Starting next fall at the University of Minnesota, a new three-year project will host virtual workshops, reading groups and speaker events focusing on the experiences of people with disabilities using a critical lens.

The project, titled “Refusing Disposability: Racial and Disability Justice Toward Another World,” is hosted by the University’s Critical Disability Studies Collective (CDSC) and will cover topics like intersectionality and amplified vulnerability during the pandemic. The overarching theme of the CDSC’s project focuses on the campaign and hashtag that started when the pandemic hit, #NoBodyIsDisposable, to resist triage discrimination.

As hospitals and medical professionals reached capacity during the pandemic, triage protocols applied a hierarchy system to prioritize providing treatment for certain patients over others. The campaign, #NoBodyIsDisposable, advocates for the resistance of triage discrimination, which many argue disproportionately denies treatment and minimizes the lives of people with disabilities, elders and more.

“Before COVID-19, marginalized communities have had reason to fear bias in medical settings. We are terrified of being killed by the people who are supposed to care for us. Let’s protect each other and fight for the resources and policies we need to get through this emergency together,” read the #NoBodyIsDisposable campaign’s open letter to medical professionals around the country.

A project lead and University professor, Dr. Jennifer Row, said that part of the CDSC project would examine the system of triage protocols to understand how and why medical professionals treat certain lives as more valuable than others.

Three University graduate students formed the CDSC in 2015 to create an academic community to study disability at the University. Ultimately, the current goal of the CDSC is to establish a department with a major or minor in critical disability studies.

“We are trying to engage folks in the study and understanding of disability as a sort of cultural site, so by that we mean not a medical problem or a medical issue that disabled folks need to fix,” said Dr. Angela Carter, CDSC co-founder and co-chair. “But instead … thinking and understanding disability more from the humanities and social science perspective.”

The CDSC’s project will also include workshops to support University instructors who want to develop new courses to advance students’ learning, grow academic scholarship and expand research on critical disability studies.

“The University of Minnesota is really behind its Big Ten peers,” Row said. “[Critical disability studies] really is a prominent field that is being celebrated, explored and researched across the country and the U is direly behind because we have nothing. We do not even have an undergraduate minor.”

Another core component of the CDSC’s project is to create an online public access curriculum for instructors outside the University to learn about critical disability studies, integrate it into their courses and share knowledge.

“The creation of a public access curriculum breaking down that boundary between the larger world and the ivory tower, creating that as a bridge and making sure that knowledge is facilitated in such a way that it is useful, usable and applicable by the public,” said Dr. Jessica Horvath Williams, CDSC co-chair and project lead.

Row said the CDSC plans to make a website for a public access curriculum that may include webinars, shared syllabi, and activities that can be adaptive for K-12 educators to teach their students.

CDSC members plan for the first two years of the project to be virtual and the last year to be in-person. The CDSC will invite activists, scholars, authors and artists to speak at events on various topics related to critical disability studies.

“We are trying to institutionalize critical disability studies as a program, but our work has really been inspired by, or ignited by, a lot of the difficulties and issues that were set off by both a lot of the COVID-19 inequities but also the racial violence that we have been seeing,” Row said.

The University of Minnesota is hosting three virtual teach-in events to bring activists, scholars and students together to discuss race, policing and the criminal justice system in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin.

On Monday, the first teach-in, “Criminal (in)Justice, Race, and Policing: Derek Chauvin, Mohamed Noor, and Beyond,” featured four panelists: associate professors Keith Mayes and Michelle Phelps; Sam Martinez, an activist with Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar; and University law graduate Ian Taylor. Race, Indigeneity, Gender and Sexuality Studies Initiative and the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop host the teach-ins.

The day after the first teach-in, the jury in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin found him guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Panelists at the teach-in discussed the potential outcome of a guilty verdict, including other topics such as reparations, social movements and police reform. More than 350 people attended the teach-in.

“If Derek Chauvin is convicted in any of the charges, he’ll likely appeal to the Court of Appeals,” Taylor said. “If that’s affirmed there, then he’ll appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. … When it’s affirmed at that level, then what happens is that it establishes state precedent.”

As a result, judges trying similar cases in the future will need to abide by the established precedent set by equal or higher courts, Taylor added.

Former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor’s case is up for appeal in June. Jurors convicted him of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in 2019 for the killing of Justine Ruszczyk. Noor’s appeal, if successful, could impact Chauvin’s case and sentencing.

In the discussion, panelists responded to a question about the differences between Noor’s case and the upcoming trial of former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter, including race and gender disparities in the criminal legal system.

“I think this question touches on obviously something really important, which is how perceptions of how racialized men or Black men move through spaces versus how white women move through spaces and how we interpret those actions. And I think those disparities are met at almost every sector of our society,” Taylor said.

Potter is facing a second-degree manslaughter charge after firing the shot that killed Daunte Wright. Taylor said the main difference, in the legal sense, between Potter and Noor is the charges they face.

The defendant’s mental state is a key factor that influences the charges from the prosecutors. Taylor said prosecutors need to evaluate whether the defendant acted with a “depraved mind,” meaning that the defendant acted in reckless disregard of life or unreasonable risk.

Phelps said the Chauvin murder trial has prompted public conversations about the use of force, expectations from law enforcement and more.

“There’s all of these ways that the trial has inadvertently put policing on trial, even as the prosecution attempts to distance itself,” Phelps said. “If we do get a conviction, I think that sends a message, right? That police don’t have this blank slip for police violence, and I think that’s an important message for the trial to send.”

Amber Joy Powell, the moderator and a University Ph.D. candidate in sociology, asked the panelists if a conviction of Chauvin is a victory and a sign of justice.

“The most basic answer is no. Nothing is going to bring back George Floyd. Nothing is going to bring back Jamar [Clark],” Martinez said. “Nothing is going to stop these families from the mental and emotional harm that’s happened or that we’ll have to deal with for so many years down the road.”

After the announcement of the jury’s verdict, crowds cheered and nearby cars honked in support. Still, many people echoed the same sentiment as Martinez — the work is not over. During the last half of the teach-in, panelists answered submitted questions. One attendee asked about the vision of reparations after the murder of George Floyd.

“We have to do a long cost accounting of all the ways that Black and brown people have been discriminated against and done wrong,” Mayes said. “You’re going to have to add it up from areas of housing, education, forced labor, unpaid labor, violent deaths — you can just name it, on and on and on. I don’t think there’s enough money in the U.S. treasury if it’s going to be monetary to pay Black folks back, but we have to start.”

A new University of Minnesota Living Learning Community (LLC) called the Dakota Language House will launch next fall to advance and support students’ learning of the Dakota language.

Radius Apartments in Dinkytown will house the LLC for students to live and learn Dakota together. An LLC is housing assigned for students to live together in a community dedicated to similar interests, academic goals and personal direction.

The American Indian studies department and the Dakota Language Program collaborated to develop the Dakota Language House to create LLCs based on languages taught in the department, focusing on language revitalization.

“To speak the language is to literally breathe life into the language because you’re using the air to speak language, and so, in a metaphorical but in the literal way. So by speaking the language, we’re breathing life into it and that’s actually a phrase in our language,” said Šišóka Dúta, a University Dakota language instructor. Dúta is an enrolled member of the Lake Traverse Reservation and he is Sisithunwan Wahpethunwan Dakhota.

As an undergraduate student, Dúta said he would have loved the opportunity to be in an environment where people speak the Dakota language daily.

“If you could find a place to do that, then you create like a little pocket or language bubble where the English language is either not spoken or severely reduced, and if you do that, you’re going to progress faster in the target language, which would be Dakota,” Dúta said.

Mobilizing to preserve language

In the late 1800s, the U.S. government forced Indigenous children to attend boarding schools to erase their culture, language and traditions. The boarding schools forced students to only speak English, dress in American-style clothing and convert to Christianity.

By the 1970s, most of the boarding schools closed, but Dúta said Indigenous parents and grandparents decided not to pass down the language for various reasons, including the trauma from these boarding schools.

“A lot of my people knew how to speak [Dakota] but refused to speak it because of the treatment by these schools. Other people refuse to speak it because they wanted to assimilate, so it’s kind of like a variety,” Dúta said. “But because many people decided ‘No, I’m not going to pass it on to the next generation’… then you have like Gen X and the millennial generation who didn’t grow up with their heritage language.”

Recently, more people from the younger generation who did not grow up speaking Dakota, including Dúta, are learning it as adults to maintain the heritage culture, he added.

“I think a lot of people my age and even younger … are really showing interest because we want to keep it alive for the next generations coming,” Dúta said.

Dustin Morrow, a citizen of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and a third-year University student, said his grandmother was the last Ojibwe speaker in his family. Because she passed away when he was three, Morrow did not have the opportunity to learn the language in his early life.

“You feel that absence, even though you don’t really know it. You still feel the absence because of just everything that’s put on you,” Morrow said. “I just wanted it back. I guess that’s why I decided language is where I want to be.”

Development of the Ojibwe Immersion House

Morrow was one of the first students living in the Ojibwe Immersion House, an LLC launched by the Ojibwe Language Program last year, where students are fully immersed in the Ojibwe language. The Ojibwe Immersion House LLC influenced the vision behind the Dakota Learning House. Both language programs — Ojibwe and Dakota — are situated within the American Indian Studies Department.
Most of the students’ heritage is Ojibwe, so they are learning the language of their heritage, said Brendan Kishketon, a citizen of Kickapoo and Ojibwe tribes, an associate professor and the director of the Ojibwe Language Program.

The two houses are a part of efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages.

“That’s the end goal here. Not just for [students] to get exposure, not just for them to learn it, not just for them to be highly proficient,” Kishketon said. “But that they become so highly proficient that when they graduate and start having a family… that they can speak to their own kids in the language thereby perpetuating the language, saving the language, keeping the language alive, so that it doesn’t go extinct.”

At the Ojibwe Immersion House, there is a no English-speaking rule which students need to follow while living in the house. But because most Dakota language students are enrolled at the beginner or intermediate level, the Dakota Language House is not an immersion house yet, Dúta said. He added that students who live in the Dakota Language House are highly encouraged to speak the language.

Morrow joined the University’s Ojibwe Language Program after watching a nine-minute video of University students and faculty members speaking Ojibwe and sharing their personal experiences in the program and the importance of preserving the language.

Immediately after watching the video, he said he felt a strong motivation to apply to the Ojibwe Language Program but also a slight hesitation because it had been four years since he had last been in school.

However, he still decided to apply. Now, almost three years later, he will be graduating this spring with a double-major in linguistics and Ojibwe.

“When you come from a reservation, or even just a rural setting and come into the city, it’s difficult to adjust. But when you’re just surrounded by people that come from the same background as you and know exactly what you’re going through with that kind of thing, it really makes the transition easier,” Morrow said.

Next fall, Morrow will live in the Ojibwe Immersion House again because the University’s linguistics graduate program accepted him.

Kishketon said he introduced a plan three years ago to establish three initiatives in the program to attract more students to enroll. Last year, he accomplished the plan, which included creating an Ojibwe language major, establishing a summer institute for American Indian high school students to learn more about the University and forming the Ojibwe Immersion House.

“Why we started it was to give the students an opportunity to learn in an environment that’s not a classroom. But personally, I wanted life to be their classroom,” Kishketon said.

In February, the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health received a $5 million grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota to create the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity.

The vision behind the center was formed by Dr. Rachel Hardeman, a tenured associate professor in the School of Public Health Division of Health Policy and Management. She will be the founding director of the center to advance racial health equity through research and community-centered action.

Hardeman said in an email to the Minnesota Daily that during middle school and high school, she spent evenings and weekends going to doctors’ appointments with her grandmother, who suffered from kidney failure.

She added that her grandmother experienced discrimination and indifference from her medical providers. Eventually, she decided to stop treatment that was keeping her alive.

“At age 16, I lost my grandmother because she was tired of dealing with a health care system that didn’t seem to care about her,” she said in her email. “This is why I went to school at the University of Minnesota and now work here: to influence our systems to do better by our communities of color.”

Hardeman was born and raised in Minneapolis. She is starting new projects to examine the impact of police violence and over-policing on maternal-infant health as well as working with doctoral students in her research lab titled “Measuring and Operationalizing Racism to Achieve Health Equity.”

Her career has focused on researching racial health inequities and reproductive health equity, including the effects of structural racism in health.

“The center is a natural evolution of my life and career. I have deep roots in Minnesota and our communities of color, and I strive to have my research directly connect back to communities,” Hardeman said in the email. “My vision for the center is manifested from my commitment to achieve racial justice and optimal health for Black communities and other communities of color.”

To Hardeman, “structural racism is a solvable problem, and we all have a role to play in confronting it.”
The center will focus on five areas, including developing antiracist research on the impact of racism on health, serving as a trusted resource to outside organizations on issues related to racism and health equity and changing the narrative about race so whiteness is not the “ideal standard for human beings.”

At this time, the center’s timeline and development is in the planning process.

“In the next several years, we hope that the Center will have established strong community partnerships, be actively conducting community-based research, and be a trusted source of information and innovation,” Hardeman said in her email.

In July, she became the first Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity as part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota’s mission to end racial and health inequities. The donation gift is the largest ever received to a center at the School of Public Health.

Dr. Mark Steffen, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota’s chief medical officer and vice president, said in the future the organization will continue to collaborate with the University as a whole and learn from Hardeman’s work.

“More importantly, [the center will] help us think about what are going to be those important strategies that we, as a health plan, can deploy that improves the health equity for the members in the communities that we serve,” he added.

Around six years ago, J’Mag Karbeah met Hardeman when she applied to be a teaching assistant for one of Hardeman’s classes. While pursuing her master’s degree in maternal and child health, Karbeah said the lack of discussion around racial health disparities in reproductive health and institutional barriers made her training feel incomplete.

But when she met Hardeman, Karbeah said her experience at the school changed.

“It was the first time that I felt my ideas had a place within public health and that these larger ideas about systems and history could really be incorporated into current public health practice,” she said.

At a meeting almost five years ago, Karbeah said she had whispered about possibly pursuing a Ph.D. program. When Hardeman heard, Karbeah said she fully supported and encouraged her. Now, as a Ph.D. student, Karbeah has Hardeman as her academic adviser.

“I honestly applied to Minnesota’s Ph.D. program because I knew there was the possibility [Hardeman] could be my adviser and we’ve worked together ever since,” Karbeah said.

Hardeman’s passion to advance racial health equity stems from her personal journey. She said she is determined to continue doing what she loves.

“Advancing racial health equity is advancing the health, dignity, and opportunity for people I love most. By doing my research, I honor my parents, grandparents, and ancestors, and I build a better future for my daughter,” Hardeman said in her email.

When Hana Maruyama was in high school, her mother encouraged her to do school projects surrounding the family’s history. Now as a University of Minnesota Ph.D. candidate, Maruyama and her brother, Noah Maruyama, are collecting and preserving the stories of Japanese Americans forcibly incarcerated during World War II.

The podcast “Campu” spotlights objects such as rocks, fences, food and paper — objects commonly found in jails and prisons — to add intimate details of life inside the concentration camps. The name refers to the term “campu no kuse,” which describes the custom of “incarcerees” collecting objects in the camps.

“Campu” incorporates firsthand oral histories from the camps with the help of Densho, a Seattle-based nonprofit that aims to preserve and share the history of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

“So many have reached out to say, ‘This [podcast] was incredibly healing for me, and it felt like it was my family history, even if you weren’t actually talking to my family members,’” Hana said. “I think that feedback has been just incredible and exactly what we set out to do in the very beginning.”

Since its launch in September, the Los Angeles Review of Books podcast review channel named “Campu” a top-five podcast to listen to in January, and the New York Times listed it as a top-eight new podcast.

Tom Ikeda, Densho’s founder and director, had two generations of family members incarcerated during the war. In the 1990s, Ikeda realized that many Issei and Nisei — first-generation and second-generation Japanese immigrants, respectively — incarcerees had died, motivating him to record their stories before they were lost forever.

“[Ikeda] knew that making these oral histories, recording them like videos and then making them available online for free, was going to be more powerful and long-lasting than trying to establish a traditional museum or just [creating] audio files,” said Natasha Varner, the communications and public engagement director at Densho.

Hana and Noah made these oral histories the cornerstone of the listening experience in “Campu,” alongside Hana’s narration and Noah’s audio engineering and musical scores.

Each podcast episode ends with Hana or Noah reading each narrator’s name who shared their oral history archive in the episode. Many of the narrators are no longer alive. For the former incarcerees who are still living, the podcast is a platform to discover the stories they suppressed for decades.

“People have said that they hear familiar voices in the credits where we list 60 or so names in a row, and they will recognize someone that they knew 40 or 50 years ago,” Noah said. “The variety of voices of the incarcerees is really what is special about this podcast, and that would not have been possible without Densho.”

Silence on the subject has meant that a younger generation of Japanese Americans has grown up with a clouded knowledge of their family’s history and pain, Hana said.

Growing up in Washington D.C., the siblings said they had family members who were forcibly incarcerated in the camps but rarely spoke about their experiences.

Before the podcast, Noah said he only knew the surface of the history of Japanese American incarceration. He grew up not having Japanese American friends and feeling disconnected from a part of his identity, he said.

“For Japanese Americans, speaking together is healing. That silence often hurts us, and wounds fester when you don’t treat them,” Noah said. “This really was a period of personal growth for me in working on this. I think reckoning with that is what made it so.”

A story of injustice

The first episode provides context for where many of the camps were — land that belonged to Native Americans and, during westward expansion, was often cultivated by enslaved Africans.

“I want us to understand how this relates to greater systems of oppression in this country,” Hana said. “That first episode, we try and talk about how this country was built on the dispossession of American Indians and the enslavement of Black people. And I think understanding that as the foundation that enabled what happened to Japanese Americans is important.”

The incarceration of Japanese Americans in the U.S. began in February 1942 after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, clearing the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Some historians regard Roosevelt as one of the top presidents in U.S. history, often credited with bringing the country out of the Great Depression. However, many Japanese Americans have different memories of the nation’s longest-serving president.

“It’s very apparent that anytime you bring [Roosevelt] up with a Japanese American, it’s very negative. That goes for my dad, my grandmother and pretty much anyone I can think of,” Noah said. “Japanese Americans often understate quite a bit, laugh off or stay silent about the things they are angry about. That is not there for FDR.”

In response to intelligence about a possible attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt commissioned a report investigating Japanese Americans’ loyalty in the Western United States. The report largely concluded that Japanese Americans were loyal and would pose little threat to the U.S.

Despite results from the report, Roosevelt signed the order in a decision that J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI at the time, said was based on “public and political pressure rather than on factual data.”

Throughout the podcast, Hana and Noah refrain from using the term “internment camps.” According to Hana, the term refers to the detention of “enemy aliens,” which does not apply to the American citizens that made up two-thirds of the incarcerees.

Instead, Hana and Noah use the term “concentration camps.”

“The term concentration camp is really the most fitting, historically accurate term that exists for what happened to Japanese Americans, and that is why we do use that term in the podcast,” Hana said.

During history classes, Hana said she rarely heard this side of Roosevelt’s legacy. She often grappled with the question of whether a “good” president could put people in concentration camps and still be revered.

Looking to the future

Hana and Noah are in talks with Densho to create additional material for “Campu.” They both want to continue the project after Hana completes her dissertation at the University.

The siblings’ focus is currently on a special episode that will honor their grandmother, whom they lost to COVID-19 in late December.

Hana was in the process of writing the current season’s final episode when their grandmother died. The only way to finish the material was to write about her, she said.

But Hana said she also has to consider her grandmother’s honest feelings on sharing stories about the incarceration.

“I had this moment when she passed away where I asked myself, ‘Should I really be doing this work? [My grandmother] hated talking about it, so is this work actually honoring her legacy, or is it just bringing back something she would have wanted to forget?’ That is not a question that most researchers have to ask themselves,” Hana said.

The resilience of the incarcerees and understanding how their story fits into broader narratives of American oppression is what drives them to keep sharing this history, Hana and Noah said.

“Injustices get worse when we don’t pay attention to them,” Noah said.

On Feb. 25, the University of Minnesota’s Asian Pacific American Resource Center (APARC) will celebrate five years of supporting students’ academic success, cultivating a community space and creating programs to develop student leaders.

In 2016, the University received a five-year Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution grant from the U.S. Department of Education that launched the center. The center is continuing its work with a renewed five-year grant from August 2020. The virtual celebration marks the fifth anniversary of the University’s designation as an Asian American and Pacific Islander-serving institution.

The celebration will feature student performances, acknowledgments and a presentation of the center’s plans for the future. Afterward, there will be a social and networking event for students and leaders in Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities.

“This anniversary celebration isn’t just about celebrating APARC. It’s about celebrating AAPI students (current, past, and future) and our partners who have all made an impact on APARC,” Anne Nguyen, APARC marketing and communications student coordinator, said in an email.

Located in the University’s Appleby Hall, APARC has developed strong connections with students, community organizations and University departments over the years. Between 2016 and 2017, the center had 213 student visits, according to data collected by APARC. The center exceeded 3,000 visits between 2018 and 2019.

Kong Her, APARC program director, said he remembers that the first semester of APARC began in a shared office space that made it difficult to work directly with students. He worked with APARC staff on the fourth floor of Wulling Hall, which was out of view from students, he added.

Within a year, the College of Education and Human Development, the College of Liberal Arts and APARC created a dedicated space for the center in Appleby Hall that officially opened in November 2017.

“It’s been quite a journey to start with, like, literally nothing,” said Peter Limthongviratn, APARC program coordinator. “We had to buy our own supplies [and] use our loaner laptops for a while, and just slowly from having such a small space for ourselves and then growing into what we have today, it’s been a huge jump.”

The APARC space is currently closed because of the pandemic. However, APARC is continuing to support students through programming and using social media to maintain connections, Her said. Student engagement during the pandemic has been a major challenge for APARC and many student and community organizations.

Her said at the beginning of the pandemic, it was natural for everyone to attempt to replicate an in-person sense of community, but doing that online was not the same. He added that he realized it was crucial for him and other students to shift their focus to getting through the pandemic.

For the next five years, the grant will fund new initiatives to promote supporting students to thrive while in college and after college, Her said. He will highlight more details about the allocation of funds at the celebration.

“I’m excited to see the growth from year one to year five because I know Kong and Peter did a lot of work those first couple years,” said Haruka Yukioka, a fifth-year student and APARC student ambassador.

Last month, APARC developed a new leadership and mentorship program called ASPIRE LEADS. The program offers a new directed study course for student mentors on topics like Asian American literature, leadership, social justice and more. Mentors can gain two to three academic credits by participating in the course.

“One of the things that we’ve always said was that all of this work should be led and influenced by student voices and student experience,” Her said. “I think it’s important that it needs to come from students because this is all for supporting the AAPI communities, so their voices [are] especially important.”

APARC has to reapply for funding during the final years of the grant cycle, which Limthongviratn said puts the center at risk of not being funded for another five years. Last year, APARC faced financial uncertainty when a bill to renew federal funding for minority-serving institutions stalled in the U.S. Senate.

“I hope that at some point in the next five years, the University will finally try to invest more resources into APARC so that we can be institutionalized and that we’re not, like, working on this deadline,” Limthongviratn said.

Nguyen, the center’s student communications coordinator, said she has worked with APARC since her first year in college. Nguyen, who was initially on a different career path, said APARC influenced her decision to change her major to strategic communications with a minor in sociology.

“With my job at APARC, I really realized ‘Okay, I do have this creative side of me that’s not just a hobby. It’s something that comes so naturally easily to me that I really like,’” Nguyen said. “Honestly, if it wasn’t for APARC, I think I would still be on the track of pre-law right now.”

Devin Vue, a fourth-year student and APARC student coordinator, will be graduating this spring. In his role as a coordinator, Vue primarily focused on the mentorship program.

“I’ve been so humbled to just be a part of this community that I am kind of nervous and afraid of what’s to come after this,” Vue said. “I know that whenever I come back, I know APARC will always be my community. … I really am going to miss it since I have created a lot of memories and developed a lot of relationships through [APARC].”

Editor’s note: Haruka Yukioka is a member of the Minnesota Daily’s board of directors. The board does not dictate the coverage or content production of the Daily.

A group of first-year University of Minnesota law students wrote a letter to the Law School on Jan. 12 raising concerns regarding a lack of communication about COVID-19 exposures, classes and final examinations overlapping with religious holidays and unclear fee charges on student accounts.

First-year students Lexie Robinson and Mercedes Molina drafted the letter and included suggestions from other first-year students before sending the letter to two of the University’s Law School deans. The letter was signed by 100 people.

Molina said some students who are not involved in student government, like the Law Council, feel like decisions are being made behind closed doors. The letter provided an inclusive platform for student voices, she said.

“Many students feel the law school has acted in a manner which has posed health risks and unjustifiably contributed to student debt. Further, there is concern that the law school has acted in a discriminatory manner towards students of certain faiths in scheduling practices,” read the students’ letter.

In an emailed response to the letter, Erin Keyes, assistant dean of students in the Law School, said the Law School is following the University’s guidelines that were developed by health experts. In addition, the Law School has implemented updated guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among law students. Some classes are currently held in person with a choice to be remote.

“As a unit of the university, the Law School is not allowed to send any notifications or announcements about positive COVID cases to our Law School community, even keeping the individual anonymous, unless directed to do so by public health or University officials,” Keyes said in her response.

Keyes added that the Law School and the University at-large had zero confirmed cases of transmission in a classroom and that no one is required to attend classes in person.

“Throughout the response that [Keyes] provided us, there was just this really common theme of the burden being on us, as students, to reach out for help,” Molina said. “When you’re drowning in the school work, there’s not a lot of opportunity for us to reach out until it is too late.”

Zack Taylor, a first-year law student, said he helped draft the language regarding the religious holiday overlap with courses in the letter. He is involved in the Jewish Law Student Association and the Law School Armed Forces Association.

“To me, the power dynamic in a diverse and inclusive community is not one where you have this majority culture, and then everyone else is asking to be included,” Taylor said. “It’s where everyone is included by default.”

Last fall, when exams were held during Hanukkah, some first-year students said it was their breaking point from frustrations with the Law School.

The letter drew attention to the Law School’s final examination period this spring coinciding with the month of Ramadan, which will begin in mid-April until mid-May. Finals exams at the Law School are scheduled to start on April 29 lasting until May 10.

“Expecting students to take exams on strict time constraints while fasting presents obvious concerns of performance that could significantly affect their class standing,” read the letter.

According to Keyes’ response, the Law School is working with the Muslim Law Students Association to making accommodations for students observing Ramadan, and “a number of variances were approved in response to individual student situations.”

Although student fees are determined by the Board of Regents, Garry Jenkins, dean of the Law School, said the Law School froze tuition last year for the first time in decades. Last Monday, the Law School hosted a town hall meeting, partially in response to the students’ letter, to communicate directly with students, he added.

“We’re committed to our students’ academic success and wellbeing, and we’re interested in removing as many barriers as we can,” Jenkins said. “That doesn’t mean that we can do everything in exactly the way every individual student asks, but that does mean we’ll continue to recognize their challenges and work really hard to address those issues as they arise.”

After attending the student town hall, Robinson said in an email that “while students could send in questions beforehand, it felt super scripted and the common theme was defensiveness and pointing to resources they already have.”

Keyes has reached out to Molina and Robinson to schedule a meeting to further discuss the letter. Keyes said she is continuing to communicate with students to address concerns.

“We ask the University administration to take these concerns to heart, and recognize the University of Minnesota community wants to do everything in our power to alleviate as many of the burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic for our peers as possible. But we can only do so with the full support and understanding of our university,” read the student’s letter.

A new student-led program will provide a space for first-year University of Minnesota law students to study through a lens that centers the experiences of students of color.

The Race-Informed Study Experience program, or RISE, was founded by third-year law student Shantal Pai. The RISE program officially started last week with two online introductory sessions. Every month, Pai will lead the virtual sessions, which will cover topics like code-switching, navigating a predominantly white institution and starting conversations to reevaluate racist legal arguments.

Sessions are centered around the classes that first-year law students are required to take during their second semester: property and criminal law. Currently, there are 19 students participating.

“There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just a chance for them to engage with the material, learn from each other and honestly practice talking about law in a slightly different way than we do in class,” Pai said.

The RISE program is supported by the Structured Study Group Program (SSG), the University’s Law School academic support program for first-year students. The SSG program allows first-year students to gain mentorship and academic support from second- and third-year law students.

Morgan Alexander, a third-year law student, joined SSG as a student in the program before becoming an SSG instructor alongside Pai. Alexander has been an SSG instructor for the past two years.

“I’m so glad the [RISE] program exists, and I’m so glad that someone like Shantal is spearheading it because of her passion for this. I find it embarrassing that it has not already existed. The Law School, the legal profession, is always behind, and this is no different,” Alexander said.

In Pai’s property law class, she remembered her professor explaining a case that sparked her frustration and motivated her to create the RISE program. In an 1823 court case called Johnson v. M’Intosh, the court gave the federal government control over the Indigenous lands of the Piankeshaw tribe.

This decision was based on the idea that the Piankeshaw tribe was not able to maintain possession of the land because it “never ‘owned’ it in the traditional sense of the word,” according to a LexisNexis case brief.

Pai said she wanted to discuss the consequences of the case and its relation to the continued expropriation of Indigenous lands. However, she added that the professor and materials in class did not provide an opportunity for deeper discussions.

Brandie Burris, a second-year law student, said she attended the first introductory session to connect to peers and explore law in a way that is not often recognized in her classes.

She added that creating an affirming academic community for students to discuss legal topics taught in classes while wrestling with how race, racism and bias play out in American law is important.

Pai will be graduating in May, and she said she hopes a student in the RISE program and a second-year law student will help carry on the program into the future.

“I’m just really hoping that the students can have that opportunity to feel connected to each other and to know that there’s other people on their team. And they’re not solely responsible for the future of a good legal system, but we’re creating this together,” Pai said.

A report published by the University of Minnesota Center for Urban and Regional Affairs in November found that many north Minneapolis residents want to see transformative changes in policing to address police violence.

The report, “Over-Policed and Under-Protected: Public Safety in North Minneapolis,” analyzed interviews from 112 Northside residents between 2017-2019, including policy recommendations, findings and insight from interviewees. According to the report, many described having negative experiences with police, including physical and verbal abuse.

Michelle Phelps, the project’s principal investigator and University associate professor, said she wanted to think about changes to policing and whether reform would be effective for residents in heavily policed neighborhoods.

“It was also really important to us to provide some solutions and not just describe problems in policing,” Phelps said in an email to the Minnesota Daily.

In addition to Phelps, five graduate and undergraduate research assistants helped to develop the report.

Over the years, the Minneapolis Police Department has come under scrutiny for police killings and Minneapolis residents bringing up concerns about public safety. After the police killing of George Floyd, Minneapolis became a focal point of national attention for debates about policing reform, defunding the police and abolishing the police.

“Just to know what happened less than two years later, after those interviews were taken, makes me sad that things actually got worse,” said University Ph.D. candidate and researcher Amber Joy Powell.

One of the findings in the report showed that many Northside residents take pride in their neighborhoods, providing examples of positives like their neighbors and locally owned businesses. But residents also worried about crime and violence. According to survey results, only 20% of respondents rated their neighborhood safety as “good” or “very good” despite having expressed positive thoughts about their sense of community.

The report recommends allocating more funding to community resources to increase public safety beyond policing. Other policy recommendations include accelerating efforts to reduce police misconduct, promoting more justice for victims of police violence and increasing the flow of communication between city leaders, police and community members.

Chris Robertson, a third-year sociology Ph.D. student, joined the team of researchers in the summer of 2018. He said his research interests include the intersections between policing, public health and race. In his role on the research team, Robertson collected existing research on topics like the effects of police violence and community trust. He also contributed to data analysis and coding for the report.

“As a Black male, policing is something that is very relevant and very much so connected to my life and how I navigate the world,” Robertson said. “This report, this research project, just researching policing in general, had always been close to my heart.”

Though he could have ended his role after finishing the University’s Graduate School Diversity Office Summer Institute that connected him to the research, he decided to stay on the research team. Robertson said some of his family members were victims of police violence.

“For my son, for all those close to me, not to have that fear of being stopped by a cop or being unfairly abused and brutalized by that … keeps me going and doing this research,” he said.

As a result of the report, members of the research team are working on publishing a series of articles based on the data and findings. They are engaging with policymakers and other stakeholders in Minneapolis to advance change, Phelps said.

“We share this report to bear witness to the many abuses of power in our city’s past and to call for deeply listening to the most-impacted residents in building structures for the future that provide safety and justice for all,” the report read.

Last month, M Dining managed by Aramark started a series of virtual monthly roundtable meetings with University of Minnesota students to collect feedback about the current challenges of food and dining on campus.

M Dining invited some University students to attend the meeting, which was set up as a webinar. The meeting covered topics such as climate change, local purchasing, responsible food sourcing and dietary accommodations for students.

Most students who attended were on a meal plan through the University’s dining halls on campus.

“We are constantly working on efforts to promote the local products that we currently source and expand that network of local suppliers,” Austin Johnson, Aramark and M Dining sustainability coordinator, said in an email to the Minnesota Daily. “When students show an interest in local items and have a desire to learn more about the local food system, it helps guide our efforts for the future.”

Some members from Uprooted & Rising Minneapolis (UNR), a community group led by University students advocating for food sovereignty, also attended the roundtable meeting.

Priscilla Trinh, a third-year University student and UNR member, said the webinar format did not allow students to see each other or unmute themselves to speak.

“It wasn’t really a roundtable because a roundtable … is an open discussion,” Trinh said.

Since its formation in August, UNR has been bringing together community members and students advocating for the University to end its relationship with big food corporations, like Aramark and Cargill.

Now, the organization is growing in members and continuing to advocate for the University to transform food and dining on campus. UNR’s demands include transitioning to a University-operated food system and committing to justice efforts like racial justice and workers’ rights.

After the meeting, UNR members sent an email to Johnson in which they raised concerns about the webinar format and lack of discussion surrounding long-term issues, like the University’s contract with Aramark and Aramark’s engagement in kickback programs. Those programs block local farmers from entering the college market, according to a study from Real Food Generation, an organization that advocates for fair food systems in higher education.

Chris Elrod, the senior marketing manager for Aramark and M Dining, said in an email response to Trinh that the webinar format was intentional as it intended to “prevent issues that [other departments and universities] had experienced when giving all participants full access.”

UNR members who attended the meeting said they were also concerned that Aramark and M Dining staff only focused on the current challenges of food and dining, especially as a result of the pandemic, rather than looking ahead.

“The meeting explicitly refrained from addressing the future, which we see as a direct attempt to avoid pressing issues such as the UMN dining contract with Aramark and tangible long-term solutions to address the blatant food insecurity [and] injustices on campus,” Trinh said in the email to Johnson.

In his response, Elrod confirmed the roundtable was specifically designed to address current dining related topics.

“This roundtable, hosted by M Dining/Aramark, was not meant to inform, or address, the University’s decision-making process in terms of contract/self-operation, but instead to engage with students on what changes can be made immediately,” Elrod said in the email.

The next roundtable meeting is planned for Dec. 9 and will cover Aramark’s diversity and inclusion efforts. UNR plans to attend and bring up other issues highlighted in its demands.

“They expect civil discussion, but if they repeatedly ignore points we’re bringing up, then I think we’re justified to push harder for certain things or bring in other stakeholders to talk about this issue,” Trinh said.

This winter, UNR is working to expand its network of local farmers and vendors who are Black, Indigenous and people of color for potential partnership with the University if it were to become a self-operated food system.