TOP HEADLINES INSIDE:
KALER TALKS BUDGET REQUEST, COACHING CONTRACT PAGE 5
■ ■ U athletes add to Science Museum exhibit
THE MN DAILY SAT WITH KALER ON WEDNESDAY.
■ ■ Coach P.J. Fleck nabs 25 football recruits
The attendees can see how they match-up with athletes. PG 3
The recruiting class is ranked 57th in the United States. PG 7
PARTLY CLOUDY HIGH 18° LOW 8°
U OF M
MINNEAPOLIS
LATE WEEK
ST PAUL
ONLINE EXCLUSIVES AT MNDAILY.COM
FEB. 2-4, 2017
FOOTBALL
STUDENT ISSUES
Travel ban causes unease for international students
Training will target Gopher football team concerns
“I [would] prefer starting over in another country that feels more comfortable.”
U leaders say they’ll address issues with the team’s culture.
Saeed Hashemi, below, a University of Minnesota Ph.D. student from Iran.
BY RYAN FAIRCLOTH rfaircloth@mndaily.com
ALEX TUTHILL-PREUS, DAILY
University Ph.D. student Saeed Hashemi poses for a portrait on Wednesday. Hashemi is from Iran, one of the countries affected by President Trump’s immigration ban. BY RILYN EISCHENS reischens@mndaily.com
M
ahdi Ahmadi dreams of going home. At night, his subconscious takes him back to Iran, where his parents and sister live. He hasn’t seen them since Jan. 11, 2011, a date he remembers and recites with ease. The recurring dreams are “compensation” for being without them for six years, he said. Ahmadi, an Iranian citizen and doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, was planning a trip home for next year. His father and
mother are both sick, and he said he would have a hard time forgiving himself if he didn’t make the journey to see them. But President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting U.S. entry for some foreign nationals has left Ahmadi and other members of the University community unsure of when it will be safe to leave and return to the U.S. The executive order bars entry to the United States for citizens Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia for 90 days. Nationals from Syria are barred indefinitely, and refugee entry from any country
LIBRARIES
Black history focus of U-led archive site Umbra Search has more than 500K African American artifacts. BY RAJU CHADUVULA rchaduvula@mndaily.com
From handwritten 17th-centur y letters to underground hip hop albums from the 1970s, a whole bevy of African-American historical artifacts are now available via the University of Minnesota’s Umbra search. The site, which houses digital African American archives, is now completely free and open to public — just in time for Black History Month. With more than 500,000 materials from nearly 1,000 institutions, the site was created as a central repository for use by researchers, teachers, students, artists and faculty, said Cecily Marcus, curator of the Archie Givens, Sr., Collection of African American Literature at Anderson Library. The project is a national initiative between several institutions, such as Yale University and the Smithsonian Institution, but was led by the University. Nearly 50 percent of the collection’s materials come from the Digital Public Librar y of America, Marcus said. u See UMBRA Page 5
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA STUDENTS FROM COUNTRIES LISTED ON TRAVEL BAN Syria
4 3
111
Iraq
Iran
3
Libya
0
Sudan
3
Yemen
1 Somalia *Editor’s Note: Home locations for 3,776 students was not available. SOURCE: UMN OFFICE OF INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH FALL 2016 ENROLLMENT DATA
is suspended for 120 days. All of the countries are Muslimmajority. Almost immediately, chaos ensued at airports across the country as citizens from impacted nations flying to the U.S. were detained. The order prompted protests nationwide and sent many University students, staff and faculty reeling. A little over 100 University students called one of the af fected countries home in 2013, according to available enrollment data, and many more have family in those countries. u See STUDENTS Page 10
CHILDCARE
U funding cuts hit daycares Student service fee changes could slash budgets by at least 37 percent.
FINANCE
TCF sued for opt-in overdraft policy A partnership gives the U $37 for every new TCF account. BY ANDREW HEISER aheiser@mndaily.com
The centers’ directors say they were blindsided by the changes, which they didn’t lear n about until a December information session. u See CARE Page 10
u See TCF Page 3
COURTNEY DEUTZ, DAILY
Children sit and listen as they are read a story at the Community Child Care Center on Monday, in St. Paul. The daycare’s funding from student service fees will be cut.
the student ser vice fees process, the two University area centers’ eligible funding will drop from over $85,000 each to a maximum of $55,000 each. Over 70 percent of customers at both centers are students.
u See CULTURE Page 5
A federal finance protection agency is suing TCF Bank, a bank with close ties to the University of Minnesota, alleging that it tricked customers into accepting overdraft service fees so that the bank could generate more revenue. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month said TCF Bank intentionally misled customers during the application process so they would accept an account option that charged $35 for each overdraft. TCF Bank has an exclusive par tnership with the University of Minnesota that allows students to connect their U Cards to a checking account. The CFPB said the bank adopted a “loose definition of consent” and pushed customers to accept the service. The bureau said the bank tricked customers into think-
BY DAVID CLAREY dclarey@mndaily.com
Jonathan Ploeger was all set to go back to school for his Ph.D., but he still had one last thing to take care of: his daughter. Ploeger and his wife applied for daycare waitlists for their 16-month-old daughter. His wife would be the sole earner, and they had student loans to worr y about. But they received a call from the Community Child Care Center on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus telling them they would be eligible for their sliding fee scale. Without the scale, Ploeger, who ser ves as the center’s liaison between the University of Minnesota — which has traditionally funded the center — and the Como Early Learning Center, said the two wouldn’t be able to afford to have their daughter in childcare. But now, after changes to
The Gophers football team sat through four presentations on sexual assault prevention, relationship violence, the University’s sexual assault policies and bystander inter vention in 2016. Just over two months after the last presentation, 10 players were accused of involvement in the alleged sexual assault of a game day employee. Now, University of Minnesota administrators say the answer is more training. The Gophers football team has been in the spotlight since it boycotted all team activities in December in protest of the suspensions against their 10 accused teammates. When the team sat down with University Athletics Director Mark Coyle after the boycott, they agreed there was a need for “positive change” in team culture, he said in a Jan. 23 interview. At the time, the team’s methods for pursuing change were still up in the air. Newly-appointed head football coach P.J. Fleck has yet to meet with his team to talk about sexual assault prevention. He said he plans to discuss team-wide
VOLUME 117 ISSUE 35