The University of Minnesota announced in an email College of Liberal Arts (CLA) history professor Ann Waltner has been selected as the interim dean for CLA on Tuesday morning. 

The decision follows the resignation of former CLA dean John Coleman, who announced in April his plan to leave the University to become Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

Waltner will serve as interim-dean starting on July 3 and “will work productively with Dean Coleman to ensure a smooth transition,” according to the email. 

She will also, according to the email sent just to CLA students, provide “collaborative leadership that will be invaluable” as the University prepares to launch a national search in early fall in hopes of having a new permanent dean in place by fall 2024.

Waltner has served as CLA Associate Dean, Chair of the Department of History, Chair of the Council of Chairs and founding Director of the Institute of Advanced Study, demonstrating her “extensive administrative experience in CLA and at the University level.”

Specializing in Chinese history, Waltner has made several contributions to the University and the history department, like creating an open access online course on Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese novel from the 18th century.

Compass is an undergraduate student organization founded in 2016 that works to make the business world more inclusive of LGBTQ people in Minneapolis and promote diversity in the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

Executive director of Compass and fourth-year student Zach Nienhuis said it is important to have a student organization like this on campus that provides a safe environment for students who are part of the LGBTQ community.

Compass’ main purpose is to create networking and mentorship opportunities for LGBTQ students in the Carlson School and provide a space where students can learn and use their voice to advance their careers, according to Nienhuis.

Compass alumni event
On Nov. 17, Carlson held their 2022 annual Compass Alumni Reunion at the University’s McNamara Alumni Center.

The alumni event’s theme was “strength through inclusion.” Speakers at the event talked about their different experiences with inclusion in the business world.

Maitri Ajmera, president of the Carlson Business Board and a third-year student, spoke at the alumni event about how LGBTQ people can represent themselves well in the business world while remaining open and vulnerable.

The University has several initiatives involving the theme of inclusion, including all of the Carlson School student organizations coming together to talk about how to increase diversity within the school. Despite their progress, Ajmera said there is still more that can be done to make the University more inclusive by having more student organizations that reflect similar work to Compass.

“Carlson has a lot of work to do, so it’s important to have a student organization that promotes a space for inclusion and belonging,” Ajmera said.

Ryan Poehler, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion project manager at U.S. Bank and a member of the Carlson Alumni PRIDE Board, talked about how there is strength in being nervous about being a “minority in the business industry.”

In his speech, he used a quote from his mom to describe the main point of his speech: “Being slightly nervous means you care, and you’re alive, and you’re taking some kind of risk.”

He encouraged the audience to turn their nervousness being in the business world into finding a community, becoming more vulnerable and seeking their own voice as they navigate through their career.

LGBTQ in business in Minneapolis
According to a study from the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report in 2022, men still outnumber women 3-to-1 in business ownership.

While LGBTQ women make up 2.3% of entry level employees in the workforce, they only represent 1.6% of managers and even smaller percentages of upper-level management. LGBTQ men in business hold 3.1% of entry level positions and 2.8% of management positions.

A University of California-Los Angeles report found nearly half of LGBTQ people have faced discrimination in the workplace at some point in their lives.

However, Nienhuis said Minneapolis is one of the friendliest LGBTQ communities for those who want to work in business. In 2020, the Carlson School was ranked 24th for best colleges for LGBTQ students.

“The Twin Cities, and Carlson in general, are really good about going beyond window dressing by putting in different networking resources for people who are a part of the LGBTQ community,” Nienhuis said.

Nienhuis said he is looking forward to seeing Compass continue to flourish as a student organization by promoting more Compass events and engaging with more students at the University.

“I didn’t know an organization like Compass existed until I joined Carlson as a junior, and knowing about it sooner would have gone a long way,” Nienhuis said. “We want to continue to expand the community that we have on campus and in the Twin Cities as well.”

Student leaders are continuing to express frustration with the lack of residence hall security following several incidents of indecent conduct reported this fall in University of Minnesota bathrooms.

The University has been struggling with staffing shortages in several areas around campus since the beginning of the fall semester, including security, which led to a lack of security in the residence halls.

When asked how many security personnel the University is short, the University sent a statement about its current staffing. There are currently 50 full-time and student employees with the University actively recruiting more, according to the email statement sent to the Minnesota Daily.

“While hiring has been challenging in a variety of industries, we have seen positive progress with security staffing to help fill out our planned security schedules,” according to the statement.

The most recent indecent conduct bathroom incident reported via a SAFE-U alert occurred at Coffman Union on Nov. 15. This followed an Oct. 29 report of a peeping incident at a Middlebrook Hall shower, marking the third reported inappropriate bathroom incident at a residence hall this semester.

Since the October bathroom incidents 2021, USG has been pushing Housing and Residential Life (HRL) to add more security measures to residence hall bathrooms.

In May, HRL announced they were going to add locks to all residence hall bathrooms that currently lack them. This project has yet to be completed due to a supply shortage.

Second-year student Daniel Tobias, director of the USG infrastructure committee, said HRL is planning to add bathroom locks throughout the academic year, finishing in summer 2023 because replacing and reinstalling doors needs to occur after students have moved out of the residence halls.

Security in residence halls has decreased from the 2020-21 academic year due to staffing shortages, according to HRL Associate Director Susan Stubblefield.

Second-year student Erin Vos, USG campus life committee director, said security focuses on patrolling within the Superblock area and other residential hall areas where incidents have occurred in the past, such as Territorial Hall.

She said many of the students she works with do not feel safe in their residential halls despite the University’s continuous push for safety on and around campus.

“There is still an ongoing issue with the invasion of privacy, security reasons and the overall discomfort of living in the dorms,” Vos said.

Stubblefield wrote there are many other safety measures implemented within the residence halls along with the security patrols to ensure student safety. These include exterior doors that are locked 24/7 and can only be accessed by resident and staff UCards, security cameras located in public areas of the residence halls, staffed information desks and interior rounds conducted by community advisors throughout the week.

“We hope that we can increase interior security coverage in the future as University Security actively recruits and hires more staff,” Stubblefield wrote in an email to the Minnesota Daily. “We recognize that, like in so many other job sectors, hiring security personnel is particularly challenging right now.”

One of the reasons students may be struggling with feeling safe, according to Vos, is the over-admittance of students at the University. Compared to last year, there has been a 5% increase in enrollment.

“There are no spaces, accessible places for students to go if they do not feel either comfortable or safe by other students that might be making them uncomfortable,” Vos said. “There is not a lot of space for students to move.”

Vos said students felt because there are few open rooms, they would be unable to switch rooms if they felt unsafe.

However, according to Stubblefield, the size of the first-year class does not have an impact on providing housing for those who choose to live on campus.

“Students may have a perception that we are unable to make room changes because the building that a student desires to move to may not have a space for them, however, we have been able to accommodate a number of assignment change requests,” Stubblefield wrote.

The City of Minneapolis announced the spike in drug overdoses in Minneapolis as a public health and public safety concern in October, noting an average of eight overdose incidents each day.

Since this news release, the number of overdoses has continued to rise, according to the Minnesota Department of Health’s (MDH) Drug Overdose Dashboard.

In a news report released by Millennium Health, there has been a 400% increase in fentanyl use in Minnesota since 2019. The Twin Cities area has seen an increase of more than 100%.

In 2016, University of Minnesota agricultural economist Jason Beddow died due to a fentanyl overdose.

Jason was a research assistant professor in the Department of Applied Economics and enjoyed conducting research, focusing on the spatial aspects of agriculture and how people might better use spatial data to understand agricultural systems.

Jason was not a drug addict, according to his wife, Lucy Angelis, but in 2016, he overdosed on fentanyl and died. Jason’s family hopes to demonstrate that if this happened to him, it could happen to anyone.

Jason Beddow, a kind and caring husband, son and researcher

On Sept. 12, Aaron Broussard was sentenced to life in prison after selling fentanyl to Jason and 10 other people.

Angelis said Jason was an amazing, intelligent person and someone who loved doing research for the University. She described him as a caring and loving individual and husband.

“He got a dog because he wanted to be with me, because I had a dog, and he wanted to be able to interact with me,” Angelis said. “He did so many things for me, which is super sweet.”

Jason’s father, John Beddow, echoed Angelis’s comments about his son’s kind nature and how much he cared about those around him.

“He was a very kind individual,” John said. “Everything he did, including his professional career, was about making life better for others.”

Jason was a funny person and was always ready to take silly pictures and have a good time, Angelis said.

“I think the funny pictures show his personality more because he was not a serious person,” Angelis said while flipping through a scrapbook she made filled with pictures of Jason. “If you talked to his co-workers, he was caring, understanding, so supportive and could be really inspiring.”

Angelis said Jason was her soulmate; there was no doubt in her mind he was the one for her.

“When you meet the love of your life, you really do know they are the love of your life,” Angelis said. “There’s nothing else like it.”

When Jason bought drugs from Broussard, he was looking for Ritalin, a stimulant drug. Angelis said most of the people who bought from Broussard, including Jason, were not drug addicts and had no idea they were purchasing fentanyl.

Angelis said she had a hard time understanding her late husband’s overdose because taking any sort of drug without understanding the possible side effects “went against everything he stood for.”

After Jason’s death, Angelis said she believed it important to speak out about what happened to him because she does not want other people to face a similar situation.

“I learned the value of relationships, what to get upset about and what to not get upset about,” Angelis said. “He was supportive and inspiring, and I miss him.”

Fentanyl use continues in Minnesota, but there are treatment services

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50-100 times stronger than morphine and is used to relieve pain for cancer patients through patches. Fentanyl is cut with heroin most of the time, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

In recent months, more people have switched from heroin to fentanyl because they can receive the euphoric feeling faster and it is cheaper. Fentanyl is more potent than heroin, which means people who ingest it are more likely to overdose, according to a Center of Disease Control report.

According to MDH, 1,286 overdose deaths were reported in Minnesota in 2021, representing a 22% increase from the 2020 total. The majority of those overdoses were attributed to fentanyl.

In Minnesota, 107 opioid overdose deaths occurred in 2020 in the 0-24 age group, according to Kaiser Family Foundation.

“It gets scarier because you never know where the drugs came from and now online, you really don’t know where it’s coming from,” Angelis said. “There’s so many things you don’t know.”

However, Minnesota Commissioner of Health Jan Malcolm said there are solutions that Minnesota is working toward, as stated in their 2020 Drug and Alcohol Abuse in Minnesota Legislative Report such as making treatment services more accessible.

“This increase in drug overdose deaths is alarming, but there are things we can do about it,” Malcolm said. “One important step is to expand programs that make it easier for people to access naloxone — a medication that can reverse overdoses and save lives.”

Fentanyl test strips have become a major resource in preventing overdoses, according to MDH. The drug testing technology has shown to be effective at detecting the presence of fentanyl in drug samples prior to use.

Fentanyl test strips cost $1 per strip and are available at drug treatment facilities in Minnesota.

According to MDH, those with a positive test result were five times more likely to change their drug use behavior to reduce the risk of overdose.

If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, substance use assessments and consultations are available on Boynton Health’s website.

On Oct. 25, several students heard the piercing sound of an alert from their phones. The first alert said, “Shelter in place – Homicide suspect at large described as 17-year-old white male.”

The alert indicated to take shelter for those in the Roseville area, about three miles away from the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus. The suspect was arrested and Ramsey County later announced the alert was sent out to a larger area than originally programmed.

After students and faculty received the initial alert, several professors decided to have their classes go into lockdown across the St. Paul and West Bank campuses.

One of those classrooms, located on the St. Paul campus, held Professor Diana Karwan’s Hydrology and Watershed Management class.

“When between 50 to 60 cell phones go off, you notice it,” Karwan said. “There was a lot of concern and confusion.”

The original alert only said the words “shelter in place,” so that is what Karwan’s lecture hall-sized class did.

The University campus security told students and faculty the alert was a hack without saying much else, leaving several feeling left in the dark and unprepared for possible future situations.

“Everyone was concerned and everyone was doing a good job of investigating by whatever means of communication they had,” Karwan said.

Student’s and faculty’s emotional responses

University protocol in the event of a lockdown is in the Emergency Operations Plan and Building Emergency Plans, according to a University email statement to the Minnesota Daily.

“The University has dedicated resources for addressing potential emerging threats to hopefully neutralize situations before they escalate,” said public relations Director Jake Ricker.

Karwan said she was frustrated with how the University handled the situation that happened on Oct 25., saying campus security did not help out students who called to get more answers on what was going on.

“When we initially heard there was a ‘shelter in place,’ we knew we needed to secure the room but realized we had no way of locking the room,” Karwan said.

Karwan said the students in her classroom tried to board up the classroom by placing University posters on the windows and moved the two tables that were able to be moved against the doors.

Within the first 15 minutes of receiving the alert, Karwan said they saw news of the murder suspect walking around the Falcon Heights area, which is where the St. Paul campus is located.

However, the University was telling a different story, according to Karwan.

“The student who called campus security was told that [the alert] was a hack,” Karwan said. “Campus security is saying ‘we don’t need to do anything,’ but I talked to them eventually and they agreed to lock our classroom.”

Preparedness at the University

In the earlier hours of receiving the alert, some classrooms said they were concerned that there was an active shooter on campus, leading to discussion of if students and faculty would feel prepared if that situation were to occur.

Fourth-year student Emily Ehlert and third-year student Abi Strand said the University has not adequately prepared students for a potential active shooter or other type of dangerous lockdown situation.

“We don’t do a lot of practice with that, and I’m not sure how I would react,” Ehlert said.

“Even in elementary school, we would do fire drills and bomb drills,” Strand said. “We don’t do any kind of drills now, so putting that into a basis would be helpful.”

Karwan echoed students’ frustrations with how the situation unfolded, saying as someone who teaches at the University, she had little to no information on how to make sure her classroom was secured or who to call.

“There was a lot of stress and emotion while this was all playing out because we didn’t know what was going on,” Karwan said.

Ricker said in the email statement that the buildings across all five University of Minnesota campuses have a Building Emergency Plan (BEP) that outlines the steps occupants should take during an emergency like an active shooter.

He also said the University has online training and the Department of Public Safety provides in-person training by request.

“There are campus-specific and department-specific examples of ongoing trainings as well, ranging from annual building evacuation drills to scheduled emergency response exercises,” Ricker said.

Despite having these trainings available, Karwan said she feels like teachers at K-12 schools in St. Paul “have a more well-understood way to go about dealing with this information” than she does teaching at the University.

While Minnesota state law requires that school districts conduct five active-shooter drills each year, the law doesn’t extend to the university level.

Karwan said she would like to see more resources available in classrooms to provide information to students on these situations, especially on how to lock the doors in classrooms.

“When you’re in the moment and anxious, you might not remember the phone number you would have to call for campus security,” Karwan said. “There needs to be easily accessible reminders.”

When asked if the University is actively thinking about the event of an active shooter situation, Ricker said, “Absolutely yes.”

“On the Twin Cities campus alone, we have held four exercises in the past eight months dealing with scenarios involving hostile intruders, active shooters or other emergency events,” Ricker said.

According to Ricker, the Department of Public Safety and Gopher Athletics each host an annual exercise on how to respond to an active shooter situation.

Myron Frans, senior vice president for finance and operations, sent an email to University of Minnesota students, faculty and staff Wednesday announcing Operation Gopher Guardian, “a targeted law enforcement presence in Dinkytown and the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood.” 

The program will run on Friday and Saturday for the next two weeks from the evening through the early morning. This initiative will include up to 10 additional officers from the University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD) and the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).

The University will pay MPD and UMPD officers who take part in the initiative and are not already working these shifts overtime. 

This is the most recent in a slew of University attempts to crack down on crime around campus. In September, the University announced Dinkytown Alerts and a partnership with the Minnesota State Patrol. In July, the University implemented a safety pilot program in Dinkytown that converted certain streets into pedestrian zones for three weekends. 

Operation Gopher Guardian comes after incidents over the holiday weekend where at least four people were injured from fireworks shot outside of the Sigma Chi fraternity house and Frank and Andrea’s Pizza. 

Jake Ricker, the University’s public relations director, said in an email to the Minnesota Daily the Halloween weekend events, along with growing community concerns, led to Operation Gopher Guardian as a temporary solution. 

“The safety of our community, whether on campus or in the neighborhoods near campus, remains a top priority,” Ricker said. “This decision was made by University leadership, in partnership with MPD, in response to the uptick in crimes that have occurred recently in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood, including the Dinkytown area.”

Two high school friends went down the same dangerous path with two different outcomes: one was lucky enough to make it out alive; the other was not.

Ruth*, who chose to not identify due to personal safety concerns, and Luke Ronnei became addicted to heroin as teenagers.

While Ruth struggled with addiction for years, she is now sober. A heroin overdose ended Ronnei’s life in 2016 at age 20.

Ruth has not forgotten her past struggles with substance abuse or Ronnei. Now, she works with his mother, Colleen Ronnei, to educate young people about the dangers of opioids.

“This is happening all around us — why are we not talking about it?” Colleen said. “The more we can let people know what’s going on, the less likely they will end up in my shoes.”

In the first six months of 2019, there were 248 opioid-related deaths in the Twin Cities area. This number increased 31% in the first six months of 2020, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

Ruth’s Story

Ruth broke her foot when she was 15 years old. A doctor prescribed opioids for the pain. Soon after her first couple of doses, she began abusing the medication, taking more pills than needed for her injury.

When doctors around the Twin Cities area began to crack down on overprescribing opioids, the price of pills Ruth bought on the street rose. There seemed to only be one way for her to afford a similar high.

Heroin.

“It didn’t matter if you were in my way; I would get you out of the way,” Ruth said. “Nobody else liked me, but you couldn’t hate me more than I hated me.”

Ruth’s life soon spiraled out of control as she put herself “in really unsafe situations” by moving drugs for the Mexican Cartel and gangs around the Twin Cities area to pay for her next high.

The real danger began, though, when she first overdosed, Ruth said.

“I would like to say [overdosing] woke me up, but it didn’t. If anything, it would make me want to use again, like ‘Get me out of here, I just want to get high,’” she said.

Ruth decided it was time to reach out for help after a year of “being sick and tired of waking up sick and tired” and went to a treatment facility in Texas.

“The last week of my use, I OD’d three times and that finally scared the crap out of me,” she said.

Though in treatment, Ruth was not ready to stop using, and while there, planned to end her own life. She decided to pack her bags, buy drugs and overdose. But something happened to change her life completely.

A worker at the treatment center asked Ruth what her dreams and goals were in life. The question made Ruth pour her heart out to the worker, and she realized she wanted to stay alive to see her dreams become a reality.

“Usually, in that setting, people are so focused on ‘How did you get here? What’s your story?’” Ruth said. “She was the first person to ask ‘What are your goals? What do you want from life?’ Nobody asked me that before.”

That moment is what inspired Ruth to choose a life of sobriety, which she has maintained for the past seven years. It also played a role in Ruth’s decision to start volunteering for Colleen.

Colleen’s Story

On Jan. 7, 2016, Colleen’s worst nightmare came true when her son overdosed on heroin in their home.

Colleen’s son, Luke, died after battling his addiction for two years. In 2017, to prevent other families from facing the same grief she had, Ronnei formed Change the Outcome (CTO), a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness surrounding the opioid crisis in Minnesota.

She said the organization seeks to bring attention to the opioid crisis by visiting middle and high schools to have an “open and honest conversation about drug use” with students.

According to Minnesota records, in 2020, people between the ages 15 and 34 had 2,648 emergency room visits for opioid-involved overdoses, the greatest number of any age group.

“Kids are dying every day in the state of Minnesota, and it’s not getting better. It’s getting worse,” Colleen said.

Rather than feeling defeated by the opioid crisis, Colleen continues to support young people in their recovery from addiction while preemptively educating others about the dangers of opioids.

“I know that [CTO] is not going to stop or end the opioid epidemic, but I know it is saving kids’ lives,” Colleen said. “I know that young people are feeling more empowered to ask for help.”

Ruth decided to volunteer for Colleen at CTO after attending Luke’s funeral. At that time, Ruth was in recovery, and she joined Colleen’s panel at CTO presentations to share her story.

“Reach out because there is life to live,” Ruth said. “It’s not always easy, but it gets a lot better. My worst days sober are better than my best days using.”

Recovery Resources on Campus

The University of Minnesota offers several resources for students who may be struggling with substance abuse.

Fourth-year University students Jordyn Berg and Karena Finch are co-coordinators for Boynton Health’s Recovery on Campus (ROC). ROC is a student organization that provides a safe space for students who have struggled with addiction to talk about their experiences with one another.

“It’s really difficult to find people who are going through school but also managing sobriety,” Berg said. “It’s important to provide and to allow people to know that is out there.”

ROC’s group meetings are held in Boynton Health’s Garden Room every Friday from 4 to 5 p.m. Berg and Finch also organize events to raise awareness of the organization within the University community, Finch said.

“It’s good to show people that they’re not alone in trying to be sober on campus, that there are other people going through similar things as them, and that there’s a safe space for them to be and feel comfortable,” Finch said.

Along with ROC, the University offers a substance use assessment and health promotion consultations for students who may be struggling with addiction.

The Minnesota Daily wrote the first article on the University of Minnesota’s Fight for $15 movement in April 2015, back when the University’s minimum wage for student workers was $7.25 an hour.

After achieving their goal of raising the student wage to $15 an hour seven years later, students looked back on the movement and the impact of the change so far.

The University announced its decision to raise the student minimum wage from $10.33 to $15 an hour Aug. 3. Students can expect to see their first paycheck of $15 an hour on Oct. 19, Ken Horstman, the University’s vice president for human resources, stated in the announcement.

“This is another way to support our student workers and acknowledge the invaluable contributions they make to our campuses in a tremendous variety of jobs,” Horstman said.

The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) has led the University’s Fight for $15 movement for more than a decade, according to Carter Yost, co-chair of the campaign. However, they chose to make advocating for the change a major priority last year after student workers began speaking out about facing financial insecurities due to low wages and stressful conditions.

The University’s Fight for $15 campaign arose from the national movement to raise the minimum wage nationwide, which started in New York City in 2012 with fast food workers walking out of their jobs. USG was inspired to implement a similar campaign at the University.

“This needed to happen quickly and that was our root for organizing this,” Yost said. “Students got on board, and we knew this was something we needed to make progress on.”

Yost said the turning point of the campaign happened in March when several student organizations, led by the USG, collaborated to craft a plan to finally push the University toward meeting their goal.

USG petitioned to get a referendum on the campus ballot to demonstrate student support for the $15 an hour minimum wage. After gathering enough signatures, the referendum was voted on during the spring election.

The Fight for $15 referendum passed with 90% of the student vote, putting additional pressure on the University to raise student worker wages.

Since the wage increase was announced over the summer, Yost said the USG has observed more students interested in applying for on-campus positions.

“I don’t know if I will, at any point, have an impact on campus that is bigger than this,” Yost said. “We’ve impacted thousands of students, and that’s really cool.”

The University has expressed hope that the change would help fill open positions, as they struggled with a significant worker shortage that affected the services provided on-campus in 2021.

“We are confident that both our effective use of work-study funds and the wage increase will help the University fill its student worker positions and help students meet their financial needs,” Horstman said.

However, some students said they think the increase came too late. Bri Strittmater, a third-year student and past student worker, said she found a new job off campus last year because she was not making enough money as a University employee.

“I got a new job so I could make more and actually afford rent,” Strittmater said. “If I was making $15 an hour last year, I’d still be a student worker.”

The fight for higher wages will continue, Yost said, as the “fight for labor rights is never truly over.”

On Oct. 4 and 5, service workers at the University voted to go on strike to advocate for a $20 minimum wage. The strike could begin as early as Oct 22.

“This is not the end of labor movements on campus, nor is it satisfactory.” Yost said. “But it is remarkable progress in the right direction.”

A SAFE-U alert was released on Sept. 23 indicating a suspect attempted to look at a resident in a Bailey Hall bathroom stall. Bailey Hall is the only residential hall on the St. Paul campus. 

The University released new information on Friday stating the University of Minnesota Police Department concluded its investigation of the Bailey Hall bathroom incident. 

“After reviewing video surveillance, identifying involved parties and conducting interviews, UMPD determined that the incident was a misunderstanding and no indecent conduct or code of conduct violation occurred,” according to the update. 

The incident at Bailey Hall was one of the three recent bathroom incidents on campus. Two additional incidents occurred at Middlebrook and Smith halls on Sept. 9 and Sept. 15 respectively. 

The Middlebrook Hall incident involved a suspect looking at someone in the shower. The victim in the Smith Hall incident reported the suspect took a picture of them with a cell phone under the stall partition, both according to SAFE-U alerts. 

Both the Middlebrook and Smith incidents remain under investigation.

Some students initially reported feeling unsafe after these incidents as the University continues to push for more campus safety. 

SAFE-U alerts went out to University of Minnesota students on Sept. 9 and Sept. 15 reporting incidents involving indecent conduct in a bathroom in Middlebrook Hall, the residential hall on West Bank, and a bathroom in Smith Hall, an academic building on East Bank.

On Sept. 23, another SAFE-U alert reported a male suspect tried to look into a bathroom stall at Bailey Hall, the residential hall on the St. Paul campus. Students reported feeling uneasy about the incidents, citing a lack of security at residence halls despite the recent push for more safety on and around campus.

In email statements to the Minnesota Daily, Susan Stubblefield, interim director of Housing & Residential Life (HRL), and Matt Kramer, interim vice president for University Services, advised students not to prop doors open in locked University buildings.

“Even when done with the best intentions, holding doors open for strangers, propping doors open or leaving doors ajar creates security challenges,” Stubblefield said.

Kramer said safety is one of the University’s top priorities, and they will continue to ensure that members of the campus community feel safe inside campus buildings.

Jake Ricker, public relations director for the University, said the University of Minnesota Police Department (UMPD) is looking into these incidents and cannot comment until the investigations are closed.

Last year, the UMPD reported similarly inappropriate incidents in bathrooms in other residential halls: Frontier Hall, Comstock Hall and Territorial Hall. The Minneapolis Police Department arrested and charged a man for breaking into Frontier and Comstock in February.

First-year student and Middlebrook Hall resident Carmen Pasquerella said she was not surprised when she received the SAFE-U alert about the September Middlebrook Hall incident.

“The security at the campus dorms are slim to none, and you can easily access any building without having a U Card,” Pasquerella said. “My roommate and I were initially nervous for our safety because, as women, we are already targeted on campus for crimes like this.”

Pasquerella said some of her friends in Middlebrook have had friends stand outside of the showers to help make those showering feel more comfortable in shared bathrooms.

First-year student and Middlebrook resident Anne Shelleny said security on campus needs improvement, especially in the dorms.

“The U should enforce better security at the entrances of the dorms by making everyone show their U Cards at the front desk and having guests check into the front desk,” Shelleny said. “They should also better educate the CAs on monitoring the halls during the night to make sure no one suspicious is just walking around the halls.”

In May, HRL announced plans to add locks over the summer to the outside of the bathrooms in Frontier, Centennial, Territorial, Pioneer, Comstock, Bailey and 17th Avenue halls. However, this project has yet to be completed.

“Supply chain disruptions have delayed installation in our buildings, but this work will be completed as soon as possible,” Stubblefield said.

Daniel Tobias, infrastructure committee director for the Undergraduate Student Government, wrote part of the resolution to add the bathroom locks. He said he was frustrated “by the lack of progress” by HRL.

“Until HRL can get this locks project off the ground, all we can do with that collective frustration is work together to develop additional residence hall security measures that are both feasible for HRL and Facilities Management and meaningful to students,” Tobias said.