By Alyssa Bluhm
Murphy News Service
Public safety and increasing campus diversity were high on the list of challenges University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler highlighted in his third State of the University address Thursday afternoon.
The university, he said, met the first benchmark in its $90-million goal of reallocating administrative costs – after receiving criticism for having a bloated staff at the top – by moving $15 million from administration spending to other U expense lines. Among the U’s other accomplishments, Kaler said, were a two-year tuition freeze and a reinvestment in research after financial cutbacks in recent years.
Kaler discussed the “Retaining All Our Students” initiative as one way the U is addressing the lack of racial and ethnic diversity on campus. The program’s aim is to improve first-year retention rates for low-income students. With less than 4 percent of the student body representing African Americans, Kaler conceded more needs to be done not only to retain students of color, but to make them feel more accepted on campus.
“[F]or many of our students of color… the environment could be more welcoming. Students have said they sometimes feel singled out as the only student of color in a class, and some feel profiled by others on campus because of their race,” Kaler said from the podium of the Coffman Union theater. The statement conflicts with the University’s new aggressive approach to public safety, which makes many students of color feel profiled.
Few specifics were given on how the University will address the lack of diversity on campus, leaving
“I’d like to see the percentage [of African American students] double by next semester,” junior Forrester Pack said. “The U should recruit from high schools in the surrounding area—there’s so much diversity here.”
Kaler briefly touched on the U’s plans to improve on- and off-campus housing. “[W]alkability, bikeability, and a range of amenities are important to neighborhood livability for our students and they need to be important to the institution… Over the next few months, we will forge a new set of guiding principles for working with the City of Minneapolis and our neighborhoods,” Kaler said.
Kaler appeared to be referring either to the recent influx of large, upscale apartments, or to saving the aesthetic of the Dinkytown neighborhood from apartment developers such as Doran Companies. Students and community members have been against Doran’s spread into Dinkytown in recent years.
“There’s too much new housing,” freshman Will Dammann said. “I don’t see why we need to focus on getting more when it’s already too expensive for students.”
A question-and-answer session followed Kaler’s address. Responding to a student-submitted question about a remedy to the high cost of textbooks, Kaler said that the University does not profit from the bookstore, adding that making textbooks free or cheaper for students would come at a high cost for the U. Nonetheless, “It’s wrong for textbooks to cost so much,” he said.
When asked what the U is doing to prevent rising tuition, Kaler’s response didn’t mention anything other than pushing for another tuition freeze.
“I wish he’d be more confident about his approach to the tuition freeze,” Dammann said. “As president, he could fix anything by saying ‘Let’s get this done!’ But nothing is happening.”
Alyssa Bluhm is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.
READ KALER’S SPEECH
For a transcript of his State of the University speech go to http://www1.umn.edu/president/speeches-and-writing/state-of-university-2014/