By: Joe Kleinschmidt

Shot on 16 mm film on a mere $7,000 budget, 2004’s “Primer” stands among the brainiest sci-fi movies ever made. But the technical story didn’t depend on a multi-million dollar Michael Bay budget — the director even filmed most scenes in one take. Jargon-laden dialogue made for a dense but rewarding script about a time-travel device that goes awry.

Nearly ten years later, former engineer Shane Carruth returns with a film even more puzzling, although the information lies in the experimental filmmaking instead of the script. Taking cues from Terrence Malick’s playbook, “Upstream Color” depends on the non-verbal cues of its actors and repetition of parallel imagery to drive the narrative.

But unlike “The Tree of Life,” Carruth aims for a darker, microscopic approach to the story. Equally disorienting and emotionally palpable, a man abducts Kris, an effects artist (Amy Seimetz). The mysterious figure uses a bioengineered grub to manipulate her. After a grisly surgery involving a pig, Kris recovers with no memory.

Eventually, she bonds with a trader named Jeff (Carruth), who shares a similar experience, and the two fall in love in the unspecified dystopia. Detailing the plot of “Upstream Color” poses problems because the film challenges audiences with fractured shards of information rather than a linear arc.

While the visuals remain arresting throughout the film, the experience feels dependent on your ability to empathize with the stone-faced acting. Many of Carruth’s lines feel stilted, but Seimetz drives the emotional arcs successfully. “Upstream Color” remains Carruth’s brainchild. And as the producer, writer, director, editor, cinematographer, composer and distributor — the film secures his position as a true autodidact. “Primer” wasn’t a fluke.

“Upstream Color” disorients, but for a true purpose. Shards of individual scenes and moments explore humanity’s loss of connection to the natural world. After abandoning an epic adventure, “A Topiary,” Carruth’s newest, represents his most personal work to date. The barrage of close-ups creates a singular tactile experience alongside a creeping electronic score.

Kris experiences the implanted grub moving throughout her limbs, more gripping than the chest-bursting scene in “Alien.” On screen, the digital and natural worlds somehow affect one another — close-ups show an illogical relationship with nature for Kris and Jeff. In one scene, the two recite “Walden” to each other in between swimming laps.

Ultimately, Carruth aims for Stanley Kubrick’s level of artistry. “Upstream Color” may fall slightly short, but the confusing experience gives darkly emotional strokes of genius that conventional movies fail to live up to. Carruth fills the movie with tantalizing visual riddles that reward multiple viewings. Even with its shortcomings and deliberate uncertainty, the movie marks the work of an auteur.

By: Janice Bitters

Jasmine Hardin is living away from home for the first time this year, and while she enjoys living closer to school, making rent can be difficult.

By: Katherine Lymn

His kids were staying in a different hotel room to avoid any distractions, and his wife had to persuade him to go to sleep — he’d defaulted to a law school lifestyle and stayed up into the early morning to practice his points.

It was 2001 and the night before one of the biggest days of Mark Rotenberg’s life: arguing before the United States Supreme  Court.

Few lawyers ever make it to the U.S. Supreme Court — even fewer university general counsels.

As the University of Minnesota’s head lawyer, Rotenberg’s the legal watchdog both off campus — arguing in prestigious courts — and within University walls, making sure administrators are in line.

After more than 20 years of leading an office that's won most of its cases, he'll leave this summer for Johns Hopkins University.

And while he’s argued before the highest courts of the country and state in his time here, day to day he’s been the legal adviser to four University presidents and countless regents as they govern the multi-billion dollar company that is the University of Minnesota.

The OGC evolves

In fall 1992, Rotenberg was having breakfast with then-Law School Dean Bob Stein at the West Bank Holiday Inn when Stein had to run.

He was headed to a search committee meeting for the University’s next general counsel.

As the pair shook hands, Stein imparted Rotenberg with a lasting goodbye.

“You know, the general counsel job at the U is the best law practice job in Minnesota.”

That stuck with Rotenberg as he drove back downtown.

And on the last day possible, he sent in his résumé.

Stein said there wasn’t much question that Rotenberg was the top choice.

A couple of decades and hundreds of lawsuits later, Rotenberg said Stein’s words have proven true.

In that time, though, the office itself has changed.

Since Rotenberg’s arrival, it’s grown to 18 lawyers whose 2012 base salaries totaled more than $2.3 million.

The University’s reach has spread to more realms — like government-funded research — but the school gets sued less.

The creation of the OGC in 1981 was part of a nationwide explosion of colleges building up internal legal armies. As university activities became more complex, so did potential legal issues.

But the University’s legal team does what many at other colleges don’t — it goes to court.

While many choose to farm out court cases, the University often sends its own lawyers to argue — saving money and attracting top talent.

“That changed the character of the office a little bit,” said Mark Yudof, the University’s president from 1997-2002.

“It made it a little bit easier to attract good lawyers,” he said, because often the best lawyers want some time in a courtroom.

For the first time in recent history, the University is getting sued less.

Part of that could be due to a doctrine that gave the University its own grievance process for faculty and staff.

It could also be the University is getting a reputation — one of winning, something Rotenberg describes with pride.

The University won nine out of every 10 cases that went to court in the past decade.

Walking a fine line

When he’s not arguing in high court or amid multi-million dollar negotiations, Rotenberg’s the man with the answers for the University’s 12 regents and University President Eric Kaler.

Lately, the questions have been about constitutional autonomy, a complicated issue he’s passionate about.

Angry about reports of administrative bloat, state lawmakers this year have pushed the boundaries on that autonomy, trying to attach strings to the billions in state funds the University relies on. At the same time, though, its autonomy prevents state interference in University governance — the University, after all, was here first.

Rotenberg also ensures the athletics department is in compliance with NCAA rules — and many say the late-’90s basketball academic fraud scandal is the biggest challenge he’s faced.

After the scandal, in which athletes’ advisers were writing papers for them, reporting lines changed so the athletics compliance director reported to Rotenberg instead of the athletics director, Stein said.

In interviews with Rotenberg’s colleagues, many said his integrity stood out.

Because of the nature of his position, they couldn’t elaborate on instances when someone needed to be put in line.

Those occasions “were very sort of heated episodes,” said Board of Regents Chair Linda Cohen

“I think it’s not great for anybody to have them sort of revisited.”

Stein, now a law school professor, said Rotenberg walks a fine line, keeping people legally in check without restricting their activities too much.

“He needs to encourage people and support them,” Stein said, and “at the same time, identify areas that we can’t go.”

Regent Patricia Simmons said Rotenberg was sensitive to sometimes competing interests.

With complex personnel issues, for example, “you want to give everyone the benefit of a doubt but yet also make sure you protect the students and the University,” she said. “And that protection includes image and reputation.”

Cohen said she felt she could always count on Rotenberg to get back to her with answers to her questions — “unless he’s in the middle of a Vikings negotiation or something,” she added.

And she’s right — Rotenberg gets lots of phone calls but knows which ones he has to answer.

On a recent afternoon in his office, his iPhone rang. After checking who it was, he put it down.

“It’s not a regent,” he said. “I’ll let it go.”

While Rotenberg is in good standing with many of his bosses at the University, there are still some happy to see him leave.

Rotenberg is the figurehead in times of crisis, for better or for worse.

Some say he’s leaving the University without properly handling charges of research misconduct and with a lack of transparency, especially in the Dan Markingson case. While being a participant in a University drug study in 2004, Markingson committed suicide. In the years since, bioethicists have raised serious concerns about whether Markingson was able to consent to participate in the study.

In an email to Kaler, bioethicist Carl Elliott requested to speak privately with the president because Elliott believed Rotenberg’s role in the investigation was inappropriate.

Rotenberg isn’t apologizing for how he handled it and said the University has investigated the matter enough.

What some see as secrecy, he said is attorney-client privilege — and “some people will not be persuaded” otherwise.

Victories

A troupe of general counsel folks and Rotenberg’s family traveled to Washington for his 2001 U.S. Supreme Court appearance.

The subject matter of the case itself was not particularly fascinating — a dispute over Congress’s role in Minnesota employment law.

But appearing — and winning — before the nation’s most powerful judges is one of Rotenberg’s proudest moments.

In another case a couple years earlier, his success was measured in dollars.

Rotenberg was part of settlement negotiations with Glaxo Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) over a University-created AIDS drug.

The University sued the pharmaceutical giant for royalties, saying a University researcher patented a compound used in the blockbuster drug. Glaxo said the drug was made independent of the researcher’s compound.

Early in the case at their North Carolina headquarters, Glaxo roughed up Rotenberg and his team, saying the University’s claims were no good.

After a day of that, Glaxo offered a settlement of about $12 million.

On the plane home, a fellow University lawyer was giddy at such a good offer after just a day of negotiations.

But Rotenberg wasn’t going to give.

“I knew at that time that there was something very big underlying this particular set of patents,” he said, “because if they would offer us that kind of money first trip out to corporate headquarters, I suspected that there was going be a much larger recovery.”

That in mind, University lawyers altered their strategy and “decided to really work the case up,” he said.

After more negotiations, the University did settle — for $300 million. That’s since grown to about a half-billion.

“That was a huge battle royale,” he said.

At home

Once, on Passover vacation in Miami, Rotenberg left days early to fly back for an early morning meeting about the light rail with the governor and the University’s president.

One New Year’s Eve, he spent the night sitting in a rental car in the driveway on the phone for negotiations for a coach’s contract.

On a more regular basis, Rotenberg stays late at his Morrill Hall or McNamara Alumni Center offices — but his wife, Amy Rotenberg, said that’s more him than his job.

“The one time that he was on time was for our wedding,” she joked.

Once he does get home, he can’t just switch off his work role.

“It’s not so much that he brings it home and talks about it with us,” she said, “it’s that we’ll be sitting at the dinner table and the phone will ring.”

He tries to avoid working at home and has other ways to ground himself outside the office.

He runs in his Lake of the Isles neighborhood. He used to scuba-dive and play tennis, but those hobbies were sacrificed as his job demanded more.

He meets with a rabbi regularly to study the Torah, and he’s a member of the Rabbinical Assembly’s committee on Jewish law.

Rotenberg’s three kids — ages 15, 23 and 26 — have shared him with the University for most or all of their lives.

Their interaction with work has grown from vague — “some basketball player did something bad, and dad took care of it,” son Mathew remembered thinking — to curious, asking about a case after seeing their father in the news.

And while those relationships have changed as the children have grown up, some never will — once when he was interviewed on TV, his mother called and asked, “Why didn’t you shave?”

Conclusion

On a recent Wednesday, Rotenberg and a team from his office gather around one end of a long, corporate-style boardroom table.

They work their way down a laundry list of issues Rotenberg wants to resolve before he leaves.

One by one, he announces the next steps.

It could be a “one-on-one” with Kaler or meeting individually with the regents to brief them on an issue.

At today’s meeting, there are a few unusual items on the agenda — Rotenberg’s going- away party, which is sure to attract some of the most powerful law professionals in the state and an inventory of which pieces of his office furniture are his to take to Baltimore or stay at the University.

Rotenberg already has an assistant at Johns Hopkins and a Maryland high school picked out for his son Max.

And so, after 20 years, he has to pick what he’ll get done with his limited time and what he’ll let go.

“I’m gonna pull that off of here,” he says of one issue. “Because I don’t think there’s anything else I can do.”

By: Branden Largent

A bill that would expand alcohol sales at the University of Minnesota’s Mariucci and Williams arenas was withdrawn Wednesday by Minnesota Rep. Dan Schoen, DFL-St. Paul Park.

The bill would’ve allowed the University to serve alcohol at sporting events in the arenas’ general seating instead of only in premium-seating areas.

Schoen said he withdrew the bill to give the University more time to solidify its sales strategies for expanded alcohol sales.

“I think that they’re poised to want to do this at their facilities,” Schoen said, “But they don’t want to be forced into it.”

University officials testified at a hearing on the bill in March, saying the University isn’t ready to expand sales like they have in TCF Bank Stadium.

“We’ll bring it in again during the next session and make sure that they’re ready for it,” Schoen said.

Legislators also found it “disturbing,” he said, that the University brought in $900,000 in beer sales yet still didn’t make a net profit.

“Obviously there are bigger problems over at the University of Minnesota,” Schoen said.

By: Rebecca Harrington

The University of Minnesota’s chemical engineering major is pushing its limits, and many students say the major’s higher demand has increased its difficulty.

Although designed to accommodate about 100 seniors, the major has admitted 30 percent more students over the last several years, which is putting space constraints on the curriculum.

Department head Frank Bates said the nationally ranked major can’t keep growing and still offer the same caliber of education.

“The department has swelled to accommodate as many as we can,” he said, “but there’s a limit to what we can do.”

All of the College of Science and Engineering undergraduate majors have grown, said Paul Strykowski, associate dean for undergraduate programs.

Lab space is the most challenging thing to plan, Bates said, because there are only so many hours in the day to schedule time for the students to use the space.

“You can put more students in a lecture hall,” Strykowski said, “but if you really want to get a one-on-one laboratory experience, at some point, something’s got to give.”

Lab space

If chemical engineering students fail a course that’s a prerequisite for subsequent courses — like capstone labs — they have to take the class over again.

As one of the most “restrictive” majors in CSE, students take almost all of their upper division classes together in succession. Most classes are only offered once a year, so students have to wait a full year to retake them.

Students take two capstone classes during their junior and senior years. It’s often the first time they are applying what they learn in lectures to actual industrial-grade equipment, like the double-effect apparatus, which is a maze of pipes with 63 different valves.

Students get two four-hour sessions in the lab for each experiment. The first attempt often doesn’t produce any usable data, and they have to wait until the next week for the final attempt.

Tyler Lillemo, chemical engineering junior, said if this happened in “the real world,” he wouldn’t give up and leave.

“I feel like the class is a little unrealistic because they only give you two tries to get it right,” he said. “If I was in a job and I didn’t get it right, I would not go home at five.”

Students are in groups of three, and they come in at assigned times, so the lab is booked solid every week. Many students said they wished there was more lab time or space for them to perfect their experiments.

Construction started on Amundson Hall last month, which will add 40,000 square feet of teaching and lab space. But most of the expansion will provide more space for the other major in the department, materials science and engineering.

Bates said he expects to see materials science grow in size and prestige, equaling chemical engineering. He hopes to graduate about 100 seniors from each major per year.

Raul Caretta, head professor of the lab courses, said the small lab groups result in a very low student-to-teacher ratio, which is crucial in courses as difficult and precise as the labs.

The department uses “team teaching,” Bates said. Multiple faculty members teach lecture, discussion and lab portions of the courses. At least five or six faculty members teach the capstone labs.

Caretta said the faculty members have the same high standards throughout the course because they want their engineers to keep improving with the same expectations.

“We are trying to start up engineers that will make the least amount of mistakes,” he said.

Pressures

Chemical engineering juniors spent 40 hours or more writing their 50- to 80-page lab reports for the junior lab.

The average grade on the hardest lab was 26 percent.

Students described the grading as “demoralizing.” Their final grades are based on a curve, so if they get above average, they can feel safe that they’ll pass the two-credit class.

U.S. News and World Report ranked the University’s chemical engineering major the fifth-best in the country.

CSE students apply to their major sophomore year. Strykowski said this allows students to get a taste of the different disciplines in the college before committing to a major.

In fall 2010, 206 sophomores were enrolled in Material and Energy Balances, the pre-major chemical engineering course. Of these students, 136 of them went on as juniors, and about 130 of them will graduate this year.

Caretta said it’s the department’s policy to admit as many students into the labs that qualify to register for the course, which means they have to pass the junior lab in order to proceed to the senior one.

Bates stressed how the faculty has to prepare the students for “the real world.” When engineers make mistakes, he said, the results are often devastating.

“In the real world … you don’t get partial credit for getting it halfway right,” Bates said. “This course is challenging for students, partly because we expect perfection.”

Mikayla Kienitz, chemical engineering junior, said she’s become “numb” when getting her grades back.

“They grade you with the standard of perfection,” said chemical engineering junior Kristi Gangelhoff, “but you aim for average.”

These are high standards for students who are often in their first industrial-scale engineering lab, said Zach Erdman, chemical engineering junior.

“It should be expected when you have the necessary knowledge base,” he said, “not when you’re first learning it.”

As frustrated as students are while they’re taking the classes, Caretta said their hard work does pay off after they graduate.

“They don’t realize how good they are getting,” he said, “but we don’t tell them too much either … because engineering is a life learning experience.”

By: Rebecca Harrington

The University of Minnesota’s data centers manage and store everything from grades and financial data to the websites’ servers.

Data centers use more than 2 percent of the electricity in the U.S., according to a 2011 study from Stanford University.

In 2010, the Office of Information Technology had plans to purchase portable data centers to increase energy efficiency, which would have cost up to $7 million.

But instead, the office canceled the project altogether and consolidated the University’s then-several data centers into one main location and a backup.

Patton Fast, OIT chief technology officer and enterprise architect, said President Eric Kaler had asked the office to “recalibrate the risk” associated with expanding the University’s data centers, and the office found that canceling the project was more cost-effective.

“We don’t want to be spending money just to spend money,” Fast said. “… Now we’re under heavier scrutiny, but we have to hold ourselves under heavier scrutiny than anyone else puts us under.”

OIT weighed the risk and impact a data center malfunction would have, concluding that the benefits of the upgrade would not necessarily be worth the investment.

While consumer electronics like smartphones and laptops are constantly being updated, Fast said, larger, more complex technology like data centers hasn’t changed very much over the years.

Energy use

Data centers use so much energy because they’re almost always running and require constant cooling.

The University’s data centers only close one weekend a year for maintenance.

In closing the other data centers, the University has reduced its electricity usage from 12.4 million kilowatt-hours in 2011 to a projected 10 million kilowatt-hours this year. An average home uses about 11,280 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The University has also reduced energy use and expanded its storage with cloud services. Storing in the cloud means the University sends its information to a data center managed by another company, which stores it.

Although the University has consolidated its data centers, cloud services and other practices have increased its storage capacity by nearly 60 percent since 2010.

Fast said he foresees greater use of the cloud in the future for non-private data. University policy and state and federal laws require the University to store its own protected data, like health care, educational and contractual data.

While these changes have reduced the University’s electricity usage, Fast said the bottom line is saving money.

“The overarching goal of all this is to reduce the overall cost to the University,” he said.

By: Cody Nelson

In its last forum of the year, the Minnesota Student Association reflected on the past year and prepared for the future.

President Taylor Williams spoke about accomplishments of the year, including medical amnesty legislation and a voter registration event with a high turnout.

MSA also voted Mick Hedberg to be its new speaker of the forum and elected several other University of Minnesota students to leadership positions.

In his final speech to the forum, Williams talked about MSA’s success in pushing medical amnesty legislation — one of the main goals of his campaign last spring.

The bill, which would legally protect underage drinkers from punishment if they are seeking medical attention for themselves or others, has passed committees in the Minnesota House and Senate.

Williams said the measure — which is expected to pass — was the first time MSA and the Minnesota Student Legislative Coalition wrote legislation “from scratch” and got it introduced to the Legislature.

Engagement with MSA was another goal for Williams, he said.

MSA’s membership nearly tripled this year, Williams said, partly due to the internship program that brought more than 20 freshmen to the student association.

Last fall’s election also brought highlights to MSA’s year.

Williams and MSA came out against constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage and require voter ID.

“Those amendments, if passed, would have been detrimental to our student body,” he said.

MSA also sponsored a voter registration event, Voterpalooza, during which they registered more than 500 University students to vote.

Though MSA-supported initiatives for open-textbook legislation didn’t get footing this session, Williams said student government will continue pushing the cause in the Legislature.

Hedberg said he wants MSA to have more diversity in its outreach efforts.

“There are other groups on campus that represent the types of diversity we want,” he said.

Traditionally, the speaker of the forum is charged with ensuring MSA forums and procedures run smoothly.

After his election, Hedberg took over the forum, and elections were held for new committee directors and other student government representative spots.

Connie Dong was voted to lead MSA’s Grants Committee, and Alex Cole will take control of the Facilities, Housing and Transit Committee.

Olive Martin and Valkyrie Jensen were also elected as directors of the Student Outreach and Engagement and University Policies and Student Concerns committees, respectively.

By: Janice Bitters

A diversity gap exists among Minnesota teachers, and Twin Cities public schools have consistently looked to the University of Minnesota for help.

More than 96 percent of the teachers in Minnesota were Caucasian, while 74 percent of the student population shared that ethnicity, according to a 2012 Minnesota Department of Education study.

At the same time, the amount of minority students in Minnesota is

projected to increase by more than 60 percent in the next decade.

Students need to be exposed to teachers of different ethnicities, said Richard Wassen, director of educator licensing at MDE.

“That is one of the purposes behind integration,” he said. “All students benefit from having exposure to diversity and different cultures.”

Teachers of color also provide real-life examples to minority students for future careers, including teaching, according to a Center for American Progress report on teacher diversity.

The University has improved the diversity of students studying to be teachers, said Misty Sato, an associate professor of curriculum and instruction.

Sato said 13 percent of students studying to be teachers at the University are of color, up from 9 percent a few years ago.

“We are higher than the state average, which is 3.5 percent [teachers of color], but that’s not nearly enough teachers to meet the expectations of our school partners,” she said.

The University is faced with unique pressures in filling teacher population gaps in the state, said Spanish studies junior Shawna Zielinski. She plans to become an English as a second language teacher after getting her teacher’s license.

“Because we are the biggest state school, you might say we have more of an obligation and resources,” she said, “but I think a lot [of pressure] is put on the University.”

Causes

The reasons behind the teacher diversity gap are varied and complicated, Wassen said.

One of the biggest barriers is the numerous tests students must pass before they’re licensed as teachers, he said, because the tests are costly and may have cultural biases.

“We have to fine-tune our system,” he said. “There is no research that suggests the tests measure who will make a better teacher.”

Another barrier, Wassen said, is the high cost of education and student teaching, worsened by low teacher salaries.

“The research suggests that the most important way to support teacher diversity is to create more equitable pathways,” he said.

Common suggestions for creating those pathways are scholarship increases and tuition forgiveness for teachers, according to the MDE study.

One solution

Alternative teaching licensing programs are another way to ease financial pathways for teachers, but it’s been more than two years since Minnesota legislators passed the law allowing for alternative teacher licensing in the state, and no one has proposed a program to the Board of Teaching.

Alternative licensing allows people to teach sooner by allowing organizations to design a teacher-training program for people with an undergraduate degree but without a master’s or passing all the licensing tests.

After completing an approved 200-hour program, participants get a temporary teaching license and begin teaching in Minnesota schools while finishing their education and earning a salary.

At the University, developing an alternative licensing program isn’t a top priority because it already has at least 22 different teaching licensure programs, Sato said.

But she said if the University did consider creating one of the programs, the primary motivation would likely be to increase diversity.

“There’s national data that show certain types of alternative licensure programs can attract and retain more people of color in a licensure program and fill that gap in the teaching population,” she said.

The most common method for earning a teaching license at the University is completing a one-year master’s teaching program after receiving a four-year bachelor’s degree.

But the quick nature of the alternative teaching licensing can turn some off.

“There are great benefits for the recent college grad,” Zielinksi said, “but I would argue that it tends to not be good overall for the schools they are placed in because they tend to be less prepared as teachers and less qualified.”

Sato said the reputation of a program could be impacted if it offered alternative teacher certification.

“There [are] some real philosophical differences that people hold about what it means to become a teacher,” she said, “and how much preparation you need before you should be allowed to be the sole teacher of record with students.”

“And right now at the University, we’ve held the value that it is important to be fully prepared before you can be the teacher of record.”

Teach for America

State law doesn’t limit alternative teacher licensing to institutes of higher education.

One program that currently offers an alternative pathway to temporary teaching is Teach for America, which recruits students from colleges and universities nationwide.

TFA could be the first to utilize the new state law, with plans to submit a formal proposal to the Board of Teaching to become a certified alternative teaching licenser, said spokeswoman Kaitlin Gastrock.

In 2012, a quarter of TFA teachers who began teaching in Minnesota identified as minorities, Gastrock said.

TFA members in Minnesota can teach with a conditional certification after going through summer pre-service training.

Studies in three other states have found TFA members to be effective teachers, Gastrock said.

“Teach for America is well-positioned to meet the high bar set forth by the Board of Teaching that requires a robust admission and selection process …” she said. “We think this a tremendous opportunity to continue to strengthen and expand the pipeline of talented teachers in the region.”

By: Jill Jensen

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra ratified a new, three-year contract Monday after a months-long lockout but not before University of Minnesota School of Music students started questioning their career paths.

The new contract reduces the orchestra from 34 to 28 players and cuts annual pay by almost $14,000, to $60,000 — a seven-year low.

“We believe this agreement will allow for the preservation of artistic quality while ensuring financial sustainability,” SPCO President Dobson West said in a news release.

Although the new contract is uplifting for students, it sets a national precedent of underpaying high-caliber musicians, said Christopher Brown, SPCO’s principal bassist and an adjunct professor at the University.

Brown said the musicians were “treated less than admirably” and demoralized throughout negotiations for a new contract.

They called for an immediate search for a new SPCO leader, the Associated Press reported.

“It came as a big shock to a lot of us that we were no longer good enough,” Brown said. “This was more than just a slap in the face.”

Many orchestra members, including Brown, are eligible to take a special retirement package offered by SPCO, he said, and losing those musicians will hurt the ensemble.

“The real calamity is that we had a great orchestra,” he said, “and now the chances of it being a great orchestra, in my opinion … are lessened.”

Questioning careers

Violin performance sophomore Hannah Howland said it’s scary both Twin Cities orchestras have had problems because it makes her question her career choice. The Minnesota Orchestra has been locked out since Oct. 1, 2012.

The Iowa native said she came to the University because of the various performance opportunities.

“You can just get all this exposure to this music … which is what I want to do with my life,” Howland said. “That in itself is kind of an educational experience.”

There has been an air of uncertainty among music students since SPCO locked out in October, Brown said.

Brown said he walked into his classroom visibly disappointed and sad each day. He said that kind of degradation can make students question their career choice.

“I feel like I’m coming to work here, and I’m letting them down,” he said, adding that one of his students switched from a bass performance major to business.

Brown said the lockout will educate students on the clash between artists and corporate management.

When SPCO concerts resume May 9, Brown will be back with the ensemble, and Howland will be in the audience.

While Brown said he’s happy to be playing music again, there are still some “outstanding issues.”

“It comes with more disappointment than happiness.”

By: Janice Bitters

A state Senate vote Wednesday could bring undocumented high school students one step closer to a more affordable college education.

Currently, undocumented Minnesota students aren’t eligible for in-state tuition or for state and private aid, including scholarships, at many colleges in the state, including the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus.

The Minnesota Prosperity, or DREAM, Act would change that.

The bill is scheduled to be heard on the Senate floor Wednesday after passing through the finance committee last week. Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, who authored the proposal, said she’s confident the bill will pass, despite the fact that it has not been heard on the House floor.

The bill was scheduled to be heard in the House at the beginning of April, however Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, the chair of the higher education finance and policy committee, cut the hearing from the agenda.

Pelowski didn’t return multiple calls for comment. However, at an April 8 meeting he said the committee had “an array of concerns with the bill,” including that he felt the proposal was a federal issue, rather than a state one.

Immigrant rights advocate Juventino Meza wrote in a tweet that day, “Rep Pelowski’s leadership [is] disappointing; Minnesota students deserve better!”

Opponents have raised questions about whether students who don’t have the legal right to be in the U.S. should receive public funding for school, Pappas said.

The OHE estimated 50 percent of the more than 660 undocumented undergraduates in Minnesota would apply and qualify for a state grant if the measure is passed, which Pappas said would not have a large impact on Minnesota students.

The Pew Research Center estimated in 2010 that about 85,000 undocumented immigrants were living in Minnesota.

“We are putting $80 million more into financial aid this year,” Pappas said. “And this will have a very minimal impact on state grants.”

Advocates for the bill, like University senior teaching specialist Kathleen Ganley, say the DREAM Act is an ethical issue for some students.

“[Undocumented students] know no other place,” said Ganley, who teaches immigration and community service classes at the University. “I think it is ethically wrong to not allow them to pay in-state tuition. This is their state. They have lived here all their lives and often had no choice.”

In the 2012-13 academic year, resident and non-resident tuition rates at the University differed by about $2,600.

Pappas said if it passes the Senate on Wednesday, she will add it to the higher education omnibus bill, where it could be passed along with other higher education measures.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order that would grant certain immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children relief from deportation for two years.

University doctoral candidate Alfonso Sintjago said while passing the Minnesota DREAM Act would be beneficial to students, he’s also hoping for a federal change that would grant an easier path to citizenship.

“There’s a point when you notice the system is broken, Sintjago said. “People wonder, ‘If the linear system is broken, then what is the system that works?’ They start trying to go around the system.”