I receive funding from the National Science Foundation, which is affected by the shutdown, but hasn’t yet missed a scheduled payment for my projects.) Meanwhile, tens of thousands of federal scientists must sit idle, and others must work without pay.”

She also noted instances of the direct consequences of the shutdown she has seen on Twitter, including a graduate student losing health insurance and a postdoctoral fellow expressing worry about feeding his baby.

DiCorleto said there is little most researchers can do to prepare for a prolonged shutdown; because it’s in the hands of Congress and the president, until funding comes back, researchers have to wait and see what comes next.

“It’s a bit like the furloughed workers who aren’t receiving paychecks today,” DiCorleto said. “But as soon as the government is back in operation, they will receive their back pay.”

The shutdown started because of a dispute between the president, alongside Republican-controlled Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, and her fellow Democrats over providing $5.7 billion in funding for enhanced fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border.

In the meantime, DiCorleto said the shutdown isn’t starting a “crisis,” but will leave a lasting impact.

“It’s an impact where science gets delayed,” DiCorleto said. “It might be delayed by one month, it might bill delayed by three or four or five months.”

And in her letter, Jefferson wrote said these delays could have an impact on future careers and the field as a whole.

“Students tell me that they are rethinking their career plans,” Jefferson wrote. “They no longer see federal science jobs as a dependable choice. Graduate-school positions may be harder to attain, because programs lack funds that would normally have been awarded by now.

“Back-pay won’t replenish the loss of human capital: talent that leaves or stays away from government jobs will weaken US science for decades.”

Nicholas Hunter is a senior reporter. Contact him at [email protected].

AP: AP-NORC poll: Shutdown drags Trump approval to yearlong low

Steve Peoples and Emily Swanson / Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A strong majority of Americans blame President Donald Trump for the record-long government shutdown and reject his primary rationale for a border wall, according to a new poll that shows the turmoil in Washington is dragging his approval rating to its lowest level in more than a year.