Members of Twin Cities Healthcare Workers For Palestine (HCW4P) and other community members were prevented from attending the State Board of Investments’s (SBI) quarterly meeting on Dec. 10 where they planned to encourage the board to divest from Israel, according to a press release from HCW4P. 

The meeting, normally public and held in person, was held in a hybrid format, according to the press release. 35 people were allowed to watch the Zoom meeting while about 25 people were left outside in 26-degree weather. 

SBI accepted public comments by email to be discussed at the meeting, according to the press release. 28 comments were submitted, but none of them were addressed. 

During the meeting, Gov. Tim Walz said the change was made to allow the public more time to voice their concerns. 

“We’ve made this change in response to concerns raised during the last several SBI meetings. In those meetings, members of the public felt constrained by the board ruling, particularly the need of grouping speakers together around the same topic to make sure we stayed within a limited amount of time,” Walz said. “This change gives more people an opportunity to submit comments to address the issues of their concern to the board.”

Barry Kleider, a member of Jewish Voices for Peace who attended the meeting from inside the viewing room, said there was no way for anyone in the room watching the Zoom meeting to communicate with members of the board. 

“The only contact we had with our elected officials was a TV monitor. They couldn’t see us,” Kleider said. “There was no microphone in the room, so they couldn’t hear us. It was really pretty quick that we realized it was a sham.”

The room they watched the meeting from was uncomfortable, Kleider said.

“With all the comfortable meeting rooms at the state capitol, they crammed us into a tiny, little conference room. Seating capacity was 35 and more than half of our group was outside in the cold,” Kleider said. “The closest restrooms were two blocks away and we sat on folding chairs.”

Kleider said SBI gave groups that signed up ahead of time about five minutes to speak after meetings in the past, but during its August meeting, Jewish Voices for Peace was only permitted one minute to speak. No one was allowed to speak outside of submitting email comments during the December meeting. 

“This time, they made it really clear that we weren’t welcome, that they weren’t open to hearing criticism over the state’s investments in Israel,” Kleider said. 

Kleider said Minnesota needs to divest from Israel because it makes the state complicit in the violence in Gaza and is fiscally irresponsible.

“SBI is required to protect our fiscal interests. And Moody’s Analytics has downgraded Israel’s bond rating to the lowest point that any international organization would recognize,” Kleider said. “So for us to be holding Israel bonds is fiscally irresponsible.”

Moody’s Ratings analyzes countries’ and companies’ level of financial risk, according to their website. 

According to Moody’s, Israel’s involvement in global conflict has decreased the country’s creditworthiness in both the short and long term. There are heightened security risks that will likely lead to a slower economic recovery for Israel.

SBI is responsible for making sure people’s pensions are growing as well, including for Minneapolis Public Schools where Kleider works, he said. 

“It’s personal for me, not just as a Jew, but also as a pension holder who works for the public schools,” Kleider said. “So fiscally, it’s irresponsible on their part, and Minnesota should simply not be complicit with a nation that’s bombing its neighbors.”

Sam Sharpe, a mental health worker with HCW4P who was not allowed into the meeting, said the format of SBI’s December meeting went through several iterations. Originally it was scheduled fully virtually, but was then changed to hybrid with an option to watch the live stream in person.

“I got there on Tuesday, about 10 to 15 minutes before the meeting started. And as I was walking up to the building, somebody came up to me and said, ‘Hey, they only let 35 people in, and everybody else is either leaving or staying outside,’” Sharpe said. “And so then I walked up to the building, and there were people outside who were holding signs and banners and chanting.” 

The meeting, Sharpe said, was also shorter than normal, being about 26 minutes long. Other SBI meetings are normally about an hour and a half long. 

SBI did not respond to the Minnesota Daily’s request for comment. 

Alycia Garubanda, a speech pathologist with HCW4P who was not allowed into the meeting, said the way SBI held the meeting felt like a way to silence people’s voices. 

“They’re actively trying to repress our voices from the conversation. It doesn’t feel like a democratic process,” Garubanda said. “It feels like they’re telling us to throw up our hands because there’s nothing that they can do which we know is not true. And it leads me to question what it will take for them to hear us.”

Kleider said only allowing a select number of people inside felt divisive. 

“It felt like they were really intentionally trying to divide us, the people who were inside and the people who were outside,” Kleider said. “So it just felt really mean-spirited on their part and like they really made every effort to let us know that they weren’t interested in hearing from us.”

The U.S. Department of Justice updated regulations for Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 in April 2024 to include specific regulations on the accessibility of web content for Americans with disabilities, according to their website. 

According to the website for the University of Minnesota’s Office for Digital Accessibility, the University is updating websites to meet the guidelines, and it has until April 2026 to fully comply with them. 

An example of digital accessibility for websites includes alternative text to describe an image so blind people who use text-to-speech features to read articles, according to the ADA’s website. Without alternative text, people who need to use text-to-speech would not know about the images and would not have complete knowledge of the content on a page. 

Khaled Musa, the director of the University’s Office for Digital Accessibility (ODA), said the University is ahead of the curve when it comes to digital accessibility, particularly with websites. The University has had an accessibility policy since 2002 to create media, technology and teaching methods that are accessible to disabled students and staff.

The ADA’s website said inaccessible websites make it difficult for people with disabilities to access government services, or in the University’s case, academic services. 

Musa said to ensure websites are easily accessible, the University has a default template on the content management system Drupal that all websites are expected to follow. Drupal also alerts people making websites of any errors there may be before they publish a website to guarantee the site is accessible to all people. 

“People do not publish with errors in mind to make it so the website is inaccessible for people. I think sometimes people publish as an oversight because they don’t see it,” Musa said. “So by providing that tool on the spot right before they hit publish, if they see any error they get to verify it. It’s been a very productive tool.”

Websites the University works with, like Canvas, do not need to be updated to meet the new federal guidelines, but the ODA alerts Canvas to any errors that come up, Musa said. 

“From day one when we purchased it, I meet within the structure once a month,” Musa said. “And if there are issues with the platform itself, I alert them, okay, submit tickets and we fix it.”

Musa said he also works with other vendors the University uses, such as Microsoft, Google and Zoom. 

The University created a website dedicated to digital accessibility in 2010 that was later developed into the Accessible U website in 2016, which became the Office for Digital Accessibility in 2024, according to the ODA’s website. 

Musa said because the University worked on digital accessibility before it was a federal regulation, other universities have looked to the ODA’s website for guidance. 

“We’ve developed the Digital Accessibility Foundation series since 2019 so we are ahead of the curve when it comes to this compliance thing because we’ve been treating it as a compliance issue for a long time, not because it was legally mandated, but because a lot of people, a lot of grassroots individuals around the University, felt really strongly about it,” Musa said. 

Most University websites will not need much updating, if any at all, because of the University’s commitment to digital accessibility, Musa said. 

“I’m not saying everyone is perfect,” Musa said “Like there will be a few that will have to learn or relearn some of the skills. Some of them are new to this and might need a little bit of education, but that’s what the Office for Digital Accessibility is here for.”

The Disability Resource Center (DRC) said in an email to the Minnesota Daily the DRC worked to develop the Office of Digital Accessibility to ensure online tools from the University are accessible to all users. 

“The Disability Resource Center is proud to have partnered with the Office of Information Technology over the past several years to establish the Office for Digital Accessibility,” the DRC Leadership Team said in the same email. “Our shared goal is to empower the University of Minnesota to proactively embed accessibility into every aspect of its work.” 

Musa said it is important to remember that accessibility is not the same as getting accommodations. He added students can get further accommodations from the DRC as well.

“Any student with a disability who has good assistive technology skills will be able to interact with that content to the best of their ability in an equal way as every other student, but if they still have an accommodation that is still a separate process,” Musa said. “This accessibility does not replace the accommodation process. It does not, it doesn’t even augment. Accommodations are individualized.”

A study conducted by the University of Minnesota Department of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering and the Department of Natural Resources of Minnesota found high levels of insecticide in springs and some groundwater around Minnesota, according to a press release from the College of Science and Engineering on Nov. 18. 

These insecticides could impact drinking water for individuals who tap their own water from surface-level wells or who drink directly from natural springs, said Bill Arnold, a University professor and the principal investigator of the study. 

City and municipal wells are less likely to be contaminated because they tap water much deeper in the ground, Arnold said. 

There are two types of groundwater — confined and unconfined groundwater, Arnold said. 

“Unconfined groundwater is connected to the surface in some way, and then confined groundwater has some geologic layer between the surface,” Arnold said. “So that water tends to be older, it tends to be deeper. And that’s the stuff we often tap for drinking water.”

Unconfined groundwater is generally used for irrigation, Arnold said. The run-off of that water can end up in natural springs.

Arnold said people should avoid drinking directly from natural springs because of this. 

“People who think that, ‘Oh, I’m going to a natural spring to get water because it’s natural, it’s flowing from the ground. It’s got to be safe,’” Arnold said. “Depending on where you are in the state and where, what the connectivity of that spring is, I’d say you’re much more likely to get contamination in a spring than you would in a well.”

Arnold said most of the contaminated water was found in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and the Karst Region in southeastern Minnesota. 

In an email to the Minnesota Daily, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) said they will use the results of the study to inform how they approach maintaining clean drinking water. 

“The MPCA appreciates recent research conducted by the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources that found high concentrations of insecticides in some of the state’s ground and surface water,” said Michael Rafferty, the spokesperson for MPCA. “Information from this study can be incorporated into strategies that MPCA and its state partners develop to protect and restore water quality in both ground and surface waters.”

Insecticides end up in springs and shallow groundwater through the run-off of crops being treated but also by people using those same chemicals on their own plants at home, Arnold said. Because the chemicals are used both in agricultural and urban settings they showed up more in areas of the state where one of those attributes is prominent. 

“We put them out in the environment, and they’re relatively water-soluble, and so then they get transported when water flows,” Arnold said. 

Arnold said there are a few ways to prevent insecticides from ending up in water. One way is to design chemicals that are more degradable. He added another way is to use them less frequently.

“We certainly over-apply them in all sorts of scenarios,” Arnold said. “Making sure that you’re using them when it’s needed and not is a preventative measure a lot of times as well.”

Small changes like these can help deter the amount of insecticides that end up in springs and groundwater, Arnold said.

Following president-elect Donald Trump’s election in November, Americans raised concerns over future reproductive health access. 

Minnesota is viewed as a haven for reproductive health care after Gov. Tim Walz codified abortion in the Minnesota Constitution in 2023. According to Planned Parenthood North Central States, there was a 150% increase in appointments for long-lasting reversible contraception, such as intrauterine devices, after the election. 

However, that does not mean there is no reason to be concerned for its future in the state, said Adam Negri, a PhD candidate at the University of Minnesota’s Program in the  History of Medicine. 

June Carbone, a law professor at the University specializing in assisted reproduction, said it is difficult to tell exactly what could happen to abortion both on the state and federal levels.

“The reason this is complicated is that, I think, it will be a game of reaction and action,” Carbone said.  

A complete federal abortion ban is unlikely, Carbone said, and there would likely be exceptions that permit abortion in cases of rape or incest. 

Congress is discussing a few propositions, Carbone said. For example, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed a 15-week abortion ban in September, and politicians on the state and federal level have tried to put fetal personhood laws in place since 1973, which would consider fetuses living people and protected from abortion.

“Trump has gone back and forth as to whether he would sign such a thing,” Carbone said. “It depends on what’s going on in his head at the moment, so it’s very hard to predict. The thing about Trump is he shakes things up, he disrupts and therefore the traditional assumptions don’t apply.”

There are still a lot of questions about whether an abortion ban would be constitutional, especially given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, Carbone said. 

“We know that there are Christian nationalists on the Supreme Court, I’m thinking of Samuel Alito, and what that means is Alito would uphold any abortion restriction of any kind on any grounds,” Carbone said. “I’m willing to predict that, but I don’t know if he’s got five votes for that.”

During Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration instated regulations making it easier to access abortion pills, as states are not permitted to ban the abortion pill mifepristone and the pill can be sent via mail or prescribed through telehealth, Carbone said. She added the Trump Administration is likely to rescind those regulations, but it would take a while to be put into effect. 

Instead of viewing states as havens or not, Negri said the discussion should be reframed to be about sending states and receiving states. This means states where abortion is protected send abortion health care, like abortion pills, to states where abortion rights have been stripped. 

Negri said Minnesota might not have the infrastructure to support an increase in abortions being sought after in-state. According to Unrestrict Minnesota, the state has only nine abortion clinics. 

Because of the small number of clinics in Minnesota, an influx of patients would be strenuous on providers, said Lauren Ruhrold, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota’s Program in the History of Medicine. Many clinics only provide abortions one day a week with only one or two providers, sometimes traveling from out of state.  

“Think of the number of appointments you could possibly fit into one day of the week,” Ruhrold said. “How do you prevent fatigue for your staff?”

While abortion is protected in Minnesota’s constitution, Ruhrold said the protections are fragile and could change at any moment. 

“Just because abortion is legal here doesn’t mean that getting an abortion is easy or totally straightforward. Abortion has a really long, turbulent history, especially in Minnesota around restrictions,” Ruhrold said. “And those protections are fragile. You know, they can always change.”

Emily Winderman, a professor of communication studies at the University who studies health and medicine, said some laws are not actively being enforced but could resurface in an attempt to restrict abortion. The Comstock Act of 1873, which inhibits the use of the U.S. Postal Service to send obscene content, could be used to restrict the mailing of abortion pills. 

“There is a precedent for birth control information having been suppressed. Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating the Comstock Act,” Winderman said. “It is something that, I believe, could very well be easily reinforced without necessarily going through congressional processes that would be the same thing as instituting and creating policy.”

Margaret Sanger was a prominent activist for sex education and birth control access in the 20th century. Sanger was indicted under the Comstock Act for distributing information about birth control because it was described as “lewd” content. 

Winderman said most abortions occur in the first trimester when abortion pills are frequently prescribed. Enforcing the Comstock Act could completely prohibit abortion pills from being sent to people early in their pregnancy. 

Negri said there are many groups in Minnesota working to protect abortion access by supporting health care providers and lobbying for reproductive health care access, such as Unrestrict Minnesota and Minnesota Abortion Action Committee.

Doctors Against Genocide, a nonprofit created in the fall of 2023, is calling for health care workers to take a stand against the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine through their petition “Not Another Child Not Another Hospital,” according to their website. 

The petition, launched in October, was sent to medical associations across the country, asking them to advocate for Israel to stop attacking hospitals and health care workers, protect the children of Gaza and Lebanon, support divestment from Israel, advocate for unrestricted medical aid to Gaza and establish health care education that helps medical professionals treat those affected by war crimes.

According to the New York Times, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire arranged by the U.S. and France. The conflict between the two countries was ongoing from October 2023 after the Lebanese group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.

Dr. Nidal Jboor, co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide, said doctors swore an oath to care for and protect people, which he feels has not been followed during the conflict. 

“As doctors and health care workers, we swore an oath to protect life and to advocate against the loss of life in any way, shape or form. We expected the healthcare community to be the first ones to stand up, loud and strong, to call for a ceasefire to stop the mass murder of children and women,” Jboor said. “And unfortunately, the majority of the health care system is still silent.”

Co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle said health care organizations are not taking a stance on the conflict is partly because of censorship within the organizations. 

“There was a decision by a lot of the leadership not to speak immediately about Oct. 7, so there were a lot of internal memos and a lot of pressure on heads of departments and CEOs telling employees this is a topic you cannot speak on,” Kuemmerle said. 

Kuemmerle said there is also an element of anti-Palestinian racism contributing to the lack of advocacy coming from health care workers. 

“Compare what happened with Palestine to what’s happening in Ukraine, and you will see a stark difference,” Kuemmerle said. “There was, you know, massive support for Ukraine, there were massive attempts of hospitals to send aid, there were statements, there were expressions of sadness and agony.”

Jboor said the petition gained a lot of traction over the past month. As of November, more than 5,000 people signed and more than 40 health care groups endorsed the petition, according to the Doctors Against Genocide website.  

“So far, we’re having a decent response,” Jboor said. “A lot of people are joining and a lot of people are asking more questions and endorsing and interested to join.”

Jboor said Doctors Against Palestine encourages health care workers to take a stand regardless of their political views. 

“What we’re trying to do is we’re demanding that they take at least the professional and the moral stand, regardless of politics, and instead based on their medical and ethical oath to protect life, regardless of whose life it is and whatever the politics are,” Jboor said. 

The University of Minnesota Medical School has not made a statement about the conflict in Palestine. When asked, the school said in an email to the Minnesota Daily it “does not issue statements on global affairs.” 

As stated in the same email, the Medical School’s mission is “to educate skilled, compassionate, and socially responsible physicians. We support and respect the deeply personal choices our faculty, staff and students make to engage within our community and beyond.”

Dr. Asfia Qaadir, a doctor at PrairieCare and member of the Twin Cities chapter of Health Care Workers for Palestine, said it is the job of health care workers and organizations to advocate for the safety of Palestinians, and medical schools should train their students with those values in mind. 

“We need to speak up to do everything we can as health care workers, those involved in the health care sector, to save life,” Qaadir said. “And so it is absolutely part of the responsibility and obligation of medical schools to teach this, medical students to learn this, and then as health care workers to do this.”

Regardless of whether an institution takes a stance, Qaadir said there are ways for individuals to advocate for the wellbeing of Palestinians. 

“In the end, all of it is necessary, and I think it depends on what a person’s capacity is, what their skills and talents are, where they are in their understanding and learning,” Qaadir said. “I think the most foundational step in advocacy is literacy. And so it’s incredibly important for students at this moment to lean into Palestinian voices who are teaching, whether they’re reporters, health care workers, legal experts, writers, artists, first-person accounts, those who are living, you know, surviving on the ground in occupied Palestine.”

Learning the history of Palestine can help medical students and health care providers alike with the resources to care for patients from diverse backgrounds and treat patients in a way that is trauma-informed, Qaadir said.

Following President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Trump administration could roll back on environmental regulations, putting the Boundary Waters Canoe Area at risk. 

Removing the regulations would give corporations more leeway to mine in areas that are rich with natural resources, like the Boundary Waters, according to the Sierra Club. 

The Boundary Waters are a point of contention in the debate around environmental policy for decades, Friends of the Boundary Waters Communication Director Pete Marshall said. Friends of the Boundary Waters was founded in 1976 to advocate for the protection of the area.

The Boundary Waters is federally protected and strictly regulated to ensure its water quality remains clean and people can enjoy the hiking, camping and canoeing privileges it has to offer, Marshall said. The surrounding land is not federally protected, however, and is rich in copper which is highly sought-after land for different mining companies. 

According to mining company Antofagasta, copper is used in a variety of industries, including construction, infrastructure, transport and consumer goods.

Mining for copper is detrimental to the environment, Marshall said. The way the metal is spread throughout the ground makes it impossible to mine for it without impacting the world around it. 

“It’s not chunks of copper, it’s spread out through the ore body. So that means that when they mine and they get into the ore body, it’s about 0.69% copper,” Marshall said. “Which means you have to essentially crush up 200 to 300 pounds of rock to get just one pound of copper.”

This process uses a lot of energy, but there are also chemical issues that come with mining for copper, Marshall said. 

“The danger is that this copper is bonded to sulfide-bearing ores, and sulfide-bearing ores, when they’re exposed to air or water, produce sulfuric acid,” Marshall said. 

Because so much ore needs to be crushed to mine for copper, Marshall said there is a lot of waste that is generated that could potentially get into the surrounding water system. 

“The ore that the copper is in produces what is chemically battery acid, and that gets into the water system,” Marshall said. “That’s why it’s so worrisome.”

Twin Metals Minnesota, whose parent company is Antofagasta, is interested in mining for copper between Ely and Babbitt, Minnesota, two cities near the Boundary Waters, according to their website. 

The state of Minnesota has regulations in place to keep the state’s water clean. Over 77% of voters in Minnesota voted in favor of amending the Minnesota Constitution to protect sources of drinking water and the quality of lakes, rivers and streams in the state in the 2024 election, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State website. 

While there is a general consensus in the state that clean water is important in communities closer to the Boundary Waters and other parts of northern Minnesota where mining is prevalent, the division of opinions is much more stark, said Stephen Polasky, a professor of ecology and applied economics at the University of Minnesota. 

Some people in these communities make their money in the mining industry, while others work in the tourism industry from canoe outfitting and other outdoor activities, Polasky said. 

“In a way, it’s economy versus economy,” Polasky said. “Do you want the mining economy? Do you want a tourism, amenity-based economy?”

There are a lot of protections around the Boundary Waters at the state level that prevent the government from just going there and mining, Polasky said. 

“You can’t have a new mine in the state unless it has state permits, and the permits cover things like air pollution and water pollution, and they have to have, you know, an approved Environmental Impact Statement and so forth,” Polasky said. “So it isn’t as if the feds, you know, Trump, can just say, ‘We’re going to mine.’”

What Trump can do, Polasky said, is take off the federal moratorium, or a temporary suspension of a law, to protect the Boundary Waters. While this would be a big step towards mining in the area, there is still the requirement of obtaining a state permit protecting the area. 

Mae Davenport, a professor and director of the Center for Changing Landscapes at the University, said treaties with Indigenous communities in the area also protect the Boundary Waters and surrounding areas like the Superior National Forest. 

“The Superior National Forest signed a co-stewardship agreement with the boys for Fond du Lac and Grand Portage bands, as well as the 1854 Treaty Authority,” Davenport said. “Which is also just further affirmation that these Ojibwe tribes and the inter-tribal organization are the original stewards of the land, and they have rights that they have retained to access those lands and that those were protected, and so that stewardship agreement just sort of also puts into priority the tribal treaty rights.”

The 1854 Treaty Authority protects the tribes’ right to fish and hunt in the area, according to their website. It also aims to protect and enhance the wilderness and resources outlined in the 1854 Treaty Area, including the Boundary Waters.

Just as the state needs to abide by the treaties, so does the federal government, Davenport said. 

“The U.S. federal government and the states have trust responsibilities to tribes that date back to the 1850s to protect these lands and waters and to protect treaty rights, which includes the rights of tribal members to hunt, fish and gather in these areas, and that protects those areas as well,” Davenport said. “So a singular president or an authoritative government cannot terminate those treaties or violate those treaties, just like they can’t terminate or violate the U.S. Constitution.”

Recently, the transition between presidential administrations led to differences in policy for mining in protected areas, Marshall said. 

The Obama administration prevented coal mining leases on public lands and started a two-year study investigating what copper sulfide mines would do to the area near the Boundary Waters, Marshall said. Once Trump came into office, he revived the leases Obama prevented and canceled the study on copper-sulfide mining, which the Biden administration later reversed. 

“It’s a lot of back and forth,” Marshall said. “Currently, Twin Metals does not have the mineral leases it needs to open a mine, and there was a 20-year mining ban on federal land in the Superior National Forest, so we had pretty strong protections against these potential mines near the Boundary Waters.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 46 million turkeys are eaten on Thanksgiving each year. 

Turkey is a staple of Thanksgiving in the U.S., and even more so in Minnesota. 

Minnesota is the largest producer of turkeys in the country, making up 18% of turkey production, according to the 2023 Minnesota Turkey Fact Sheet from the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. The state has more than 600 turkey farmers. 

President of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association and general manager of Falhun Farms Jake Vlaminck said producing turkeys varies by the sex of the turkey. 

Vlaminck raises male turkeys, or toms, which are generally used for turkey breast and further processed meats like ground turkey. 

Female turkeys, called hens, tend to be sold as a whole bird because of their smaller size, Vlaminck said. 

Different turkey growers fit into different niches, Vlaminck said. Some farmers specialize in growing toms, while others specialize in hens or breeding and hatching turkeys. 

Hens are inseminated and eventually lay eggs in what is called a laying facility, Vlaminck said. The eggs are put in an incubator for 28 days until they hatch. 

When the chicks are a day old, they are separated by gender in a process called sexing, Vlaminck said. Once that step is complete, the chicks are sent to the growers.

“After they hatch, they’ll come to us and they have them already on feed and water,” Vlaminck said. “We just have to put them in the barns and get them used to finding the feed and water in the barn, as opposed to having it right up to their in their tray that they had from day one.”

As the toms grow, farmers ensure the birds have clean water to drink and a comfortable living area filled with wood shavings until they are fully mature, around 12 to 15 weeks old, Vlaminck said. Once they reach maturity they are ready to be slaughtered and further processed for different kinds of meat. 

Hens, on the other hand, are raised until they reach a certain weight, Vlaminck said. 

“The hens are harvested by weight because they want to have a certain weight that goes into the packaged turkey,” Vlaminck said. “Most people are looking for somewhere between a 12-16 pound turkey because most people have smaller gatherings.”

Carol Cardona, the Ben Pomeroy Chair of Avian Health in the University of Minnesota Veterinary School, said once turkeys are ready for slaughter they are herded from their enclosure into a truck where they are killed.

“They’re quite comfortable in the truck, and then they get off of the truck, and they’ll be stunned, so they become unconscious,” Cardona said. 

According to Vlaminck, the turkeys are stunned with carbon dioxide. 

Once the turkeys are slaughtered, they are bled out until there is no blood left in their body because people generally do not like the taste of it in their food, Cardona said. 

When slaughtering the turkey, it is important to make sure that the bird’s brain is no longer functioning but the heart is still beating and the muscles are still fresh, Cardona said. She added itmakes the meat taste better. 

“There’s stages to organ death. And so during the slaughter process, we’re trying to make that meat as fresh as possible,” Cardona said. “We make sure that the brain isn’t feeling anything and the animal is dead, but keep those organs fresh and alive so that the consumer gets the best tasting product possible.”

The meat is inspected by veterinarians before being prepared for retail to ensure that it is safe for consumption, Cardona said. 

“Veterinarians inspect those carcasses,” Cardona said. “And even though this bird was acting normal, it might have had a little cold or something, and so that inspector they might say this carcass is not safe to go to the food chain or they might be able to take out the part that had the disease on it, and send the rest of it through.”

Once a turkey is inspected, the meat is cleaned in a series of baths of varying temperatures to ensure it is safe for consumption, Cardona said.  

Once the meat is cleaned and free of bacteria, it is sent out for further processing to make products like ground turkey and sausages or is shrink-wrapped and put on the shelves for full birds and turkey breasts, Cardona said. 

Over the past few years, Vlaminck said he noticed the trend of “Friendsgiving,” where smaller groups of friends gather for the holiday instead of a large family, influencing the demand for different kinds of turkey meat around the holiday. 

“It gets the producers looking more for more Friendsgiving-friendly stuff,” Vlaminck said. “So maybe instead of a whole bird, it might be a boneless breast.”

The Friendsgiving trend has impacted hen growers as well, as farmers need to grow smaller birds, Vlaminck said. 

“They want those smaller birds there too,” Vlaminck said. “So they’ll maybe keep them alive a little bit less time, and they might change the feed ration a bit so they grow a little slower.”

Just as Thanksgiving is traditionally a holiday centered around spending time and sharing a meal with family, the business of growing turkeys is also family-focused, Vlaminck said. Falhun Farms is a family business started by his father-in-law and employs many of his family members. 

“It’s all family operation, and that’s the way turkey is in Minnesota,” Vlaminck said. “Turkey is family because it’s all family raised. And you think about enjoying turkey together as a family.”

The Gift of Life club at the University of Minnesota provides students with resources to donate bone marrow and stem cells. 

The drives do not allow students to donate bone marrow or stem cells at the site, only giving students the opportunity to join the registry, said the club’s co-president, Grant Higgins. They are then notified if they are a match for someone who needs bone marrow.

“All of what we do is trying to get people to swab and join in the registry to see if they are a match for someone,” Higgins said. “And if they are a match, typically, we either fly them and the recipient out to our national headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida or wherever the patient is, because it’s usually a lot harder for the recipient to travel than it is for donors.”

Higgins said joining the registry is simple. Students just need to swab their cheek with a kit provided by the larger Gift of Life organization. 

Students swab both of their cheeks and are told to choose their favorite cheek for a third, Higgins said.

Ashley Raskin, Gift of Life’s co-president, said the club hosts swabbing drives throughout the semester to make the process accessible to students. 

“When we’re doing the drives, we do them on campus,” Raskin said. “People usually will see us tabling, and they’ll be interested and ask about it. That’s kind of how we do most of our outreach.”

Higgins said the University’s Gift of Life chapter also hosts mega drives to get as many students swabbed as possible. They set up a booth in the Northrop Mall to advertise to passersby.

Dr. Meera Srikanthan, an assistant professor in the division of Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy at the University’s Medical School, said bone marrow transplants are used for patients with leukemia, sickle cell disease and bone marrow failure. 

The procedure is usually done after other treatments, such as chemotherapy, fail, Srikanthan said. 

Bone marrow transplants, now called hematopoietic stem cell transplants, are not using bone marrow, according to Srikanthan. They remove the stem cells from a healthy person’s bone marrow to be injected into the bloodstream of the patient who needs the transplant. 

“These stem cells scatter and set up shop in the bone marrow and usually somewhere between 10 to 20 days after we infuse it, we start seeing those new cells starting to show up in their bloodstream,” Srikanthan said. 

There are multiple procedures a donor can undergo to donate their stem cells, according to Srikanthan. 

Bone marrow harvest procedures are the most common, Srikanthan said. The procedure requires the donor to be put under anesthesia.

“We go in and we use needles to go into the pelvic bone, so right on top of each butt cheek, essentially with a needle and pulling out the bone marrow,” Srikanthan said. 

Another less invasive procedure is called peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation, Srikanthan said. PBSC donation is less invasive than a bone marrow harvest. 

With this procedure, a donor takes medication in the form of a shot to stimulate the bone marrow, causing stem cells to appear in the bloodstream. 

“That way we can actually collect stem cells from their blood rather than doing the bone marrow harvest procedures,” Srikanthan said. 

Caden Riewer, a fourth-year student, said he matched with a patient through Gift of Life and flew out to Washington D.C. to donate stem cells in the fall of 2024.

Riewer said the entire trip was completely free, and Gift of Life was very accommodating and reimbursed all of his expenses. 

“It was a five-day operation where I would get three shots a day for the first four days of a medication that made my bone stem cells overproduce stem cells that would be inputted into my bloodstream,” Riewer said. “On the fifth day, I would have the blood taken out, run through a machine that would separate my stem cells from the blood, and put it back into my body. The final procedure took about six to seven hours and the machine cycled the entire contents of my blood three times.”

Even though the procedure was intensive, it was not particularly painful, Riewer said. 

“The procedure itself only caused mild discomfort from having a needle in your arms for multiple hours, but if you are good with needles it was a surprisingly easy process,” Riewer said.

Srikanthan said bone marrow transplants are a life-saving procedure.

According to the National Library of Medicine, 80.4% of patients who received a bone marrow transplant lived 20 years after receiving the cells.

“Hematopoietic stem cell transplants literally save lives,” Srikanthan said. “Whether it’s a patient who has cancer or a patient who has sickle cell disease, there’s a wide variety of different diseases that we treat where stem cell transplant is a new beginning for them.”

Boynton Health’s 2024 College Student Health Survey Report said cannabis use is on the rise for college students, while high-risk drinking is steadily declining. 

High-risk drinking among University of Minnesota students, or drinking five or more alcoholic beverages in one sitting, is down about 10% since 2015, according to the survey report. Cannabis use, on the other hand, is up roughly 9%. 

The shift in the rates of consumption of both substances comes from changing attitudes about drinking culture. 

Jack Baribeau, a fourth-year student at the University of Minnesota, said he prefers cannabis because of the danger he sees in bars and other places where people drink. 

“Drinking culture is messy to me. I’ve heard of people getting assaulted at bars because others aren’t able to control their actions as much when they’re drunk,” Baribeau said. “I don’t see the same danger when I use marijuana because I’m normally in my own home and have control of the situation.”

Third-year student Katie Leach said she drank more in high school and at the beginning of college. Now, she prefers marijuana because she does not get hangovers the day after smoking.

“I can smoke as much weed as I want in a day and the next day I’ll feel fine,” Leach said.

Leach said she feels like she has more control of her body when she is high as well.

“Drinking makes me feel like I am more disconnected from my body and my body’s just like doing whatever it wants,” Leach said.  “Whereas when I’m high, I have more control over my body. I’m able to control my thoughts more in a sense with the amount I’m smoking.”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, cannabis and THC products alter people’s moods, thoughts and perceptions of reality. 

Julie Sanem, a research project specialist at the University’s Cannabis Research Center, said increasing cannabis use can be seen nationwide. 

According to the World Health Organization, 15% of Americans reported smoking marijuana in 2024, compared to 7% in 2013. 

“We see both trends occurring across the United States,” Sanem said. “So we’ve seen cannabis use increasing over time among University of Minnesota students, among other adults in the United States and among college students across the country. And so I think it’s not too surprising that we’re seeing this trend in University of Minnesota students.”

According to the survey report, 27% of college students reported consuming some form of cannabis. In comparison, 24% of students reported high-risk drinking. 

Several factors caused this shift, Sanem said. 24 states have legalized marijuana in some capacity, including Minnesota, making cannabis easier to get ahold of than in previous years. 

Additionally, Sanem said colleges promoted safe drinking practices. 

The University of Minnesota program eCheckup To Go, for example, allows students to reflect on their drinking habits and points students toward other resources to get help if they feel they have a problem. 

“Colleges have focused on trying to reduce the rates of high-risk drinking among students for quite a while, and we have a lot of good evidence about what works for reducing high-risk drinking among college students,” Sanem said.

ThanhVan Vu, the associate director of Clinical Operations for outpatient mental health therapy who works with students struggling with substance abuse at Boynton Health, said it’s important for students to be mindful of how they consume both alcohol and cannabis to ensure they stay safe. 

“Are they utilizing that substance in a recreational way? How much space does that take up? Or are they utilizing that substance as a coping mechanism in order to alleviate anxiety?” Vu said.

Vu said a good way for students to be mindful of their substance use is to make a plan for the time they will be intoxicated. 

“Am I going to be hanging out with just a group of friends at their apartment? Am I going to a bar? I think planning ahead can really help put you in the mindset of how aware and how you’re engaging with substances,” Vu said.

Boynton offers a variety of programs to help students if they are struggling with substance use, Vu said. Boynton also offers assessments to help diagnose students with substance use disorders if they are concerned about their relationship with cannabis or alcohol.

The Rural Physician Associate Program, or RPAP, encourages University of Minnesota Medical School students to work in rural areas to gain professional experience, according to their website.

RPAP trains third-year University Medical School students to work in rural areas and understand the nuances that come with working with patients from rural areas, the Director of RPAP Kirby Clark said.

The program places students in cities in greater Minnesota and western Wisconsin, Clark said. Every medical student is required to have experience in a variety of fields of medicine, which RPAP allows students to do by working in clinics with different specialties.

“We match these students with these incredible doctors in rural communities. They’re so engaging and skilled and connected to their communities,” Clark said. “And the students see that they’re like, ‘I want to be like that person.’”

Clark said the program has been around for 54 years and was the first program of its kind. Since its conception in 1971, the RPAP program has been replicated all over the world.

Giving students the opportunity to study medicine in rural areas encourages them to return after completing their residency, as opposed to when students spend all 12 years of their training in metropolitan areas where they form relationships and plant their roots, Clark said.

“So what if we kind of whet their appetite during their training for a rural site and have them form some relationships there during this formative time,” Clark said. “So that’s what we do during their third year.”

Clark said about 42% of students who go through the RPAP program end up returning to rural areas after completing their education.

Austen Ott, an alumnus of the program for the 2023-24 term, said RPAP was a main factor as to why they applied to the University’s Medical School. They wanted to work in a rural setting while practicing family medicine.

Ott said they were placed in Willmar, Minnesota, about two hours outside of the Twin Cities, where they studied under two physicians in family medicine.

“I really got to see everything that a family physician could possibly do by working with the two of them,” Ott said. “And it was a great kind of day-to-day experience, because I would just follow whoever it was I was working with that day around.”

Ott said another benefit of the program was the ability to work with the same patients more than once and form a relationship with them, something uncommon in the medical school experience.

“I had the opportunity to see, for example, a patient who was seven or eight months pregnant when I first got there, and then she delivered her baby,” Ott said. “And then also I got to see her newborn over the course of that nine months.”

Ott said they felt the ability to work so closely with patients over and over again was a privilege to them as it led to unique opportunities.

“I felt very privileged to have that opportunity to be involved in that mom’s care because I had built up enough trust with her through our office visits,” Ott said. “And then also with the physician that I was working with, after working with him for several months, I was able to do a delivery all on my own, with him just supervising me.”

While Ott already knew they wanted to work in rural health care, they said RPAP only solidified that goal.

“After completing the RPAP program, I am very confident that I want to do family medicine,” Ott said. “I know that there’s kind of no other specialty that I would feel the happiest in. And I do want to go back to a rural area.”

Correction: The pronouns of Austen Ott are they/them, not he/him.