February 8, 2021

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2021

MNDAILY.COM

ADMINISTRATION

Regents consider UMN logo on alcohol products The policy would be expected to generate $300,000 in revenue for U.

By Sonja Kleven skleven@mndaily.com Last spring, a group of students from the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) approached University Relations with a proposition: They wanted to create a studentmanufactured beer with hops patented by the University of Minnesota.

The students were far along in their process; they had worked with the College of Design on a logo for the can, the Carlson School of Management for a business plan and CFANS for the chemistry behind the brew. However, when they approached the University with hopes to partner with a third-party brewer to produce the beer, they were turned down.

Due to policies that prohibit the University from entering licensing and sponsorship agreements with alcoholic beverage companies, the students were not able to partner with the University. The Board of Regents is now considering amending those policies.

There are currently three schools within the Big Ten — the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pennsylvania State University — that prohibit

Illustration by Mary Ellen Ritter such affiliations.

“What we told that student group was, ‘You know, I’m sorry but we can’t work with you because we have this restriction,’” said Matt Kramer, four-year Vice President of University Relations.

“They had a lot of great ideas. And it was not fun to tell them, you know, ‘We can’t help, we literally can’t do this.’”

Due to the rise in craft breweries in Minnesota, a shift towards more responsible messaging around drinking and increased interest from students, the board has discussed and plans to vote on the policy amendments at their February meeting, Kramer said. If passed, the policy changes would allow licensing agreements — putting the University’s “mark” on products — and sponsorship affiliations with alcoholic beverage companies.

Kramer said the University of Minnesota will most likely operate under a “hybrid model,” partner-

ing with a combination of larger, national brands, such as Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors, as well as local craft breweries.

Phil Buhlmann, a professor of chemistry at the University and the chair of the Faculty Consultative Committee, said he is excited about the opportunities the policy changes could create for students.

“This is not about the University of Minnesota getting very big into a big business of selling lots of alcohol or something like that. It’s just making it possible to create small opportunities,” Buhlmann said. “I think that it opens possibilities, but it doesn’t mean at the same time everything would be allowed. I think it’s a thoughtful approach.”

Jennifer Brown, a neuroscience Ph.D. student at the University and a representative for the Council of Graduate Students (COGS), said that the revenue was only a minor factor in her support for the amendments. Instead, she

said she is excited about the opportunities the policy changes would create for students.

“Because the local brewery scene is such a big part of the draw of Minnesota and so many Minnesota students go on to found their own breweries or work in breweries, I think it could help form partnerships within the University,” Brown said.

Along with the positive feedback, some University members also voiced concerns.

Sydney Bauer, a ranking student senator, said she wanted to make sure the University would keep their partnerships local.

“One of my concerns was supporting local economies.

We have a lot of breweries right here in Minneapolis that we could partner with and that was kind of a concern of mine,” she said.

Kramer said that University Relations is also in favor of prioritizing smaller, local companies, despite interest from larger companies. “… We would want to structure some sort of a deal to make absolutely sure that smaller companies across the state were able to participate.

That reduces our revenue, because you’re not giving people exclusivity, but I think it also rewards Minnesota companies that are hiring our Minnesota college graduates,” Kramer said.

By Samantha Hendrickson shendrickson@mndaily.com Amid the state’s budget challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Minnesota’s financial requests look a little different from last year’s — and the previous 20 years’.

The statewide budget deficit of $1.27 billion for 2022-23 caused by the pandemic and a delayed 2020 legislative session factored into the University’s low ask for state funding this year. Both the capital request and the biennial budget request this year are lower than in years before.

“I think [lawmakers] appreciate that the University has some

By Srilekha Garishakurti sgarishakurti@mndaily.com

See LEGISLATURE Page 2

See COVID-19 Page 2

Illustration by Morgan La Casse and Sarah Mai Asset Preservation and Replacement funds across the University system. The University is also working to construct a new chemistry lab facility on the Twin Cities campus and a new science building on the Duluth campus.

President Joan Gabel is accounting for the additional $46.5 million in the systemwide strategic plan but has not decided how

The pandemic is giving international first-year students second thoughts.

to use the funds.

The plan, called MPACT: 2025, includes goals such as reducing financial barriers for students and recruiting and retaining more diverse students and faculty, among other priorities.

Minnesota Student Association President Amy Ma spoke

See ADMIN Page 2

UMN budget request lowest in two decades pretty reasonable requests, compared to terms of the dollar size, and that we’ve looked at the deficit we know that the state is in and the tough challenges ahead,” said J.D. Burton, chief government relations officer for the University.

The $46.5 million budget request for additional funding is the lowest it has been in two decades. The last two requests were $87 million two years ago and nearly $150 million in 2017, with the Legislature approving $43.5 million and about $55 million in those cycles, respectively.

This funding is on top of the nearly $700 million the University already receives from the state of Minnesota.

The capital request, which will be considered next year, amounts to $264 million — $53 million less than last year’s — and is mostly for Higher Education

Enrollment down among international students

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of undergraduate international first-year students at the University of Minnesota was on the rise, with overall international student enrollment remaining steady.

Between 2018 and 2019, the number of first-year international students at the University increased by about 52 percent, according to data from International Student & Scholar Services (ISSS).

“We were kind of on an upswing in fall 2019 and then COVID happened,” said Aimee Thostenson, director of international student recruitment.

In line with national trends, the University experienced a sharp decline in international students seeking education on campus, according to Thostenson and Barbara Kappler, the director and assistant dean of ISSS. ISSS is working on releasing another report with data from 2020-2021 that will reflect the effects of the pandemic on international enrollment trends.

“The national experience this fall of 2020 was a decrease for a significant number of reasons including the pandemic pausing the services of embassies and consulates, travel restrictions, expensive flights and more,” Kappler said.

Before COVID-19, ISSS recruited international students through in-person fairs and by visiting various continents and talking to prospective international students about studying at the University. This school year, the University has had to adapt its overseas recruitment strategies by going fully remote.

“Going all virtual was a big change, but otherwise the information we share remains the same, but it’s just the method of delivery that’s different,” Thostenson said.

The international law school program and master’s of law admissions have also had to make changes to promote their programs abroad.

“Members of our small International Programs team typically travel overseas several times each year to make connections with prospective LLM students,

LEGISLATURE

The biennial budget request is for $46.5 million in new funding.

CORONAVIRUS

RACIAL JUSTICE

DESIGN

UMN receives $5 million grant for racial justice initiatives

Redesigning Aunt Jemima: Design course centers anti-racism in branding

The University will also use the grant to strengthen ties with tribal nations.

By Sonja Kleven skleven@mndaily.com

Led by Terresa Moses, the course is being shown at a UMN museum.

By Abbey Machtig amachtig@mndaily.com

Jigna Desai, Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota poses for a portrait in front of her home on Thursday, Jan. 27. (Audrey Rauth / Minnesota Daily)

The University of Minnesota received a $5 million grant to strengthen racial justice within higher education, including the University’s relationship with tribal nations, through a series of projects and initiatives.

Minnesota Transform, slated to start over the next year, will include student internships, research jobs and a report on the University’s 150-year-long history with Minnesota’s tribal na-

tions. The grant was awarded in early January by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an organization focused on funding arts and humanities projects.

This set of initiatives is an initial step toward addressing racial injustice at the University, said Tadd Johnson, senior director of American Indian Tribal Nations Relations and professor in the American Indian Studies department.

“I think we need to delve deeper,” he said. “I think we need to spend decades on all the things that have gone wrong with Native Americans. Is the University doing enough? Never.

Is there enough money in this grant? No, but how do you start a job like this?”

The project’s overall goal is to begin addressing the University’s See RACIAL JUSTICE Page 2

Terresa Moses, an assistant professor in the College of Design challenged her students to take anti-racist approaches to design in a course first taught at the University of Minnesota last fall, the process of which is now being shown at the Goldstein Museum of Design.

Moses and her colleague, University of Illinois School of Art & Design assistant professor Lisa Mercer, created and launched the Racism Untaught course toolkit in 2018. The exhibit, which is only open to University staff, faculty and students, guides onlookers through the steps of the Racism Untaught framework as if they were participants.

Jean McElvain, the interim director and associate curator at the Goldstein, said the exhibit is unique because it looks specifically at intervention versus solely historical accounts of racism in design.

“It’s an issue that I think is difficult to discuss. Difficult, sometimes, to articulate. So if you have those key terms in front of you, it really allows you first of all to differentiate what the different issues are in a racialized design and be able to name them,” McElvain said. “So I think just putting a language to it is really helpful for me, and I think anybody who would visit.”

Corporations like PayPal and Target have adopted the Racism Untaught framework. First developed as an hours-long seminar, Moses and Mercer have since implemented the toolkit into semester-long courses at academic institutions.

This course allows for a more indepth analysis of racialized design, See DESIGN Page 2 Volume 121 Issue 8

2 Monday, February 8, 2021

Admin page 1 University members also brought up issues with directly affiliating the University’s brand with alcoholic beverages.

“Whether it’s binge drinking, excessive consumption, et cetera, those are all very legitimate concerns,” Kramer said. “And what I’ve pointed out is just saying we’re going to add a category to our accepted licensing and advertising doesn’t necessarily mean we’re jumping right in.

There’s a lot of work that has to be done. We will have to decide what we will allow, what we won’t allow.”

Legislature page 1 at the Jan. 14 legislative breakfast with University administrators and state lawmakers to highlight the importance of state funding for student accessibility.

“The University of Minnesota has deep ties with the state of Minnesota. Yet, higher education remains inaccessible to first-generation students, students of color, Indigenous students, students with disabilities and more,” Ma said at the breakfast. “To really fulfill our mission of educating and bettering the state of Minnesota, we will need

In response to concerns discussed at the December board meeting, University Relations has already set one major restriction: Goldy Gopher will not be affiliated with the sale or marketing of alcohol.

“Goldy is, I can’t say a person, because I think he’s a gopher,” Kramer said with a smile. “But Goldy is somebody you interact with and I don’t necessarily want someone I interact with, or our fans interacting with, appearing on a bottle of wine, or cider or beer.”

Based on an analysis of the market and the revenue these partnerships have generated for other universities, University Relations

estimates that the policy changes will generate about $300,000 in revenue for the University annually.

All revenue from licensing on the Twin Cities campus goes back into Gopher Athletics, Kramer said.

However, sponsorship “goes with the entity that it originates at.” For example, if an event hosted by the School of Music is sponsored by a wine company, the revenue would go back to the School of Music, Kramer said.

Should the board pass the policy amendments in February, Kramer said next steps will include selecting national and local vendors.

The initiative is slated to launch in fall of 2021.

support from our community members and legislators.”

Some students have expressed concern over tuition, especially during COVID-19, as many are left wondering why they are still paying full tuition for online classes. Last spring, some lawmakers attempted to pass legislation demanding larger refunds for students who left an in-person university for spring break and never returned to University housing.

State funding for the University directly impacts tuition prices.

“Certainly, this may have an impact on what the tuition levels are moving

forward,” Burton said, but decisions on tuition prices will not be made until June by the University’s Board of Regents.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also spoke at the legislative breakfast to show his support for the budget requests, noting that the state of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota’s future are closely tied, especially during COVID-19.

“There’s strong agreement that the foundation of this state’s economic engine, cultural engine [and] social engine has been our University systems and of course, the University of Minnesota being the flagship,” Walz said.

Design page 1

Moses said.

“I think [Moses] introduced something totally new to the College of Design,” said Jonathan Heu, a fourth-year student studying graphic design. “I think she offers a whole new perspective and I think every student in that class can say that they took something back.”

Moses and Mercer’s framework guides students through an introduction and five steps: onboarding, context, define, ideation, prototyping and impact.

Over the course of 16 weeks, students analyze their own biases and redesign an existing racialized brand, such as Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth’s.

“The re-design for Aunt Jemima wouldn’t be enough to just remove her face,” Moses said. “It’s like, okay, how do we apologize for that?

How do we recognize as an institution and an organization that we were okay with this for so long?”

After taking the course, Moses said she hopes students will recognize their agency in perpetuating racialized designs.

“That’s what my main goal is,” Moses said. “That students understand their agency in the positionality of racism, and that also it’s not impossible to create an antiracist design approach. It is a hard conversation, but if

Photo courtesy of Terresa Moses, Assistant Professor and Director of the College of Design Justice Network at the University of Minnesota.

(Daniel Oyinloye / Minnesota Daily)

you can commit to it, we can actually begin to change our culture and make a better world for everyone; liberate all the people who are oppressed and marginalized.”

Several students who took the class said it left them feeling empowered to recognize and stand up to racialized design.

“I can recall a time where [my group] had a moment of, ‘Who let this happen?’ and, ‘Why did no one step up to say something?’” said Grace Carlson, a third-year graphic design student. “We concluded that in big companies where there isn’t enough diversity, there is no space to have critiques like that; no one is there to offer that perspective.”

Heu also said that the course has had a large impact on his work.

“I feel like as a designer I want to make [a] good de-

sign that’s gonna positively impact people. And I want to make sure that, like, I’m learning and I’m continuing to grow,” he said.

Heu said he has taken other courses within the College of Design that focus on topics such as sustainability and consumerism, but this was the first course that was structured to explicitly discuss racism. Jack Wiese, a third-year graphic design student, voiced the same appreciation for the course.

“Many CDES courses do incorporate some kind of conversation, however it is not nearly enough to just ‘talk’ about it,” Wiese said in an email to the Minnesota Daily. “It’s important that all faculty are able to teach their students these lessons so that the next generation of designers don’t allow racism in design to persist. Real change starts with all of us.”

COVID-19 page 1 but that has not been possible over the past year,” said Kara Galvin, director of International and Graduate Programs, in an email.

Robin Ingli, director of admissions of the JD program at the Law School, said after the pandemic hit, in the fall of 2020, international student enrollment at the law school decreased from 8% to 4%.

By going fully remote, Ingli said the law school admissions office was able to reach more people, including students in other countries.

Thostenson said public distrust in the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the anti-immigrant rhetoric under the Trump administration has contributed to the decline in international student enrollment.

But with a new administration, Thostenson said she is optimistic about the vaccine rollout process.

Kappler said despite the consequences of the pandemic, international students have persisted and have come to the University.

“Students are still

Racial justice page 1 role in a history of racial injustice, said Jigna Desai, project leader and University professor in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies.

The University will distribute portions of the $5 million grant to specific projects, including the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC).

“This project is hoping to do more of that historical acknowledgment and really putting things out on the table that happened: good things, not so good things, horrible things, uncomfortable things that people don’t want to talk about. It’s not going to be an easy project, but it’s one that needs to be done,” said MIAC’s Executive Director Shannon Geshick.

Using funding from the grant, MIAC will work with the University to create a historical report that analyzes the University’s relationship with Minnesota’s tribal nations. MIAC sent leadership a series of resolutions this summer asking that the University acknowledge its obligations to the tribes as a land-grant institution, whereby the federal government gave tribal lands ceded by Native Americans, often as a result of U.S. violence, to universities as a grant.

“One of those resolutions really delved into

Illustration by Sarah Mai arriving in the United States even though the restrictions and the difficulties are keeping the majority of students from being

able to travel,” Kappler said. “I want to give credit to those students who have made that journey to continue their studies.”

the University and tribal relations, or lack thereof, and highlighted the fact that the University has gained greatly from use of ancestral Dakota land and that there should be some partnership, some work, some figuring out how to not just acknowledge but, again, move forward together,” Geshick said.

The report will inform and serve as a foundation for future University policies, according to David Chang, a collaborator on the project and professor in the Department of History.

“It’s going to be a pretty substantial report because there’s a long history to tell,” Chang said. “The goal is to come up with a document that’s truly usable. The timeline on that is kind of slow, but this is a big undertaking. … This is a sincere effort to understand this history.”

The historical report will also include recommendations on areas of improvement for the University, such as broadening Morris’ tuition waiver for Native American students to other programs or campuses at the University.

Leaders from MIAC and the tribal nations are also seeking representation on the University’s Board of Regents. This request will likely become formalized in the report, Geshick said.

“The elected tribal leaders of the tribal nations in Minnesota have

expressed a need for there to be tribal representation and specifically an elected tribal leader to sit on that board,” she said.

MIAC will hire an external historical consultant to work on the report in collaboration with researchers from the University, Geshick said. Using funds from the grant, each of the 11 tribal nations will also hire an intern to research the report.

Due to budget constraints, faculty had to seek outside funding to support the resolutions made by MIAC this summer.

“We had to go look for money. We’re hoping at some point the University will pony up some money for these types of things, but we’ll wait,” Johnson said. “In the meantime, I’m very aggressively going after grant money.

We’re going after other foundations at this point to try and fund these initiatives. But right now is a bad time for universities.”

As work on the project begins, leaders said they will work to establish trust and build relationships in the communities they are discussing.

“There’s a lot of mistrust with communities because the University has often taken what it’s needed and then not necessarily met the needs of the communities,” Desai said.

“So when you do a partnership, part of it is figuring out what each component wants or needs.”

University of Minnesota alum Nimo Yusuf uses WhatsApp to deliver lessons to Somali participants

Yusuf is bringing SNAP education to the Somali community.

By Ava Thompson athompson@mndaily.com

University of Minnesota alum Nimo Yusuf delivers nutrition lessons to Somali participants in the University Extension’s SNAP Education using WhatsApp, a popular application among many U.S. immigrant communities.

SNAP Education offers nutrition courses and works with other organizations to reach communities that are eligible for SNAP benefits. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition

Assistance Program, is a government program that provides financial assistance to families in need to purchase food.

Yusuf teaches program participants how to make healthier ingredient choices when planning meals and cooking recipes, such as using whole grain instead of white flour when making an East African bread dish called injera. Her other lessons include reading the different fat percentages in milk and how to save money when comparing prices across store outlets.

Instead of teaching her students how to use Zoom, Yusuf uses WhatsApp to formulate her lesson plans into bite-sized voice memos accompanied with

pictures. WhatsApp allows users to send audio recordings, participate in group conversations with up to 256 people and host video calls in different countries.

For Yusuf, who has been using WhatsApp since 2010, the app is the most effective way to teach her classes virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I knew a lot of the Somali participants that I work with, including myself, are very familiar [with] WhatsApp,” Yusuf said. “When we switched from in-person, it was one of the platforms that I knew they were very familiar with, and it wouldn’t take a whole lot of time to train them or to know how to use.”

While she said she misses seeing her students’ faces in person, Yusuf ’s adapted curriculum has received positive feedback.

“The feedback has been that they have learned a lot through WhatsApp and the curriculum that we have been providing.

So far, it’s been very, very well received,” Yusuf said.

Janice Rasmussen, regional SNAP-Ed coordinator and Yusuf ’s supervisor, said Yusuf ’s work is vital during COVID-19 when communities of color, including immigrant communities, are disproportionately impacted by the virus.

“COVID has just heightened [health disparities]. … If you look at the public health numbers, like,

African American and folks of African descent are dying way more often from COVID,” Rasmussen said. “I think some of it relates to just the stress that people live under and the discrimination they face every day and the poverty that they’re living with.”

Hibaq Dualeh, another SNAP educator, said COVID-19 has revealed persistent systemic health and social inequities. To Dualeh, it is an opportunity to learn and create resources and programs that can benefit communities of color.

“COVID has made it incredibly difficult for us to engage communities in person,” Dualeh said in an email to the Minnesota Daily. “As a result, we have free time that can be

devoted to other areas. In the past year, we’ve had ample time to identify gaps and opportunities in the resources we provide to the communities we work with.”

Yusuf plans to resume teaching her lessons via WhatsApp in February with about 40 participants.

“We just want to make a difference in the community, and [the] kindness of the community … makes my day, and that makes me feel rewarded, even when you know the challenges are very real and there are a lot of barriers,” Yusuf said. “I’m glad to be a bridge that helps to bring … the University resources to the Somali community, to the communities that I work with.”

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3 Monday, February 8, 2021

Dr. Bonnie Jenkins nominated to the Biden administration She is currently waiting for confirmation from the Senate.

By Katelyn Vue kvue@mndaily.com Every year during middle school, Dr. Bonnie Jenkins made sure she was on the honor roll.

As a reward for making the honor roll at Jenkins’ middle school, students traveled to Washington, D.C. Those trips sparked Jenkins’ interest in working for the federal government.

Now, Jenkins is a senior fellow in global policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, where she hosts virtual seminars on topics like national security and arms control. Between earning several degrees — including a law degree, two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in international relations — Jenkins has served in city, state and federal government as well as the military.

Last month, President Joe Biden nominated Jenkins to be undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs in his administration. She awaits to hear confirmation from the Senate.

“I grew up … in the south Bronx, and I didn’t come from lots of money

Bonnie Jenkins, the founder and executive director of the Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict Transformation, speaks at a conference. Courtesy photo. or anything, but I was very fortunate to get assistance from scholarships to go to different schools starting in high school,” Jenkins said.

“I just love to learn; I still love to learn. And I like the academic environment, so it’s been quite a ride from where I started to where I am now.”

She pursued roles in city and state government before working in the federal government in Washington in 1990. Jenkins said her federal role exposed her to international security issues, particularly in arms control, that paved a new path for

her journey.

“I like new things; I like challenges, and so I seek out challenges all the time,” Jenkins said In January, Jenkins was selected as the 2020 Arms Control Person of the Year through an online poll, with participants spanning over 65 countries, which recognized her work in diversifying foreign policy and national security and taking action steps to target institutional racism.

Jenkins is the founder and executive director of Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security and Conflict

Transformation (WCAPS), a nonprofit aiming “to advance leadership and professional development for women of color in the fields of international peace, security and conflict transformation.” She launched the organization in 2017 after serving eight years in the Obama administration as the coordinator for the Department of State’s threat reduction programs.

For many years, Jenkins was often the only person of color in the room to discuss topics including weapons of mass destruction and international security.

“I didn’t see people coming up behind me. I didn’t see a generation of people who look like me coming up in this field,” Jenkins said.

WCAPS has a mentorship program, projects, working groups and a pipeline to direct organizations to seek women of color for opportunities. WCAPS also has chapters worldwide and is working to develop a chapter at the University’s Humphrey School.

“Starting my organization was something new.

I never ran [a nongovernmental organization] before, so it was still taking a chance and a leap of faith,” Jenkins said. “But you have to believe in yourself, and you have to work hard at it.”

Will Stewart, customer relationship management

consultant for WCAPS, said he found out about Jenkins’ nomination for President Biden’s administration through Twitter.

“She was so gracious and humble about it,” Stewart said. “That’s her personality: She didn’t make anything too big, and I know she’s going to be great in this position.”

“Bonnie is brilliant to a point where it is almost impossible. She is constantly doing six more things than you know she is because that is how much she can manage,” Maher Akremi, WCAPS project assistant, said. “But at the same time, at no point will she ever make you feel small just because she is incredible.”

Sylvia Mishra, co-chair for one of the WCAPS working groups, reached out to Jenkins over email almost four years ago and said she was surprised how quickly Jenkins replied to set up a time for coffee.

“Her inspirational story is matched with the goodness of her heart,” Mishra said. “Her championing underrepresented communities and voices is something that stands out brightly about her.”

Editor’s note: Because of an editor error, this article was published before the piece was finalized. It has since been updated and republished.

Local businesses, neighborhood organizations begin applying for UMN’s Good Neighbor Fund The fund will award $45,000 between several local recipients.

By Jasmine Snow jsnow@mndaily.com Dave Feehan loves Dinkytown. As a member of a group dedicated to preserving the ‘Dinky-ness’ of the area, he wants to do everything he can to make it better. But the projects cannot move forward for free.

The University of Minnesota’s Good Neighbor Fund (GNF) is taking applications and some local groups are gearing up to request funding for their projects.

GNF supports University-area communities through a grant established in 2007. The original purpose of the grant was to support local governments, organizations and businesses through the changes brought about by the creation of TCF Bank Stadium. This year, $45,000 is up for grabs.

“It was an opportunity for the neighborhoods to address and essentially help beautify and improve the serenity, security, etc.,

of the community that surrounds the space,” said J.D. Burton, the University’s chief government relations officer.

In recent years, the grant has been awarded to a range of projects and initiatives, from improving bike parking in St. Anthony Park to the preservation of murals in Dinkytown.

Feehan, the co-chair of Preserve Historic Dinkytown, will be assisting the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association with their grant proposal for this year to assist Dinkytown businesses.

He said they hope to put the funds toward a variety of projects, primarily a small-scale business improvement district which showed promise following work done by a group of student interns this summer.

“Business improvement districts are common in the United States and they’re really important,” Feehan said. “It’s really an attempt to create a sense of community and to fix some of the things that need fixing.”

Southeast Como Improvement Association (SECIA) brainstormed

A trash bin adorned with the silhouette of Minneapolis is half buried in snow in the Marcy Holmes neighborhood on Tuesday, Jan. 28. The neighborhood provides housing for a significant number of University students. (Kamaan Richards / Minnesota Daily) their possible proposals for this year at a recent meeting, including a mini eco fair, an intergenerational connection and social justice initiative and a welcome packet to promote diverse involvement in the neighborhood organization.SECIA is planning to continue discussions about their proposals in the coming months before applying for funding.

The University’s hiring freeze and other staffing changes have presented

minor obstacles in this year’s application process, but Burton said it’ll be business as usual for the awarding process.

In order to qualify, applicants must be a part of the Stadium Area Advisory Group and demonstrate “financial accountability,” according to its website.

Merrie Benasutti, a community coordinator from the University’s Office of Public Engagement, said there are sometimes “domino effects” created by grant award

decisions — when a recipient is announced, other funders sometimes match dollars to complete the project.

Though there are no maximum or minimum award limits, the fund’s website encourages applicants to be mindful of funding availability. Applications can be found on the fund’s website and are due April 15. An advisory committee will decide on final awardees, who should be notified around July of this year.

MSA plans to advocate for the expansion of SAD light availability for students MSA wants to add more SAD lights to libraries across campus.

By Ava Thompson athompson@mndaily.com The Minnesota Student Association is working to increase the availability of lights on campus to reduce the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of depression that is related to changes in seasons when there is less sunlight.

University of Minnesota students can currently check out SAD lights at Magrath Library on the St. Paul campus. Part of a larger effort to improve student mental health, the MSA initiative aims to make the lights available across more University libraries, including Walter Library and Wilson Library.

Eight percent of University students reported being diagnosed with SAD, according to the 2018 College Student Health Survey Report.

That year, almost 4% of University students reported

being diagnosed with SAD within 12 months of taking the survey.

Through internal library equipment funding, Magrath Library conducted a pilot project that introduced four SAD lights beginning in 2015, with the potential for expansion. The lights were constantly used before COVID-19 and are still circulating, said Kristen Mastel, an outreach and instruction librarian at Magrath Library.

“Once folks knew about them, they were always checked out whenever it was winter, … whenever it’s kind

of gloomy out,” Mastel said.

Governess Simpson, director of MSA’s Health and Wellness Committee, said her team plans to consult with library managers to gauge interest and get student perspectives before drafting a resolution asking the University to purchase more lights.

“Our hope is to put together a resolution that can prompt administration at the library to purchase and indulge in more SAD lights,” Simpson said.

Although the lights are in constant circulation at

Magrath, Mark Engebretson, the University Libraries director of advancement, said the overall demand for SAD lights has been low. Since September 2019, Magrath Library has received 45 bookings on the lights.

However, Engebretson said they would look into the possibility of having them available at other University libraries.

“I am fairly convinced this is a need that has to be addressed, and we can create a good case for it,” Simpson said.

Daily Review

4 Monday, February 8, 2021

Dr. Calvin Phillips to become VP for student affairs and dean of students

Phillip’s roles will start on March 1, pending approval.

By Abbey Machtig and Ethan Fine amachtig@mndaily.com efine@mndaily.com

The University of Minnesota recently announced that Dr. Calvin Phillips will join the University as the vice president for student affairs and dean of students.

Though Phillips’ employment does not begin until March and is dependent on approval by the Board of Regents, the University is currently working to transition Phillips into the position through conversations with administrators and, eventually, with students.

This announcement concludes a year-long, national search for candidates to fill the position.

Phillips previously worked at Eastern Michigan University (EMU).

Upon arriving at the University, Phillips said he

plans to perform a self-assessment to identify future projects and “to truly understand about the experience of the student on the campus.”

This self-assessment process will include talking with students, both undergraduate and graduate, staff, faculty and administrators.

“Some things that may work well at Eastern [Michigan University] may not necessarily work at your institution. Your needs may be different and I think that’s part of what I’m going to be really working hard at and assessing,” Phillips said in an interview with the Minnesota Daily.

The vice president for student affairs oversees 20 units and over 500 employees. Among these are Boynton Health, Student Legal Services, fraternity and sorority life and Student Unions and Activities.

The position also oversees a budget of $94 million.

Phillips will report directly to President Joan Gabel and serve on her senior leadership team.

Last March, the search

Dr. Calvin Phillips poses for a portrait. Photo courtesy of university of Minnesota Relations. for the position was paused searches from other unifor four months due to the versities. When all of those pandemic. Administrators checkboxes were met, we felt they were prepared for agreed to launch,” Goh said. this possibility, said MiPhillips has occupied chael Goh, vice president several administrative roles for equity and diversity at at universities throughout the University and co-chair the country, most recently of the search committee. at EMU as the vice presi“That’s based on our dent for student affairs. search firm’s experience Prior to EMU, Phillips held with other searches that the same position at both had already launched dur- Northern State University ing the pandemic. We were and the University of Texasalso considerate of re- Pan American. cent experiences of other At a public forum in

December, Phillips said that both the diverse population of the Twin Cities and his desire to gain a better understanding of the recent calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd attracted him to the University.

“I look at that as part of my responsibility, to be a part of that change to say that this is not who we are as a community and really send the message to people about the importance of an inclusive community,” Phillips said.

During his time at EMU, Phillips worked to establish several diversity-focused initiatives and committees aimed at improving the student experience for students from underrepresented groups. He also introduced a Title IX office, a collegiate level esports program and was involved in COVID-19 mitigation efforts at EMU. “The best way I can describe Calvin is he’s always calm,” Leigh Greden, chief of staff at EMU, said. “He has a very pleasant demeanor. He’s a team player.”

Making connections between stakeholder groups at the University will be a major focus in the beginning stages of his career at the University, Phillips said.

“If people can say they know who the vice president and dean of students is at the University of Minnesota, they know who I am, then I think for me, that’s going to be a win,” Phillips said.

Dr. Phillips will begin at the University on March 1.

“

I look at that as part of my responsibility, to be a part of that change to say that this in now who we are as a community...”

DR. CALVIN PHILLIPS Future VP of student affairs & dean of students

Newly formed Arab Student Association aims to forge sense of community for Arab students Arab Student Association to connect UMN Arab students .

By Srilekha Garishakurti sgarishakurti@mndaily.com The Arab Student Association (ASA) at the University of Minnesota is hosting its first-ever event virtually this week.

The cultural group registered as an official organization in the fall in order to create a collective Arab community on campus, encompassing all religions, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, said Nadia Aruri, the president and co-founder of ASA. Despite having known many Arab students on campus, the leaders of ASA said they lacked an official group to foster community and host cultural events and activities.

“Having alumni in my family, I knew that community was a big thing that was missing at the University,” said Farah Ahmed-

Arab Student Union Board Members Nadia Aruri, Ava Kian, Farha Ismail and Farah Ahmed Baghat pose for a portrait at 44 North Apartments on Monday, Jan. 25.

Bahgat, vice president and co-founder of ASA. “So we took it upon ourselves to spark a sense of community for those who resonate

with the culture as well as those who want to learn more about it.”

Susan Abed, a thirdyear student at the Uni-

versity, said she has felt a lack of representation and sense of community.

“When I first heard about ASA, I was very ex-

cited because growing up, I wasn’t really around Arabs. To be at a school where an actual [Arab] Association was forming

in front of my eyes really made me feel very excited,” Abed said.

She said she hopes the group will do a good job representing and sharing Arab cultures to University students.

Although the pandemic is not an ideal time to start a student group, the board members took it upon themselves to create an inclusive space for Arab students, Ahmed-Bahgat said.

The board members of ASA said they are hopeful for the future as they are in the beginning stages of planning events and initiatives for Arab students.

“I really would love to see this flourish into, not only a University of Minnesota group, but as well as something that kind of brings those in Minnesota together,” Ahmed-Bahgat said.

With their first event coming up this week, ASA hopes to host many more events including virtual galas, game nights, study sessions, cultural nights, bake sales and more, Aruri said.

What Biden’s federal student loan pause means for UMN

UMN officials, students and experts weigh in on the freeze

By Abbey Machtig amachtig@mndaily.com

President Joe Biden’s administration extended the pause on federal student loan payments and interest through an executive order signed in January, an action that will impact University of Minnesota students.

While many of the details regarding this policy change remain unknown, the University’s administration will eventually receive guidance from government organizations. Meanwhile, students are considering how the executive order will impact them and their finances in the future.

According to 2020 data, total student debt in the United States amounts to approximately $1.7 trillion, with $1.5 trillion of that amount coming from fed-

eral student loans.

The executive order, signed into action on Jan. 21, temporarily freezes the required payments on federal student loans through September 2021 and sets interest rates at 0%, allowing borrowers to go without making their loan payments.

This payment pause was introduced by former President Donald Trump’s administration at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to relieve financial stress for federal student loan holders. The pause was set to expire at the end of January prior to the extension granted by Biden.

Those with federal student loans will automatically be enrolled in the payment waiver, said Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on finances for college students and former publisher of savingforcollege.com.

Alli Heckert, a secondyear University student studying strategic communications, has taken out

approximately $60,000 in private and federal loans to fund her education.

“These actions are detrimental,” she said. “We have a greater issue around the country that secondary educational institutions are gouging students’ bank accounts, almost making education not accessible without signing into a life worth of debt. I mean using myself as an example I am [approximately] $60,000 in debt before I have even turned 20.”

Heckert said she will continue to pay her student loans even throughout the freeze, giving her the opportunity to get ahead on the payments.

“This change being implemented means that in the future I may not worry as much or pay as much as I would have to without it,” Heckert said.

Joseph Brunner, a second-year student studying health and wellbeing sciences, said that the payment pause will allow him

to save up money to pay tuition in the future.

“I do take out student loans, and while luckily paying them off has not been an issue as of yet, at the rate of my financial wellbeing, this would likely become more of a pertinent problem in a couple of months,” Brunner said in an email to the Minnesota Daily.

Kantrowitz recommended that borrowers focus on building an emergency fund, paying back other debts and on saving and investing throughout the payment pause.

The eventual widespread distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, slated to reach college students this coming summer or fall, may also encourage the economy to grow and cause the government to end the payment pause in September, Kantrowitz said.

“Everybody loves the payment policy and interest waiver. There’s clearly

some borrowers that still need it. I wouldn’t be surprised that if we do have all the vaccinations occur and the economy starts coming back, then people won’t necessarily need a further extension,” he said.

University officials said it is difficult to know exactly what this payment pause will mean for the University and what the long-term effects will be.

However, the University is expecting to receive future guidance from government organizations, like the Department of Education, on how to adapt to these policy changes.

For other policies affecting higher education that may change under Biden, such as immigration laws, guidance may come from the Department of Justice, University President Joan Gabel said in an interview with the Minnesota Daily on Monday. The University’s legal counsel will also monitor policy changes, Gabel said.

Illustration by Mary Ellen Ritter Heckert said she feels the Biden administration’s decision to continue the payment pause has been relieving for federal student loan holders.

“I think that this age group and those affected are in a really vulnerable spot in their life as it is,” she said. “So, to add on top of all the global issues and individual issues this seems like a good start, and I emphasize start, to help release some pressure.”

5 Monday, February 8, 2021

FOOD

Al’s Breakfast switches up menu with weekly staff meals Typical food is for typical times, so skip the usual.

By Nina Raemont nraemont@mndaily.com Brown paper to-go bags line the counter of Al’s Breakfast, where plates of eggs and hashbrowns and mugs of piping hot coffee were once consumed by hungry patrons. The items inside the restaurant’s brown bags, however, aren’t your usual brunch suspects.

The bags contain a spinach salad with fresh fixings like avocado, grapefruit and jicama, a lamb stew with polenta, roasted Brussels sprouts and veggies with a honeychipotle glaze and a lime white chocolate tart finished with a topping of

berries — not your typical Al’s order.

But typical food is for typical times, and the past year has been anything but typical for the restaurant industry. That’s why in May, Alison Kirwin, the owner of Al’s Breakfast, decided to offer a weekly staff meal special to the Twin Cities community.

For $50, customers will get two large servings of an assortment of different weekly specials: a “threecourse culinary delight,” according to employee Andrew Wilkins. From Christmas lamb shanks to summertime prosciutto and melon, the weekly options offer a new and refreshing take on their regular takeout operation.

What initially began as a way to feed the staff through the pandemic evolved into a creative approach to keep

Alison Kirwin stands in Al’s to get orders out the door on Wednesday, Feb. 3. (Parker Johnson / Minnesota Daily) the restaurant relevant and offer customers something different. By Monday of each week, customers can order the meals advertised through Al’s social media, newsletter and on their website and pick them up in store every Wednesday.

Al’s Breakfast employee Will Harris said the staff meals are a great option for students. Although they are

advertised as two servings, the meals will last you a few days, Harris said. All you have to do is heat them up.

“It’s relatively profitable and ... it also is fun for me to have a little bit more creativity with what we’re doing and just to get to show off some of my other skills,” Kirwin said. Along with profitability and relevance, the extra cash

helps “keep the lights on” at the iconic restaurant and gives the employees a free weekly meal.

Al’s employee Olive Weston has grown up with Kirwin’s cooking. Weston, Kirwin’s goddaughter and niece, has fond memories of her aunt’s best dishes that she’s made in and out of the restaurant.

“I think it’s really cool that the people that know her as making hashbrowns and pancakes every week — which are amazing and delicious too — but I think it’s great that she gets to show all of these people that have known her for many years over at Al’s all the other amazing things that she can cook,” Weston said.

“They’re spot-on every week and always impressive.”

The close quarters that make the dining experience so unique are also the

reason that Al’s won’t be able to return to indoor dining until a majority of the community is vaccinated, Kirwin said. Until then, the staff meals and the takeout model allow the restaurant a way to stay a part of the University community.

Kirwin said the area neighborhoods have been supportive throughout the pandemic, but business is nowhere near where it used to be pre-pandemic.

The day when we are back, wolfing down hashbrowns, bumping elbows with our breakfast bar strangers and listening in on everyone else’s conversation feels far away for now. would do anything to get back to that,” Kirwin said.

“It’s going to be a tough go for the next nine months but I think we’re gonna make it out on the other side.”

MUSIC

Local artist Mama Rose prepares for debut release “drink More water” channels Rose’s musical influences.

By Frankie Carlson fcarlson@mndaily.com A mother of three, a self-proclaimed psychic and an all-around artist, local musician Mama Rose spent the latter half of 2020 in the studio.

Her debut EP, “drink More water,” is set to release on all streaming services on Feb. 26, with the project’s single, “sweet Waters,” dropping on Feb. 19.

A combination of sounds and influences from folk, hip-hop and neo-jazz, “drink More water” is a cathartic reflection on change, identity and discovering one’s relationship with the world and nature.

Rose began work on the EP in the summer of 2020 while pregnant with her third child.

Local artist Mama Rose poses for a portrait on Tuesday, Feb. 2. (Emily Pofahl / Minnesota Daily) “Right around that time, my partner and I found out that our baby had some pretty serious health complications,” Rose said.

“And at that time in my pregnancy, we weren’t sure if he was even going to be able to breathe or swallow when he was born or if he would make it. So, I was in a very peculiar place of wanting, knowing that I had something coming up in my life that was going to be an extreme shift when he was born.”

Rose felt that despite the concerning news, it was the perfect time to create.

Before recording “drink More water,” Rose had been in a search for the perfect-fit producer who would help her realize her goals for her first release.

“I’ve been waiting for that person before creating my first project because I knew that whatever I put out to the world for my first project, it needed to be something that really represented me,” Rose

said. “Finally, last summer, I found Jason Faye.”

Faye, a local musician and audio engineer, took point on recording “drink More water” after they met at a wedding, with Faye DJing and Rose officiating.

The two kept their recording sessions collaborative and unrestrained as they focused on improvisation and freeflowing ideas.

“Great songwriter,” Faye said. “She is just in the moment. She can just make things seemingly out of nothing and really work quickly. Very intuitive.”

Charlotte “Mama” Rose discovered her creative side at a young age. Her mother, a nonprofessional visual artist, encouraged Rose’s participation in every area of the arts, signing her up for art competitions, theater camps and eventually songwriting contests. Rose attributes her musical influences growing up to different family members, with her father playing classic rock around the

house, her mother listening to funk and R&B and her older sister imparting her taste in hip-hop.

Coming out of high school, Rose was offered an academic scholarship for the nursing program at St. Kate’s University.

“The reason that I wanted to do that is because all four of my nieces and nephews — my sister’s kids — were born very early,” Rose said. “Three of them were born three months early, and they spent a lot of time in the ICU. So, I wanted to be able to help babies.”

Eventually finding herself in a transitional and transformative period, Rose left St. Kate’s at 19 to pursue music.

“I decided that I needed to stop going to nursing school because if I were to go down that path, I was never going to have enough time to be as committed to art and music as I needed to be,” she said. “I really didn’t know what that was going to look like. At that time, I was climbing out

of a hole to try to convince myself that I was actually an artist, or could be.”

Rose began her performance career opening a show at Dr. Chocolate’s Chocolate Chateau, a nowclosed St. Paul restaurant where she was working at the time. From there, she began to perform more regularly in the Twin Cities area. “That was the beginning of a new chapter. I did that and then just kind of slowly eased into doing more performances.

After that, I created Mama Rose, which is the version of me that I share in all my art now,” Rose said.

Rose’s publicist, Krista Vilinskis, hopes that people will listen closely and take in the lyrics of “drink More water.”

“I really hope that [listeners] stop and smell the roses,” Vilinskis said.

“The mindfulness behind her art is really authentic, and I feel it when I talk to her and when I listen to her music. Some people are just naturally talented, and she’s definitely one of them.”

ARTS

Minneapolis Institute of Art premiers exhibit curated by UMN undergrad Starasea Nidiala Camara curated Mia’s newest exhibition.

By Nina Raemont nraemont@mndaily.com When you step foot into the Cargill Gallery on the first floor of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), you will see an assortment of assemblages, quilts and works of found wood, metal, paint and more. The exhibition is impactful, it’s intentional and a University of Minnesota student curated it.

Curated by Starasea Nidiala Camara, Mia’s newest exhibition, “In the Presence of Our Ancestors: Southern Perspectives in African American Art,” will be open and free to view until December 2021.

The exhibition centers on past and present African American artists from the southern region of the United States.

Camara is a fourthyear student pursuing an individually designed interdepartmental major with concentrations in

Arabic language and literature, African diaspora studies and art history.

Camara’s opportunity came from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, which annually selects three undergraduate students of color to work at museums across the country, including Mia. The foundation aims to diversify collections and the employment pipeline, affording undergraduates paid professional development within the museum field.

Camara grew up with art all around her — her mother is a lifelong artist — and at a young age, she cultivated a love for drawing and painting, eventually moving into welding, glasswork and ceramics as she got older.

“The first activity that was of interest to me was creating,” Camara said.

She developed a curiosity for museum work in her midteens and worked at Mia as a visitor experience representative when she applied to the Souls Grown Deep internship program.

The exhibition features environmentally specific works using industrial materials like metal,

wood and paint, Camara explained. For “Royal Flag”

by Thornton Dial, Dial utilized paint, an American flag, a toy bull and a doll.

Joe Minter’s “Old Rugged Cross” incorporates planks of wood and nails, and Lola Pettway made a quilt of corduroy, while Lottie Mooney’s quilt is cotton and rayon.

The exhibition walls are painted black, and each artistic work is accompanied by a label that informs the viewer of the artist’s background and provides a photo, giving the reader a further understanding of the artist’s life.

“I think that I very much wanted to create a specific ambiance, challenging the idea of a white cube gallery with works traditionally being presented without context, which is very common in the contemporary fashion in which galleries are often organized,” Camara said.

The opportunity to curate an exhibition as an undergraduate is rare, said Robert Cozzolino, curator of paintings at Mia. Cozzolino worked with Camara throughout the exhibition’s curatorial process.

Starasea Nidiala Camara poses for a portrait on Thursday, Jan. 28. (Parker Johnson / Minnesota Daily) Learning about curatorial work goes beyond the theoretical readings and exploration that happen within museum studies classrooms, Cozzolino said.

“The first thing that I found out when I started working in museums was there really isn’t a way to learn until you’re thrown in,” Cozzolino said. “I don’t know what happens in museum studies classes, but I know that if people are just talking theoretically about exhibitions, it doesn’t compare to the weird range of experiences and serendipitous events that happen when you’re actually dealing with the stuff and the people.”

Throughout the curatorial process, Camara sought out Mia’s Black people, Indigenous people and people of color Curatorial Advisory Committee (CAC), which helped her walk through layout choices like the nontraditional color of the walls and the labels that further explain the artists, among other programmatic elements of the show.

The work of the committee “horizontalized” the curatorial process, said Anniessa Antar, Mia activation specialist and CAC member.

“Bringing in other voices [for the committee] just helps kind of

democratize the museum visitorship,” Antar said.

Antar said the committee is one component of a larger arc to develop more equitable museum practices.

“It’s a good start, but we need to also be looking at the structures, including payment, you know, just the general workplace culture and retention of people of color at the museum,” Antar said.

Camara explained that in some exhibition work, the communities that the exhibition is about are not always brought into the conversation or do not have agency over the work presented about them.

“The arts is a center of education — the arts is a pillar of education — but it’s also a methodology that can be applied to representation,” Camara said. “So if we’re not a part of these conversations — if we’re not leading these conversations — it’s not necessarily about being invited. It’s about being a part of the conversation from the beginning, contributing and working together to develop something new, something that’s beneficial to everybody.

If we win, everybody wins.”

6 Monday, February 8, 2021

ARTS

Black Table Arts Cooperative set to open a new location The creative space for Black artists opens on Feb. 25.

By Nina Raemont nraemont@mndaily.com Upon one of the walls in the Black Table Arts Cooperative is a quote from Aimé and Suzanne Césaire. It reads: “ ... The Revolution will construct itself in the name of bread, of course, but also in the name of fresh air and of poetry (which amounts to the same thing) … ” The Black Table Arts Cooperative’s (BTA) new space will open Feb. 25, standing as a resource center for Black creatives and businesses, offering resources and a community to both emerging and established Black artists in the Twin Cities.

The building will house a bookstore, a performance space and shared workspaces. Keno Evol, the founder and executive director of BTA, sees the

cooperative at the center of civic engagement, art, organizing, Black joy and imagination.

Located on Minnehaha Avenue, the physical space is only a few blocks away from the Minneapolis Police Department Third Precinct, which was destroyed in a fire during the riots and unrest sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.

“We want to be clear that this sort of space, sort of structure, came out of the relational support and the financial support of uprising that’s going to deepen the work in the name of George Floyd, but also in the name of Terrance Franklin and Jamar Clark and Philando Castile and Marcus Golden,” Evol said.

BTA has hosted different events that center Black creatives and artists, from the Because Black Life conference, a gathering dedicated to communally checking in on Black life and imagining the future of organizing; to Black Lines

Keno Evol poses for a portrait on Friday, Jan. 22. (Audrey Rauth / Minnesota Daily) Matter, their bi-weekly writers workshop; to Chai and Chill, a poetry reading and conversation space.

With the new physical space, BTA looks to continue those events while also adding on many more.

Many artist cooperatives exist in the Twin Cities, but few center Black artists and organizing in their mission.

The cooperative not only focuses on art as a form of expression but also as a way

to maintain efforts of social justice and Black liberation.

“We think that within being an artist is someone who has alternative ideas to the status quo,” Evol said.

“The stakes are high in this country and in this world, and artists have good ideas.”

Alfred Sanders, director of operations for BTA, has ties to the Twin Cities art community through his 10-year career as a singer.

Sanders remembers how

hard it was to get his start as an artist, and he hopes BTA will provide young creatives with the resources that he didn’t have access to when he started out. “The biggest thing is being a starting point for artists who may feel lost,” Sanders said.

Eventually, BTA intends to offer internship and apprenticeship opportunities to young people interested in the art world, from high school to college students.

“[Young artists] can just learn things and spark their brain and kind of focus on the next generation.

So, that’s a big hope with [BTA] is kind of focusing on us but also inspiring the ones coming up behind us in order to mold their creativity and add some purpose to their trajectory,” Sanders said.

Sunezz Washington, program assistant for BTA, recently jumped back into the Twin Cities art scene, focusing on honing her skills as a sketch artist and exploring her passion for herbal medicine. Through the co-op, she has more access to resources for artistic growth.

“Having that foundation is more needed than people really realize, and having that close-knit community is very important for any creative.

You have that foundation to really push yourself as a collective and just keep growing as an organization,” Washington said. “It’s a really beautiful thing.”

FOOD

Sharing Food: Bariis iskukaris (Somali-style rice) “Sharing Food,” a series by A&E, lets no meal go unshared.

By Nina Raemont nraemont@mndaily.com During the colder months, we gravitate toward food that will sustain us and make us feel whole.

I can’t think of anything better than a plate of bariis iskukaris, Somali-style rice, shared by the Somali Student Association (SSA).

Pronounced “Ba-rees Iska-Ku-Ris,” this aromatic and colorful plate of rice is not only simple to make, but it also boasts flavorful and warm spices that contribute to a nourishing meal, pairing well with vegetables or meat of your choice.

From Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and finally to the U.S., the SSA president, Mohamed Elmi, has moved around a lot. One thing that doesn’t change wherever he goes? This plate of rice.

“You’ll find a Somali person everywhere from Southeast Asia to America.

But one thing that, no

The finished dish of bariis iskukaris prepared series on Sunday, Jan. 31. (Shannon Doyle / Minnesota Daily) matter where you go, at a Somali restaurant, you will always find bariis no matter how it’s cooked or if it has different spices. It’s one thing that, despite politics and everything that’s happened, we all share in common,” Elmi said.

In the early 1990s, the Somali Civil War caused many Somali people to flee to different countries and spread across the world. Many came to Minnesota. In fact, the state holds the largest concentration of Somalis in the country, according to American Community

Survey in 2017.

With just one bite of the rice, the warm and savory spices contrast with the sweet and plump rehydrated raisins in olive oil with onions sprinkled atop the dish.

The Basmati rice’s aromatic flavor pairs beautifully with the cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom and clove.

The dish uses a Somali spice blend called xawaash that, when paired with the saffron, lends a yellowish tint to the rice. The spices bloom in the hot oil and fill your kitchen with a fragrant aroma.

Elmi pairs his bariis with banana — a staple in Somali cuisine — and different types of meat, from goat to steak to chicken. “It’s a nice balance of sweet,” he said.

In high school, Elmi’s mom would make him bariis three to five times a week. “It just gives you a feeling of family and home, and it just ties you back to your culture in a way,” Elmi said. Now he goes to the West Bank Diner with friends to eat the staple dish.

“Everyone knows it, and everyone eats it,” Elmi said.

Recipe for bariis iskukaris adapted from New York Times Cooking Ingredients For the rice: 2 cups Basmati rice 1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 large yellow onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 cinnamon stick 3 whole green cardamom pods 5 whole cloves 1 teaspoon xawaash spice mix (see below)

4 cups chicken stock 1 teaspoon saffron threads, finely chopped 1/2 cup raisins Salt to taste For the xawaash (Somali spice mix): 1 tablespoon cumin seeds 1 tablespoon coriander seeds 2 teaspoons dried whole sage 1 teaspoon black peppercorns 1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds 1 teaspoon ground turmeric 1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger 8 green cardamom pods 10 whole cloves 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg 1/3 cinnamon stick For the topping: 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 red onion, peeled and thinly sliced 1/4 cup raisins 1 red bell pepper, cored and thinly sliced Salt to taste Soak rice in cold water for 30 to 45 minutes, then drain.

Meanwhile, prepare the xawaash: Combine all the spices in a spice grinder and finely grind. Set aside.

Prepare the topping: Heat olive oil in a wide, deep pot over mediumhigh heat and add the onions, occasionally stirring until translucent.

Add raisins and allow to soften, about 2 minutes, then add red bell pepper and cook until softened, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Season with salt and set aside on a paper towel.

In the same pot, make the rice: Heat 1/4 cup oil. Add onions and sauté, frequently stirring, until softened, 6 to 8 minutes. Add garlic, cinnamon sticks, cardamom, cloves and xawaash and cook, stirring for 1 minute.

Stir in stock and rice.

Bring to boil, then cover and cook on low heat for 20 minutes. Stir in saffron and raisins and season to taste with salt. Cover, turn off heat and steam for 5 more minutes. Transfer to a serving platter, using a large spoon to pile rice in a heap onto the platter. Sprinkle topping over rice and serve.

MUSIC

Q&A: Everybody’s favorite ‘honk rock’ band, VIAL A&E spoke with the femme-punk outfit about music and life.

We have been working on an album that we really got to see manifest, because we had a lot of extra time to work on it.

We also got to start doing TikTok, which definitely isn’t the same as live shows, but has been a really fun way to connect with our audience and grow and have some fun.

By Megan Phillips mphillips@mndaily.com VIAL was named City Pages’ (RIP) “Best New Band” in 2020. An indie punk quartet formed in mid-2019, VIAL has quickly made a name for itself, performing alongside acts like HUNNY, Bad Bad Hats and Origami Angel.

A&E sat down with VIAL bassist Kate Kanfield, keytarist Taylor Kraemer and guitarist KT Branscom to talk about their upcoming album release and what they’ve been up to since the pandemic began.

How did you meet?

Taylor Kraemer: We all met at an after-school program — at least Kate, KT

The members of the local indie-punk band VIAL pose for a portrait on Sunday, Jan. 31 in Minneapolis. (Audrey Rauth / Minnesota Daily) and I. It was fun, because it was where we learned to play music and it was a good kind of escape or reality there. Everyone was super emo. Katie was

a little different. Katie is our drummer, and we met through Tinder, because we couldn’t find a drummer, and we knew a bunch of artsy people were on Tinder.

How has the past year been for you with COVID-19?

Kate Kanfield: It’s been kind of crazy. This year has been chaotic. It’s also had some hidden gems.

When is your second album going to be released?

Kraemer: We have a very tentative plan right now. We’re crossing our fingers for an amazing mid-summer punk record that’s all about rebelling and being yourself. I think it would thrive in warm weather.

What can fans expect from your upcoming album?

Kanfield: It’s a bit of an extension of our first record which was all about coming-of-age and not really enjoying it

and trying to figure out your place in the world.

This one is a little more localized version. It’s a little angrier. But we also have a couple of indie pop songs. It’s a good mixture of genres. It’s about figuring out who you are and becoming more confident in yourself.

You’re very active on TikTok, what’s your favorite thing about TikTok? KT Branscom: We can connect with a lot more people. We kind of blew up a bit on TikTok and our audience has grown all over the country.

Who is your favorite TikToker?

Branscom: @doctorpoopofficial.

He’s just a guy from Minneapolis that has a cool voice, and he’s funny.

This interview has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Editorials & Opinions

7 Monday, February 8, 2021

COLUMN

MyPillow guy is ruining MySanity The insane and 100% true story of Mike Lindell and why he haunts my dreams.

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a t e l y, I ’ v e Henry Kueppers been having columnist strange, recurring dreams. In one of them, I’m washing my face in front of a mirror. I look down to splash some water on my cheeks, and when I look back up, the face of Mike Lindell greets me instead of my own. In another one, I’m being smothered by a horribly uncomfortable pillow.

With my last dying breaths, I scream, “What the hell is this?” and a booming voice answers, “It’s MYPILLOW!” Now, as I walk the streets of the University of Minnesota campus, I’m always checking over my shoulder.

Because he isn’t far. He too used to walk the very same streets that I did.

I know he’s sitting on some uncomfor table and poorly made pillow throne in Chaska, Minnesota. Waiting.

Biding his time. And when he’s finally ready, Mike Lindell will strike. And I truly believe he’ll take our entire state down with him … GET OUT OF MY HEAD, MIKE LINDELL! On paper, Mike Lindell should be an inspiring tale of the American dream. He went from being bankrupt with a crack addiction to a self-made multimillionaire, CEO and infomercial king. At the lowest point in his life, Mike Lindell was apparently awake for two weeks constantly doing crack. He did so much in those two weeks that even his own drug dealer said, “You’re not getting any more from me.” A year later, he was committed to sobriety and focused all his energy on business. Today, his pillow-making company, MyPillow, continues to grow and expand its business ventures.

This should be inspirational for all people with addictions — current or former — and all entrepreneurs out there. However, he is also the terrifying tale of the American nightmare.

Today, numerous reporters are writing stories about his cockamamie theories about election fraud and the state of America. He is on the verge of a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems after repeatedly stating their machines helped swing the election in favor of Biden. Even though a defamation suit could potentially be the end of MyPillow as we know it, the man continues to spew crazy and far-fetched theories because he is a fervent supporter of Donald Trump and Trumpian politics. And the media loves him! Except for Twitter, who permanently banned him. Otherwise,

he’s being written up by NPR, the New York Times and now the Minnesota Daily (all equal in viewership and popularity).

That’s why I think Mike Lindell is getting under my skin and my pillow: because we live in a country where someone as unhinged and chaotic* as him can be handed a platform to talk about the random visions he receives from God — apparently, there are a lot of them — for large audiences. Maybe reporters don’t think it’s that big of a deal to write articles about him. I mean, the guy is clearly deranged and full of weird ideas, right? Any sane person could see that. IF ONLY WE LIVED IN A COUNTRY WITH REASONABLE CITIZENS! Do we not remember a certain orange-colored, fluffy-haired billionaire who was also given platforms to speak his absurd rhetoric? Donald Trump has an origin story comparable to Mike Lindell, in that the media coverage of Trump helped catapult him into the zeitgeist and the homes of millions of Americans. The same thing is now happening with Mike Lindell, who has said he’s considered running for governor of Minnesota (once, of course, he catapults every single Dominion Voting machine into outer space). Even “Saturday Night Live” parodied Mike Lindell. People know who he is, and the more commonplace his name becomes, the more likely he could grow his popularity and brand.

We need to take this guy seriously, even if he is constantly talking about how he’ll never take the coronavirus vaccine because he takes oleandrin —

a deadly plant poison — and it’s basically just as good. (It’s not.) The guy is way too confident and brazen for my liking. Mike Lindell, you are the reason why my pillow is no longer a safe haven for peace and slumber. I can only daydream that someday soon, you’ll end up in MyLocalPyschWard. *I don’t think Mike Lindell is chaotic and unhinged because he was a former drug addict. I think he is unhinged just because that is who he is.

Henry Kueppers welcomes comments at hkueppers@mndaily.com

COLUMN

Imperialism will always come home The events of Jan. 6 are far from unprecedented.

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h r e e w e e k s Kendra Anderson columnist ago, the United States watched breathlessly as the U.S. Capitol building was under siege. The events of Jan. 6 sent shockwaves across the U.S. and left many searching for answers. How could this have happened in America?

We’ve spent the past several decades claiming to implement and encourage democracy around the world, and it was only a matter of time before our actions came home.

I n 1 9 5 6 , Joh n F. Ke n n e dy d e scribed the United States’ role in foreign affairs as a volunteer firefighter, someone who rushes in when others are in need of help and puts out the fire. At the time, he applauded Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem for his leadership and establishing Vietnam as a “cornerstone of democracy” in Southeast Asia. While Kennedy was proud of the previous U.S. interventions in Vietnam, he decided that from that point forward, “the choice can only be made by the Vietnamese” when it came to the fate of their country. Six years later, Kennedy was president and the U.S. was assisting in the coup that would leave

Diem assassinated and the people of South Vietnam thrown into further turmoil. This was not the first time the U.S. incited violence and terror abroad, and it would be far from the last.

Three decades later, Ronald Reagan addressed the American public on U.S. involvement in Nicaragua, doubling down on his support of the Contras (counter-revolutionary fighters, or as Reagan preferred to call them, freedom fighters). He evoked familiar American fears as he declared the Communist Sandinistas of Nicaragua a threat to the security of the United States. In his address, Reagan announced that the U.S. would be sending aid to the Contras in the form of $100 million, funding that was partially secured through an illegal arms deal with Iran, better known as the Iran-Contra affair. On the U.S. dollar, the Contras continued to terrorize the people of Nicaragua.

The 21st century saw the U.S. entangled in yet another foreign conflict.

In March of 2003, George W. Bush broadcasted an international message announcing that the U.S. would go to war in Iraq. He promised the Iraqi people that the United States would “tear down the apparatus of terror” and remove the “tyrant” in their country. He assured them that any military campaign would be directed against these tyrants and terrorists, not everyday Iraqis. The “goal” of this war was to assure that Iraq was “democratic and free.” Bush lied, as did Reagan and Kennedy. The Vietnamese were not allowed to make their own decisions. Funding for the Contras was not acquired legally, nor were the Contras a group the U.S. had any business supporting to begin with. And thousands of Iraqis would find themselves caught in the crossfire of war. The nation that prides itself on its war on terror has been the greatest terror to the

world for decades.

Millions of civilians were killed in the Vietnam War. Overall the war cost the U.S. more than $800 billion.

Thanks to America’s generous donation, thousands of civilians were killed in the Contra war. While several in Reagan’s administration were charged on counts of withholding information from Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, they were later pardoned during George H. W. Bush’s presidency.

The invasion and subsequent war in Iraq kicked off a series of conflicts in the Middle East that have cost us $6.4 trillion so far. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in such conflicts, and millions have been displaced. The United States has made a long and costly career out of playing “volunteer firefighter.”

Our involvement in foreign governments dates back to the early 19th century, first focusing on Central and Latin America, moving slowly to the Pacific and eventually reaching the rest of the world. For decades, we’ve been an imperial force to be reckoned with, seemingly undefeated in (most) of our affairs. We’ve funneled hundreds of billions into military funding at home and abroad. We’ve experimented with forms of regime change ranging from direct, violent coups, like Kennedy’s coup against Diem, to attempts to influence foreign voters, such as Bush’s involvement in Bolivia’s 2002 election. As a nation that has dedicated so much time to intervening in other nation’s affairs, it is no surprise that this legacy of terror came back to haunt us on Jan. 6.

On the morning of Jan. 6, the Electoral College was likely set to confirm Joe Biden’s presidency. Donald Trump lashed out on Twitter, calling the vote a “fraud” and the U.S. election system “worse than that of third world countries.” In a public address, he encouraged his followers to “fight like

hell” and declared that he would join them in walking to the Capitol to display “pride and boldness” that would “take back our country.” Hours later, Americans watched in panic and disbelief as the Capitol was attacked.

There was nothing unprecedented about this moment, given the nature of our country’s history. We’ve assisted in coups where the leader is murdered or forced out of the country. We’ve pulled the strings in other country’s elections. We’ve watched for years as civilians are caught in the crossfire of warfare, running through the streets with their clothes burned off by napalm or their faces bloodied by shrapnel. Violence is in our DNA, and the events of Jan. 6 should not be shocking to us. We’ve undermined other country’s leaders for decades and implemented our forceful changes to regimes we deemed unfit to rule. Trump is not the first president to inspire this sort of violence; he’s just the first to bring it home.

Today, we are the ones processing death and violence, contemplating the meaning of democracy and questioning our safety. We’ve been firefighters for decades, accumulating rubble and ash everywhere we go. Now our house is on fire, but we can’t save ourselves.

Imperialism always finds its way back home.

Kendra Anderson welcomes comments at kanderson@mndaily.com.

Illustration by Natalia Poteryakhin

8 Monday, February 8, 2021

Editorials & Opinions

COLUMN

The manipulation of streaming

Why the constant competition between streaming services is detrimental to consumers.

I

n July 2020, PeaTara Brankin cock TV, a streamcolumnist ing service created

by NBC, went live. In the months following Peacock’s release, both “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office,” two of NBC’s most popular comedy series, were taken off of Netflix.

While this likely came as somewhat of

a shock to those who are big fans of the shows, there wasn’t too much uproar. It would be fine because both “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office” are on Peacock, right?

Well, it’s more complicated than that.

While Peacock advertises itself as a relatively free streaming service, only the first two seasons of “The Office” are available for free, and that’s not the only misleading piece of information. If you want access to more content, you have to pay $5 a month, but you still have to sit through commercials. If you don’t want to sit through commercials, you have to pay $10 a month, a dollar more than the basic Netflix subscription.

Over the past decade, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and more recently Disney+ have been in constant competition to have the largest number of consumers and subsequently make the most money. This has resulted in platforms making their own high-budget television shows and movies with esteemed casts and crews and attempts to sign series that people love onto their platforms.

Peacock is an example of prominent

television networks trying to get in on the action. Not only does Peacock have “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office,” but it also has movies like the “Harry Potter” series and claims to have upcoming original content by writers like Tina Fey. The battle between streaming services and the creation of new ones by prominent television networks is a way of financially manipulating the consumer, whether intentional or not. More than half of consumers subscribed to Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime are also subscribed to another service, as people’s favorite movies and series are bounced from one platform to another.

If a consumer doesn’t want to miss out on a popular TV show or movie, they will have to spend more money by subscribing to additional streaming platforms.

For example, “Parks and Recreation” is one of my favorite comedy series.

When it was taken off of Netflix, I was anxious to see what streaming service would pick it up next. I was expecting maybe Hulu or HBO would snatch it, but, to my dismay, I realized that it

would only be available on Peacock. As much as I love “Parks and Recreation,” I was not willing to subscribe to an entire platform just to watch one series.

Honestly, the creation of Peacock just annoys me. It is, in my opinion, a shameless attempt to force consumers to subscribe to its service by holding their favorite series over their heads.

Unfortunately, I think it is likely that other television networks will follow in NBC’s footsteps. When it comes to making money, large television networks aren’t going to simply stand by and watch streaming platforms profit off of their series.

Tara Brankin welcomes comments at tbrankin@mndaily.com.

COLUMN

The fight for Turtle Island: Enbridge’s Line 3 “How can a couple hundred hippies and Indigenous folks stop this massive project?”

A

n anarchist, an Emily Eaton environmentalist, columnist and a college student walk into a room. What do you get?

The movement to stop the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, a pipeline expansion designed to carry tar sands from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin.

During the average week, Quintin Grabowksi seems like a regular college student. But on the weekends, he ditches the chemistry textbooks and college swag in pursuit of a higher calling: protesting pipelines.

Grabowski’s been in this game for longer than most. He began anti-pipeline advocacy in his early teens, starting with Michigan’s Line 5. It wasn’t until he moved to the Twin Cities that Grabowski learned about Line 3. Three years later, he’s moved beyond letter writing campaigns and

capital protests. Now, he treks up north to support and hold space for indigenous water protectors. As he explains, “It’s not just about stopping this pipeline, it’s about changing the way we think about the natural world.”

Jonas Goonface, on the other hand, looks exactly as one might expect a selfproclaimed anarchist to look. His radicalizing moment? Calling up jails in search of his brother, who police arrested during a Dakota Access Pipeline protest.

Since then, he’s thrown in with Northfield Against Line 3, a community-based advocacy group. He’s even used himself as a physical barrier to pipeline construction.

Through it all, Goonface finds strength in his community. “I’m really encouraged and humbled because I’ve been in this fight for like, two years. But, I’m also joining people who have been in this fight for decades, who’ve learned all of this shit from indigenous folks who have been resisting this bullshit for decades.

For University of Minnesota fourth-year student Abby Hornberger, summers spent in the pristine surroundings of the Boundary Waters are at the root of her advocacy.

Her mother, an environmentalist, has also played a role in her passion for protecting the land. But, stopping Line 3 is about more than childhood memories and familial connections. In Hornberger’s words, “the act of [constructing] the pipeline is an act of violence against indigenous nations.” Protecting our water is not a burden that she believes indigenous people alone should shoulder. It is a shared responsibility that applies to us all.

Line 3 is slated to pass through the Mississippi River watershed twice, as well

as important wetlands, forests and wild rice beds of Minnesota. The largest watershed in the United States, the Mississippi begins in Minnesota and flows all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. From Illinois to Minnesota alone, roughly 15 million people rely on the waters of the Mississippi for clean water each day. It is the lifeblood of the Midwest — of our way of life, our economy and our environment.

Some argue that the replacement of the infrastructure is necessary. Old, outdated materials pose a higher risk of leakage and rupturing. But, we don’t know how to effectively clean up tar sands, the type of oil that Line 3 carries. Not only is tar sands crude considered the dirtiest and most carbon intensive form of oil, but it is also heavier than other forms of petroleum. Were a pipeline to rupture, tar sands would sink into waterways instead of floating on top, rendering the skimmers and buoys normally used in oil spill clean-up next to useless. This issue is present with Line 3 as it is, but expanding the pipeline increases the quantity of oil able to enter and pollute the environment.

While replacing infrastructure can prevent spillages, these pipelines leak. That is not a question, it is a given. Since 1996, pipelines have spilled more than 3 million gallons of oil per year, roughly 200 barrels every day. Tar sands are thicker, heavier and more corrosive than other materials, meaning that they pose a much greater risk of leakage and pipe ruptures. Expanded infrastructure allows oil companies to move more crude at a faster rate, meaning that when disaster strikes, it could be deadly. I reached out to Enbridge to learn more about their plans for a safe, spill-free

pipeline but did not receive a response.

Advocacy, in any form, can be controversial. Though many water protectors find community through activism, the experience can be isolating. It becomes like any other passion: When you’re so involved in an issue, it’s hard not to want to pull people into the movement, and even harder to understand why people resist being pulled in. Hornberger said she finds it difficult to navigate personal relationships when people aren’t open to having conversations about environmental advocacy, a sentiment echoed by Grabowski. “I find myself ranting and raving about a pipeline that nobody is really well acquainted with,” Goonface told me, “[and] to an audience that’s not always really receptive to it.” All three, however, count themselves lucky in one area: though their parents may worry, they remain supportive of their children’s activism.

Next week, I’ll look into how Line 3 impacts tribal sovereignty and the movement against tribal erasure.

Emily Eaton welcomes comments at eeaton@mndaily.com.

COLUMN

Ranked-choice voting would help heal our political divide Biden talks a lot about healing the soul of the nation. RCV is a logical first step.

A

Zach Courtney s a p ol i t i c a l columnist science major, I did plenty of watching and listening in the leadup to the 2020 election, especially the Democratic primary. Everyone had their schtick. Bernie wanted universal, single-payer healthcare. Andrew Yang wanted a universal basic income. Tulsi Gabbard wanted to end the wars. Elizabeth Warren had a plan for anything and everything.

While each of these could-be presidents had a policy or policies they were known for, President Joe Biden gave vague-but-meaningful stump speeches on “healing the soul of the nation.” His victory speech on Nov. 7 had a similar message.

Let me start here: He’s right. After

all, studies have shown that the United States is more politically polarized today than any time since the Civil War. (Read that last sentence again!). The issue I have isn’t Biden’s message; my issue is his lack of a meaningful policy proposal to heal polarization. With little insight or detail into Biden’s plan to heal our political divide, may I suggest we start with ranked-choice voting (RCV)?

Under RCV, voters can rank their first, second, third, fourth (and so on) choices. If no candidate is the first choice of the true majority (more than 50%) of voters, RCV comes into play.

The candidate with the fewest firstplace votes is removed from contention.

Anyone who voted for said candidate will automatically have their second choice calculated. This process is continued until a candidate gets above the 50% threshold.

Currently, most American elections require the winning candidate to have a plurality (the most votes) to win. In these races, a candidate could win with 34% of the vote if three candidates ran.

In this system especially, the possibility of a “spoiler” candidate forces voters to choose someone they think can win. Because of this, votes for a third-party candidate are usually meaningless.

Our current system force-feeds Americans into choosing between the Democrat or Republican, even though recent polling shows that 45% of Americans identify as independents. Why do we operate under a two-party system when 45% of Americans don’t identify themselves with either of the two

parties? From the same Gallup poll, 24% of Americans are Republicans and 30% are Democrats.

Why do we allow a system where the outer 54% rip apart the inner 45%?

In RCV, it would likely be the exact opposite. Since candidates would need to build a coalition of more than 50% of voters, they would have to appeal to a wider range of voters, likely shifting politics more toward the political center.

Regardless of where we shift politically though, it would automatically shift to make our government more representative of its voters while also relieving polarization. In a representative democracy, that’s the goal, right?

Our current primary system not only allows divisive rhetoric from candidates — it encourages it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly-elected Republican congresswoman from Georgia, is the latest example of the political benefits of being divisive. Greene has pushed several conspiracy theories, from the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting being fake to a laser beam in space being the culprit behind the 2018 wildfires. (Yes, she actually said that.) Under an RCV system, candidates would be forced to build broader coalitions. Meddling ridiculous conspiracies might currently work to win a primary, but it could almost never work to get a true majority of support in an RCV election.

Divisive rhetoric from a candidate like Donald Trump — one who essentially called fellow candidate Ted Cruz’s wife ugly — should have no place in a political exchange. But the current

system rewards it. Then, after primary candidates tear each other down, voters are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils in the general election.

Whenever people are forced to choose between two rivals — whether it be the Packers and the Vikings or Democrats and Republicans — it only raises the temperature in the room. The difference between professional sports and politics, though, is that the public should not have to be torn apart because of an election. Under our current voting system, this will sadly always be the case.

Joe Biden won the general election, finishing with the most votes by a winning candidate in our nation’s history. It is fair to say that many of those voters cast their ballot for change and healing. RCV is a great start, but just that: a start. A less-divisive nation is like Rome; it isn’t built in a day. Change takes time.

I know I write for a college newspaper, and not too many would want to spend their weekend reading a public policy book by a 20-year-old, but stay tuned: This discussion on solving polarization is far from over.

Zach Courtney welcomes comments at zcourtney@mndaily.com.

Sports

9 Monday, February 8, 2021

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL

The Gophers simplify their perspective in odd season Gophers stay present during a season of uncertainty.

By Brendan O’Brien bobrien@mndaily.com It took over 400 days to get to this point for the Minnesota volleyball team.

Two wins in as many matches against Michigan State and the Gophers are off to a strong start to the 2021 season. Getting to this point, however, was no easy task.

Flashback to December 2019, when the Gopher squad lost in the semifinal to eventual champion Stanford in front of thousands of fans.

Everyone knew the loss was a disappointing end to an overall successful 2019 campaign, but no one predicted what was to come after.

Roughly 13 months of no competition.

A different practice schedule in the fall.

Daily COVID-19 testing.

Online classes. Little to no other social interactions.

And now follow that up with a conference-only schedule, with only family and media members in the stands.

All of this adds up to an unusual spring setup.

The Gophers still have significant and achievable goals for this season. A Big Ten title, Final Four appearance and NCAA championship all might be within reach for this deep Minnesota team ranked No. 7 in the AVCA poll. And to reach these heights, everyone in the program is living by one mantra for the rest of the season.

“Think positive. Test negative,” head coach Hugh McCutcheon said.

This will be key in 2021.

The team was obviously excited about the opportunity to compete during the pandemic, even if it meant delaying the season until the spring semester.

But with the uncertainty that comes with COVID-19, the Gophers are prioritizing

a true “one day at a time” mentality. This seems only logical in a world where a match might get canceled the day before it is scheduled due to a coronavirus outbreak within a team.

“We got together so many times to reinvent our goals and reset them because it’s changed so much,” middle blocker Regan Pittman said. “I think our biggest thing is having a flexible mindset of what our goals are. There’s so many unexpected [things].”

While there are several challenges to this philosophy and competing during a pandemic in general, it also comes with some benefits for some players. Opposite hitter Stephanie Samedy sees the situation a little differently and is taking a positive approach.

“For me personally, I think it’s pretty nice to have two main focuses,” Samedy said. “Being able to get school done on my own time and then having volleyball and just being

Opposite hitter Stephanie Samedy spikes the ball to earn a point for the Gophers in Maturi Pavilion on Sunday, Jan. 24. The Gophers won against Michigan State Spartans with a score of 3-0. (Shannon Doyle / Minnesota) able to focus on that, and not have that much noise is great.”

McCutcheon said there was a significant change in the excitement level of the team when the spring schedule was announced, citing that everyone loves competing. The Gophers clearly had little trouble harnessing their energy to

open the season, winning all six sets of the two matches.

But once again, they are not looking too far ahead to the future of the season. For now, Minnesota’s main focus is getting through this week of practice healthy to face Maryland on Friday and Saturday.

“If we ever needed more validation of the concept of one day at a time, it’s this, because I do think if you start to get ahead of yourself it’ll do your head in,” McCutcheon said. “We’re going to try to think positive, test negative and protect our bubble the best we can.”

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Gophers dominate at home, struggle on road Minnesota will need to figure out how to win on the road.

By AJ Condon acondon@mndaily.com Empty stadiums, no crowd noise, home court advantage diminished — all three things are true to some degree, yet the Gophers men’s basketball team has looked as onesided as possible. A team that appears to be one of the best in the Big Ten at home plays like one of the worst while on the road.

“Clearly, we’ve played very good basketball at home, and clearly we haven’t played great basketball on the road. I still don’t really understand why because there are no fans. I just think, for whatever reason, we’ve been better at Williams [Arena],” head coach Richard Pitino said.

Minnesota opened up its season with six straight home non-conference games. The team went 6-0 and were off to a hot start in front of a predominantly empty stadium. They were then given the tough task

of traveling to Champaign, Illinois for their first road game of the season that didn’t go all too well.

That was the start to what the season has been through 16 games on the year. A mostly unstoppable team at home with a record of 111, and a team that fails to show up on the road: The Gophers have had four away games, in which they are 0-4 and have lost by an average of 19.75 points in those games.

To the Gophers’ credit, those four losses have come against teams that were highly ranked at the time. No. 13 Illinois 92-65, No. 6 Wisconsin 71-59, No. 10 Michigan 82-57 and No. 5 Iowa 86-71. They haven’t had the easiest start to the Big Ten season, but that doesn’t account for the difference in road versus home play.

Two out of their four away losses have come against teams that have come to Williams Arena, and the Gophers have beat. The Gophers upset the Hawkeyes in an overtime thriller and looked like a completely different team the second time around against the

Wolverines, while earning their second top-10 win.

So, what is the difference between these home and away games?

Pitino continues to harp on the fact that there are no fans and there really shouldn’t be a difference in his team when it comes to where they play.

“The interesting thing is there is no fans. I’m gonna say that anytime [reporters] bring that up.

There are no fans, there was no home court. It’s all neutral sites,” Pitino said.

For the Gophers, it’s been their shooting percentage and turnovers, which usually is the factor in most wins and losses. In their 12 home games, the Gophers are shooting 44.3% from the field compared to 31.6% in their four road losses.

That’s pretty much been the story for the Gophers this year – shoot well and they win games, don’t and they lose.

On top of their improved shooting percentage from the field, that also comes with improved shooting percentage from behind the arc. In home games, the Gophers are shooting 31.1% from three

compared to 25.6% on the road. That isn’t a huge difference and has still been the Gophers biggest problem this season.

“Guys, I don’t know how smart I am, but if you’re dead last in three’s, you should not be first in attempts,” Pitino said.

It hasn’t just been the offensive side that has differed in these road games compared to the home games. The defense, as a whole, has been a lot better in the wins, and not too hot in the losses.

Minnesota has held its opponents to shoot 38.2% from the field and 30% from deep at the Barn.

On top of that, they force their opponents to be sloppy on the offensive end and have forced about 14.3 turnovers per game.

“It’s not tough to play on the road because there are no fans. The challenges you have at home are the same as they are on the road. That’s the bottom line, if we defend like we did today, if we disrupt like we did today, we’ll be better in any venue. It doesn’t matter where we play,” Pitino said following a home win over Michigan.

Gophers forward Eric Curry challenges a defender at Williams Arena on Thursday, Dec. 10. The Gophers then defeated the Kansas City Roos 90-61. (Emily Pofahl / Minnesota Daily) The story gets a whole lot different when it’s time for the Gophers to leave Minneapolis and travel to another Big Ten school.

Their 31.6% shooting from the field on the road makes it hard to win games, while allowing 54% shooting. Minnesota is also shooting a less than stellar 25.6% from three, while allowing 42.6% shooting from deep.

Its shooting has been uncharacteristic while away from the Barn and it has led to an 0-4 start.

“Now I know, certainly, the routines for the guys are a little bit easier when

you’re not travelling. But to me, it really should not matter, they’re all neutral site courts,” Pitino said.

In its most recent game, Minnesota hosted Maryland and played similarly to how it has on the road. They shot 30.4% en route to their first home loss of the season.

The Gophers schedule features five more home games and five road games — assuming the Nebraska game doesn’t get rescheduled — and the team will look to get its first road win of the season on Jan. 30 against Purdue.

year. Cherkowski said that Murphy is a “great teammate and a really good player.”

“She’s super fast and skilled, so that’s really fun to have someone like that my age who is that talented,” Cherkowski said. “She’s also so much fun to hang around with off ice as well.”

Cherkowski coming from Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic has presented quite the transition in playing American collegiate hockey. Cherkowski and Murphy both agree that college hockey has been more aggressive and faster than what they played as high school students.

Cherkowski added that she

is grateful for her veteran teammates who have helped aid the move to the next level.

“It’s been a huge help having Amy [Potomak] and [Olivia] Knowles just to guide me and be people to relate to and ask questions,” Cherkowski said.

Along with playing collegiate hockey, both athletes are enjoying the cuisine around campus.

Murphy enjoys the occasional shake from MyBurger, and Cherkowski enjoys Noodles & Company, something she didn’t have across the northern border.

“There isn’t a place like Noodles in Canada; it’s so good,” Cherkowski said.

WOMEN’S HOCKEY

Cherkowski and Murphy: the future of women’s hockey Two freshmen play on the Gophers’s top two lines.

By Matthew Kennedy mkennedy@mndaily.com Two of the top five scorers on the No. 2 Minnesota Golden Gophers women’s hockey team are experiencing their first time playing in the NCAA. Abbey Murphy, who is from the Chicago area and calls herself a “bruiser” type of player who brings

a “mean game,” has three goals and five assists — totaling eight points over 11 games played. Murphy is a member of the second line on the Gophers, with Emily Oden and Taylor Heise.

“Heise and Oden are two people I look up to a lot, and I’m very excited to continue to roll with them and get to know them,” Murphy said.

Murphy is also from the same AAA club hockey team, Chicago Mission, as fellow freshman teammate Josey Dunne.

“It’s been awesome playing with Jos, especially coming from Mission,” Murphy said. “We know each other well, and it’s very rewarding to play four more years with someone you’ve grown up with and has totally made the transition from high school to college easier.”

Anne Cherkowski is the third player on the Gophers’ roster from British Columbia, Canada.

She has one goal and five assists, earning six points over 11 games. Cherkowski is a member of the

Gophers’ top offensive line with Grace Zumwinkle and Amy Potomak.

“Before our first game together, I was a little nervous, and I didn’t want to mess up, but they’ve shown me the way and have been great leaders,” Cherkowski said. “Finding my niche in the college game has been much easier with their support.”

Murphy and Cherkowski are great friends off the ice and have helped each other navigate what could be an otherwise challenging freshman

Sports

10 Monday, February 8, 2021

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Kalscheur shines on defense, not on offense Kalscheur’s sophomore slump carries over as a junior.

By AJ Condon acondon@mndaily.com The Gophers men’s basketball team has seen plenty of ups and downs throughout this unprecedented season.

Junior guard Gabe Kalscheur has been one player who seems to have his ups on defense and downs on offense.

Kalscheur continues to be the best Gopher defender and gets praised constantly by head coach Richard Pitino.

“We talk constantly about Gabe’s shooting; I think Gabe is the best perimeter defender in the league,” Pitino said.

Kalscheur had one of his best games defensively in an upset win over thenNo.7 Michigan Jan. 16.

He was able to hold the Wolverines’ top-scoring guard to just eight points on 3-of-9 shooting.

Sophomore Franz Wagner

Guard Gabe Kalscheur brings the ball up the court at Williams Arena on Monday, Dec. 2, 2019. (Nur B. Adam / Minnesota Daily) was unable to get things going and had his worst shooting performance of the season to that point.

Kalscheur did a good job against the 6-foot-9 guard, even with a fiveinch difference in height.

“I just tried to make it as tough as possible, make him second guess his shots. … I just tried to make it as tough as possible for him to get to his right hand and

make every shot difficult for him to take,” Kalscheur said.

The defense has never been a problem for Kalscheur since he first stepped foot on the elevated floor of the Barn.

Another thing that wasn’t a problem during his first season for the maroon and gold was Kalscheur’s ability to shoot.

Kalscheur began

his collegiate career successfully for Minnesota.

In his freshman stint, he shot 41.7% from the field and 41% from deep while starting all 36 games that season. He posted 16 double-digit scoring games, with four being 20 or more points, while being the fourth leading scorer on the team with 10 points per game.

As of now, that has been

the peak to Kalscheur’s career, which has been on a hard downfall since.

His field goal percentage, as well as his three-point percentage, has been on a downward trend since his exceptional freshman year.

In his sophomore season, Kalscheur dropped down to a 37.6% field goal shooter, while seeing his three-point shooting drop down to 34.1%. That was just the beginning to his downward trend.

After such an abnormal offseason, Kalscheur still hasn’t warmed up yet in his junior season. After seeing his numbers fall after his sophomore stint, they have continued to drop in his third year. Through 18 games, those numbers have proceeded to follow suit as he’s shooting a career-low 31% from the field and 23.3% from deep.

Pitino doesn’t worry about the numbers and percentages around Kalscheur’s shooting.

In the beginning of the season, he was making game-winning plays on defense that helped propel the Gophers to their undefeated start.

“I don’t judge Gabe’s play by made threes or not.

This is back-to-back games where he’s made winning plays. I don’t make a big deal about that. I clearly have faith in him — he’s

still playing major minutes because he brings a lot of other great things to the table,” Pitino said following the win over the University of North Dakota.

But as good as Kalscheur has been on defense, the shooting struggles are evident and are a problem for the Gophers on offense.

Minnesota has relied on redshirt junior Marcus Carr and junior transfer Liam Robbins to run the offense, and when they are struggling, the team can’t seem to get anything going.

The team’s three-game skid has demonstrated these challenges and the team’s need for a consistent offensive threat outside of Carr and Robbins. Despite shooting a high volume of three-point attempts, Minnesota is one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the nation, allowing opponents to direct their focus on Carr and Robbins.

K a l s c h e u r demonstrated his offensive abilities in the past, and if he were to return to his freshman form, that could greatly contribute to the Gophers’ offense.

If Kalscheur can become a consistent third option once again, the sky is the limit for a Gophers’ team that’s already beaten the likes of Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State.

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL

Shaffmaster adds depth, promising future to Gophers volleyball The freshman setter makes an impact on a strong team.

By Brendan O’Brien bobrien@mndaily.com With COVID-19 delaying the Big Ten volleyball season, it took a little longer than expected to see what setter Melani Shaffmaster could do on the court for the Gophers volleyball team.

Now that the season is underway, Gophers fans finally get to see the freshman in action.

Shaffmaster is one player who adds to the depth of successful players on Minnesota’s team. Along with Taylor Landfair and Jenna Wenaas, she is a part of the country’s topranked recruiting class.

Paired with an experienced roster that made the Final Four in 2019, it appears Shaffmaster and

the Gophers will have a successful 2021 season.

After winning the Indiana state championship three times and being named the Gatorade Player of the Year twice in Indiana, Shaffmaster enrolled early at Minnesota in January of 2020. She trained with the Gophers for a little more than a month before the pandemic shut down team activities. Then, Shaffmaster said it was challenging to do much training on her own as a player whose specialty is setting up her teammates to score. But she did not let the delayed start to her collegiate career discourage her and took the experience as a positive when the team regrouped.

“I’m upset we didn’t get to play in the fall, but I was a little happy we got a couple more months of training to get used to playing volleyball here,” Shaffmaster said. “Getting

to set these hitters as much as you can before you actually start playing really helped me, and playing against each other in practice is super intense.”

Two weeks into the season, it appears she is prepared for the high-level competition this season has to offer. Shaffmaster admitted she still gets nervous before matches, but her play in the opening weekend against Michigan State earned her Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors. Playing in every set thus far, Shaffmaster leads the team with 99 assists and has added 31 digs on the defensive side.

What ultimately drew Shaffmaster from high school and club volleyball in Indiana to collegiate volleyball in the Twin Cities was Hugh McCutcheon and the Gophers coaching staff’s culture. After learning under McCutcheon and being around the team for

The Gopher celebrate a sweep over Indiana at Maturi Pavilion on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018.

(Jack Rodgers / Minnesota Daily) a year, she is excited about her future at Minnesota.

“They are just really good at teaching. It’s a really strong learning environment and is a huge process of people learning and getting better,” Shaffmaster said of the

coaching staff. “I’ve been really open to learning and completely changing the way I play volleyball and doing what they need me to do to be the best setter.”

In the meantime, Shaffmaster said she wants to ease her nerves as the

season goes on and create more energy as the Gophers play in empty pavilions due to COVID-19. She will play her first collegiate game in her home state as Minnesota is back in action against Purdue on Friday and Saturday.

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL

Top-ranked heavyweight Gable Steveson talks upcoming title quest and his off-season

Steveson tries to win his first heavyweight NCAA crown.

By Matthew Kennedy mkennedy@mndaily.com Gophers top-ranked heavyweight Gable Steveson doesn’t lose often.

Ever since falling to Anthony Cassar in the 2019 NCAA tournament, Steveson has gone an impressive 23-0, including a 6-0 record in his 2021 campaign. He notably defeated Mason Parris in the 2020 Big Ten title match going into the NCAA Tournament, which he was favored to win before COVID-19 caused its cancelation.

“I was confident going

into the NCAAs that I could come out on top.

That was my year to do it after beating an opponent like Mason Parris, who came in and pushed me the whole seven minutes,” Steveson said. “He is the next best guy behind me, and after that win it was a huge confidence boost.”

Steveson recently defeated the No. 3 heavyweight in the country, Tony Cassioppi of top-ranked Iowa, in a 15-6 major decision.

Steveson thought the match in Maturi Pavilion provided a championship feel.

“He’s one of the top guys in the country too. He pushed Mason Parris to the limit, and I think Cassioppi is a great wrestler, but my dominating win over him

shows that I can come out on top in March and show there is a major gap between me and the rest of the guys,” he said.

Overall, Steveson thinks his biggest competition in 2021 will once again be Parris.

Parris, also a junior, is from the University of Michigan and is currently No. 2 in the country behind Steveson, according to InterMat Wrestling rankings.

But Steveon isn’t concerned about potential challenges from Parris or Cassioppi. For him, winning the 2021 national championship isn’t just a goal — it’s an expectation.

“Being completely honest, I don’t think winning a championship was ever a really deep

challenge in my mind.

With all of the wrestlers that are in the field, it provides a test for sure, but it’s always been a thing in my head that I have to achieve a national championship,” he said.

“There’s not going to be another year of me saying, ‘I have to go get it,’ where it’s the No. 1 thing. Winning a title has been my goal since I came into the University of Minnesota, so the pressure that is being put on me to win is just me knowing and telling myself, ‘I can do it.’”

But Steveson hasn’t been waiting for a title to fall into his lap. He may have spent time this summer wakeboarding on Lake Minnetonka or on a boat at Long Lake, but if you’ve seen the top

heavyweight in action this season, he looks even bigger than he did during his 2020 campaign.

It’s no coincidence.

During the summer, Steveson gained 20 pounds in training and preparation for the season. But what’s more surprising is he did not plan for it.

“The weight came on quick, and people can tell now when I wrestle that I look different in some ways, and I’m just making sure that I’m doing all the right things to grow.

Jumping up 20 pounds just happened one day when I stepped on the scale,” Steveson said.

“But I knew my weight would clean up in the right ways since I wasn’t wrestling. Now, I’m five pounds lighter at the 260

mark to have the physical appearance and the look to be the best I can.”

The next step for Steveson is a national title, something he’s been eyeing since he first stepped foot on the University campus. And the national title would provide the footing for the following step, bringing him closer to his ultimate dream of competing in the WWE. “It’ll create another legacy that I’m writing right now as the days go by, match by match.

Having that national championship will bring me to a new height, platform, and have me solidify my spot out there as one of the best, and it’s only a matter of time when that happens,” he said.

11 Monday, February 8, 2021

First-year law program centers experiences of students of color RISE is a space for students of color to discuss pursuing law.

By Katelyn Vue kvue@mndaily.com 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 thirdyear 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 firstyear 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.

Shantal Pai poses for portraits outside Mondale Hall on Jan. 20. “Hopefully we can get more diversity within the law system, more representation, as most of the students signed up are minority representing.” (Parker Johnson / Minnesota Daily) This decision was discuss the consequences of based on the idea that the the case and its relation to the Piankeshaw tribe was not continued expropriation of able to maintain possession Indigenous lands. However, of the land because it “never she added that the professor ‘owned’ it in the traditional and materials in class did not sense of the word,” provide an opportunity for according to a LexisNexis deeper discussions. case brief.

Brandie Burris, a Pai said she wanted to 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.

Subterranean fungi could be key to treating devastating bat disease Researchers explore cave fungi use as a control agent.

By Becca Most bmost@mndaily.com For the past four years, University of Minnesota researcher Bob Blanchette has examined over 165 varieties of subterranean fungi that have been growing in various caves and iron ore mines around Minnesota.

Of those varieties, 46 of the fungi types do not match any type of fungus scientists have seen before, Blanchette said. One variety stretches over rocks and crevices like cobwebs.

Another variety appears as a bright teal patch on the ground, and a third variety takes up enough space to fill an entire room.

Blanchette and several other researchers published some of their initial findings last summer. Part of their research is looking into whether the compounds these fungi produce could be used to combat a deadly disease that has decimated Minnesota’s bat populations in recent years.

White-nose syndrome Some sites in Minnesota have seen their hibernating bat populations drop 94% due to white-nose syndrome, a disease characterized by a white growth on a bat’s nose, wings and ears. The disease was first documented in the state about five years ago and is caused by a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd).

Bats with white-nose syndrome wake from hibernation prematurely and begin foraging in the winter. Because food and water sources are scarce, bats die because they use up their limited fat reserves to sustain themselves.

“Every time they wake in the winter, it’s very energetically costly. It takes a lot of energy to warm their bodies back up,” said Minnesota Department of Natural Resources mammal specialist Melissa Boman.

“Because their fat reserves are so limited and every wake up is costly, those bats essentially starve.”

Blanchette said studying the subterranean fungi could be key to stopping the spread of Pd. “We really don’t have a lot of information on the biology and ecology of these organisms. And this is [also] true for the pathogen

that causes the whitenose syndrome of bats,” he said. “If we could learn more about that biology and the ecology of them, we can likely have a better opportunity to find controls for them.”

‘Untapped resources’ Christine Salomon, an associate professor at the College of Pharmacy’s Center for Drug Design, has been studying samples taken from these mines and caves in her lab. Examining the compounds in the fungi and bacteria, Salomon is looking for microbial strains that inhibit the growth of the fungal pathogen Pd causing white-nose syndrome in bats.

The approach of using a living organism to combat the growth or spread of another organism is known as “biological control” and has been used successfully in agricultural settings to treat a number of diseases and insect pests, she said.

So far, Salomon said her lab has identified more than 100 different microbial strains that inhibit the growth of Pd in a lab setting.

Because Pd spores remain on cave walls and floors for a long time and the disease has spread to so many bats, it may be

impossible to treat bats individually for Pd, Salomon said. Her focus then has largely been on developing treatments for cave surfaces to reduce the amount of infectious white-nose syndrome pathogens.

By isolating the active components in each potential biocontrol strain, her team tests to see if the compounds are toxic to bat cells. Using samples from the cave walls Blanchette’s team explored, they are also testing to see if these living microbes are effective as a biological control agent on the cave’s rock ceilings and walls.

The process is slow and tedious, and researchers must be careful about the implications of introducing foreign microbes into the environment or using treatments that could negatively impact other species besides bats, she said.

Finding natural compounds and biological control agents to address the outbreak rather than using synthetic pesticides or other human-made treatments could not only be less expensive but better for the environment, if they can prove biological control is as effective, Salomon said.

Blanchette said venturing into these caves

to explore how these fungi are adapting to extreme environments is exciting, and something the state will hopefully be able to use in the future.

“These [fungi] are

untapped resources in Minnesota here that could be very beneficial and very useful in the future,” he said. “And most important is to find out what they are and what they do.”

Associate Professor Christine Salomon poses for a portrait in her lab in Nils Hasselmo Hall on Tuesday, Jan 26. (Emily Urfer / Minnesota Daily)

Associate Professor Christine Salomon holds a rock sample found in Soudan Underground Mine in her lab in Nils Hasselmo Hall on Jan 26. (Emily Urfer / Minnesota Daily)

West Bank restaurants withstand pandemic

Restaurants in Cedar-Riverside remain open for takeout.

By Lydia Morrell lmorrell@mndaily.com While other neighborhoods near the University of Minnesota have lost some landmark institutions, West Bank restaurants have mostly weathered the storm of the pandemic.

The restaurant landscape largely remains the same in CedarRiverside despite the challenges of COVID-19 lockdowns.

The West Bank Business Association (WBBA) rolled out initiatives throughout the pandemic to help ease new businesses into the area and support established locations.

Acadia cafe posted to Facebook in September that it was seeking new ownership. The restaurant has been closed since June during remodeling.

“After 18 years, two

locations, countless m u s i c / k a ra oke/ t h ea t e r shows and a pandemic, the owners are ready to move on,” the post read.

“The business is currently closed for renovations and covid, and we’re looking for someone to bring it into its next phase.”

Malabari Kitchen, an Indian restaurant on Cedar Avenue South, closed in March with no plans to reopen.

No restaurants have opened in the neighborhood within the last year, said KJ Starr, business services director of WBBA. But JoJo Ndege hoped to.

He originally planned to open Kilimanjaro Grill last June but said the pandemic difficulties forced him to delay the opening date to fall of this year. The restaurant will be located in the old Viking Bar location, though the work on the building is not yet completed.

Ndege has hosted a radio show called African Rhythms for more than

ten years and has been involved with many African music events in the area, so he said it felt “natural” to open his restaurant in CedarRiverside.

“I felt that if I brought in the cuisine part of it, it will just enrich the neighborhood even more,” Ndege said. “We’ll invite different chefs to do different foods from different ethnicities, but all of that is not going to work anytime soon, so when we open we’re going to start with the catering.”

Kilimanjaro Grill will offer take-out options, catering services and possibly a sidewalk cafe.

Ndege said he had to completely discard his first business plan once the pandemic hit.

“So, the first thing is how we’re going to be able to change within short notice with whatever happens,” Ndege said.

“The second thing is there’s no certainty as to how we’re going to end up.”

Michelle Kwan poses for a portrait in front of her family-owned restaurant, Keefer Court Bakery and Cafe on Monday, Jan. 25. (Jasmine Webber / Minnesota Daily) Many restaurants have added or expanded online ordering options. Michelle Kwan, owner of Keefer Court, said the pandemic has not significantly impacted their sales, because their bakery already had an extensive takeout menu.

“In addition to being a bakery and everything, it’s definitely been different, because we never did delivery before and starting last year, we started doing delivery with those third-party businesses,” Kwan said,

noting that she had to set delivery prices higher to cover the extra costs of third-party apps.

Many West Bank businesses are a part of the WBBA and could take part in the initiatives that they are setting in place this year, such as websites for businesses on WBBA’s directory. Starr said the association is putting together photos and small stories for each of their 200 member businesses that will be linked to an interactive map on the WBBA website.

“So, you can click on the map on our website, and I can pull up like what is your grocery and you can see [the owner] and his mother and all the cool foods they have at their grocery store,” Starr said.

Starr said that the association is also planning to assemble a framework and staffing for a restorative justice program in the neighborhood.

WBBA helps restaurant owners to apply for grants and loans as needed, as well.

At The Red Sea, a mainstay that has been in the neighborhood for decades, the bar and live music venue have been closed since March, and dining capacity is still limited to 50%.

Russom Solomon, longtime owner of the Ethiopian restaurant, said he is just waiting for the state’s restrictions to ease.

“It’s a constantly changing neighborhood,” Solomon said.

“But we have adapted with the change.”

12 Monday, February 8, 2021

CBD use during pregnancy affects offspring

Scientists say people should be wary of CBD while pregnant.

By Becca Most bmost@mndaily.com

Cannabidiol (CBD) is not hard to come by anymore.

Since Minnesota legalized the sale of CBD in January 2020, stores around the state advertise the product as a natural remedy for pain or other ailments, including at shops near the University of Minnesota.

In a study published last month, University researchers found some potential adverse effects of CBD, especially when taken during pregnancy. Their preliminary study in mice shows CBD has a lasting impact on offspring even into adulthood.

Although this study has not been conducted on humans yet, researchers say people should be wary of using CBD while pregnant, especially as more people use CBD to alleviate symptoms like nausea or pain that often accompany pregnancy.

According to a 2019 global analytics poll, 20% of people ages 18-29 use CBD consistently, and 64% of Americans are familiar with CBD products. “[CBD has] now exploded in popularity and yet, we don’t have very much information about what it does during gestation in humans,” University researcher and coauthor Dr. Christopher Faulk said. “There are many, many humans who are taking these compounds, almost certainly during pregnancy, so it’s vital for us to find this out.”

Dr. Nicole Wanner, a postdoctoral fellow in the College of Veterinary Medicine and co-author of the study, said their work is even more critical now as CBD and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) become legalized in different states around the country. While CBD and THC are both chemical compounds found in cannabis plants, THC produces a “high” when smoked or ingested.

“The fact that CBD is indicated for a lot of things that might happen during pregnancy, like nausea or pain, makes us pretty concerned

Project lead Nicole Wanner examines mouse DNA at the Andrew C. Boss Laboratory of Meat Science on Friday, Jan. 29. (Emily Pofahl / Minnesota Daily) that this would be a potential exposure for people,” Wanner said. “Some people can also perceive something that’s from a plant as maybe more natural compared to using a conventional drug.

But that isn’t always necessarily the case. Plants can contain some very active ingredients that can be just as impactful as any other drug.”

For many decades federal regulations prevented the study of cannabinoids, like THC, and other illicit drugs, which made it difficult or even impossible to study these kinds of compounds,

Wanner said. She said their work attempts to fill a “huge hole in the literature” about CBD’s safety or possible consequences.

After giving pregnant mice CBD daily during pregnancy and in the nursing period, Wanner and Faulk studied the behavior of the mice’s offspring, which had no CBD exposure after weaning them.

Researchers used mice for the experiment because they wanted to study the effects of CBD on mammals with a shorter lifespan, enabling them to see the results in their offspring within a couple of

months. Wanner said they gave mice an amount of CBD that was roughly equivalent to the amount a person taking CBD would consume to mimic human usage.

Although male mice had relatively few behavior changes, the female mice had thousands of changes in their gene expression. Female mice also had worsened anxiety but improved memory behavior compared to males despite having no direct contact with CBD. “If you see an effect that’s transmissible to a new generation, that’s kind of concerning,” said Dr. David Brown, a University professor in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences who has conducted cannabinoid research in the past.

Brown said this study is important because it is one of few looking into inherited traits due to CBD usage. It is also one of the few studies examining the effects of cannabinoids other than THC on female animals and their offspring.

Historically, many research studies have focused solely on male subjects

because researchers did not want to deal with breeding cycles, pregnancies or hormonal changes in female subjects, Brown said. But doing so negates the research conducted on half of the global population and does not consider the impact of differences caused by sex, he said.

Wanner said they plan to conduct additional studies, particularly exploring CBD’s impact on mice’s adolescent development. She said adolescence is a typical age for the onset of mental health disorders in humans. Because few regulations prohibit those under 18 from purchasing CBD products online, Wanner said looking into CBD’s effects on brain development in youth is especially important.

“I struggle to think of any sort of category of substance where research into it had been essentially prohibited for decades and then all of a sudden humans started taking massive quantities of it,” Faulk said. “There’s a huge gap in the human use and in the human research. It’s almost unprecedented compared to other substances. …

We got to catch up.”

Gabel talks UMPD safety review, Biden’s higher ed policies Gabel also talked regent elections and CARES funds for students.

By Abbey Machtig amachtig@mndaily.com In a virtual interview with the Minnesota Daily, University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel discussed the recently concluded safety review of the University Police Department and changes to higher education policies from President Joe Biden’s administration.

Gabel also weighed in on the Board of Regents election and the University’s relationship with Minnesota’s tribal nations.

She said the Board of Regents will discuss these topics further at meetings on Feb. 11 and 12.

This year, the Regent Candidate Advisory Council recommended four women and eight men as candidates for the Board of Regents.

Four of the men are people of color, including Brandon Alkire, who could become the first Native American regent in the University’s history. What conversations have you had with the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council and the tribal nations about representation on the Board of Regents and the list of resolutions sent to the University over the summer?

The council sent over a resolution a few months ago, a lengthy resolution, really where they looked at a very holistic set of hopes and expectations for the relationship with the University. Some of those

expectations were simply to be more structured and organized about our work with them so that we would commit to meeting at least three times a year, which we have been maintaining since then, in addition to one-on-one meetings with some of the chairs and other tribal council leaders. Then, some work and commitment around our complicated history, which, as we know, has been a journey and something that we would really like to see improve. They have hopes for where we would partner looking ahead and into things that we would do down the road.

Since Jan. 20, Biden has both signed into action and recommended various policy updates and changes that will affect higher education and the University of Minnesota. Some of these changes include extending the freeze on federal student loan payments and interest, an increase in guidance on COVID-19 plans for higher education and strengthening Title IX laws. How will the University respond and begin to implement these changes in the future?

So obviously we’re delighted with the attention that the new administration is paying both to student finances, to research support, to campus climate and Title IX and otherwise, and a few other related areas. We’re eager to work with the Biden administration. We’re grateful to see that doors are being reopened to our international students, and we’re very optimistic about how complying with these policies will be of benefit to the University

of Minnesota.

We’ve been tracking the news and the executive orders that the president has been signing. I’ve personally been on some briefing calls that indicate where policy is likely to change. There hasn’t been anything yet that required a fundamental, you know, stop in your tracks and pivot to something else. We’re watching closely so that I don’t expect to be caught by surprise. The administration has been communicating a lot, and we’re watching really closely.

The results from Dr. Cedric Alexander’s safety review were published last week and will be discussed in depth at the February Board of Regents meeting. What was the most shocking result included in the review to you?

I wouldn’t say I was shocked, but I think the extent of the recommendations was probably more than we expected. I would consider that a good thing because it really feels like if we work our way through this, that we will have done everything we know how to do to improve this attribute of inclusion while also addressing the fact that crime is up. … I think that if I were to describe anything along the lines of surprise, it’s this recognition that there’s still a lot to do — that even at a place that’s deeply committed, that really wants to be better, where there is a very clear voice and not a lot of confusion, it’s still a lot of work, and that’s okay. We’re ready to do that work. I’m glad that we have now some structure to do that work.

But now we need to do it, and that’s a chapter in and

of itself.

How will you balance the potential added cost of these implementations, for equipment or other things, with the need to be financially responsible?

Every penny we spend is tough right now. Some of the things that UMPD needs, we would have to wait until the next budget, and it would have to come as part of the overall budget plan for the University. Some things that we would want to start now, we would use one-time money to bootstrap until we got to the next fiscal year and could go through the budget cycle.

Everything we’re doing right now is in extreme recognition of our constrained financial resources.

A second round of CARES funds has been designated for higher education, an approximate $21.2 billion.

According to experts, these funds will be more accessible to students. How will the distribution process to students differ from last year?

We’re expecting whatever distribution we receive to be similarly divided [between the] institution and students.

But last time, there were a lot of restrictions on which students could receive funds.

Many of those restrictions we expect will be lifted, which would allow us to distribute to more of our students.

We’re waiting to get the final details, and then we would set up a distribution either through financial aid or emergency funds, much like we did last time. We would just be able to let more students know that money was available than we were able

President Joan Gabel poses for a portrait over Zoom on Thursday, Oct. 15. (Abbey Machtig / Minnesota Daily) to with the first distribution of CARES funds.

The University’s budget request to the state is the lowest amount in approximately 20 years, at $46.5 million.

What is the strategy behind requesting this amount, especially when the University is experiencing a large budget deficit?

The strategy here is that we are in a tough financial situation, but we have made reasonable plans to address our own shortfall. We have not had to do that on the backs of students. This was in a frozen tuition and frozen fee environment. We have made a set of collective community sacrifices in order to get through what we’re getting through. And now what we’re asking the state to do is to invest in the future and the strategic plan that we’ve recently passed. It’s a low amount relative to what we’ve asked for before, but it is the amount we received at the last biennial budget distribution. Our hope is that they will give us all of it, which would keep us on par with what the state has given us in the recent past.

Were they to give us more, we could obviously use it, but this is what we need in order to get through this time.

Then as things loosen up and

revenues go back up again, you can be quite sure we will ask for more.

Has the University or will the University see an increase in academic programs that are canceled or paused as a result of low enrollment throughout the pandemic?

What is the University doing to maintain programs and courses that may be more impacted by the pandemic than others?

There’s a regular cycle of programs that sunset and new programs that start. We do have some doctoral programs that have paused — it’s not enrollment issues; it’s job prospect issues on the other end that have encouraged those programs to pause for admission. A lot of universities are in hiring freezes, and doctoral students generally would be on the University market. If we bring a student in, we want them to have an open, active market when they finish. Those are pauses, not permanent cancellations or discontinuations. We have a lot of optimism that sooner rather than later, because of the vaccine, we’ll restart those programs.

This interview has been slightly edited for length, grammar and clarity.

Political science faculty speaks out against hiring of former Trump staffers University professors ask for “strictest of scrutiny.”

By Hana Ikramuddin hikramuddin@mndaily.com Political science faculty from universities nationally have signed onto two letters, one of which includes a demand that college administrations be critical of hiring staffers from former President Donald Trump’s administration.

Over 150 professors have signed the letter, including five from the University of Minnesota. The letter, which was written in early January, asks for University administrators to “refrain

from hiring or otherwise giving positions to senior officials, political appointees, and political staffers in the Trump administration without first applying the strictest of scrutiny — including consultation with faculty and students.”

Some Trump administration aides and staffers are reportedly worried about finding employment following their time under the former president, according to reporting by Politico.

Over the last several years, universities attempting to hire former Trump staffers have faced protests from students and faculty, including at the University of Virginia.

“The intent of signing a letter at least for me, is sort of making a public commitment and sending a signal. The

reason for doing it is to let people in positions to make these kinds of decisions know that they have faculty and other people in their institution who are going to speak up if this happens,” Humphrey School of Public Affairs professor Joe Soss said.

Soss signed the letter after seeing it circulate on social media and said he expects the University to consult with faculty, staff and students before hiring former members of the Trump administration.

“We think there should be a presumption with this administration that it will be inappropriate to offer positions of our institution to people who’ve done the work of this administration,” Soss said.

However, Department of Political Science professor Tanisha Fazal says she is skeptical of the effectiveness of the letter.

“I tend not to sign a lot of these kinds of letters.

But there are certain lines that, if crossed, require accountability,” Fazal wrote in an emailed statement to the Minnesota Daily. “Honestly, I’m skeptical that the letter will have, or has had, much of an effect (although I would be glad to be wrong about this).

Even so, and speaking only for myself, it was important for me to speak up by signing the letter.”

In early January, Soss and multiple other University professors also signed onto a letter demanding the former U.S. president’s removal from office, which had signatures

Illustration by Mary Ellen Ritter from over 100 faculty at universities nationally. Jane Lawrence Sumner, another faculty member in the University’s political science department also signed the letter.

“I think that it’s important that people who study politics and government and political science be willing to take a

stand and just say our political institutions mean something, and we believe in protecting them,” Sumner said. “I think one thing that does unify us is we all do share this commitment to sort of the strength and resilience of political institutions. And I think it’s important to take a stand on that.”