May 30–June 12, 2019 Vol. 30, No. 11 southwestjournal.com
Parents want foundation to make changes
GRIND PAYS OFF
Group says Southwest Foundation disproportionately benefits ‘whitest and wealthiest’ students By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
A group of parents focused on combating systemic inequities are demanding that the Southwest High School Foundation change its approach to raising and distributing funds. The group, called White on White, said the foundation should raise money at less exclusive venues and that its all-white board needs a more diverse membership. The parents also said the foundation should focus grants on students who have been historically underserved and make the application process easier to understand for people from marginalized communities. “The decisions they make need to have an equity lens,” parent Laura Balfour said. “If it’s not equitable, then they shouldn’t be doing it.” The group’s demands came four months after the foundation received a $250,000 donation from 1969 Southwest graduate Betsee Parker, who earmarked half the funds for “teacher innovation and development.” Her gift wasn’t intended for the foundation’s yearly grantmaking activities, according to board president Adam Barrett, who graduated from Southwest in 2000. Parker was traveling abroad this spring (she bought a Scottish castle in February) and was unavailable for an interview, Barrett said. He said she wanted Southwest’s teachers to use the “innovation” funding as they saw fit, adding that a teacher committee has been discussing how best to spend it. White on White parents said they want some of that money to go toward teacher-equity training. “Real classroom innovation would be white teachers kind of coming to terms with their racism,” parent June Thiemann said.
Skateboard advocates make headway in Minneapolis
By Andrew Hazzard
On a sunny Monday in May, Tyler Kirksey brought his skateboard to Armatage Park. It’s a familiar place for Kirksey, 19, who has been skating for about seven years. He attended nearby Southwest High School and improved his skills by skating at Armatage. The place has some sentimental value to him. The skate park there is great for learning, he said, but if he could he’d improve the “flow” of the park, making the transitions between the five elements there smoother and more instinctive. “It’s really a bare bones type of park,” he said.
Ben Vaske jumps up to ride a rail at Elliot Park, the city’s public skate park Downtown. The park will be upgraded this fall, the MPRB says. Photo by Andrew Hazzard
SEE SKATING / PAGE A23
SEE SOUTHWEST FOUNDATION / PAGE A15
Kingfield philosopher seeks medical aid in dying By Zac Farber / zfarber@swjournal.com
When philosopher Karen Warren started teaching in 1978, she would devote a unit of her ethics class to euthanasia. “I started thinking very early on about whether there’s such a thing as rational suicide, whether people have a right to die,” said Warren, who has lived in the Kingfield neighborhood for the past two decades. Some of her ethics students, she said, would argue that it was always morally wrong to kill yourself. She would challenge their beliefs with probing questions. “What if you’re a CIA agent who’s taken an oath to die — to kill yourself — rather than reveal your country’s secrets?” she’d ask.
“What about Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest unjust regimes — have they done something wrong? They’re monks!” The goal, she recalled, was to make students think for themselves and see how it may be “problematic to say the right to life is absolute.” If Warren’s students asked her what she believed herself, she would reply: “That’s irrelevant; my job is to develop your view.” Today, Warren is reticent no longer. In 2015, she was diagnosed with a terminal neurodegenerative disorder called Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), which will eventually leave her paralyzed and unable to talk, walk or swallow.
Who works in the MoZaic East building? PAGE B1
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The diagnosis has radically changed her outlook on life. She said her perspective has “deepened” from academic expertise to lived experience, and she has turned her orderly intellect away from philosophical research and toward the uncertain work of political activism. “It became obvious to me that the one thing I could do as a philosopher and teacher was I can do a three-minute speech,” she said. “Before I got the illness, I don’t think I understood my role in life or why I was here.” SEE WARREN / PAGE A17
Comprehensive plan’s impact on SW schools PAGE A9
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“All I want to do is die comfortably,” Karen Warren says. Photo by Bill Klotz
Snapping turtles returning to Harriet PAGE B7
Lola demolished
Community calendar
Maka Ska’s new artwork
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