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All eyes were on Minneapolis in 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). That year, University of Minnesota president, Joan Gabel, appeared to be listening to the student community when she announced that U of M would be cutting ties with MPD. However, in 2022, U of M abruptly reneged on that promise and began reestablishing ties with MPD. Not only did U of M betray its students, but it missed an important opportunity to show leadership in how to invest in real community safety.
According to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News in 2020, "employees associated with the campus police department had used Clearview [facial recognition technology]" despite prior avowals from the University of Minnesota that it would never use facial recognition on its campus.
This year, U of M brought in Jeff Ettinger, the former CEO of Hormel Foods, the maker of SPAM, as interim president. Ettinger, a nonacademic with no experience in university administration, promised to "restore the U’s reputation with lawmakers and the general public." Robyn Gulley, the only regent who voted no on Ettinger's hiring, should be praised for raising valid concerns about “corporate influence in higher ed.”
In bright news this year, graduate students at U of M voted by a 97% majority to unionize.
The University of Minnesota confirmed on Thursday that a 2021 breach of a university database may have compromised personal information of students and staff dating back to 1989.
On July 21, 2023, the U of M learned of an individual claiming to have posted sensitive admissions data on the internet. After an extensive investigation into the claim's credibility, the university confirmed that a breach of its database occurred in 2021. According to a press release, this incident has not affected university operations.
The U of M has since confirmed that the incident has potentially affected individuals who submitted personal and sensitive information as a prospective student, attended the university as a student, worked at the university as an employee, or participated in university programs between 1989 and 2021.
Some of the information the individual has potentially gained access to includes full names, addresses, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, driver's license or passport information, university I.D. numbers, birthdates and demographic information.
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"I trusted the university with my personal information and didn't protect it. And that's really frustrating," Kauffman said. "When I saw social security as one of the data points taken from me potentially, I was like, 'holy crap this is really serious.'"
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The University of Minnesota’s Queer Student Cultural Center (QSCC) faces an uncertain future after some board members went on strike to protest allegations of racism and misconduct and the majority of the QSCC’s leadership resigned.
Eight members of the Board of Governors (BOG) went on strike starting April 2 due to a disagreement with the way the QSCC administration was handling allegations of racial microaggressions, according to former BOG member Lynn Dinh.
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Sara Lam, the QSCC’s former treasurer, resigned in February due to feeling disrespected by other QSCC leaders. Lam said leadership repeatedly talked over people of color, including her and Dinh, in a way that felt discriminatory.
Both Lam and Dinh said when they tried to bring up unequal treatment and microaggressions, leadership did not fully address their concerns.
Lam and Dinh said members used their queer identity or disability as a shield to claim they could not have done anything racist. This caused their concerns to be pushed aside, they said.
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While the nature of her disability allows her some privilege as a visibly able-bodied person, she said she’s often seen as lazy or faking it.
“People will give me really dirty looks when I take disability seating, to the point where I will pass out before I ask someone to give up their seat for me,” she said. “I hate having people question my disability just because they can’t see it.”
But while her professors give her accommodations because she’s registered with the Disability Resource Center, she says her classmates don’t always understand the reality of her disability. She’s been docked in peer evaluations for not showing up to group work despite informing her classmates she physically can’t get there.
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