Nearly six months after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, the University of Minnesota is undergoing several efforts to reexamine and reform campus police.

However, some say they feel change is not happening quickly enough.

The University Senate and Senate committees have been discussing several student-led reform proposals this month while the University’s consultant Cedric Alexander continues his review of UMPD. Student activists have voiced concerns about the University’s progress on police reform and oversight.

External review of UMPD

Following the announcement of his review in August, Alexander has been gathering community input on UMPD. He has met with over 200 individuals on campus, President Joan Gabel said at the Nov. 5 University Senate meeting.

Alexander’s contract with the University does not specify an end date for the review, but the University anticipates it will be finished towards the beginning of 2021. Alexander is paid $25,000 for each month he works with the University.

“[Dr. Alexander’s] input will provide valuable perspective on opportunities to enhance safety on the Twin Cities campus and it will be thoroughly considered. However, the University will not hesitate to consider ways to enhance public safety if necessary while Dr. Alexander finishes his work,” according to a University statement emailed to the Minnesota Daily.

The Campus Safety Committee

The Senate, which is part of the University’s governance structure and is led by Gabel, voted on Nov. 5 to form the Campus Safety Committee, a centralized group that will advise University leaders on campus safety and policing, among other responsibilities. A Professional Student Government task force pioneered the committee after Floyd’s death.

The Senate Consultative Committee (SCC), which is composed of faculty, staff and students and reports to the University Senate, urged senators to vote against the proposal. The committee cited a lack of consultation with governance committees and other stakeholder groups, and because members of the SCC said it would be beneficial to wait until after Alexander completes his review of UMPD.

According to a comment on the agenda for the November Senate meeting, “The SCC opposes adoption not because the suggested bylaw amendment lacks merit. Instead, it opposes the bylaw change at this time because this amendment would better be considered … after the final report from Dr. Cedric Alexander is available.”

In the comment, the SCC said it would consider approving the bylaw proposal for the Campus Safety Committee after Alexander’s report becomes available.

Despite the statement, the Senate approved the proposal with a vote of 119 to 48, with nine abstaining.

“A lot of people like [the idea of] a safety committee … There are problems with that particular proposal and also some significant concerns from Civil Service and from PACC,” SCC Chair Phil Buhlmann said prior to the Nov. 5 vote. “It just seems really premature. And we totally understand that everybody feels like we need results. We need results, but there’s just a little bit too much rush here.”

The proposal, which was initially presented to the senate in June, faced other criticism from University Senators due to its lack of representation from specific groups on campus, such as professional, administrative and civil service workers.

University stakeholders in and out of the Senate have also scrutinized the proposal because it does not have a clear plan to ensure students of color are represented on the committee.

“When we’re dealing with UMPD, and police presence on campus, it’s super important to make sure that Black and brown voices are centered, the folks that have been doing this for a really long time, rather than putting it in governance structures,” Minnesota Student Association President Amy Ma said.

While the SCC has been supportive of a Campus Safety Committee, it would have preferred more consultations and modifications from the proposal before the Nov. 5 vote, said Ned Patterson, the Vice Chair of the SCC in an email to the Minnesota Daily.

Some senators said they were opposed to the proposal because they feel students are overrepresented in the makeup of the committee.

Ongoing police review and activist criticism

Some student activists have said they believe that the Senate’s recommendation to wait until after Alexander’s review is finished to implement proposals is causing an unnecessary delay to Some student activists have said they believe that the Senate’s recommendation to wait until after Alexander’s review is finished to implement proposals is causing unnecessary delay to campus safety discussions and reform on campus

“I think it has definitely stalled a lot of these conversations. Coming into this consultation process, there was definitely skepticism from students and even within student government, that this was kind of seen as a way to delay the conversation,” Ma said.

Mattea Allert, a third-year graduate student and Speaker of the Council of Graduate Students, said some student UMPD reform proposals predate the review. Mattea also co-authored the proposal for the Campus Safety Committee.

“Students … were having these discussions well before Dr. Alexander ever came to campus,” Allert said. “It [doesn’t] make any sense for him to be used as an excuse to shut down various proposals that were created well before he came into the picture.”

Ma said that nationwide, advocacy can be delayed until the activists who are pushing for reform do not have the resources to continue. Similarly, some students pushing for UMPD reform could graduate and leave the University before their proposal is considered, she added.

Josh Lesser, the vice president of Professional Student Government and third-year law student also helped to write the Campus Safety Committee proposal.

“Students are still on campus and they want immediate action to be done by the University, to ensure that they feel safe,” Lesser said. “Hiring [an external] consultant is great for long term changes, but it doesn’t address the short term concerns that students have.”

Jack Flom, the MSA Representative to the Student Senate Consultative Committee, said they feel that there are demands from students that have not been heard by Senate leadership. Flom is also advocating for a proposal to gradually disarm all University system police departments.

Senate leadership response

Buhlmann said he believes the Senate has not been a barrier to University police reform. While consultation takes time, it exists to create long-term and effective solutions, and the University will benefit from waiting for Alexander’s review to make decisions about campus safety, he said.

“Sometimes consultation is slow … If you want to really have real big change, you need to do it thoroughly,” Buhlmann said. “To really cause a thorough change and make sure that the safety committee somehow in some form is really effective on campus, it needs to be also broadly accepted as an effective committee. And right now, we have various constituencies on campus that are not supportive of that current committee.”

The University of Minnesota has chosen to delay spring break by nearly a month on the Twin Cities and Rochester campuses to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

By pushing back spring break from its usual dates in March to April 5 through 9, the University could delay large groups of students leaving and returning to campus, and help to mitigate the spread of the virus. The University Senate voted to approve the proposal Monday, with consideration of feedback from faculty and students.

Similar to last spring, if there is a rise in COVID-19 cases, the University could pivot to online-only learning following spring break.

“[This plan] will also enable us to watch how the public health situation develops and to consider what mode of instruction would be best for the weeks after spring break and for final exams,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Croson at the Oct. 8 Board of Regents meeting.

The University has yet to decide on the modality of courses following spring break, which could be online-only, hybrid or in-person. According to a recent email from the University to staff and faculty, instructors chose their course modality for spring semester at the beginning of October. Professional programs will retain their own calendars for spring semester.

The Senate Committee on Educational Policy (SCEP), who recommended the break take place in April, also discussed a broken up spring break, which would have meant several individual days off spread throughout the semester.

Through consultation with students, SCEP found that many wanted five continuous days of spring break at some point in the semester, said SCEP Chair Thomas Chase.

Some faculty said they also preferred a continuous spring break. Faculty Consultative Committee member Tabitha Grier-Reed said the emotional exhaustion and isolation of the pandemic will continue to impact students, staff and faculty in the spring, making a continuous break important. Grier-Reed works in the College of Education and Human Development.

“I think people have questions about spring break because people need a break. I think students will need a break; faculty will need a break,” Grier-Reed said. “The idea of not having a break, I think, seemed pretty unacceptable.”

The current plan also aligns the University’s break with those of the Minneapolis and St. Paul K-12 school systems, which would lower the burden on some parents at the University, Chase said.

“The Minneapolis and St. Paul public school systems have their spring break on the week of April 5. And so, for those who are parents and are faced with this problem of homeschooling … It’s really attractive for them to have our spring break aligned with their spring break,” Chase said.

Other Big Ten schools are also navigating their own spring break plans.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Michigan will entirely eliminate spring break from their calendars. Purdue University will start its semester later, with the addition of three “reading days,” where students will not have class but are expected to remain on campus.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will start their spring semester six days later than normal and will have a few days off throughout the semester. Michigan State University has not yet made a decision regarding spring break as of Oct. 3.

“Nobody knows exactly the right thing to do,” Chase said. “We don’t know what the current situation [will] be in the spring. Will it be getting better? Will it be getting worse? Nobody knows. And so basically we just have to make our best guess as to where to go from here.”

A majority of undergraduates have confirmed the University of Minnesota’s COVID-19 risk acknowledgement on their MyU page, a move that has been met with varied reactions from students and staff.

The pop-up, which was added before the start of the fall semester, asks students to assume responsibility for their personal safety and to acknowledge that tuition is based on credits rather than course modality. Students must accept the pop-up before they can proceed to their MyU account, where they can check class registration status and billing statements.

Over 91% of undergraduate students have now confirmed the statement, according to One Stop Student Services.

After students took to social media to voice concerns about the waiver, Executive Vice President and Provost Rachel Croson sent out a systemwide email to explain that the acknowledgement is not a waiver of legal rights.

“Instead, it is a way for us to be clear about the University’s expectations and intentions,” read Croson’s email to students.

The statement was later slightly modified to explain the statement’s intent.

According to the email, similar acknowledgments have been used multiple times in the past. Students who chose not to confirm the statement were directed to reach out to One Stop Student Services.

“We also wanted to provide clarity for students that the mode of class delivery does not change the fact that tuition is charged in exchange for teaching by the University’s renowned instructors, research and other experiences … and that it is still expected that tuition bills are paid by the published due dates,” said Julie Selander, director of One Stop Student Services, in an emailed statement to the Minnesota Daily.

Some staff and faculty were not informed of the waiver before its publication on the University’s website, said Claire Hilgeman, a senior academic advisor in the College of Liberal Arts.

“Nobody knew about it; I think it was sort of a surprise for everybody,” Hilgeman said. “It would have been nice to have gotten a heads up and had more of a process, rather than just be blindsided by it.”

The University has the ability to put holds on students to prevent them from registering for classes if certain fees are not paid or if there is missing information regarding admissions; however, the measure is only used when needed, Hilgeman said.

“I wished [the waiver] had been worded differently to give a little more dignity to students and faculty. I did understand why ultimately they did need the students to sign it,” she said.

Some students said they felt the waiver was unfair because they had to agree to the terms before they could access MyU.

“I do think that that was forceful and coercive,” said graduate student Savannah Wery, who started a petition asking the administration to remove the pop-up and urged officials to get students to agree to the statement in a “less coercive” way.