September 19, 2019

U RESEARCHERS HOPE TO DEVELOP ANTI-OBESITY DRUG USING MICE PAGE 5

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SERVING THE UMN COMMUNITY SINCE 1900

NATION

Fighting for health at the border

NEIGHBORHOODS

Recent crimes spark safety discussions Marcy-Holmes officials and local residents held a discussion Monday to address violent crimes.

BY TAYLOR SCHROEDER tschroeder@mndaily.com

group is using a naturally occurring compound to create novel drugs to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

Professor Michael Smanski’s research group focuses on a naturally occurring compound that has been shown to have a positive effect on diseases such as Parkin-

Recent violent crimes in Marcy-Holmes have led officials to address community concerns and increase engagement.

Police and neighborhood officials convened at First Congregational Church Monday to address Marcy-Holmes residents’ safety concerns after an attempted abduction on Sept. 12. Residents asked questions about police staffing, housing regulatory services and population growth.

The attempted abduction took place in the back parking lot of an apartment complex at 410 6th St. SE at 7:10 a.m. as a University of Minnesota student was taking out her trash. The attacker allegedly approached her from behind and put his hand over her mouth before she fought him off of her. He then ran off of the premises.

There have been two other high-profile incidents at the address in the last year. A high-risk warrant entry on Jan. 24 found an unlicensed firearm and narcotics.

The second event occurred when MPD responded to a shooting at 12:28 p.m. on Feb. 16.

Chris Lautenschlager, executive director of the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association, said crime tends to be cyclical and typically increases in summer months. While Marcy-Holmes started with one violent crime in January of this year, by July the number of monthly violent crimes peaked at 14.

But year-to-year violent crime in the neighborhood has increased from 46 incidents in 2015 to 71 in 2019 between Jan. 1 and Sep. 17.

The meeting was led by 2nd Precinct Inspector Todd Loining of the Minneapolis Police Department, who recounted the event and fielded audience questions.

“When I look at the number of calls [from the address], it’s not good but it’s not the worst,” Loining said at the meeting. “We consider ‘problem properties’ based on calls of service, public safety issues and when we have to address something that’s inherently dangerous.”

On March 6, MPD met with the building’s management to discuss existing security measures and agree on future actions for the building to take. So far, management has installed LED lights on the property and on the street and has prohibited subleasing and short-term rentals in the building.

Management has not yet installed security cameras in the rear parking lot, but has stated they will be installed by the end of the year.

Residents raised their concerns over the lack of action taken

by Steven Scott Management, which has leased the apartments since 1993. Representatives from the company did not attend the meeting.

In response, the 2nd Precinct held a meeting to discuss the property’s management Tuesday with

u See NEURO DISEASE Page 3

u See SAFETY Page 3

KAMAAN RICHARDS, DAILY

University of Minnesota medical students, from left, Omar Cespedes, Regina Lorenzo, Karina Romo, David Molinar, Santana Sanchez, and Angelina OmodtLopez pose for a portrait on the West Bank Campus on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2019.

U Student group acts to improve health conditions at southern border

BY JASMINE SNOW jsnow@mndaily.com

A group of Latino medical students are consolidating their field expertise and humanitarian advocacy to campaign for better conditions in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.

Students in the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities’ chapter of the Latino Medical Student Association are advocating for a bill in Congress that would set a standard of care for immigrants in detention centers operated by Customs and Border Patrol. LM-

SA members believe the detention center conditions lie at the intersection of public health and humanitarian efforts.

The Humanitarian Standards for Individuals in Customs and Border Protection Custody Act would require CBP to provide adequate drinking water, food, hygiene products and other essentials to immigrants in detention centers. The legislation would also require initial health screenings to identify individuals with

Kosher restaurant hits Coffman

BY HANA IKRAMUDDIN hikramuddin@mndaily.com The University of Minnesota opened its first fully kosher restaurant in Coffman Union this month.

House of Hummus opened on Sept. 3 in Minnesota Marketplace, a food court located on the ground level of Coffman. The new restaurant was created in response to a lack of kosher options available to University students.

“Our goal is to have [House of Hummus] here as long as possible, providing students, staff and faculty with a kosher dining option,” said University Dining Services Director Kelly Milledge in an email to the Minnesota Daily.

House of Hummus is owned by Chabad, an international Jewish group with 5,000 centers total.

Rabbi Yitzi Steiner and Chavi Steiner, co-directors of Chabad’s University branch, initiated the opening of House of Hummus on campus. The couple has been advocating for more kosher options on campus for over a decade.

“Ever since we’ve come here, we’ve dedicated our lives to growing the Jewish community and beyond, and that’s why bringing kosher food to campus was so important: because I believe this will not only enhance the current Jewish student body, but potential students as well,” Yitzi Steiner said.

In previous years, some kosher options have been available to students. This consisted of a few prepackaged items, such as sandwiches which were made available in Coffman in 2017 and a frozen kosher meal available in Coffman and the dining halls.

“It was not hot food, it was not fresh food … and I think because of that it just didn’t last,” Yitzi Steiner said. “It is very hard to survive or thrive as a student if you don’t have any place to eat.”

Natan Paradise, the University’s associate director of the Center for Jewish Studies, has worked at the University for more than 15 years and also attended the University as an undergraduate.

“Four generations of my family have earned degrees at u See KOSHER Page 3

u See LMSA Page 3

RESEARCH

STUDENT LIFE

The House of Hummus restaurant opened in the Minnesota Marketplace

acute health conditions or who require more immediate care or priority, like pregnant women, children and those with disabilities.

This legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July and now awaits Senate action.

“When I visited the CBP detention facilities at our border, I saw dirty, inhumane conditions that threatened the health of infants, toddlers and pregnant women. Six

NUR B. ADAM, DAILY

Dr. Dimitri Perusse, left, and his wife, Yari Cabezas-Perusse, play with their daughter, Denali, in their backyard on Tuesday, Sept. 17. Perusse’s daughter suffered a stroke right after birth which motivates him in his research on treatment for neurodegenerative diseases.

Motivated by daughter, UMN lab researcher continues work The lab focuses on a natural compound that can treat Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and strokes.

BY NIAMH COOMEY ncoomey@mndaily.com

A University of Minnesota lab

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

7,000 miles away, U international students feel effects of Hong Kong protests As conflicts continue in Hong Kong, students struggle with being away from their home.

BY JIANG LI AND GWIWON JASON NAM jli@mndaily.com, gnam@mndaily.com

University of Minnesota student Stanley Chow participated in a protest toward the end of the summer in his hometown — Hong Kong.

“Everyone was wearing a black shirt, black pants to show the unity of protesters. It was also very peaceful,” Chow said.

Multiple protests have occurred this year in Hong Kong in opposition of an extradition bill, which would have allowed mainland China authorities to extradite suspects for prosecution in Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong citizens worried the bill would subject

Hong Kong citizens and visitors to mainland China’s jurisdiction, undermining civil liberties. Earlier this month, the Hong Kong government announced it would withdraw the bill, but many in mainland China and Hong Kong are still in conflict.

With the dispute ongoing since early June, many University international students are still passionate about the issue even though they are more than 7,000 miles away from the heart of the movement.

Like Chow, many University students from Hong Kong support the protests.

“Since we are not in Hong Kong, we really can’t do much to directly support the people in Hong Kong, which makes me feel so bad and useless,” said Hugh Chan, president of the Hong Kong Student Association. “I feel useless because [I] cannot be there with all the protesters fighting for our rights.”

Chan said HKSA is a neutral platform for people with different opinions to support Hong Kong.

Natalie Tang, a fourth-year communication studies student from Hong Kong, expressed her mixed feelings as a student studying abroad.

“It feels like I couldn’t do anything much but caring and showing support in such a long distance,” Tang said, adding that she feels sad whenever she watches the news or browses social media.

Hong Kong was a colony of the United Kingdom from 1842 to 1997, despite a short takeover by Japan in 1941. In 1997, the United Kingdom ended its administration, transferring authority to China.

Olivia Zang, a fourth-year statistics major from mainland China, said she believes some Hong Kong citizens were following the protesting crowd blindly.

“I think some of them didn’t know what is going on and just

ILLUSTRATION BY MORGAN LA CASSE, DAILY

follow the trend, like protesting on the street,” Zang said. “They might think they were fighting for Hong Kong’s democracy and future development but may not

even realize that they may be taken [advantage of] by some groups.”

Darry Zhang, president of the u See HONG KONG Page 3 VOLUME 120 ISSUE 6

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Head Coach P.J. Fleck converses with a referee at TCF Bank Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019. Minnesota defeated Georgia Southern 35-32.

Gabel announces provost forums Four candidates to partake in public provost forums in the coming weeks.

BY DYLAN ANDERSON dandseron@mndaily.com The University of Minnesota has four candidates to be the next executive vice president and provost.

The candidates, yet to be named, will participate in public forums on campus in the coming weeks kicking off on Sept. 24, according to an email sent

by President Joan Gabel to the University community Tuesday.

Information about each candidate will be released the day before their respective public forum and include their name, a photo and their curriculum vitae, a more comprehensive version of a resume commonly

used in academia.

The announcement of candidates and public forums introducing them to the University community comes after a monthslong search for the next provost, the second highest-ranking position at the University.

Karen Hanson, who currently holds the role, announced she would step down from the job last December. She agreed to stay on, after taking a leave of absence, to provide stability as the University welcomed Gabel as its new president. Hanson has been with the University since 2012.

Unlike the search process that tapped Gabel as the University’s 17th president, the University will reveal the identity of multiple candidates and hold interviews with “numerous stakeholder groups” in addition to the

forums, the email said.

H o s t e d i n N o r t h ro p Auditorium, the forums will take place on Sept. 24 and Oct. 2, with two more on Oct. 7. They will all be streamed online.

Gabel also updated the campus community on efforts to create the next systemwide strategic plan, a process that began before former President Eric Kaler announced he would step down in July 2018.

Regents have expressed a desire to have a systemwide strategic plan since before Gabel took over, and emphasized its importance at the regents retreat in July.

Looking to center the system’s focus around strategic commitments, Gabel’s email said she wants to have an “extensive consultation with the University community and beyond this fall.”

Commitments suggested in the email cover a

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University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel fields questions from the Minnesota Daily in her office on Thursday, Sept. 5.

variety of topics such as students, discovery, a welcoming community and fiscal stewardship.

After presenting the various commitments at the December Board of Regents meeting, Gabel will direct senior leaders to establish working groups deriving goals and objectives

to meet those commitments, according to the email. The University hopes to complete this work by next June.

“I welcome your participation in these important initiatives, and thank you for all you do for the University of Minnesota,” Gabel said in the email.

Longtime lodging for UMN guests closes The Wales House closed last month after 25 years of hosting guests.

BY CAITLIN ANDERSON canderson@mndaily.com

“Build-your-own-pizza” nights are among the fond memories of important University of Minnesota visitors who stayed at the Wales House.

The Wales House, formerly a fraternity house, opened as bed-and-breakfast-style lodging for visiting researchers, professors and families in 1994. Its closure last month signified the end of an era for Kelly Carver, who bought and ran the guesthouse with his wife, Julieanne Carver.

“We loved meeting so many of these amazingly interesting people,” Kelly Carver said. The pair lived in the house with their two children.

The Carvers met as University students and later took jobs on campus. While working at the University,

CLEO KREJCI, DAILY

The Wales House, a longtime Dinkytown lodging for UMN guests, as seen on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2019..

Kelly Carver saw a need for housing for University guests — whether people needed to stay for a few days or several months.

In August of 1994, the Wales House opened for business in the vacant former Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house on the 1100 block of 5th Street SE. The house was furnished with comfortable chairs, a chess table and trinkets gifted by guests

from around the world, said Austria resident and Briton Gina Moseley, who stayed in the Wales House two to three times per year starting in 2014 for laboratory research at the University.

T h e h ou s e prov ide d a niche that other shortterm rental places could not: a home away from home filled with worldly people, guests said.

“You’d have breakfast with a transplant surgeon

EDITORIAL BOARD Ariana Wilson Editorials & Opinions Editor awilson@mndaily.com

from Chile, make dinner and chat [with] a Japanese post-doctoral student or play chess with maybe an Egyptian psychologist,” said Michael Crossland, a London resident who works in partnership with the University and stayed at the house almost every year since 2006.

The guests who came to the house enjoyed having a family living alongside them, Kelly Carver said.

“It was really tough … being away from home so much,” Moseley said. “To have somewhere that’s a home to come back to, that was incredible.”

The Carvers even came to stay with Moseley in Austria once for vacation.

For Crossland, the house’s Friday pizza nights are now a tradition for his family in London too, he said.

Moseley recalled “bursting into tears” when she heard the result of her home country’s Brexit referendum while staying at the house. Julieanne Carver comforted her during that time, she said.

Even with the social connections the house provided, upkeep of the house proved difficult, Kelly Carver said.

During his junior year of college, he was diagnosed with a degenerative retinal disease, which has affected his ability to maintain the house in recent years. During the first years of running the house, Kelly Carver surpassed the threshold for legal blindness.

But the changing shortterm rental market, including the rise of Airbnb, has also taken a toll on his business, Kelly Carver said.

“We’re a dying breed,” he said.

But the friendships and relationships made through the Wales House continue. Both Moseley and Crossland still plan to meet with the Carvers when they come to Minnesota.

“I loved the ability to host people,” said Kelly Carver. “I loved the idea of having this really unique place and being able to call it ours.”

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Thursday, September 19, 2019

LMSA u from Page 1 children have now died under the custody, and therefore the responsibility, of our federal government,” said Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., in a statement to the Minnesota Daily.

Students in LMSA showed their support for the bill with a rally on Sept. 4 at Northrop Plaza. LMSA chapter co-founder Karina Romo and chapter events chair David Perez-Molinar organized the rally.

Romo and Perez-Molinar said the humanitarian side of the issue should not get lost in policy discussions.

“We wanted to make this

Neuro disease u from Page 1 son’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as strokes. Smanski’s lab has worked to reproduce the compound by synthetic recreation in the lab, a more sustainable method than harvesting it from fetuses within pregnant cows, where it is found. Smanski’s group recently published a paper about their work in ACS Synthetic Biology.

One postdoctoral researcher, Dimitri Perusse, is motivated by a personal connection to the topic.

Perusse’s daughter, Denali, began experiencing seizures shortly after birth.

An MRI showed that she suffered a stroke, causing damage to the back of her head, which doctors predicted could cause long-lasting effects, such as possible blindness.

His daughter is now almost 1 year old and is doing well, Perusse said, but has some delayed motor skills as a result of the stroke. He said he is hoping his work can help other infants in the same situation as his daughter.

Perusse said the compound they have been researching, serofendic acid,

Kosher u from Page 1

family have earned degrees at the University of Minnesota, and four generations of my family have found employment at the University of Minnesota, so I kind of think of it like the family business. And yet, when the House of Hummus opened, providing a space to eat kosher on campus — and I do keep kosher — I felt like I belonged here, and I was welcome here in a new and important way,” Paradise said.

The lack of kosher

a human rights movement,” Romo said. “It’s really a generational trauma that the facility conditions and family separations are leading the Latinx community to experience.”

The public health ramifications of poor detention center conditions make the issue even more urgent, Romo said.

She said a lack of access to adequate care puts the larger population at risk of disease.

“When people are put in the detention centers and they do not have access to acute care that they need and they don’t have access to preventative care that keep populations safe, they’re at an increased risk of disease for themselves and ... for the pop-

ulations at wide,” Romo said.

The bill does not grant any pathways to citizenship — it only dictates detention center conditions, which should not be political, Romo said.

“It’s not a bill that is offering grandiose requirements,” she said. “It’s really just the basics: clean water, sanitation and shelter.”

Perez-Molinar said while the bill is a step in the right direction, he believes more could be done to improve conditions for immigrants.

“The ideal that we would all hope for is that people aren’t being crammed into one large cage space and told to, essentially, sleep there and all use the same facilities.”

can help to prevent damage caused by cell death that can occur as a result of strokes, something that doesn’t have many existing treatments.

“Right now, there aren’t that many drugs that can do that on the market unfortunately,” Perusse said.

Smanski noted that the work on serofendic acid specifically is unique to his lab.

He said his lab has collaborations with other labs to test the compound on animals and is working to progress through the necessary steps toward drug development.

“We’re collaborating with other labs that are experts in neuroscience and in some of these neurodegenerative diseases, because they have animal models. They have cell models of the disease,” Smanski said. “We’re giving them compound that they can test in the lab to see how effective serofendic acid can be.”

One of these collaborations has been with professor Walter Low, the associate head for research in the Department of Neurosurgery.

Low emphasized the progress that is able to occur at the University due to collaboration and communi-

cation between researchers.

“It’s a matter of finding synergy. So if somebody at another University is doing something complimentary to you, or if two groups can get together … to make the research move faster, more efficiently, that’s what we like to see,” he said.

The balance of competition and collaboration between researchers on these topics helps to accelerate the research process toward developing new drugs, Low said.

Perusse said that his experience with his daughter has shifted the way he thinks about this work.

“Now when we think about neuroprotective agents like that … personally I’m not thinking only to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, but also I’m thinking about infant strokes,” he said.

The work is not always successful, Perusse said.

When he experiences setbacks, he looks to his daughter for motivation, keeping photographs of her on his desk.

“Now, every time I’m working and I get bad results and I can feel my motivation [go] down, I’m like, ‘Wait, think about your daughter,’” he said.

food on campus in the past has been a barrier for the recruitment of Jewish students to the University, he said.

“The consequence of that is that students for whom keeping kosher is an integral part ... and who were very strict about it — they didn’t come here. The University of Minnesota was an impossible choice, they were completely excluded from our community,” Paradise said.

In a University press release, University Dining Market Manager Chris Elrod said, “We are thrilled about this addition to our

dining program, and the ability to serve students eating kosher without the need to travel off campus.”

While everything is made fresh, House of Hummus’ kitchen is currently located in St. Paul.

The restaurant’s owners said they hope to open a kitchen in Coffman, which would ensure the food is fresh. Yitzi Steiner said he is also hoping to have House of Hummus become Halal certified to accommodate Muslim students. However, Yitzi Steiner said he has no set timeline for these goals.

“It’s still a work in progress,” he said.

JACK RODGERS, DAILY

A cyclist rides down 5th Street Southeast in Dinkytown on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2019.

Safety u from Page 1 regulatory services, the city department that handles rental licensing. “[Tuesday’s] meeting is bringing us all together to say, ‘Okay, what are we doing on this building?’ Every department gives an update, then we decide our next step,” said Nick Juarez, a crime prevention specialist for the 2nd Precinct.

The 2nd Precinct is also holding weekly safety walks beginning Thursday to increase community engagement and deter crime

Hong Kong u from Page 1 University’s Chinese Student Union and a mainland China citizen, said he thinks Hong Kong is a part of China.

“I am not quite familiar with the details of the Hong Kong protest. However, as a Chinese student group, we absolutely resist activities with the aim to set China apart,” Zhang said.

Sophomore Robin Wang is also from mainland China, but he said he supports the protesters. Wang said he loves his homeland China but felt disappointed about the restriction from the Chinese government.

“What is more frightening than the protest itself is

in campus neighborhoods.

Ward 3 City Council member Steve Fletcher, who represents MarcyHolmes, held his own safety walks over the summer to address concerns downtown. He said increased police staffing downtown and in other areas won’t necessarily deter crime.

“On our walks, we would pause and I would say ‘take a look around, how many officers can you see?’

Sometimes you couldn’t see very many, sometimes there would be multiple,” Fletcher said. “So if something happened right here,

it probably wasn’t a staffing issue.”

But MHNA board member Barbara Camm said she doesn’t think police staffing in the area is adequate, especially given the new residents that recent developments could bring.

“We are talking about the fact that we are adequately staffed in terms of police, I hardly ever see them anymore,” she said.

“There’s a building proposal on the corner of 4th Street and 15th Avenue that could add a thousand people. What is going to happen?”

that it creates antagonism between people of Hong Kong and mainland China, and [mainlanders] call young people in Hong Kong ‘waste youth,’” Wang said.

Robert Kudrle, an international trade and investment policy professor at the University’s Humphrey School, said he believes the protests have been tremendously damaging to the Hong Kong economy.

Tang, the fourth-year University student, said she understands these concerns but she may not agree with what the protesters do.

“But I understand what’s the reason behind all these acts,” Tang said.

Tang said she believes the government hasn’t focused on the problems, in-

stead allowing the police to “abuse their power” and give the impression that they are trying to silence voices.

Chow, the fourth-year student who participated in the protest, said what the government has done has greatly decreased his trust in the government.

“We are deeply in doubt of what the government would do to protect our liberty, what the government would do to its own citizens because we see a lot of police just beat people up and the government doesn’t say anything,” Chow said.

Throughout the semester, HKSA will have platforms to let people write a message to those in Hong Kong and also spread awareness throughout Minnesota.

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Thursday, September 19, 2019

How could the Minneapolis 2040 Plan affect UMN neighborhoods?

The Metropolitan Council will vote on the final plan next week before returning to the Minneapolis City Council.

BY MOHAMED IBRAHIM mibrahim@mndaily.com As the city of Minneapolis gets closer to enacting its plan for future growth and development, some community members have mixed reactions to its proposed changes.

After the Minneapolis City Council approved the policy last December, the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan will head to a vote by the Metropolitan Council next week. The plan features 14 goals including af fordable housing, increased public transit, eliminating disparities and responses to climate change.

Though city of ficials engaged residents for years to craft the plan, some remain skeptical of how it could transfor m their neighborhoods.

MPLS 2040

BY THE NUMBERS

14 GOALS 100 POLICIES 1324 DAYS BETWEEN THE START OF PLANNING AND MPLS 2040 GOING INTO EFFECT

SOURCE: MINNEAPOLIS2040

Using input from residents and communit y m e m b e r s afte r more than 100 meetings between 2016 and 2018, city of ficials developed 100 policies ranging from increasing density through zoning changes to public transit accessibility.

Chris Lautenschlager,

executive director of the Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood Association, said the association encouraged resident input during the planning process. “ We b a s i c a l l y m a d e sur e that we had individuals r epr esented in their own voice at these meetings,” Lautenschlager said. “Our concerns were centered around the ability to weigh in and have meaningful input that the city took seriously.”

Of the plan’s proposed changes, one of the first to be enacted would be an ordinance to allow multifamily housing units or triplexes in residential areas exclusively zoned for single-family homes. Ward 2 City Council Member Cam Gordon said many of these areas are largely home to white residents due to past exclusionar y lending practices that kept minorities from accessing housing. The plan aims to undo that histor y by providing more access to af fordable housing citywide, he said.

“The idea is that it will create oppor tunities for housing in dif ferent places,” Gordon said. “I’m hoping more people of color will take advantage of living in areas where their parents or grandparents wouldn’t have had that opportunity at all.”

Southeast Como, which has the lowest density of the four neighborhoods ar ound the University, could see more multi-family housing where singlefamily homes currently sit.

Southeast Como Improvement Association Board President Karl Smith said while developing af fordable housing options can be beneficial, conver ting existing homes can have

unintended consequences, like increased congestion.

“Having higher density housing, especially with good access to transit, is fine,” Smith said. “But jamming multiple bedrooms into what was once a duplex or single-family home … is problematic.”

The Metropolitan Council will vote on the city’s 2040 plan Sept. 25.

The plan will then be voted on by the City Council Oct. 11 and officially go into effect Nov. 16.

“Having higher density housing, especially with good access to transit, is fine,” Smith said. “But jamming multiple bedrooms into what was once a duplex or singlefamily home … is problematic.”

KARL SMITH Southeast Como Improvement Association Board President

TIMELINE OF MPLS 2040 APPROVAL PROCESS 04/02/2016

BEGINNING OF THE PLANNING PROCESS

03/22/2018

CITY STAFF PUBLISHES FIRST DRAFT OF MPLS 2040

12/07/2018

09/25/2019

10/11/2019

11/16/2019

MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL SUBMITS FINAL DRAFT OF MPLS 2040 TO THE METROPOLITAN COUNCIL

METROPOLITAN COUNCIL ACTS ON MPLS 2040

CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO ADOPT MPLS 2040

MPLS 2040 GOES INTO EFFECT

5

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Recycling denim? MSA can help out There will be denim drives and donation boxes on campus throughout the fall.

BY SAMANTHA HENDRICKSON shendrickson@mndaily.com

In an effort to bring awareness to textile waste, the Minnesota Student Association is calling on the University of Minnesota community to donate its denim.

The initiative, “Blue Jeans Go Green,” is launching this semester to collect denim items for recycling.

MSA’s sustainability committee was selected to partner with Cotton Incorporated, a nonprofit organization that researches cotton usage, to run textile waste events. Throughout the fall semester, MSA will

host “denim drives” and place denim donation boxes around campus.

“Denim is a very damaging material to the environment to produce,” said University Reuse Program Coordinator Todd Tanner.

“The recycling of denim doesn’t reduce the need for new denim, [but] it does reduce the need for the extraction of materials to make whatever the new product is. There’s a positive impact there.”

Once the semester is over, the denim will be sent to a recycling facility, where all its decorations, like buttons and zippers, will be removed and the denim is returned to its original fiber state — cotton. The cotton will be used to create insulation for Habitat for Humanity projects.

Cotton Incorporated, the creator of Blue Jeans

Go Green, selects one college campus each semester to run these events. MSA Sustainability Committee Director Megan Connor has been vying for Cotton Incorporated to select the University since early March 2019. She said her passion for the project incentivized her to get the attention of fellow students and the administration about denim recycling.

“While there is currently no specific policy or department on campus that focuses on textile waste, there still are some projects that we can do that spread awareness,” Connor said.

There are few donation sites near the University, Tanner said, though some sites can be reached by the Green Line. Tanner said a majority of Americans believe that textiles are easily recycled, when that is

SARAH MAI, DAILY

simply not the case.

As of 2014, approximately 9.5 percent of waste consisted of textile and clothing materials, according to the Environmental

Protection Agency.

Due to misinformation on web searches and lack of transparency from companies, the myth that all clothing can be recycled

continues, Tanner said.

He said students should be wary of donation sites advertising recycling that accepts all types of clothing. Many companies cannot process mixed textiles into a usable end product material.

By partnering with Blue Jeans Go Green, MSA said it aims to make the path to clothing sustainability easier for the student body, even if they are only accepting one type of textile.

In a statement, Cotton Incorporated said that they were “excited to work with MSA” to educate the University on denim recycling. “...We hope MSA will share this message, rally their peers, and inspire people to participate by recycling their old denim for a good cause,” the statement read.

UMN research points to a possible anti-obesity drug This discovery may have an impact on metabolic disorders such as obesity.

BY NATALIE CIERZAN ncierzan@mndaily.com

Earlier this month, University of Minnesota researchers found a new relationship between mice and humans that could possibly lead to an anti-obesity drug.

This discovery, which was found using rodent models, could impact multiple metabolic disorders including obesity and diabetes.

Now researchers will work on translating their findings and using the information to further their research.

The research is led by Alessandro Bartolomucci, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology, and includes Yuk Sham, an assistant professor in the same department and research associate Bhavani Sahu.

“It opens up a completely new idea that we can explore,” said Bartolomucci.

In their lab, the researchers replicated what evolution achieved in millions of years. Researchers identified an evolved adaptation that breaks down fat in rodents. Using in vitro methods which involve test

tubes, they tried to replicate this adaptation so it is applicable to humans.

Now the researchers are trying to make a drug-like compound that would break down fat cells in people.

The research team first began this work in 2006 when they discovered the neuropeptide, TLQP-21. Its receptor, complement 3a receptor1, broke down fat in rodents when activated, Bartolomucci said.

“This mutation was more adaptive for rodents because they’re [small] mammals,” Bartolomucci said.

Small mammals require more energy to create heat, which helps them break down their fat.

This led them to begin testing the mouse peptide’s relationship with the human receptor, which showed a similar fat break down. He said the majority of their work has been on fat cells, called adipocytes, linked to metabolic disorders like obesity.

“The more you are obese, the more you express the receptor for this peptide and the less you express other receptors,” Bartolomucci said. “This is consistent between humans and mice.”

His research team’s goal is to make the system they developed more relevant and translational to humans.

“Sometimes you get the feeling as an experimental biological scientist that you get lost in translation,” Bartolomucci said about comparing the findings in mice to humans. “You don’t want to study something that is only relevant for mice.”

With this discovery in humans, they’ll be able to move forward with their research.

“Now we have the tools to understand the differences between the studies and the different species,” he said.

Sahu, who recently moved to India to start his own research lab, designed experiments and analyzed data for this research, he said in an email to the Minnesota Daily.

“Fundamental research is very important to understand the causes for various diseases,” Sahu said in the email. “These studies are important as it can pave [the] way towards understanding basic aspects contributing towards obesity.”

Third-year graduate s t u d e n t , P e d ro R o d r i guez, worked on in vitro experiments alongside Bartolomucci.

“We’ve shown that there’s a potential for translating these findings into humans and hopefully trying to find a treatment we

Representatives to regents set new goals, fill two vacant seats Two studens were appointed to fill vacant positions with the board.

MICHAEL MCGOUGH mmcgough@mndaily.com

Two representatives to the Board of Regents, Rodrigo Tojo Garcia and Anthony Kahane, were appointed to vacant positions near the beginning of the University of Minnesota’s fall semester.

Eight students from across the University of Minnesota system are selected to serve as student representatives to the Board of Regents, assisting the Board’s decisions by presenting the voice of their respective student bodies. The Twin Cities typically has four representatives, two of which must come from Minnesota Student Association and one of which must come from the Council of Graduate Students or the Professional Student Government.

Representatives attend Board meetings, serve as nonvoting members on committees and present reports to the Board. Each report, according to COGS Executive Committee Speaker Scott Petty, serves as “a collective document of all eight” representatives.

Rodrigo Tojo Garcia — Minnesota Student Association Tojo Garcia, a sophomore from New Ulm, Minnesota, studying political

science, said he was initially interested in becoming a representative to bring “concerns of students to the Regents so that they can act on them and improve the University as a whole.”

The position’s significance, Tojo Garcia said, is to ground the Regents’ decisions.

“There’s really nothing to me that’s more powerful than the experiences of students,” Tojo Garcia said.

Tojo Garcia said his background may help him bring a fresh perspective to the Board.

“I’m a Latino person who serves as a student representative, not necessarily so that I can advocate exclusively for Latinos, but at the very least so there is a perspective when these decisions are being made,” Tojo Garcia said.

Tojo Garcia identified economic and physical accessibility as personal priorities but said he is focused on giving a voice to the student body.

“Whatever the student body thinks should be a priority, I’m going to make a priority,” Tojo Garcia said.

trative salary at the level of the Board of Regents,” Kahane said.

Kahane said he has “personal pet projects” he would like to advance but will not “put those ahead of faithfully representing the members of the Council of Graduate Students.”

These projects include cutting costs in campus lighting and water treatment processes, as well as making data about graduate students’ stipends more transparent.

Kahane also expressed interest in addressing misconduct among tenured faculty.

“We want everybody to be held accountable,” Kahane said. “We want this to be a place where everybody is safe and free to exercise their right to say ‘no’ and not lose funding over it.”

T h ough t h e y r e pr esent different student bodies, Tojo Garcia and Kahane said they both intend to share the voices of students and guide the Board’s decisions.

Anthony Kahane — Council of Graduate Students Kahane, a graduate student in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch from Glenview, Illinois, said he is approaching his position with curiosity.

“I would at least like to, before I form concrete judgments, experience decision making about things like budget and adminis-

“There’s really nothing to me that’s more powerful than the experiences of students.”

RODRIGO TOJO GARCIA student representative

SARAH MAI, DAILY

can use in our society,” he said.

Second-year graduate student, Megin Nguyen, worked with Sham on the computational parts of the research.

“We did the [evolutionary] studies on the 47 dif-

ferent mammalian species to see if there was a pattern there,” she said, which they found in mice.

Only a couple of U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs to target obesity exist, Nguyen said. However,

none of the other drugs target their new findings on the peptide and receptor relationship.

“If this goes further on, there’s a lot of potential for it to be, maybe one day, a really good drug for obesity,” she said.

6

Sports

MNDAILY.COM

MN DAILY

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

VOLLEYBALL

Freshman Kilkelly a ‘perfect fit’ for U The freshman libero has logged playing time in every set for the Gophers so far this season.

BY NOLAN O’HARA nohara@mndaily The 2019 volleyball season is officially underway, and freshman libero Rachel Kilkelly has proven herself an important part of the Gophers’ rotation.

It didn’t take long before Kilkelly was able to make a name for herself in Minnesota. In her firstever collegiate match against North Carolina, she showed her effectiveness on the court. Kilkelly recorded nine digs and added a pair of aces to help Minnesota take the match in straight sets and start the season off with a win.

“I think since I have the opportunity to play right now, I just want to do what I can to help the team, no matter what it is,” Kilkelly said. “It’s been really fun. I just want to help the team and do whatever I can to be successful.”

Six games in, Kilkelly has been just that, successful. S h e ’ s b e e n key to the rotation, having played in every set at this point in the season.

She’s shown strength at the service line and has played excellently on defense. Her impressive performances to date make it difficult to believe that until their first match, Kilkelly was unaware of the prominent role she’d play in the Gophers’ rotation.

“I actually had no idea that was going to happen.

They told me right before our first game, the day of.

I really had no idea that I was going to [be a significant part of the rotation] because we have so much talent on this team,” she said.

Her impressive performance in the first match was followed by three straight matches where she finished with double-digit digs. Over that stretch, Kilkelly recorded 37 digs, three assists and an ace, earning the praise of her head coach, Hugh McCutcheon.

“I’ve been really impressed with her

Freshman Rachel Kilkelly looks receive the ball at the Maturi Pavilion on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2019.

performance,” he said. “Really steady, seems to be in control a lot and of course playing really well too.

We’re certainly excited with the way she’s performed.”

It’s come full circle for the Shakopee High School graduate, who grew up

watching the Gophers.

She’s now an important part of the team’s rotation, contributing every time she steps on the court.

“I remember last year I would look onto the court and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to be a part of that next year,’” she said.

“And to actually be a part of it, it’s super fun because I’ve been in the stands watching my whole life, and I actually got to be on the court playing. It was just fun, because the Pav is just a good atmosphere in here. There were so many people, it was really cool.”

JACK RODGERS, DAILY

As a member of t h e team she grew up watching, Kilkelly is where she wants to be.

“Having this volleyball p ro g r a m a n d a c a d e m i c opportunity here that’s close to home was the perfect fit for me,” she said.

FOOTBALL

Despite close calls, ‘Cardiac Gophers’ head to Big Ten undefeated The Gophers led in all three games this season, needing a comeback each time.

BY NICK JUNGHEIM njungheim@nndaily

Although they entered the contest as favorites and jumped out to a double-digit lead, the Gophers needed a fourth-quarter rally to salvage a victory.

Sound familiar? That statement has applied to all three games Minnesota has played so far this season.

For the fourth consecutive season, the Gophers swept their nonconference opponents to open the season 3-0. This year, however, the victories were hard-fought as Minnesota needed creativity, resiliency and a bit of luck to defeat South Dakota State, Fresno State and Georgia Southern by a combined 13 points.

“There’s something to be said for how we’re win-

ning,” head coach P.J. Fleck said after the Georgia Southern game. “There’s going to be a lot of close games in the Big Ten; just statistically speaking, there always is. This team has found ways to win really difficult games.”

Fleck pointed out that even though none of Minnesota’s first three opponents were members of Power Five conferences, they are established programs with traditions of winning. In 2018, they produced a combined record of 32-8, with South Dakota State advancing to the semifinals of the FCS Playoffs and Fresno State attaining a final ranking of No. 18 in the Associated Press poll.

If there is one thing the Gophers have demonstrated this season, it’s an ability to make key plays at critical moments. In the season opener, redshirt senior Winston DeLattiboudere recovered a fumble at the South Dakota State 34-yard line with 8:12 re-

KAMAAN RICHARDS, DAILY

Running back Rodney Smith carries the ball at TCF Bank Stadium on Thursday, Aug. 29. Minnesota defeated South Dakota State 28-21.

maining which led to the go-ahead touchdown from redshirt sophomore Mohamed Ibrahim five plays later.

The next week at Fresno State, Minnesota needed a last-minute, 20-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Tanner Morgan to receiver Chris AutmanBell on a fourth-and-13 to tie the game. In the second overtime period, redshirt

sophomore Antoine Winfield Jr. sealed a 38-35 Gophers victory with a walkoff interception.

Just when it appeared that the Gophers were out of dramatic ways to win games, Morgan led the offense 13 plays and 75 yards in just 3:34, capping the furious drive with a touchdown to receiver Tyler Johnson with 13 seconds remaining against Georgia

Southern.The senior’s third trip to the end zone that afternoon was decisive as Minnesota wrestled a 3532 victory away from the Eagles.

“We’re doing a lot of things to put ourselves in a situation where we have to come back and do the two-minute drive,” Morgan said. “But finding a way to win and through our culture, through our ‘row the boat’ mantra, we’re able to do that.”

While winning close games is important, so is avoiding them when given the opportunity, something Minnesota has struggled with so far this year. In the first three weeks of the season, the Gophers surrendered leads of 20-7, 14-3 and 21-10.

“We had three very big, emotional games,” Fleck said after the Georgia Southern game. “It could have been a loss, but they found a way to win. But the winning is one thing, how we play is what I care

about. I didn’t think we played up to our capabilities.”

Despite the upset scares, Minnesota has managed to remain undefeated so far, something many of its upcoming opponents cannot say. Four of the Gophers’ first five Big Ten matchups are against Purdue, Nebraska, Illinois and Maryland, all teams who have already lost games in which they were favored.

After the week off, Minnesota will look to achieve its first 4-0 start since 2013.

To accomplish that, the Gophers will have to defeat Purdue on Sept. 28 in West Lafayette, Indiana.

“Coach Fleck said we’re good enough for right now,” senior Carter Coughlin said. “We’re 3-0 and that’s exactly where we wanted to be, but we have a lot of different areas we need to improve on. So, I’m excited to have a whole two weeks for us to get a lot better and come out flying against Purdue.”

CROSS COUNTRY

Korzenowski ready for success in 2019 after win at Oz Memorial The Gophers are ranked No. 23 in the latest cross country poll results.

BY BRENDAN O’BRIEN bobrien@nndaily

At the beginning of the season, head coach Sarah Hopkins and the rest of the women’s cross country team at Minnesota knew different runners would need to step in and be leaders for the team throughout the fall.

Redshirt sophomore Anastasia Korzenowski is one of the early candidates to do so this season.

Korzenowski impressed earlier this month at the Oz Memorial by leading the pack throughout the meet and securing her first career win.

It is an encouraging sign for Korzenowski, who a year ago finished as one of the top Minnesota runners in each of the seven races she ran. At both the NCAA Midwest Regional and the NCAA Championship, the final two races of the season, she finished fifth.

Korzenowski is also excited for the opportunity to be a leader for the women’s team. While she has

shown that she can be a top runner for the Gophers, Korzenowski is primarily focused on the success of the whole team.

“I want to do the best I can for the team and I know that someone had to step up and put themselves in the position,” Korzenowski said.

As most people would expect from a collegiate c ro s s c o u n t r y r u n n e r , Korzenowski loves racing and having the opportunity to compete but admits that training can be challenging for her.

The t hree- w eek p erio d between meets has made it even more difficult for Korzenowski as the team does not compete again until Saturday, Sept.

28th at the Roy Griak Invitational.

Nevertheless, Korzenowski a n d h e r t e a m mates are using this time to prepare for upcoming meets.

“It gives us a great opportunity to really build ourselves up and get a really strong block in together ... without having to worry about tapering off for the races,” Korzenowski said. “It gives us a chance to get those big t o u g h w o rk o u t s i n b u t still be fully ready to go.”

KAMAAN RICHARDS, DAILY

Redshirt Sophomore Anastasia Korzenowski holds the lead during the Oz Memorial on Friday, Sept. 6. Both Men’s and Women’s teams earned first place in the meet.

H opki ns know s t h a t Korzenowski will “scratch and claw” during any meet. But in the offseason, Hopkins challenged Korzenowski to focus more on aspects outside of running which can improve her performance. Hopkins

wants the redshirt sophomore to treat her recovery, nutrition and even her sleep as if if were a competition. Thus far, Hopkins is impressed with Korzenowski’s progress.

“Her maturation as an athlete is getting better

and [she is] better at being competitive the other 22 hours of the day,” Hopkins said.

Heading into the next meet, Korzenowski thinks the Roy Griak Invitational, where she finished sixth among Gopher run-

ners and 24th overall last season, will be a good opportunity to see how this training period has helped the team improve. But Korzenowski is mostly excited for having yet another opportunity to do what she loves most: race.

7

MNDAILY.COM

MN DAILY

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

STREET ART

Festival transforms walls into canvases The Chroma Zone Street Art and Mural Festival drew artists from far and wide.

BY NORAH KLEVEN nkleven@mndaily.com

The Twin Cities was doused in every hue imaginable during last week’s Chroma Zone Mural and Art Festival – the first of its kind in Minnesota.

Fifteen artists worked to install 12 large-scale murals in the “Creative Enterprise Zone,” an area between downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis filled with creative businesses and startups.

Catherine Day, a Chroma Zone organizer, said the festival pulled inspiration from major cities across the United States, including Denver, Detroit and the Wynwood district of Miami.

“We felt that St. Paul in particular is an important place to make a mark because we are such an artistic community here and the Twin Cities is a globally significant creative community,” Day said.

Beyond the United States, street art is happening all over the world, Day said. She cited Reykjavík, Iceland and Athens, Greece as international examples.

Chroma Zone brought both local street artists and muralists from as far as Norway and Argentina.

Chuck U is an acclaimed local artist with work most notably featured on Indeed beer cans. Though he has been working as a professional artist for ten years,

NUR ADAM, DAILY

A mural painted by Artist Chuck U as seen on Wycliff Street on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019.

his piece for the festival was only his third large scale mural.

Using varieties of blue, purple, yellow and green, he painted a sea woman feeding a suit-clad man to what he called “pet sea worms.”

The rain last week in the Twin Cities hampered the mural-creating process by delaying painting.

It caused some issues for Chuck U, rendering him unable to work because if his mural became wet from rain, its intricate lines would drip.

Just down the block, Claudia Valentino and her partner Greta McLain worked on a mural illustrating the unity of younger and older generations through paint and mosaic work.

Valentino is a native of Argentina who moved to Minneapolis in 2009. Her mural work reflects her story. It features many different shades of green, a nod to the women’s movement of Argentina, which uses green as its representative color.

“It was really important to both of them to include green in this mural because

it’s close to their hearts,” said Amelia Nielsen, an assistant to the artists. “This is their way of being connected to that movement.”

Sunflowers are also prominently featured in the mural. Nielsen said the flowers are known to naturally clean toxins from the Earth, making them a symbol of the role youth play today.

The murals created this past week will brighten the walls of the Twin Cities for at least a year, until the next Chroma Zone festival.

“It’s really about making visible the creative community,” Day said. “It’s about the importance of artistic expression and putting life and vibrancy into our community.”

BOOKS

BARS

Local author sources creativity in healing Junauda Petrus’s debut novel, “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them,” came out on Sept. 17.

BY KSENIA GORINSHTEYN kgorinshteyn@mndaily.com

JACK RODGERS, DAILY

Como Tap as seen on Monday, Sept. 16, 2019. The new business replaces Sporty’s Pub and Grill.

Review: Como Tap is Sporty’s with upgrades Major changes include a more inclusive menu and a fresh interior.

BY NORAH KLEVEN nkleven@mndaily.com

Sometimes, things have to get worse before they can get better. This was the case with the closing of Como’s much-loved bar, Sporty’s Pub and Grill, in late June.

Como Tap has now taken its place. It offers the same vibe, staff and entertainment with some upgrades to the menu, decor and game room.

The restaurant-bar opened its doors early this September. When you walk in, a pinball machine greets you to your right and the same old pool table awaits you in a windowed room to the left. The room is rearranged in a way that gives pool-lovers more room to play, out of the way of the pinball machines.

Gone are the sports

decor in the karaoke room.

Instead, posters of movie stars, TV shows and music from the ‘90s adorn the walls. This seems like a fitting change, as the room hosts the bar’s weekly trivia nights on Tuesdays and karaoke nights on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

One of the most notable changes is the upgraded menu. In an attempt to cater to a wider range of customers, the bar has added gluten free options, cauliflower “chicken wings” and a “Beyondelicious” vegan burger.

The burger is an improvement to the old menu, though at $16, it is spendy.

Perfect for meat and glutenfree guests, the patty comes served on a gluten-free bun with mushrooms, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce and fresh pico de gallo.

While Como Tap offers locally-sourced meats and beer, these changes come at a small cost to customers.

Como Tap does not offer the

same five-dollar food menu, a staple of Sporty’s.

College students and Como residents alike will approve of the happy hour.

From 3 to 7 p.m. daily, the bar offers discounted appetizers and drinks.

Continuing the tradition of cheap beer offered by Sporty’s, another happy hour from 9 p.m. to close offers three-dollar pints of Hamm’s and Michelob Golden Ultra.

The bar has ten tap-lines and focuses on local beer offerings. Though beer is the drink of choice at Como Tap, the offering of cocktails is impressive. The cocktails are largely wine and champagne-based and the menu offers a drink for each of the basic liquors.

The most popular is a wine spritzer made with white wine, cranberry juice and sprite. Another specialty is the “gin fizz,” with housemade, organic gin.

With a few adjustments, Como Tap is the Sporty’s 2.0 we never knew we needed.

Junauda Petrus can fluctuate between being an aerialist, a teacher or a writer, depending on when you catch her.

The local author effortlessly combines her many creative endeavors into an artistic identity that is based in empathy and connection.

“I want to create these worlds where people as audience members can feel saturated in an engagement of a moment,” Petrus said. “Not just attending the show.”

Pulling people into a performance serves a purpose in Petrus’ work. Her installations, including a play about an incarcerated mother and a choreographed solo performance called “Black Solitude/Autonomous Wildness,” largely deal with healing.

“We are a part of human ecology so part of how we navigate our own healing is a very personal thing but also ancestral,” Petrus said.

“You’re healing for yourself, you’re healing for your parents, you’re healing for your grandparents.”

But recently, Petrus has put this creative power into something that pulls people in a different way — through words on a page.

“Once I got past shifting my life to really focusing on the book, it really became its own world, its own portal to different stories,” Petrus said.

Her young adult novel, “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them,” was released on Sept. 17. It brings forward the narratives of queer black women in enchanting and poetic ways.

“As a queer black woman, I am also really hungry for this kind of media and I’m really excited to see myself and my story and the stories of folks that I love reflected in this book,” said Erin Sharkey, who cofounded the artistic partnership Free Black Dirt with Petrus.

The book follows two black teens, one from Trinidad and one from Minneapolis, as they explore their relationship and love for one another.

“I got very focused on not only the fact that I was telling this story, but I wanted it to be an accessible story,” Petrus said. “For young people to feel like these characters reflect them and me feel like I’m writing in a way that wants to invite them in.”

The writing process for the book began about four years ago as Petrus wrote snippets of the book before deciding to actually go for it.

“It’s always been a therapeutic thing for me to write,” Petrus said. “I really started to feel all this gratitude for the process, and the journey of writing the book.”

Petrus traveled to Trinidad last year for a few weeks to gain a better understanding of the book’s characters and see where her mother came from.

“She was really glad she went there and did research for the book because there’s so much more she got from being there and talking to people,” said Petrus’ mother, Ingrid Richards.

COURTESY OF JUNAUDA PETRUS

The 320-page book was written practically in consultation with Petrus’ young self. It’s a culmination of her devotion to her work thus far in life and a marker of where she might be headed.

“I really wish that my father and grandfather were around to see her,” Richards said. “My grandfather never learned to read but he would always buy me the newspaper when he came home from work, and now his great-granddaughter is a writer.”

Creating these stories about identity and healing has brought Petrus to an understanding of her artistry. While this may grow and transform in the future, she’s proud of where she’s gotten so far.

“I’ve been grateful to grow up and find the value in my voice,” Petrus said.

“And see the worthiness of living my life.”

“The Stars and the Blackness Between Them” Launch Party

$

Sept. 19, 6-9 p.m.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis Free, copies of the book will be available for sale

8 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

MN DAILY

MNDAILY.COM

Editorials & Opinions

COLUIMN

Solving climate change requires more than just solar panels

We need to rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, but the solution is more complicated than just building more renewables.

I

n the past, whenever I thought about solving climate change, I envisioned a world where we would be able to become fully carbon neuLew Blank tral solely columnist through the use of renewable energy, a futuristic green paradise where we’d eliminate all of our CO2 emissions simply by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources. We wouldn’t need to radically change our consumption patterns or reduce our energy use in any economic sectors, so long as our global economy was powered by renewable energy, not fossil fuels.

But after looking further into how deeply fossil fuels are ingrained in our modern economy, I’ve realized that this assumption is scientifically inaccurate. While renewable energy has enormous potential and we should be

COLUIMN

hold 853 passengers and can travel at more than 600 miles per hour. And while China has developed an all-electric cargo ship, it can only traverse 50 miles on a single charge.

While there’s some potential for improvement here, it’s unlikely that we’ll have electric airplanes, electric cargo ships, electric freight trains and electric semi trucks transporting goods around the world at an affordable rate in the coming decades.

The problem is equally complicated when it comes to buildings. The process of heating and cooling buildings with natural gas is steeped in greenhouse gas emissions, but replacing these services with electric alternatives can more than double costs, according to the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. And when it comes to constructing buildings with steel and cement — two of the most commonlyused materials in modern infrastructure — it would be extremely challenging to use renewable electricity as a substitute for the oil-intensive kilns and furnaces necessary to produce these materials, which typically create temperatures of nearly 3000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even more dauntingly, using renewable energy to curtail emissions becomes downright impossible when it comes to sources of emissions like animal agriculture, rice paddies, landfills, water treatment and deforestation. Each of these processes creates massive amounts of emissions, but none of them can possibly be solved by using renewables, simply because their emissions don’t stem directly from energy use.

The bottom line is this: renewable energy is essential to the fight against climate

change. But due to the fact that the majority of our emissions stem from non-electric processes, and converting these processes to electricity can be very expensive if not downright impossible, we shouldn’t be convinced that renewables represent 100 percent of the solution to climate change.

Whenever a company, organization, government or university promises to run solely on “renewable energy,” we as citizens need to ask some important questions. What will be done about non-electric sources of emissions?

Will heating and cooling be made electric?

Will the shipping of goods be powered by electric vehicles? Will all building renovations be made without the use of cement or steel? Will alternatives to meat be pursued?

My point is not to diminish the power of renewable energy. In fact, I believe it’s the single most impactful solution on the table when it comes to saving our planet from climate change.

The takeaway is simply that treating renewable energy as a be-all and end-all solution can cause us to overlook important aspects of solving climate change that go beyond merely building more renewables. Only with a multifaceted approach to addressing climate change that includes changing our patterns of consumption can we truly solve the problem in a comprehensive, holistic way.

Lew Blank welcomes comments at lblank@mndaily.com.

While we weren’t watching...

...Minnesota lawmakers have been whittling away at human rights.

I

taking bold, ambitious steps to build solar panels and wind farms across the U.S., it should not be treated as the be-all and end-all solution to climate change.

The reason lies in this simple fact: renewable energy sources like solar panels, wind farms and hydroelectric plants are only reliable at producing electricity, but only 28 percent of the U.S.’ emissions stem directly from electric generation.

The other 72 percent of emissions come from sources like transportation, industry, buildings and agriculture, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. While some of these emissions are indeed tied to electricity, many others stem from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal, as well as chemical processes that have little to do with electricity.

This poses a serious problem: how will we be able to use renewable electricity to power sectors of the economy whose emissions stem from non-electric processes?

While some of these non-electric processes such as cars indeed have electric alternatives that may become cost-effective in the coming years, other sectors including global trade, building-related emissions and land use-related emissions will be significantly more difficult to convert to electric inputs.

Despite major technological improvements, converting these machines to electric alternatives is extremely difficult technologically. Airbus, for instance, has produced an electric plane that seats two people and travels at a mere 136 miles per hour, a far cry from the company’s jet fuel-powered A380s, which

had some time to kill last week and had forgotten the Minnesota Daily crossword, so I picked up a copy of the Minneapolis City Uma Venkata Pages. On the incolumnist side front cover was an ad bought by an organization called Unrestrict Minnesota. They had printed a PSA about abortion restrictions that are currently in place in our state.

I learned from this page and the associated website that Minnesota mandates a script that doctors must relay to patients seeking abortion services, unlike any other medical procedure, and requires a 24-hour waiting period. The state of Minnesota also refers to

the fetus as an “unborn child,” which sounds exploitative and misleading. Doctors must also include men’s obligation to pay child support. Minors trying to undergo abortion must notify both parents, regardless of any relationship. Should the minor be unable to contact both parents, they must go through the judicial circuit to obtain permission prior to undergoing the procedure. I’m sure this law was born out of “common-sense” legislation, but it defies any realistic common sense at all. The American Academy of Pediatrics strongly advises against these laws, partly because they tend to delay the procedure until late in the pregnancy. This permission and notification requirement does not apply to other medical events like substance-abuse treatment, STI testing, and childbirth. I would think that we could all agree that minors have no business being pregnant, and a minor’s pregnancy is a blaring indication of greater problems, but here we are.

Five clinics inside the state of Minnesota provide legal abortions. Currently, Minnesota has ten doctors who are legally allowed to perform them; 98 are the “crisis pregnancy center” types that steer people away from abortion while claiming to assist them, according to Unrestrict MN. It is illegal for advanced-practice clinicians trained in abortions to deliver abortions in Minnesota

and many other states. The State Commissioner of Health collects information on the age, race, marital status, education levels, income, number of children and previous abortions and miscarriages, and the procedure payment method from patients who have undergone abortion.

And, beautifully, the Minnesota Supreme Court found in 1995 that Minnesotans have the right to abort, the right to decide to abort, and that the government has no place in influencing that decision in either direction.

Yet, all of the above laws passed since then, and hundreds more, exist to sway Minnesotans away from aborting safely.

Ask a nurse about what happens when people have no access to safe abortions.

Theoretically, those stories should be concentrated in the experiences of retired nurses. But the more legal abortion is restricted today, the more people die in the primitive catch-22.

Abortion is not about taking lives when they’re inconvenient to keep. Warfare is.

Abortion is about trusting the only person who can truly know what they’re capable of to remove a collection of cells, before it can grow into a living being who deserves a truly valid chance at life. Restricting abortion is for who doesn’t have the money to circumvent the rules — because nothing will

ever be forbidden to those who do. Restricting abortion is about keeping those part of a lower socio-economic background inside that cycle. Restricting abortion is about making sure that those with no money, no agency, no power, will never be able to lift themselves, then others, up because at the hands of someone else. They are beholden by a new life and thus virtually all of their already strained energy and assets are funneled into providing what little they can. The poor are kept poor. Poor people remain ignored. This is convenient to the people who make laws that restrict abortion.

I understand the opposition. No one honestly thinks they’re doing the wrong thing.

Unless you’re profiting from war or disease, in which case you have to be extremely dense to misconstrue those ethics, and at that point you probably wouldn’t be a profiteer.

But please know that those who are pregnant are sentient, lucid and intelligent people, too.

And ending a pregnancy is one of the hardest feats a person can go through, so the stakes are higher than anyone other than that person can possibly comprehend. Trust them.

Uma Venkata welcomes comments at uvenkata@mndaily.com.

CARTOON BY ROBERT MCGRADY SHARE YOUR VIEWS The Minnesota Daily welcomes letters and guest columns from readers. All letters must include the writer’s name, address and phone number for verification. The Daily reserves the right to edit all letters for style, space, libel and grammar. Letters to the editor should be no more than 500 words in length. Guest columns should be approximately 350 words. The Daily reserves the right to print any submission as a letter or guest column. Submission does not guarantee publication.

EDITORIALS & OPINIONS DEPARTMENT Editorials represent the voice of the Minnesota Daily as an institution and are prepared by the editorial board.

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letters@mndaily.com Fax: (612) 435-5865 Phone: (612) 435-1578 Letters and columns to the editor

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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

MN DAILY

HOROSCOPES

Today’s Birthday (9/16): Home is the center of your world this year. Focus actions to support your relationships, heart and happiness. Winter brings romance and delight, before a group project switches direction. Manage a family challenge next summer, before sharing glorious results with friends.

Collaborate for shared gain.

MNDAILY.COM

To get the advantage, check the day’s rating: 10 is the easiest day, 0 the most challenging.

Written by Nancy Black

Aries (3/21 - 4/19): Today is an 9 — Make a bargain, commitment or promise. Push for a long-term dream and vision. Use your charm and creativity. Make a move for lasting benefit.

Libra (9/23 - 10/22): Today is an 8 — Set into place structures to support your next adventure.

Balance and weigh your options. Make longterm preparations. Consider budgets.

Taurus (4/20 - 5/20): Today is a 9 — Replenish your reserves in small, steady increments.

Compute expenses to find painless twigs to prune. Align on solutions for long-term growth.

Scorpio (10/23 - 11/21): Today is a 9 — Go for big financial goals and make them, with a partner’s support. Teamwork goes the distance.

Clarify your vision to inspire greater gain.

Gemini (5/21 - 6/21): Today is a 9 — Focus energy for a personal project for long-lasting gain. Research and consider expert financial opinions. Explore and innovate.

Sagittarius (11/22 - 12/21): Today is a 9 — Collaborate to determine next steps with your partner. Discuss possibilities, and align upon which to greenlight. Compromise and negotiate.

Cancer (6/22 - 7/22): Today is an 7 — Review options for the pathway of least friction. Gentle, steady pressure works better than force, especially with partners. Rest and recharge.

Capricorn (12/22 - 1/19): Today is an 8 — Pick up the pace as demand for your work rises.

The moves you make now can have lasting personal benefits. You have an extra advantage.

Leo (7/23 - 8/22): Today is an 8 — A community effort gains momentum. Long-term goals seem within reach. Make agreements, and sign contracts. Recruit friends to help.

Aquarius (1/20 - 2/18): Today is an 8 — Quick action gets through. Collaboration flowers. Pull together for common gain. Have fun with family, friends and someone you love. Share your heart.

Virgo (8/23 - 9/22): Today is an 8 — A professional goal tempts. Play the game you’ve been practicing to win. Forge ahead, and anticipate changes. Stay light on your feet.

Pisces (2/19 - 3/20): Today is a 7 — Work together for home and family. Work out who will do what, and get going. Handle household routines, and make a long-desired improvement.

DR. DATE Dr. Date,

My ex-girlfriend and I were together for two years in high school — a lifetime in teenage relationships. We broke up a few months ago (after trying the long distance thing at different colleges) with no hard feelings, until I saw her making out with someone on her Snapchat story the very next day. Come on, at least give me some mourning period…

Anyway, we’re not exactly on the best of terms, which is why I was super surprised to get a call from an unknown number last week that turned out to be her — asking me to bail her and her new boyfriend out of jail.

I balked and hung up, but not before telling her that her next boyfriend can deal with it. I thought I was being cool and assertive ... until I felt bad, went down to the courthouse and bailed them both out. Two years is a long time, okay?

Now I’m not sure what to do.

She broke up with her new boyfriend because of the jail thing, paid me back for bail and now is talking about getting back together. What am I supposed to do?!

Dr. Date,

I have an interesting predicament.

My boyfriend just keeps coming home with phallic-shaped foods! First, it was a bunch of cucumbers, then carrots, zucchini, squash — if it is even slightly shaped like genitalia, my boyfriend has bought it in the past week. I asked why so many veggies, and he just said they looked good! I’m worried he’s subconsciously trying to tell me something sexual, but I’m not sure if I’m reading into things. Any ideas?

—In a Pickle

Dear In a Pickle,

Just look up some recipes and make vegetable soup before he comes home. If he seems irrationally upset, you’ll know your answer. If you’re both cool with the other use though, I suggest you invest in something that doesn’t cost 99 cents and will give you an infection!

—Dr. Date

—Locked in my Heart

Dear Locked in my Heart,

Uhhh ... this is a predicament (and yes, I’m annoyed you didn’t mention WHAT she was in jail for. There’s a big difference between stealing a candy bar and assaulting someone!) But no matter what happened that landed her and her boyfriend in jail, I wouldn’t get back together with her. This whole situation is so weird and you deserve someone who A) has friends they can call instead, WTF? and B) wouldn’t do that to you. Tell her you’re not interested and thank your lucky stars you got the bail money back.

—Dr. Date

Want advice from the love doctor?

Email Dr. Date at drdate@mndaily.com

SUDOKU CROSSWORD

Last Issue’s Puzzle Solved Complete the grid so each row, column and 3-by-3 box (in bold borders) contains every digit 1 to 9.

9/19/19

For strategies on how to solve sudoku, visit sudoku.org.uk.

Last issue’s solution

© 2019 Michael Mepham. Distributed

by Tribune Media Services.

All rights reserved.

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Thursday, September 19, 2019