In a letter penned from a federal detention facility in Louisiana, pro-Palestinian activist and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil posed a simple and urgent question: “Who has the right to have rights?” If we ask the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee due process and equal protection, the answer is clear: people do. 

Not citizens, but people. 

The Trump administration is violating this principle by punishing student organizers like Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi as part of its broader campaign against immigrants. These arrests are grave constitutional violations, each further eroding the fragile state of our collective civil rights.

Over the last two years, I’ve written op-eds about the horrors of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, protested with Students for Justice in Palestine, participated in Seders led by Jewish Voice for Peace and joined the encampment on Northrop Lawn. 

I’ve taken these actions because I am a humanist and an American taxpayer who refuses to believe the intentional starvation and extermination of an entire population can ever be justified. 

It’s not more complicated than that. 

What about these beliefs change because I happened to be born a U.S. citizen?

That is the legal distinction between myself, Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi and the thousands of immigrants who have been wrongfully detained and targeted since January. When we set aside how we are recognized by the state, our actions remain the same.

The consequences of this widening dragnet of fascism are unfolding around us. 

One of the 11 University of Minnesota students whose legal status was terminated, Doğukan Günaydın, has been held in Sherburne County jail for over a month. Rather than fighting for its own student’s release, this administration is helping to facilitate the training of his captors by leasing a gun range to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

An immigration judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security failed to make a case for his removal, yet he remains in ICE custody because he is a “danger to public safety.” Their evidence? A misdemeanor drunk driving ticket from 2023.

The point is not to excuse the offense, but to remind us that perfection is not a prerequisite for deserving constitutional protection. 

An estimated one in seven Minnesotans have a DWI on their record. Should their rights be stripped away too?

From the American South to Nazi Germany, fascist governments have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship to justify oppression and consolidate power. This power struggle plays out first on the bodies and lives of vulnerable people. 

That’s the beauty of due process, which requires the government to follow strict procedures before depriving anyone of their rights. It does not assume guilt or innocence. It demands integrity from the legal system the public can trust. Equal protection was brought about as an enforcement mechanism to animate due process in reluctant states following the abolition of slavery. 

Some of the most regrettable rulings passed down from the Supreme Court involve the denial of citizenship and the narrowing of rights to disenfranchised people who are not nondisabled, landowning white men.

And for the most part, the Court has taken these lessons seriously. It is widely held that denying constitutional protections to people solely based on their nation of origin causes needless harm and undermines our shared humanity. The very document used to deny civil rights has also been essential to expanding them.

The Constitution is both limiting and limitless, depending on who’s reading it. It carries the deep contradictions of this country, and in that paradox lies the seriousness of our obligation to defend each other when these protections come under threat.

How we uphold these principles for one will determine how the government treats us all.

The University claims to be a refuge for people from every marginalized background. Indeed, the depth, breadth and diversity of our intellectual community is what I love most about learning here. But their promises ring hollow when they continue to enforce draconian, reactionary rules that sanction departments, silence research centers, punish student groups for disrupting the status quo and rescind job offers to scholars for exercising their rights to speak, think and assemble freely. 

If the federal government wants to attack universities in broad daylight, let it. Their fixation on our campus makes it a site of power, and we are well-positioned to resist.

A bully like Donald Trump seeks compliance, not cooperation, with his vision for our institution. Weaponizing citizenship is just another desperate attempt to silence dissent and assert his power. 

To students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators and the community at large, the question Khalil asked from his detention cell remains. If we want to preserve what remains of our democracy, we cannot be afraid to answer: Who here has the right to have rights, and how will we defend them?

Kelly Rogers is an Urban Studies undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily.

In a letter penned from a federal detention facility in Louisiana, pro-Palestinian activist and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil posed a simple and urgent question: “Who has the right to have rights?” If we ask the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee due process and equal protection, the answer is clear: people do. 

Not citizens, but people. 

The Trump administration is violating this principle by punishing student organizers like Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi as part of its broader campaign against immigrants. These arrests are grave constitutional violations, each further eroding the fragile state of our collective civil rights.

Over the last two years, I’ve written op-eds about the horrors of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, protested with Students for Justice in Palestine, participated in Seders led by Jewish Voice for Peace and joined the encampment on Northrop Lawn. 

I’ve taken these actions because I am a humanist and an American taxpayer who refuses to believe the intentional starvation and extermination of an entire population can ever be justified. 

It’s not more complicated than that. 

What about these beliefs change because I happened to be born a U.S. citizen?

That is the legal distinction between myself, Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi and the thousands of immigrants who have been wrongfully detained and targeted since January. When we set aside how we are recognized by the state, our actions remain the same.

The consequences of this widening dragnet of fascism are unfolding around us. 

One of the 11 University of Minnesota students whose legal status was terminated, Doğukan Günaydın, has been held in Sherburne County jail for over a month. Rather than fighting for its own student’s release, this administration is helping to facilitate the training of his captors by leasing a gun range to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

An immigration judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security failed to make a case for his removal, yet he remains in ICE custody because he is a “danger to public safety.” Their evidence? A misdemeanor drunk driving ticket from 2023.

The point is not to excuse the offense, but to remind us that perfection is not a prerequisite for deserving constitutional protection. 

An estimated one in seven Minnesotans have a DWI on their record. Should their rights be stripped away too?

From the American South to Nazi Germany, fascist governments have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship to justify oppression and consolidate power. This power struggle plays out first on the bodies and lives of vulnerable people. 

That’s the beauty of due process, which requires the government to follow strict procedures before depriving anyone of their rights. It does not assume guilt or innocence. It demands integrity from the legal system the public can trust. Equal protection was brought about as an enforcement mechanism to animate due process in reluctant states following the abolition of slavery. 

Some of the most regrettable rulings passed down from the Supreme Court involve the denial of citizenship and the narrowing of rights to disenfranchised people who are not nondisabled, landowning white men.

And for the most part, the Court has taken these lessons seriously. It is widely held that denying constitutional protections to people solely based on their nation of origin causes needless harm and undermines our shared humanity. The very document used to deny civil rights has also been essential to expanding them.

The Constitution is both limiting and limitless, depending on who’s reading it. It carries the deep contradictions of this country, and in that paradox lies the seriousness of our obligation to defend each other when these protections come under threat.

How we uphold these principles for one will determine how the government treats us all.

The University claims to be a refuge for people from every marginalized background. Indeed, the depth, breadth and diversity of our intellectual community is what I love most about learning here. But their promises ring hollow when they continue to enforce draconian, reactionary rules that sanction departments, silence research centers, punish student groups for disrupting the status quo and rescind job offers to scholars for exercising their rights to speak, think and assemble freely. 

If the federal government wants to attack universities in broad daylight, let it. Their fixation on our campus makes it a site of power, and we are well-positioned to resist.

A bully like Donald Trump seeks compliance, not cooperation, with his vision for our institution. Weaponizing citizenship is just another desperate attempt to silence dissent and assert his power. 

To students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators and the community at large, the question Khalil asked from his detention cell remains. If we want to preserve what remains of our democracy, we cannot be afraid to answer: Who here has the right to have rights, and how will we defend them?

Kelly Rogers is an Urban Studies undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily.

In a letter penned from a federal detention facility in Louisiana, pro-Palestinian activist and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil posed a simple and urgent question: “Who has the right to have rights?” If we ask the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee due process and equal protection, the answer is clear: people do. 

Not citizens, but people. 

The Trump administration is violating this principle by punishing student organizers like Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi as part of its broader campaign against immigrants. These arrests are grave constitutional violations, each further eroding the fragile state of our collective civil rights.

Over the last two years, I’ve written op-eds about the horrors of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, protested with Students for Justice in Palestine, participated in Seders led by Jewish Voice for Peace and joined the encampment on Northrop Lawn. 

I’ve taken these actions because I am a humanist and an American taxpayer who refuses to believe the intentional starvation and extermination of an entire population can ever be justified. 

It’s not more complicated than that. 

What about these beliefs change because I happened to be born a U.S. citizen?

That is the legal distinction between myself, Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi and the thousands of immigrants who have been wrongfully detained and targeted since January. When we set aside how we are recognized by the state, our actions remain the same.

The consequences of this widening dragnet of fascism are unfolding around us. 

One of the 11 University of Minnesota students whose legal status was terminated, Doğukan Günaydın, has been held in Sherburne County jail for over a month. Rather than fighting for its own student’s release, this administration is helping to facilitate the training of his captors by leasing a gun range to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

An immigration judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security failed to make a case for his removal, yet he remains in ICE custody because he is a “danger to public safety.” Their evidence? A misdemeanor drunk driving ticket from 2023.

The point is not to excuse the offense, but to remind us that perfection is not a prerequisite for deserving constitutional protection. 

An estimated one in seven Minnesotans have a DWI on their record. Should their rights be stripped away too?

From the American South to Nazi Germany, fascist governments have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship to justify oppression and consolidate power. This power struggle plays out first on the bodies and lives of vulnerable people. 

That’s the beauty of due process, which requires the government to follow strict procedures before depriving anyone of their rights. It does not assume guilt or innocence. It demands integrity from the legal system the public can trust. Equal protection was brought about as an enforcement mechanism to animate due process in reluctant states following the abolition of slavery. 

Some of the most regrettable rulings passed down from the Supreme Court involve the denial of citizenship and the narrowing of rights to disenfranchised people who are not nondisabled, landowning white men.

And for the most part, the Court has taken these lessons seriously. It is widely held that denying constitutional protections to people solely based on their nation of origin causes needless harm and undermines our shared humanity. The very document used to deny civil rights has also been essential to expanding them.

The Constitution is both limiting and limitless, depending on who’s reading it. It carries the deep contradictions of this country, and in that paradox lies the seriousness of our obligation to defend each other when these protections come under threat.

How we uphold these principles for one will determine how the government treats us all.

The University claims to be a refuge for people from every marginalized background. Indeed, the depth, breadth and diversity of our intellectual community is what I love most about learning here. But their promises ring hollow when they continue to enforce draconian, reactionary rules that sanction departments, silence research centers, punish student groups for disrupting the status quo and rescind job offers to scholars for exercising their rights to speak, think and assemble freely. 

If the federal government wants to attack universities in broad daylight, let it. Their fixation on our campus makes it a site of power, and we are well-positioned to resist.

A bully like Donald Trump seeks compliance, not cooperation, with his vision for our institution. Weaponizing citizenship is just another desperate attempt to silence dissent and assert his power. 

To students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators and the community at large, the question Khalil asked from his detention cell remains. If we want to preserve what remains of our democracy, we cannot be afraid to answer: Who here has the right to have rights, and how will we defend them?

Kelly Rogers is an Urban Studies undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily.

In a letter penned from a federal detention facility in Louisiana, pro-Palestinian activist and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil posed a simple and urgent question: “Who has the right to have rights?” If we ask the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee due process and equal protection, the answer is clear: people do. 

Not citizens, but people. 

The Trump administration is violating this principle by punishing student organizers like Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi as part of its broader campaign against immigrants. These arrests are grave constitutional violations, each further eroding the fragile state of our collective civil rights.

Over the last two years, I’ve written op-eds about the horrors of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, protested with Students for Justice in Palestine, participated in Seders led by Jewish Voice for Peace and joined the encampment on Northrop Lawn. 

I’ve taken these actions because I am a humanist and an American taxpayer who refuses to believe the intentional starvation and extermination of an entire population can ever be justified. 

It’s not more complicated than that. 

What about these beliefs change because I happened to be born a U.S. citizen?

That is the legal distinction between myself, Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi and the thousands of immigrants who have been wrongfully detained and targeted since January. When we set aside how we are recognized by the state, our actions remain the same.

The consequences of this widening dragnet of fascism are unfolding around us. 

One of the 11 University of Minnesota students whose legal status was terminated, Doğukan Günaydın, has been held in Sherburne County jail for over a month. Rather than fighting for its own student’s release, this administration is helping to facilitate the training of his captors by leasing a gun range to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

An immigration judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security failed to make a case for his removal, yet he remains in ICE custody because he is a “danger to public safety.” Their evidence? A misdemeanor drunk driving ticket from 2023.

The point is not to excuse the offense, but to remind us that perfection is not a prerequisite for deserving constitutional protection. 

An estimated one in seven Minnesotans have a DWI on their record. Should their rights be stripped away too?

From the American South to Nazi Germany, fascist governments have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship to justify oppression and consolidate power. This power struggle plays out first on the bodies and lives of vulnerable people. 

That’s the beauty of due process, which requires the government to follow strict procedures before depriving anyone of their rights. It does not assume guilt or innocence. It demands integrity from the legal system the public can trust. Equal protection was brought about as an enforcement mechanism to animate due process in reluctant states following the abolition of slavery. 

Some of the most regrettable rulings passed down from the Supreme Court involve the denial of citizenship and the narrowing of rights to disenfranchised people who are not nondisabled, landowning white men.

And for the most part, the Court has taken these lessons seriously. It is widely held that denying constitutional protections to people solely based on their nation of origin causes needless harm and undermines our shared humanity. The very document used to deny civil rights has also been essential to expanding them.

The Constitution is both limiting and limitless, depending on who’s reading it. It carries the deep contradictions of this country, and in that paradox lies the seriousness of our obligation to defend each other when these protections come under threat.

How we uphold these principles for one will determine how the government treats us all.

The University claims to be a refuge for people from every marginalized background. Indeed, the depth, breadth and diversity of our intellectual community is what I love most about learning here. But their promises ring hollow when they continue to enforce draconian, reactionary rules that sanction departments, silence research centers, punish student groups for disrupting the status quo and rescind job offers to scholars for exercising their rights to speak, think and assemble freely. 

If the federal government wants to attack universities in broad daylight, let it. Their fixation on our campus makes it a site of power, and we are well-positioned to resist.

A bully like Donald Trump seeks compliance, not cooperation, with his vision for our institution. Weaponizing citizenship is just another desperate attempt to silence dissent and assert his power. 

To students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators and the community at large, the question Khalil asked from his detention cell remains. If we want to preserve what remains of our democracy, we cannot be afraid to answer: Who here has the right to have rights, and how will we defend them?

Kelly Rogers is an Urban Studies undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily.

In a letter penned from a federal detention facility in Louisiana, pro-Palestinian activist and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil posed a simple and urgent question: “Who has the right to have rights?” If we ask the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee due process and equal protection, the answer is clear: people do. 

Not citizens, but people. 

The Trump administration is violating this principle by punishing student organizers like Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi as part of its broader campaign against immigrants. These arrests are grave constitutional violations, each further eroding the fragile state of our collective civil rights.

Over the last two years, I’ve written op-eds about the horrors of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, protested with Students for Justice in Palestine, participated in Seders led by Jewish Voice for Peace and joined the encampment on Northrop Lawn. 

I’ve taken these actions because I am a humanist and an American taxpayer who refuses to believe the intentional starvation and extermination of an entire population can ever be justified. 

It’s not more complicated than that. 

What about these beliefs change because I happened to be born a U.S. citizen?

That is the legal distinction between myself, Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi and the thousands of immigrants who have been wrongfully detained and targeted since January. When we set aside how we are recognized by the state, our actions remain the same.

The consequences of this widening dragnet of fascism are unfolding around us. 

One of the 11 University of Minnesota students whose legal status was terminated, Doğukan Günaydın, has been held in Sherburne County jail for over a month. Rather than fighting for its own student’s release, this administration is helping to facilitate the training of his captors by leasing a gun range to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

An immigration judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security failed to make a case for his removal, yet he remains in ICE custody because he is a “danger to public safety.” Their evidence? A misdemeanor drunk driving ticket from 2023.

The point is not to excuse the offense, but to remind us that perfection is not a prerequisite for deserving constitutional protection. 

An estimated one in seven Minnesotans have a DWI on their record. Should their rights be stripped away too?

From the American South to Nazi Germany, fascist governments have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship to justify oppression and consolidate power. This power struggle plays out first on the bodies and lives of vulnerable people. 

That’s the beauty of due process, which requires the government to follow strict procedures before depriving anyone of their rights. It does not assume guilt or innocence. It demands integrity from the legal system the public can trust. Equal protection was brought about as an enforcement mechanism to animate due process in reluctant states following the abolition of slavery. 

Some of the most regrettable rulings passed down from the Supreme Court involve the denial of citizenship and the narrowing of rights to disenfranchised people who are not nondisabled, landowning white men.

And for the most part, the Court has taken these lessons seriously. It is widely held that denying constitutional protections to people solely based on their nation of origin causes needless harm and undermines our shared humanity. The very document used to deny civil rights has also been essential to expanding them.

The Constitution is both limiting and limitless, depending on who’s reading it. It carries the deep contradictions of this country, and in that paradox lies the seriousness of our obligation to defend each other when these protections come under threat.

How we uphold these principles for one will determine how the government treats us all.

The University claims to be a refuge for people from every marginalized background. Indeed, the depth, breadth and diversity of our intellectual community is what I love most about learning here. But their promises ring hollow when they continue to enforce draconian, reactionary rules that sanction departments, silence research centers, punish student groups for disrupting the status quo and rescind job offers to scholars for exercising their rights to speak, think and assemble freely. 

If the federal government wants to attack universities in broad daylight, let it. Their fixation on our campus makes it a site of power, and we are well-positioned to resist.

A bully like Donald Trump seeks compliance, not cooperation, with his vision for our institution. Weaponizing citizenship is just another desperate attempt to silence dissent and assert his power. 

To students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators and the community at large, the question Khalil asked from his detention cell remains. If we want to preserve what remains of our democracy, we cannot be afraid to answer: Who here has the right to have rights, and how will we defend them?

Kelly Rogers is an Urban Studies undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily.

In a letter penned from a federal detention facility in Louisiana, pro-Palestinian activist and political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil posed a simple and urgent question: “Who has the right to have rights?” If we ask the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee due process and equal protection, the answer is clear: people do. 

Not citizens, but people. 

The Trump administration is violating this principle by punishing student organizers like Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk and Mohsen Mahdawi as part of its broader campaign against immigrants. These arrests are grave constitutional violations, each further eroding the fragile state of our collective civil rights.

Over the last two years, I’ve written op-eds about the horrors of the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, protested with Students for Justice in Palestine, participated in Seders led by Jewish Voice for Peace and joined the encampment on Northrop Lawn. 

I’ve taken these actions because I am a humanist and an American taxpayer who refuses to believe the intentional starvation and extermination of an entire population can ever be justified. 

It’s not more complicated than that. 

What about these beliefs change because I happened to be born a U.S. citizen?

That is the legal distinction between myself, Khalil, Ozturk, Mahdawi and the thousands of immigrants who have been wrongfully detained and targeted since January. When we set aside how we are recognized by the state, our actions remain the same.

The consequences of this widening dragnet of fascism are unfolding around us. 

One of the 11 University of Minnesota students whose legal status was terminated, Doğukan Günaydın, has been held in Sherburne County jail for over a month. Rather than fighting for its own student’s release, this administration is helping to facilitate the training of his captors by leasing a gun range to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

An immigration judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security failed to make a case for his removal, yet he remains in ICE custody because he is a “danger to public safety.” Their evidence? A misdemeanor drunk driving ticket from 2023.

The point is not to excuse the offense, but to remind us that perfection is not a prerequisite for deserving constitutional protection. 

An estimated one in seven Minnesotans have a DWI on their record. Should their rights be stripped away too?

From the American South to Nazi Germany, fascist governments have redrawn the boundaries of citizenship to justify oppression and consolidate power. This power struggle plays out first on the bodies and lives of vulnerable people. 

That’s the beauty of due process, which requires the government to follow strict procedures before depriving anyone of their rights. It does not assume guilt or innocence. It demands integrity from the legal system the public can trust. Equal protection was brought about as an enforcement mechanism to animate due process in reluctant states following the abolition of slavery. 

Some of the most regrettable rulings passed down from the Supreme Court involve the denial of citizenship and the narrowing of rights to disenfranchised people who are not nondisabled, landowning white men.

And for the most part, the Court has taken these lessons seriously. It is widely held that denying constitutional protections to people solely based on their nation of origin causes needless harm and undermines our shared humanity. The very document used to deny civil rights has also been essential to expanding them.

The Constitution is both limiting and limitless, depending on who’s reading it. It carries the deep contradictions of this country, and in that paradox lies the seriousness of our obligation to defend each other when these protections come under threat.

How we uphold these principles for one will determine how the government treats us all.

The University claims to be a refuge for people from every marginalized background. Indeed, the depth, breadth and diversity of our intellectual community is what I love most about learning here. But their promises ring hollow when they continue to enforce draconian, reactionary rules that sanction departments, silence research centers, punish student groups for disrupting the status quo and rescind job offers to scholars for exercising their rights to speak, think and assemble freely. 

If the federal government wants to attack universities in broad daylight, let it. Their fixation on our campus makes it a site of power, and we are well-positioned to resist.

A bully like Donald Trump seeks compliance, not cooperation, with his vision for our institution. Weaponizing citizenship is just another desperate attempt to silence dissent and assert his power. 

To students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators and the community at large, the question Khalil asked from his detention cell remains. If we want to preserve what remains of our democracy, we cannot be afraid to answer: Who here has the right to have rights, and how will we defend them?

Kelly Rogers is an Urban Studies undergraduate in the College of Liberal Arts and a former opinions columnist for the Minnesota Daily.

If there is one thing armchair experts across the political spectrum are adamant about, it’s writing think pieces about the social ailments of Minneapolis. 

A spike in crime on Metro Transit has been the impetus of recent outcry. Drug use, mental health crises and assaults have been more frequent following the pandemic. Outside of the mass incarceration and institutionalization of those suffering, few solutions have been offered.

I do not contest the urgency required to address these crises, but I insist our actions today will determine the viability of our public transit systems going forward. 

Metro Transit is expected to address the consequences of decades-long, negligent policymaking that ripped our social safety net wide open. The StarTribune published Nick Magrino’s “one-point plan to fight transit crime” opinion piece, which amounted to advocating for arresting people who are breaking the law. A chorus of support rang out in the comment section.

What Magrino and his supporters fundamentally misunderstand in their assertions is this tactic is exactly what brought us here today. We know criminalizing poverty reproduces its harm. And, as one commentator wrote in the Star Tribune recently, the legacy of psychiatric hospitals does not suggest its implementation would be successful at addressing mental illness and poverty. 

“Institutions like Metro Transit and public transit across the country, they’re not the movers and shakers when we think about social policy,” said Michelle Phelps, a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. “They’re being handed a set of problems that they don’t have a lot of effective tools to respond to, and they’re being asked to do contradictory things: provide transportation for people with more privilege to get to work or school and they’re also being asked to be this kind of shelter of last resort. It’s really difficult to do both at once.” 

Public transportation is a unique point of convergence where folks from every socioeconomic background cross paths, and because the Twin Cities are so economically segregated, those interactions can be jarring. It begs the question: are you uncomfortable or unsafe?

Increased visibility of mental illness or addiction cannot become a resurrection of the war on drugs. The cake-eating notion that we can both systematically erode social programming and turn away from its consequences is rooted in our American tradition of concealing poverty rather than addressing it. 

It may be controversial, but instead of repeating the sins of yesterday, we should commit to doing the deep work required of us to set things on track. Pledge our tax dollars to housing, not carceral systems; identify a problem without treating the most vulnerable of us as disposable. 

Harm reduction and housing-first methods tend to take longer to produce results, but they are far more effective than previous mitigation strategies. By removing the sobriety requirements or stigma around drug use, folks can reclaim their autonomy and actually heal. 

As students and stewards of this city and the world, it is critical we piece apart these issues and uncover the underlying inequalities that perpetuate our surface-level observations. We are not bound to what came before us and have the benefit of hindsight that can help us improve the systems we inherit. 

Public transportation is a mirror of our society’s triumphs and weaknesses. Don’t like what you see? It’s going to take a systems approach. 

Whether you find this fact liberating or terrifying, college is what you make of it – especially in an ecosystem as large as the University of Minnesota. 

There’s so much to love about a giant school like ours. People from across the globe convene here to compose the 54,955-person student body. Each classroom we enter provides a chance to explore new ideas and that learning inform our pursuits in the world.

From one small fish to another, this giant pond we call “the U” is often intimidating to navigate. Choosing from over 150 majors within 13 different colleges can make even the most decisive hopeful graduate second guess their commitment to one program or another. That uncertainty is more common than you might think.

According to the 2017 Tell Us About Yourself Pre-Orientation (TUAY) survey, 75% of 5,645 students surveyed expressed varying levels of indecisiveness about their major, with 5% having little to no clue about their interests. Lucky for those students, the Center for Academic Planning and Exploration (CAPE) is here to help. 

“We help exploring and undecided students find majors that fit for them,” said Hannah Boldt, a Change of College Coach for CAPE. 

Once a discombobulated college student herself, Boldt said their services go beyond the traditional expectations for students seeking academic advice. 

“Our appointments are one hour long,” Boldt said. “A lot of our work is co-collaborative and involves life skills like decision-making and how to navigate uncertainty.” 

Academic advisors are outnumbered and often overworked, which makes appointments to seek insight into your upcoming semester feel like some kind of NASCAR pit stop. Functional, sure. But pleasant? Not quite. 

It’s never fun to realize the dream you were chasing might not pan out the way you thought it would, but that shouldn’t stop you from confronting your truth. We’re told entering into a collegiate environment means being pushed out of the nest, but depending on your background, these systems can be incredibly challenging to navigate. 

This is especially true for non-traditional and first-generation students who are learning to walk on their own for the first time. If you’re feeling like you’re slipping between the cracks in an institution that was not built for you, you probably are.

That’s why reaching out for help is so important. 

Self-knowledge is a critical component to finding success at the University. CAPE can offer a sounding board as you uncover your personal strengths. Things like your personal values, community values and other parts of your personality and preferences are going to change the way you find success here. Getting in touch with that side of yourself doesn’t have to be done alone. 

“We’ve all had our own journeys and moments of uncertainty … so we really value authenticity,” Boldt said.“We really try to dismantle the power dynamics between students and staff.” 

If you’re feeling lost in the wild and woolly world of higher education, you’re not alone. Just because you are out of place now doesn’t mean you are stuck in there forever. Starting the conversation and going outside of the typical resources available to students can help you re-evaluate your ambitions and make the most of your college career. 

CAPE has a number of resources in addition to its advising program, such as the Major Profiles section on its website. Here, you can learn more about every major, minor and certificate program the University offers. 

“You’re going to learn and grow as you take classes, and as you figure out what works and what doesn’t work,” Boldt said. “It’s okay to learn and grow, and it’s okay that it’s a process.”

If you’re feeling uneasy in your major, start looking into alternatives today. It’s never too late to take control of your future and that starts with having the courage to explore.

I didn’t think much of it when posters of Karl Marx’s face were plastered across Dinkytown this summer.

Then, they started to spread.

No lamp post from the East Bank to the West was unscathed, the signs all but wallpapered the Washington Avenue bridge. I couldn’t escape their beady-eyed symphony, all begging the same question: are you a communist?

I was even less surprised when they were systematically defaced. Overt communist recruitment campaigns are not historically considered popular messaging. I passed it off as material evidence of typical political polarization until I looked closer at the graffiti, another leftist was responsible. 

Just as quickly as they would crop up, accusations of racism, homophobia and allegations of sexual assault scrawled on the posters would follow. One sign read, “The IMT blames victims and supports rapists!” These were hardly benign complaints.

The group behind the Marx posters is called the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). As their name suggests, they are active across the globe. The exact same posters have been documented on college campuses in Ireland, France, Germany and Greece, to name a few. 

I contacted every known student-led leftist group, including the IMT, hoping to learn more about the state of leftism on campus and gain insight into the credibility of the claims made in the poster wars. Only two of them were willing to go on the record.

“We are simply the student group of a larger organization known as Socialist Revolution, which is the United States section of the International Marxist Tendency,” said Cal Zeman, a senior member of Students for Socialist Revolution (SRS). SRS is a part of the Minneapolis chapter of the IMT.

The word “simply” is generous. Zeman estimates the total membership to be about 4,000 people across 40 countries.

“We are working to, you know, fight capitalism, like we think capitalism needs to be overthrown on an international basis,” Zeman said.

Exactly how they plan to accomplish that is still up in the air. Postering sessions, meetings, tabling, reading groups and other student events are the main focus of their efforts here at home. The larger organization boasts a robust selection of printed materials that range from books to newspapers and magazines they sell to pay for office space and other overhead costs. Analyzing theory seems to be at the heart of their model. 

The IMT hosts a Marxist School every year and entry fees range from $20 for students to $60+ if you find yourself in the “solidarity” bracket. It’s meant to serve as a primer on the values and stances of the organization. The advertisement discloses financial support is available to those who are unable to pay the entry fee. The two-day event takes place in cities across the country and includes three meals. The Minneapolis event took place during the last weekend of September. 

These fees are a recurring theme. To be considered a member, you pay dues. The options on their website range from $25 to $500 a month. All of the merchandise and reading materials are also sold to raise money for the organization. How that money is distributed is unclear. 

When asked about the posters, or rather the opposition to theirs, Zeman cited “reactionary University students,” who were “not [the IMT’s] biggest fans.” They rightfully did not disclose who was leading the opposition to their presence on and around campus, so my search continued.

A QR code on one of the retaliatory signs linked to a document detailing allegations against the IMT. It was signed by Miles Chiernov — a person who does not exist.

The last organization on my list, Twin Cities Revolutionaries, was my only hope. When they denied involvement in the campaign against IMT, I thought my story was toast. Hours later, I received an email with the subject line “Miles Chiernov.” 

I knew I’d hit the jackpot.

“I don’t really feel like we have anything to hide,” Zack Müllerleile said, undergraduate neuroscience student, former IMT member and the person behind the Miles Chiernov pseudonym. “We just wanted to formulate … very straightforward information about things that we thought we should point out to other progressives.”

He was joined by Alex Rodriquez for our interview, a fellow defector-turned-organizer with the John Brown Revolutionary Society (JBRS). Rodriquez joined the IMT online from his rural hometown in Kansas in 2021. He moved to Minneapolis from Kansas last October after attending the Marxist school. 

Müllerleile was recruited on the University of Minnesota campus in 2022. He, like many college students, was searching for a community. Throughout their time in the organization, the two guessed they had contributed well over $2,000.

“Allegedly, it’s going toward building an office in Britain,” Rodriquez said. “That’s what they’ve been saying for years.”

“The honeymoon stage … lasted about six months,” Müllerleile said. The two began communicating their differences of opinion and noticed a change in the way they were treated by other members of the organization. “We tried to stay in the organization up until we were removed for basically not being the rank-and-files.” 

The pile of disagreements continued to grow. IMT leadership wanted to distance themselves from the label of “feminist” and often criticized vulnerable groups like sex workers, people who used drugs and transgender people, Rodriquez said. 

“Whenever we tried to bring these up with other members, especially leadership, we were basically patronized and told … we didn’t know what we were talking about,” Rodriquez said. 

They decided to leave after they expressed concern about allegations of sexual assault from a chapter in Canada and were met with aggression, Müllerleile said. The IMT denied these allegations, pointing to a public statement published by the group in response to the alleged incident.

I try to hold onto a healthy dose of skepticism when navigating these conversations, knowing people are complicated and egos are often involved in political groups. But the more I’ve looked into the IMT, the more I saw similar patterns of the same behaviors that turned Rodriquez and Müllerleile away.

An email from five members of the British section outlined their departure from the organization following experiences with sexual misconduct. Another student from Warwick University in England wrote an op-ed titled “Inside university Marxist societies: One student’s escape from a campus cult.” More evidence of their contradictory nature can be found in many corners of the internet. 

“They’re trying to appear more active and revolutionary to … naive audiences of college leftists,” Müllerleile said. 

Since leaving the IMT, both Müllerleile and Rodriquez have joined the JBRS.

“It’s not sectarian to say that sexual assault is wrong,” Rodriquez said. 

Quite frankly, he’s correct. The poster wars may seem futile, but they reveal a much larger wake-up call for aspiring radicals on campus. If you want to be taken seriously, ditch the dogmatic obsession with Soviet-era slang and stop giving your money to this bottomless pit. There are plenty of ways to care for your neighbors that do not include a multi-level marketing scheme cloaked behind a hammer and sickle. 

The IMT is an embarrassment to leftism and should not be allowed to operate on campus. It is dangerous and deeply unserious at a time when the need for a functioning workers’ party is more critical than ever.

August is upon us and so too is the start of a new school year. Parading gaggles of incoming freshmen are kicking the cobwebs off 14th Avenue, a time-honored tradition that breathes new life into the University of Minnesota’s little slice of Minneapolis — Dinkytown. 

Because I transferred to the University at 23 years old, I skipped the phase of publicly embarrassing myself at Blarney’s or chowing at Mesa like an animal in a drunken rage –– but I’ve enjoyed hearing the battle stories from my friends who did. Their tales stand on the shoulders of thousands of alumni who have come of age in those hallowed streets since the 1950s.

The remnants of a bygone Dinkytown, that is hanging on by a thread, are wedged between the budding sky-high apartment complexes and corporate franchises. Only a few businesses, such as Al’s Diner and the Book House, remain in operation today.

“People have always gathered here. We don’t have a space to do that anymore,” said Kristen Eide-Tollefson, project coordinator of the Preserve Historic Dinkytown (PHD) organization. Eide-Tollefson has been involved with the area for the last 47 years and founded the Book House.

Eide-Tollefson has been on the frontlines of the push to designate Dinkytown as a historic district, to no avail. 

If the liveliness of Dinkytown was dwindling, then the COVID-19 pandemic was a nail in its coffin. The mass exodus of students during this period wreaked havoc on institutions like Annie’s Parlour and the Kitty Kat Klub, whose neon signs still hang tragically unplugged over the East Bank campus. 

It’s hard to believe that two years of turbulence could undo 70 years of tradition-making. Nearly four years later, those symptoms have yet to subside. 

“Stinkytown,” as it has become known, has turned from a once-bustling point of cultural convergence to a confused transitory node. Its further demise is perpetuated by a grim reputation that, without intervention, will doom its future to a life of over-policing and social decay. 

Calls to make Dinky safer have dominated the news cycles. Reports of gun violence, reckless driving and rowdy vandals from the suburbs have made pepper spray the hottest accessory for a night out on the town. 

The Board of Regents has devised a “Safe Streets Initiative” that aims to thwart bad behavior by ramping up law enforcement, which almost never ends well. But these attempts to mitigate crime have failed to address the lethal apathy that imbues the current perception of Dinkytown.

To revive its reputation, we should focus on the streetscape.

Take, for instance, the infamous Dinkytown McDonald’s that was razed in 2020 — ironically to be re-built in the form of a mixed-use apartment building called “Identity.” 

The death of this institution inspired a period of grieving for generations of Gophers who immortalized their mourning in a slew of op-eds and tweets. Their feeling of loss underscores the anchor of collective memory that Dinkytown truly is. 

For many, “Drunken Donald’s” symbolized the last bastion of their time at the University. 

“We’re losing the third places where students can hang out without a pile of money,” Paula Pentel said. Pentel is the undergraduate advisor for the Urban Studies program and is a long-time urbanist in the Twin Cities. 

“We’ve sanitized the specialness right out of Dinkytown,” Pentel said, who has noticed the corporate creep over her time at the University. Place-making is no easy task, and making one that people become attached to is even harder. 

If we want to make Dinkytown safer, we should strive for the development of a grittier, more spontaneous space that better reflects the lifestyles of the average college student.

Fewer $17 salads and more cozy coffee shops with places to study and convene.

Dinkytown should be a late-night soft place to land after running from house to house through Marcy-Holmes, not a food court excavated from a weird mall.

College towns are a sacred backdrop to some of the most formative years of a young person’s life. It’s a home away from home, and for many, the first time they’ve experienced dense, communal living. If we see Dinkytown as a hopeless expanse of degeneracy and danger, it will continue to become just that. But if we stay involved in its active evolution, if we run toward the fire instead of away from it, we may very well be able to reverse its course.

Indeed, my fellow Gophers, we are in a battle for the soul of Stinkytown. It is imperative that students and faculty alike recognize we are writing the future of Dinky in real-time. 

Next time you stroll through the area, take a look around. Stop by the Book House and check out their archival work or peer in the window of one of the vacant storefronts and wonder what it could be. 

Let the Board of Regents know you want to see Dinky thrive, seeing as they are becoming landlords, and remember that lively communities are safe communities. Not highly surveilled ones.

It’s going to take all of us caring about this special place for it to make the resurgence it deserves.